Bridges To Knowledge: A Blog by Barry Camson

Five Soda Bottles In Search Of An Author

This week I attended "Environment and Sustainability 2050" in Tel Aviv. One of the exhibitors there was the firm Envitech which describes itself as dealing with environmental and climate monitoring systems. They provide the hardware and software for such monitoring systems. The resulting data then appear on sites like envihaifa.org.il which monitors air quality in Haifa where I live. In my conversation with Shay Cohen, the Operational Manager for the firm, it became clear to me that there is an important next step in the overall process of increasing sustainability in our societies.

Creating Sustainable Value Chains

Taking a value chain approach is particularly helpful when addressing how to build in sustainability as an integral part of a large and complex organization. The overarching goal in such an effort is to make the entire organization as well as its ecosystem of suppliers and customers more sustainable. These approaches differ significantly from previous efforts of "greenwashing" the organization or creating a separate sustainability function divorced from the daily life of the organization. The current recognition reflects the importance of making sustainability part of the daily mission and work of each person in the organization.

This post sets out the steps that can be used to accomplish this.

These steps are derived from two Harvard and Stanford business cases, dealing with Unilever and Walmart respectively. The steps tend to be iterative and will apply differently depending on specific conditions.