Sustainability brings a competitive edge

When organisations say and prove they are more sustainable than their competitors, it gives them a competitive advantage.

Digital Nation Australia spoke with Faith Taylor, global sustainability officer at Kyndryl highlighted the business impact of social advocacy and how it is imperative for brands to keep their sustainability promises.

“We have seen where a company will do their business practices, consumers no longer believe in what they're doing, and therefore, their stock price may go down because consumers no longer purchase from them,” she explained.

An example, of this, is Nike which hired Colin Kaepernick to star in their ad campaign. Kaepernick was banned from playing NFL in 2016 after taking a knee in protest of police brutality and racial injustice.

She said, “Nike doubled down and used him in an ad campaign where they said we believe in him and said, ‘we stand with Kaepernick’. It was presented by the Board of Directors, they ran the campaign, and their stock price increased by double digits.

“By taking a stand on a social or environmental issue, can impact your stock price. That's another area of management and how it can have a financial impact,” she added.

Sustainability is innovation as you have to do more with less.

She said, “That's the basic concept here, you have to do more with less energy or use new types of energy to get there That's where technology comes in renewable energy, EVs, carbon capture.

“They enable you to actually manage and reduce your consumption. They enable you to monitor the supply and demand of how you're using energy and water. They enable you to deliver the reduction that you want to deliver,” she said.

These technologies also are clean which is important, Taylor said.

She explained, “As we're trying to reduce our footprint, we want to make sure that we're leveraging them to reduce our carbon emission. All of these technologies which help you reduce consumption, or are zero-emission is critical in this process.”