Items tagged with

sustainability

The hospitality industry has greatly ramped up sustainability efforts in recent years.  Early on hotels found ways to cut costs and operate efficiently by saving water and energy.  Today’s efforts are far more sophisticated and cross into every aspect of a hotel from its buildings, laundry, restaurants, golf courses, spas, housekeeping, guest services and technology systems. 

If we don’t first shift our thinking and reshape our old perspectives, we can’t change behaviors, foster innovation or create new solutions.  We must disrupt the very mindsets and behaviors that have lead to current successes in order to continue to be successful. 

Company leaders are realizing that being more sustainable isn’t just the right thing to do; it’s good for business.  Those who have been operating sustainably for longer periods of time were 50% more likely than the newcomers to say their efforts contribute to profitability.  In reality, responsibility will create a strategic advantage yielding sustainable prosperity if the correct steps are taken.

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives; nor the most intelligent that survives.  It is the one that is most adaptable to change.” - Charles Darwin

A few days ago I participated as a panelist in AkzoNobel’s second annual Sustainability Leadership Symposium moderated by Deborah Steketee, Ph.D. of the Center for Sustainability at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids MI.

While there are still companies out there who believe in the great trade-off myth, the reality is that ethical companies outperform others over the long term.  In it’s “WME Index,” Ethisphere showed how the publicly traded companies on their 2011 World’s Most Ethical Company list outperformed the S&P 500 between 2007 – 2011 – even in the midst of a global recession. 

I had the pleasure of having lunch this week with Stephen Brereton, Consul General of the Consulate General 
of Canada.  Our conversation revealed many similarities shared by the U.S. and Canada around sustainable development.  In the midst of today’s economic struggles, it’s not surprising that citizens in both countries put the economy and jobs as top priorities, followed by education and healthcare, and somewhere around fifth place (or so, depending on where you live and your perspectives) the environment comes on the list. 

"Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact, and that is, everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you ... the minute that you understand that you can poke life ... that you can change it, you can mold it ... that's maybe the most important thing." 

 - Steve Jobs (Just before he died, in the documentary “One Last Thing”)