SUSTAINABILITY
B usiness people often claim that avoiding an adverse impact on the environment lowers financial profit. In response to such claims, it is important to acknowledge that many benefits derived from our ecosystem, such as the use of fresh water or the catching of fish, are not priced. Exploiting these benefits are, therefore, taken for granted and we are yet to create an economy in which we pay a true price for products and services, or in which the environmental impact of business is made transparent. The initial intentions of many companies are good. For example, businesses worked together with NGOs, unions and governments to draw up the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises on Responsible Business Conduct 2023 , as they also did for the guidelines’ previous iterations in 2000 and 2011. The same is true regarding the creation of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. However, achieving a true implementation of these internationally established norms in daily business models has proven to be much more difficult. There are a great number of individuals who work hard to have a sustainable lifestyle in their personal lives. But as they arrive at work, these people often seem to assume another identity, becoming someone who is only allowed to act in the financial interests of their company. Moreover, there is a tendency for employees to feel that their personal responsibility for the environmental impact of their company is small and that any individual influence they might have would be negligible. Others may want to change their business’ environmental impact, but struggle with how they can achieve this on a larger scale. Students need to consider business practices in relation to Earth’s geophysical processes to alleviate their environmental impact. Here, Nyenrode Business University professor Tineke Lambooy explains how learning institutions can elaborate on the value of companies adopting a circular economy model, thereby helping to regenerate nature
Ambition | MARCH/APRIL 2024 | 17
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