Moreover, I grew up convinced I’d are a campaigner within an NGO or within international institutions such as the US or the EU to change the entire world for the higher. My responsibilities include technique growth, sustainable sourcing, stakeholder communication and engagement. Can You ARE A Sustainability Consultant For Multinational Companies and become An Environmentalist? Scroll through my profile and you’ll learn that might work experience includes various consultancy assignments for different corporate clients in the food, fashion and cosmetics sectors mainly. But you know what? Day I never thought I’d become a consultant 1. And I did. For some time. I worked for the UN on peace problems in the Central African Republic and campaigned at the EU level for international growth and sustainable finance. In the event that you conduct a search for me on LinkedIn, you’ll find my current job name is "Sustainability Consultant". While these experiences were adored by me, they also taught me that these huge machines are driven by bureaucracy in the worst sense of the word and submitted to the political will of whoever is in charge in those days.
And that’s because of existing trade agreements between your EU and Indonesia and Malaysia that make up the foundation of the diplomatic relations between these nations. So based on this observation, I became interested in the charged power of business when it comes to sustainability challenges. Could a Fortune 500 multi-billion dollar company operating in dozens of countries have a bigger and faster impact than nationwide governments and UN organizations? To find out for myself, I got on employment as a sustainability consultant for the private sector having no idea what I was obtaining myself into. When I first got here, boy was it a big change of scenery. My clients included some of the biggest companies in the global world inside the cosmetics and meals sectors. There’s charged power running a business. Here’s a good example: The EU only made a non-binding statement on palm oil in early 2017 even though the results of this commodity on the environment and workers have been known since mid-2000s.
As sustainability experts, we were supporting them within their "Zero Deforestation" strategy implementation and in managing their romantic relationships with their stakeholders. Putting money in a sustainability department, hiring consultants, financing projects on the ground and of course.. I’ve noticed that having a CEO who believes in the advantages of sustainability and who believes that company could be a force for good adjustments everything and infuses the notion of change within a company. But enough strangely, the financial benefits of greening their image and gaining conscious consumers isn’t the only reason behind many companies’ eco or ethical attempts. But I also witnessed the incredible power and resources these companies have. I found myself doing work for companies whose company models were completely against my own ethics: animal screening, over consumption, elevated demand of at risk raw materials to produce even more products. Should they be focused on something (read, see the financial opportunity), in this instance attempting to reduce and finally stop deforestation connected commodities to enter their source chain, they were going in all.
Look at Paul Polman at Unilever who was simply one of the earlier adopters of zero deforestation plan and who is now investing huge amount of money into research for plastic-free alternatives to packaging. There’s furthermore Elon Musk who convinced the world that renewable is the future of energy. Then there’s Kasper Rorsted at Adidas who's leading the way, ensuring the brand uses only recycled plastic by 2024 for all their products. Remember when Mango and Zara launched a "sustainable" selection that didn’t convince anyone? Or the large Volkswagen scandal when it was revealed that the brand cheated on their green house gas emissions tests, producing them compliant with legislation when the truth is they were 40 percent higher than authorized? With out a CEO and a board who are up to speed (excuse the lousy wordplay) because they truly note that there’s just zero other option, it’s very difficult for a corporation to succeed in its sustainability transformation in the long term and not simply appear as a champion of greenwashing.
Or another time, hearing about a situation where several corporations couldn’t agree on an alliance that could have impacted millions of hectares of forest and the life of thousands of workers because of "antitrust" issues. I remember being at a gathering on the top floor of a tower, conference senior supervisors at corporate headquarters, and witnessing an absurd conversation about refusing to give 10,000 additional euros (equal to US$11,540) for a highly successful task on the ground because "the budget was already agreed upon and recipients must have managed it much better". But dealing with multinational corporations is frequently filled with very also, very frustrating moments, considering yourself an activist at heart especially. So why do I keep assisting these companies within their sustainability initiatives when I really do not personally have confidence in their business model, their sourcing technique, their marketing and never, purchase anything from their website ever, whether food, cosmetics or fashion? Congrats on contacting yourselves sustainability leaders, I often want to yell when I attend these types of meetings. There’s frustration in business… But there’s also hope business.
