By Wendi Latko, Director of Sustainable Services, Xerox Environment, Health, Safety and Sustainability
It’s the time of year I refer to as “reporting season.” It starts in late spring with receipt of questionnaires for ratings such as the Dow Jones Sustainability Index and Newsweek Green Rankings, and flows through summer with the compilation of Xerox’s annual report on global citizenship. And every year I hope (in vain) that there is one question I never see – how much do we spend on “green initiatives?”
It’s not that we’re reluctant to share the information. The problem is that we don’t track it – because we can’t. Certainly we have people and processes dedicated to environmental sustainability, and we could report on that. But that figure would leave out so much of the equation – the part of the equation that gives our environmental initiatives their power. Environmental thinking is integrated into our day-to-day business. That integration takes many forms, from the assessment of environmental impact of every project being tackled by our researchers to the inclusion of renewable power sources in our facility energy contracts. From employees identifying opportunities to reduce waste in their processes to our portfolio of transportation solutions that help relieve traffic congestion.
In a recent Harvard Business Review article, Andrew Winston argues that sustainability needs to shift from being viewed as a what concept to a how concept. He likens it to quality and innovation, stating that it creates more value when it’s embedded throughout the organization. While you need to invest resources in the technical experts to coordinate and analyze, you concurrently need to work toward full business integration.
I especially like the quality analogy. Would you want the company that made your automobile to be able to tell you how much they spend on quality? I wouldn’t. I expect it to be a given – integrated into their processes every step of the way. Why would we strive for environmental sustainability to be any different?
