Original Source: P Lacy/The Guardian
“I’ve just finished a private session with over 30 CEOs here in Davos discussing how to drive sustainable consumption and enable growth. The key challenge that underpins this issue is that we are not getting to scale at speed with many of the sustainability initiatives that already exist, as the World Economic Forum and Accenture’s latest report, More with Less: Scaling Sustainable Consumption and Resource Efficiency shows. Indeed, CEOs of consumer goods companies who were part of this project were clear: to address the issue of scale and sustainable consumption, the fundamental dynamics of supply, demand and rules of the game will need to be shifted to support a world in which we are able to drive growth but with less impact on the natural environment.
For countries and companies the case for doing this, and the size of the prize, is clear. Analysis in the report shows that US$2tn of GDP could be saved in 2030 by adapting to resource constraints across key areas such as carbon, steel and iron. That is just in 2030 – there is money at stake for every year we don’t act. At a time of economic recession in large parts of the globe, such numbers are too big to ignore.There are a host of initiatives out there that are trying to seize the economic prize – but efforts to date have focused largely on hardwiring the system through supply-side fixes such as driving sustainability in end-to-end value chains and through policy and regulatory measures. While many countries and companies are trying to act, I believe that a third ‘C’ holds the key to success: the consumer.
With an additional 3bn middle class consumers expected by 2030 – the majority in emerging and developing economies – both the challenge and the opportunity are intensifying. On the one hand, of course, this will bring significant pressures on the supply of key resources and commodity prices. But, with appropriate incentives and behaviours in place, it can also drive a new wave of innovation in terms of how we meet demand without accelerating resource depletion. This is not to say that supply and rules of the game aren’t important – they most certainly are. But the consumer angle is often overlooked…”
https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/scaling-sustainability-davos-consumer-behaviour
Contributors: Open SourceCategories: Industry Articles, SIG U Resource
SRC Type: Sourcing Management, Sustainability