Sustainability Is So Much More Than Green

By: Jean Cannon Click author's name for more of his/her articles

Being sustainable means much more than just being "green" - what ever that means. And the "green" concept certainly varies. It is also much broader than environmental sustainability. Sustainable goes way beyond popular concepts like changing light globes and eating organic food. It even goes being a green business and actually includes loving that word profit and it includes having the flexibility to change and to utilise new technology to make this easier with online business.

Having a sustainable business includes: - You look after the environment so that you can continue to run your business without running out of resources, breaching legislation or impairing your neighbour's environment. This is where ISO 14001 helps.

- Clients who feel that you look after them both recommend you and they continue to buy from you. This is what ISO 9001 quality systems are about

- You look after your people with occupational health and safety and good human resources (I dislike that term because I think people work so much better as a team than as 'resources')

- You look after your finances with increased efficiency

- When you run our business in a way that saves you and your people time and effort, you also take care of your lifestyle.

- You build in feedback so that you and your people learn from mistakes and continually improve and build your business.

This is what you can build with simple and well integrated management systems like integrated ISO 14001 and ISO 9001 When these are implemented well and kept simple and practical they are much more than just a tick on the wall or a marketing image. They are a framework to help you build and manage a sustainable business.

Having the flexibility to change with circumstances is one of the marks of true sustainability. One way that businesses are increasing their sustainability is to use new technology like tele and video conferencing rather than flying to meetings. This gives you the ability to save the time, money and carbon emissions involved in more conventional communication and relationships.

There is nothing sustainable about getting up in the morning to catch the 6am flight then doing a full days work in a different city and getting home around 10pm and expecting to be fully productive the next day. This is the lifestyle we expect our business people and our politicians to survive.

Once you have implemented tele and video conferencing to your business to reduce travel, you can add an income stream by leveraging your services using online sales and auto responders. In my business this cut my flights from weekly to perhaps five a year. What a difference. I now run my consultancy mostly online and it is very effective. When you leverage your operations in this way, your costs and also your time greatly reduced. Surprisingly the technology to do this is not expensive if it is done with thought and planning

Imagine being able to get the background communication and training done predominantly with audio so that you can effectively use the time you spend commuting and still be prepared for online meetings without the need to read mountains of agenda papers. I know many businesses who save lots of time, effort and money while they also build real sustainability which includes profit.

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About The Author: Jean Cannon is a true leader helping small to medium business environmentally sustainability and obtaining internationally recognised green certification, ISO 14001 worldwide. Green business is about reducing your carbon footprint with sensible energy management which increases profit saves costs, increases efficiency and employee loyalty Learn more at www.enviro-action.com optin for practical free help and newsletter.