sustainability
Lindsey Parnell
published our audit report for year ended 2009–10 and it showed we made an additional £50m sterling of profit, having planned to actually put £40m sterling into the cost of doing Plan A. So it was a remarkable turnaround, to get to 2010 profit-positive. “It proves what Al Gore says that you can make a
sustainable business a profitable business – whether it’s coming from better eco-efficiencies, less waste, less energy, less packaging; whether it’s new ways of doing things, even inventing new businesses, which we have done by inventing M&S Energy.” Rose is unabashed about the profit imperative. “We all
now know that there’s a significant commercial return in going green, and I’m not embarrassed about saying that. Clearly there’s a moral need to do what we need to do, but if you can also say there’s an economic benefit, that’s a win-win: I’m not embarrassed about saying it differenti- ates our business, it makes our business more profitable because of course that’s what makes the world go round. “Companies like Wal-Mart, like O2, Unilever, Nike and
many more understand the green imperative of the 21st century. Commercially they have embarked on their own ethical eco journeys. There’s a guy called Yvon Chouinard, he is the founder of Patagonia. He says: ‘Every time we do the right thing we make money’. It’s part of a new wave of business thinking,” says Rose.
Redefining profit Roger Steare is corporate philosopher in residence at the Cass Business School, and a leading practitioner in the development and delivery of leadership, culture and ethics programmes for such major organisations as HSBC, PwC and Sky. He too was in Dublin for the summit and he offered an alternative and, at times, radical view. “We need to redefine profit,” says Steare. “But we need
to do something else. I think we are not facing a recession, we are facing a systems failure at every level – economic, social, political and environmental, and I’mincredibly opti- mistic provided we recognise the brutality of the crisis we are facing. For me hope comes from having the courage to face up to the truth. I think the systems failure needswhat computer engineers would call a reset. We need to reset our understanding of money, we need to reset our under- standing of the word economy, and we need to reset our
48 Irish Director Winter 2010
understanding of the word profit in the corporate context. “Money is simply a promise we trust. Companies do not
make money. They either keep or break promises. If they keep promises we trust them, if they break themwe don’t. The same is true of politicians and central bankers. So we need to understand that money is simply a promise we trust. It has no intrinsic value. “The Greek root of the word economy means thrift and
stewardship. Sustainability for me at a systems level is incompatible with growth. Growth is the philosophy of the cancer cell. It has no knowledge, it is slowly but surely killing the host. It has no sense of its own mortality, that the blood supply will stop because the patient has a heart attack.” Finally Steare deals with resetting how we define
profit. “Profit comes from the Latin word ‘profectus’, which means progress. I think we need to progress away from a childish addiction to more, and move towards a world where we fairly share progress and goodwill and well-being for all of us. “Since 1950 the global economy has grown about fifteen-
or sixteen-fold. That is what you get when you multiply 3pc per annum growth over 60 years. And yet in theWest our levels of well-being have not increased since 1950.We are no happier, and yet we are burning finite resources and fragile eco-systems at an alarming rate. If we are going to truly transformbusiness into a sustainable future we need to reset money, economy and our understanding of profit.” Rose says he agrees with a lot of what Steare had to say,
but that he is a lot more positive about the future. “Consumers want green, businesses understand the importance. What they don’t want is for it to cost more money. I think in our businesswe’ve demonstrated you can do it more cheaply. “Governments aren’t going to do it for you. Businesses
are closer to the consumer than government, therefore this move has to come from leadership in business. Business has to show it’s the right thing to do.”
The Corporation If you have an interest in sustainable business you will be familiar with the story of US carpet manufacturer Interface, one business that has been at the forefront of
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