Incorporate Sustainability Reporting
Sustainability reporting can be a great way to bring to bring transparency to a corporation’s environmental social governance or ESG. In order to start reporting, a corporation has to be aware of its base line performance and often will uncover inefficiencies that they may have not been aware of before. There are different frameworks that work better for certain types of corporations and have different focuses. The most common are the Global Reporting Initiative, Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, the Carbon Disclosure Project and Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark.
Reporting can be difficult to implement initially because it requires hiring a team or individual that is well versed in the standards of choice. It can be difficult to initially find the needed information and put together the data into a digestible report. Most of these reports have a requirement of having public facing information that theoretically drives quicker change, but may feel like a risk to the c-suite.
Reporting is a great way to decrease inefficiencies, help in the decision making process around sustainability goals, and allow for data driven specific goals. If reporting shows progress in sustainability goal tracking, this can attract investors that keep sustainability in mind, a new customer base, and increased consumer loyalty.
Proctor and Gamble uses environmental reports but does not seem to have a clear or consistent framework. This makes it difficult to compare their metrics with similar companies. Corporations should instead stick to a measurable and consistent framework to have context to the data they collect. It is imperative to have distinct and measurable frameworks for sustainability reports to be meaningful and helpful.
creating goals and plans
Creating sustainability goals and associated plans is one of the most importation first step in integrating sustainability into a corporation. Without clear, actionable, and public goals, there is little hope in a Corporation will strive towards implementing sustainability. These goals should have metrics attached to them, be specific, and have actionable plans that prove achieving these reduction or operational goals are possible. Planning for these changes and actually making the changes necessary will likely be expensive upfront, but the best kind of goals will end up creating shareholder value. This is the kind of strategy that actually reduces emissions and mitigates the risk that climate change poses. In order to think of goals, corporations should think of the things that reduce risk and preform a cost benefit analysis of the progress that will create the most shareholder value while also reducing emissions and saving money in the long term.
Goals also will lead to accountability. There is risk in this of course, because if a goal is not met, it will likely be public and consumers might be more aware of the corporations lack of action. This is a risk of transparency that is worth taking as a corporation makes sustainability progress.
P&G has ambition 2030 goals that are, for the most part, on track and impressive. These goals are public and therefore the corporation is held accountable for actually making progress and completing them. Proctor and Gamble should add some specificity to these goals however, as they do not have clear metrics for how the goals will be evaluated. It is a step in the right direction, but specificity and a measurable plan would be very helpful to consumers who are trying to evaluate P&G’s performance.
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Incorporating circularity into design
incorporating circularity into the design process means being intentional about the materials in said product. This includes knowing where all the materials come from and how they will decompose or otherwise exist after the life of the product is no longer. In a circular product recyclability is not only possible but often profitable. This reduces waste streams and allows for less purchasing of new materials. This might be difficult to implement initially because of the cost for R&D, but in the long run is great for getting nee consumer bases, returning mooney spent through resale of recycled materials, reducing carbon emissions, and changing the behavior around waste.
Proctor and Gamble has dabbled slightly in circular products but not enough. They have a few bottles that use recycled and recyclable plastics and have even recently announced some products with paper packaging. Still, both of these more sustainable packaging are far from perfect and are not widely available. The small change in this large of a corporation does have a major impact on waste (“If we convert just 10 percent of our current deodorant packages to recycled paper or another recyclable material, it could eliminate up to 1.5 million pounds of plastic waste annually”) but is not even close to be able to claim sustainability.
Read more about packaging Read more about p&g's new packaging
strategic partnerships
Strategic partnerships are an interesting way to get advice and be held accountable for making positive change. This can be through membership organizations like sustainable brands or the WBCSD, non-profits like Fair Trade USA or The Rainforest Alliance or NGOs like CERES. There are all sorts of organizations that are specialized in different aspects of sustainability and have missions to make corporations more sustainable. This is usually a cheap way of progressing forward and sometimes has positive PR associated with the partnership. These mutually beneficial relationships would be a great first step towards sustainability.
P&G has partnered with The Ocean Project to help eliminate their strain on ocean health and spread the message of how a healthy ocean is important and how plastic pollution is a threat to this. This strategic partnership has lead to small changes in their packaging and incorporating sustainability into their employee’s business reviews. They still have a long way to go but these steps are still progress. \
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using clean energy in buildings and operations
Making the leap towards more sustainable manufacturing or general business operations can sometimes be accomplished with better and more efficient buildings. Commercial buildings account for 11.4% of Green House Gas (GHG) emissions, so changing energy sources, water efficiency, and just generally updating the building will have an impact on carbon emissions.
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This is expensive in the short term but eventually saves money because of increased efficiency and therefore reduces longterm costs. New buildings with less dependance on petroleum based energy will mitigate risks that come with the oil and gas industry, and are likely to save money on tax cuts associated with clean energy depending on a corporations location and carbon emission reduction.
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Proctor and Gamble set out to purchase 100% renewable energy in all of their plants by 2030. In October of 2019 they achieved this goal in the US, Canada, and Western Europe. These markets, according to their website, account for 70% of their energy. This transparency gave them publicity and means they are likely on track for completing the last 30% ahead of their 2030 goal.
giving back to community
Philanthropic efforts are an interesting branch of sustainability that is serving the “people” side of the triple P’s (people, planet, profit). In early corporate social responsibility efforts, corporations that gave back to community were considered good enough. Now, corporations must try and serve their people, the planet, and the company’s shareholders to be considered an ethical corporation. In the talks of sustainability of a corporation, giving back to community should not be the only thing measured, but it should not be forgotten. Communities are impacted by corporations and they should be positively impacted instead of negatively.
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Proctor and Gamble give back to their community in Cincinnati, Ohio where the US headquarters is based. They have given a lot of money to promote safe drinking water through a Cincinnati based organization along with many other community/philanthropic organizations.
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implimenting recycling programs
Implementing recycling programs can mean internally within a corporation or externally implementing recycling options for one’s product. Some corporations have recycling or reuse programs internally that allow for employees to have less waste and a less harsh environmental footprint. Encouraging sustainability within the office can sometimes transfer to sustainability at a larger scale within the organization.
A corporation must be careful with calling this corporate sustainability as it doesn’t actually reduce their operational footprint much and sometimes leads to borderline greenwashing. If operations outside of the office in manufacturing plants are extremely wasteful, bragging about how employees use reusable water bottles will be interpreted as greenwashing.
Proctor and Gamble has partnered with the recycling company Terracycle in order to make their Old Spice, Olay, and Dawn Soft Packs recyclable. Consumers must collect their bottles and send them to Terracycle to be recycled. It is possible that shipping these bottles possible across the country uses more energy than just making a new plastic bottle would, but if these programs were more accessible and widely available it may be a success in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Still, reducing packaging and creating compostable or otherwise circular packaging is more ideal than implementing recycling.
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implementing supply chain efficiency
Supply chain efficiency is achieved most easily by supporting local systems and keeping production close. This reduces the “miles” the product has and therefore reducing the greenhouse gas emissions embodied in the product because of the gas and energy used to transport materials that are eventually used to create a product.
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This task can be extremely complicated especially in large scale operations where many growers/miners/manufacturers are needed to produce the scale needed in one’s operation. This can be extremely effective if possible because efficiently is increased and product sustainability moves in the right direction.
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Proctor and Gamble hired a consulting firm to reorganize their supply chain in 2018 which lead to an award of “2018 Supply Chain Top 25 rankings”. This is not a new award as “Gartner has been publishing the Supply Chain Top 25 annual ranking for 15 years, highlighting large manufacturers, retailers and distributors that demonstrate supply chain leadership in customer-driven partnerships, advanced analytics and corporate social responsibility.” The supply chain is not perfect as products have to travel sometimes many miles before reaching their end location, but effort has been put in and the efficiency is continuously improving.