I have shown before why I think that business is the solution to making sustainability widely available.

I have also shown that sustainable solutions need to be good for people and planet as well as rendering a profit.

Now I want to find out what the status quo is. Are there existing solutions that achieve that? Are there businesses who have implemented the solutions and see a positive impact on their bottom line?

Does being green to profit work?

I want to start researching the business case from three angles:

1. Businesses that are providing sustainable solutions
2. Businesses that have implemented sustainable solutions
3. Businesses that have decided not to implement sustainable solutions

Sunshine Coast, Australia

My main focus will be on a regional level: the Sunshine Coast in Australia. It includes a few related communities with a total 260,000 inhabitants. Tourism is a big economic factor, but the hinterland also offers a range of food production.

Noosa (which is at the northern end) has just been awarded Biosphere status by the UNESCO. This was not just for the ecologically sensitive area, but also the inclusive management of local council that put a strong emphasis on community involvement.

Worldwide

And I will compare my findings here with other publications. Naturally, the Internet will play an integral part in that.

I’ll start with a review of some major blogs.

Why would business be a good sustainability advocate? Because they can act more logically than an individual. They can also take into account a more long-term view and their actions have a bigger impact.

Making Logical Decisions

Humans make buying decisions on emotion. They might use logic to explain to themselves why they should buy something, but the essential decision is made emotionally.

In business this is different. A business is for profit. Therefore any purchasing decision is made based on its financial merit. If it does not increase the revenue or reduce the costs (thus leading to greater profit) it does not make sense doing it.

And here is where I see the biggest chance. Financial analysis is logical, not based on emotions.

A Long-term View

Financial analysis also always includes time. The return does not have to be immediate, it only needs to be there overall.

Bigger Impact

When you compare anything a business does with what an individual does, the business usually does it in a bigger way:

• they use more power
• they use more water
• they have more waste
• they transport more
• their impact on the community is bigger (just from the amount of people who work in a company)

That means two things:

1. It will be cheaper to deliver a sustainable solution and
2. the direct positive impact is greater
3. there is an indirect positive impact through the team carrying the solution forward into the community

So sustainable solutions for business. That is necessary to push sustainability forward.

“Sustainability is a characteristic of a process or state that can be maintained at a certain level indefinitely.” according to Wikipedia.

The process I am interested in is that of humans living on planet Earth.

There are 3 major components: People, the planet and profits.

Profits

I need to start with the end. Profits are the driving motor for our global community. It is also what drives each individual in each interaction.

What I mean is that whatever we do, we try to benefit from it. In each interaction we put in time and effort and maybe money so that at the end we have something.

And if it is possible to get the same result for less time, effort and money we go for it.

The problem in our complicated world is that the time, effort and money is not always passed on to the person who gets the benefit.

One of the best examples is global warming. It takes relatively little to dig up coal and burn it to generate electricity. Great profits are made. But now we find that the real costs include the results from global warming. These costs are carried by the community of human beings, even though individual companies and people have profited.

Planet Earth

No matter whether you are sentimental and like nature or you are a hardnosed business person, there is no denying that our lives are intricately linked to the well-being of a multitude of species and systems and processes that are all part of nature. Any imbalance in nature leads to a suffering of humans.

Many of the human actions have lead to unexpected problems elsewhere. In Australia, the introduction of cane toads are a well-known example. To fight beetles that were eating the crop, cane toads were introduced. Today they are still a plague.

Another example are our finite resources. Building a society that is dependent upon oil as its main source of energy is very short-sighted. (Peak Oil)

People

Naturally people come first. After all that is what I am and it still gives me the greatest joy to interact with others.

And anyway without humans, nature would look after itself anyway and we would not have to worry about sustainability.

But there is another aspect. Profits are often made with little regard to the impacts on human beings. Think of the sweatshops in Asia and Africa.

Sustainability - The Ideal Solution

So here is what sustainability means to me:
We use solutions that have a positive impact on the planet and care for people throughout the process of producing, using and discarding them. Additionally, they produce a profit for the company offering them and are no more expensive to me as a user.

The Sustainable Living Festival turns into an annual event for the first time. It attracts over 50 volunteers in responsible positions during preparation.

160 exhibitors show their sustainable solutions to 120,000 visitors. Our core team of 8 full-timers, who all took the risk of potentially not being paid all get their due.

The last 12 months have been an amazing ride through joy and frustration.

Some of the sponsoring companies were absolutely amazing at supporting this huge volunteer effort, others had to be dragged to the party.

I realise that it is a lot more comfortable to have a budget that funds all the event plans from the start, rather than having to adjust plans and budget all the time to accommodate necessities.

I also realise that a strong vision and sense of purpose greatly enhances any team. Bringing so many volunteers together, letting them follow their own dreams while weaving it together into a whole was an amazing feat. Luke Taylor held that vision.

Brigitte House had the ability to smooth out any ruffled feathers that I created through unpopular financial decisions. Together we achieved a huge step towards an event about sustainability that was also run using sustainable concepts.

People and planet were happy and a profit was left over to fund other parts of the Sustainable Living Foundation.  A success in all areas.

My wife had finished her Master, so we decided to follow our dream even further and move north to the sunny Sunshine Coast in Queensland were it is warm, even in winter.

I returned to Germany from South Africa, got married, migrated to Australia and ended up in Melbourne where my wife studied for a Master in Physiotherapy.

My past was event production, my future was going to be sustainability, so I started looking around Melbourne what there was for me to do.

I think it was on the second day after I had the Internet set up at our home that I stumbled upon the Sustainable Living Festival.

It was about 3 weeks away and sounded just like everything I had wanted. The perfect combination of my past skills and future interest. So I offered my help.

I remember walking through the park up to their office, thinking: “I am going to be really strict about wanting to earn money, not just volunteering. They should understand that. After all sustainability is about profit and not just feel-good.”

Naturally, they convinced me to volunteer, pretty much everyone did (except for a few hired professionals who had all been appointed already). We had 50,000 visitors over the 3 days of the event.

I also attended the debriefing session after the festival and decided to offer my services as an event producer for the next festival a year later.

Luke Taylor, the director was ecstatic. The board of the not-for-profit organisation who was putting on the event had to be convinced first that it would be financially viable. There was no money left over, so we had to put in the time to find the money for the next event. If we did not succeed, there would have been no pay.