CSR, Sustainability, Environmental concern… these themes have been yo-yoing up and down the corporate agenda as client and stakeholder pressure mounts and eases – and it is not wholly unconnected with the multiple legislation streams that are gaining traction and taking their place in the list of levies, fines and taxes that are becoming a common-place consideration for companies of all sizes.

As an economy, we have developed from building sustainability into our business process at the basic level (the pre ‘climate change’ level), where the concept meant just accepting the fact that if we don’t get the maximum return on our investment (whether it be from human or carbon resource), then we don’t have the foundation for a business that can pay its way or eventually grow. At this point sustainability as we understand it in the 21st century, an awareness of finite carbon resource, was a ‘nice-to-have’; everyone loves a tree hugger (but might not actually employ one!).

As the reality of diminishing sources of carbon resource, and wildly fluctuating oil prices based on availability, has come to have an effect on the global economy, we have entered a phase of grudging ‘need-to-have’, which reverts back as soon as we are able to ignore it (rising share prices, a temporary downward blip in the price of a barrel of oil, etc.)

What we have seen over the past 5 years or so, however, is that the pendulum increasingly points to ‘need-to-have’, especially since both political and corporate will to adopt alternatives such as wind, wave or solar power has been poor (as evidenced by the recent demise of our own domestic wind generation industry, for example).

It is not without a sense of irony that we notice that films such “The Age of Stupid” or “The Day the Earth Stood Still” (a re-make, no less) have become popular, with a global, growing understanding of the fact that when we’ve extracted every drop of oil or lump of coal, there can be no more ‘business-as-usual’. The reality is that, even if your business is riding the wave of the current economic downturn successfully, you have no choice but to accept sustainability as a ‘need-to-have’ – current and incoming levies and legislation, such as the Carbon Reduction Commitment, the Companies Act 2006 and Landfill Taxes, for example, only serve to reinforce the point.

So, as a business leader (and especially a CFO), should you not be pre-empting the pace of adoption and building cost-reducing measures into your future planning? It appears that the writing is on the wall and the business community (in the absence of strong or effective political leadership) has a window of opportunity to use the current economic climate to review its strategy going forward into recovery.

This does not mean employing a tree-hugger; it does mean, however, building sustainability into your strategy and process and that may require employing a properly integrated sustainability/environmental specialist. But there is a business case for that, as any company that has reduced its carbon footprint and discovered that this also reduces your operating costs has discovered.

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