Corporate and non-profit executives discussed the role of sustainability in business on Friday at the fourth annual Business Sustainability Initiative conference, hosted by The Tuck School of Business. Entitled "Building Sustainability into Markets and Businesses," the event featured two keynote speakers and seven moderated panels.
Speakers and panelists at the conference stressed that sustainability must become a foundation of business strategy and not just an afterthought of corporate actions. The speakers said that executive decisions regarding products, material selection and labor and ethical practices have significant social and environmental implications.
In between the morning and afternoon speeches, conference attendees went to panel discussions on topics such as industry self-regulation, clean energy technology and social entrepreneurship. Moderated mainly by Tuck professors, the panel included speakers from both corporations and the non-profit sector.
Andy Ruben, Vice President of Strategy and Sustainability at Wal-Mart and Jeffrey Hollender, President and Corporate Responsibility Officer at Seventh Generation, a natural home products company, addressed an audience of 200 at Cook Auditorium.
At the morning keynote, Ruben spoke of his company's moves toward becoming socially responsible. The Wal-Mart executive said his company plans to curtail excess energy use and to harvest organic cotton in north Texas for use in some of their clothing.
At a speech later that day, Hollender criticized Ruben and Wal-Mart for failing to publish a corporate responsibility report, abusing their position as the biggest corporation worldwide and trying to merely reduce what they have done wrong.
"I envision a world where business can improve, not just make things less bad," he said.
Hollender also urged the audience to view sustainability as more than an environmental issue.
"It's not just about the environment. Sustainability is a much larger concept that can't leave the social dimension out," he said. "You will never have sustainability without equity and justice; when there's tremendous poverty you can't have sustainability."
Ruben advised students to "take those skills you're learning and make business a force for justice." He also urged companies to develop an "essence and global imperative" and to create products which are consistent with them.
The event left a strong impression on those in attendance, many of whom suggested that the business world is rapidly evolving to require sustainable practices.
"Economic prosperity in the future will be based on sustainability and environmental friendliness rather than the current economic structure which steals resources from future generations and destroys the planet without any hope of reimbursement," Sarah Smith Th'06 said. "Often the idea of sustainability creates a win-win situation for the economic betterment of the business--by designing for the environment, companies can save money in the long term and create less waste, use less energy and in turn generate more profit."
Roughly half of those in attendance were Tuck students, a quarter were Vermont Law School students and the rest were speakers, professionals and other students, according to Whit Rappole Tu'06, event co-organizer.
The student-organized conference was hosted and supported by Tuck's Allwin Initiative for Corporate Citizenship.
"The conference is an important event to raise issues about ways that businesses and governments can partner," Allwin Initiative Director Patricia Palmiotto said. "It's bringing people living and breathing these issues together."
