The Trouble With Sustainability
Having coffee with an old friend in Brighton’s North Laine recently, the conversation quickly, and inevitably, turned to the climate crisis. Many of my conversations do these days, especially when discussing my small business, the Brighton Socks Company. My friend and I agreed, without question, on the need for sustainability across the business. But what happened next took me by surprise.
“What do you actually mean by sustainability?” my friend asked, with genuine curiosity and a hint of devil’s advocacy. The question, loaded with trepidation and intrigue, sat silently in the otherwise bustling café for just a little longer than I would have liked. Here I was, running a “sustainable” business, yet struggling to articulate a suitable response. So I did what I normally do when faced with a conundrum and reached for my phone – before nose diving down an internet rabbit hole.
The dictionary defines sustainability as “the ability to be maintained at a certain rate or level” or “the avoidance of the depletion of natural resources in order to maintain an ecological balance.” Simple enough, yet when applied to the messy realities of running a business, I had a sense that these rather basic definitions may quickly reveal their limitations. My search continued.
A blog from the University of Leeds told me the following: “A sustainable business model, or business model for sustainability, is a framework for how organisations create, deliver and capture value based on sustainable development principles.” Great. But what, exactly, are these principles? The blog went on to say: “Rather than a traditional business model that is focused solely on profit, a business model for sustainability can help organisations to tackle sustainability challenges.” Ok. And these challenges are…? That, it turns out, requires a whole blog of its own. You get the picture though.
Considering all this over coffee, through moments of animated discussion and lively debate, my friend and I were able to start unpicking the problem. Having moved beyond the original issue of environmental responsibility, it seemed that the concept of sustainability had morphed, at an unspecified point on the timeline, into an ambiguous collection of meanings. Meanings that get touted and bandied about by businesses of all shapes and sizes, often out of genuine concern but sometimes, also, out of obligation and no great commitment.
But let’s not lose sight of the abundance of good intention. Take the Brighton Socks Company as an example. In giving away 100% of our profits, we have a fairly unique take on a sustainable business model. Yes, we want our product to be as sustainable as possible, but in a world that’s still, on the whole, set up for old style, “get rich quick” Capitalism, we’re having to find creative ways to overcome some pretty challenging obstacles in that respect. And donating all of our profits to an organisation like Sussex Green Living is, I hope you’ll agree, one of our more creative moments. It’s different, it’s exciting, it’s potentially world changing. And we hope it might pave the way for other companies to consider being similarly bold when writing or revising their business plans. But even this, my own example of sustainable business, helps to demonstrate how the term has perhaps outgrown itself. Sustainability is both ubiquitous and elusive at the same time.
The challenge isn’t just semantic though. The reality is that we’re often juggling multiple, sometimes even competing definitions. There’s environmental sustainability, focusing on our impact on natural systems and resources. Economic sustainability, where we consider whether our business practices can endure financially over time. And social sustainability, examining how our operations affect communities, workers, and broader society. So I’ve begun to wonder whether the term “sustainability” itself has become part of the problem. Sustainability claims are everywhere, and the word has been stretched, twisted, and co-opted to the point where it simultaneously risks meaning everything and nothing.
This “sustainability fatigue” worries me. When every product claims to be sustainable; when every company has a sustainability officer; when sustainability becomes a buzzword, not a practice, there’s a real chance we might lose sight of what we’re trying to achieve. Perhaps it’s time to put our heads together, in that case, and consider whether sustainability needs a restructure. Maybe even a complete rebrand? We could instead talk about “regenerative business practices” or “circular economics.”. We could refer to ourselves as a “responsible business” or one that does “conscious commerce”. But whatever we do, we must keep our eyes on the prize.
The concept of “future-proofing” no doubt resonates with most businesses, focusing on resilience to uncertainty and change. “Impact-driven business” shifts the conversation further towards positive outcomes rather than simply avoiding the negative ones. And so the conversation continues. At the Brighton Socks Company, we’ve learned that defining our approach begins with honest self-assessment, not trendy terminology. What are our most significant impacts? Where can we make meaningful improvements? Which changes will genuinely reduce harm rather than simply appear virtuous? These questions don’t always yield comfortable answers, but they help guide us more than any dictionary definition.
Finishing off our coffees and wondering where the time had gone, my friend and I agreed that the trouble with sustainability isn’t the concept itself, but the increasingly ambiguous definitions and the myriad interpretations. One company’s mission to be sustainable may look very different from the next, and unless we proactively hold them to account, the less scrupulous may continue their big budget greenwashing and trumped up promises. The reality for the Brighton Socks Company is that we know there’s always more to be done. Sustainability isn’t a box to tick, it’s a set of goal posts that will – and must – keep moving.
Written by Amanda Law – Brighton Socks Company
