Sustainable Business Business models 6/8
consumption. Patagonia, the Californian
outdoor clothing company, is perhaps one
of the best known examples of a company
that is really engaging with a mindful
approach – not just by pushing the re-use,
repair and recycling business model – but
by taking the seemingly counterintuitive
approach to encouraging customers to
buy less. This point has to be at the heart
of our future story.
While business will likely always involve
earning money, we need to become more
mindful about how we earn our money,
how much we accumulate and what we
do with it. There is a huge responsibility
that goes with the stewardship of money.
Money is power. As with any form of
power, it can be used for great good, but
it can be also be used for great harm.
We all know that money was originally
intended as a means of exchange, but in
many cases it has now become the end
goal. We need to break our addiction to the
singular pursuit of accumulating money, for
its own sake, to form a wider view – what
David Korten calls real, living wealth.
This will mean businesses taking a values-
based approach, putting money and business
back in the service of people and planet, to
support social and environmental balance,
investing in how we meet the challenges of
our time in creative and affordable ways
– with more money flowing through the
real economy. This signals a move away
from false models of business that focus on
consumption, short-termism, gimmickry
and greed, and a shift towards a 'higher
purpose' for business in which money and
profit are means, not ends.
Unilever's Sustainable Living Plan offers
some ambitious leadership from the
corporate world – aiming to help more than
1 billion people to improve their health and
well-being, and to enhance the livelihoods
of at least 500,000 smallholder farmers and
75,000 small-scale distributors across their
value chain – all by the year 2020.
Sustainable banks, such as Triodos Bank
– along with other members of the Global
Alliance for Banking on Values – are a big
part of our move to a story based on living
wealth. For Triodos, its very raison d'être
is to help create a society that protects and
promotes the quality of life of all its members,
and to enable individuals, organisations and
businesses to use their money in ways that
benefit people and the environment, and
which promote sustainable development.
All investments are, of course, focused on
these positive outcomes.
We need to break our addiction to the
singular pursuit of making profit
