What do company representatives and politicians have to say about our favorite topic: sustainability in companies? Where are the opportunities, where are the difficulties? Last Thursday, we attended the ZIRP ZukunftsInitiative Rheinland Pfalz sustainability congress “Investment & Return: Added value through sustainability” to complete our picture. The original statement from a large corporation and medium-sized company: Sustainability must be economically worthwhile. Unfortunately, little was said in the discussions about for whom sustainability is also worthwhile. A comprehensive assessment of the long-term effects of sustainable business practices on society and the planet was largely missing from the discussion. Smaller companies in particular are afraid that they will not be able to meet the requirements due to their limited financial leeway – but they will have to do so in the long term: As suppliers to the large corporations, which in turn have to adapt more and more to the political demands for sustainability, “the small ones” will also have to meet more and more standards. Of course, our CSE companies are already much further ahead in this respect. They have understood that sustainability and a healthy company are two sides of the same coin. In our opinion, this way of thinking needs to be incorporated even more into the sustainability debate in companies and politics. Sustainability must not become an annoying “compulsory topic” for entrepreneurs. A CSE congress with our CSE pioneers, other sustainability performers and stakeholders as well as political representatives should be considered, as this could certainly enrich the sustainability debate.
Picture: Panel discussion with Minister President Malu Dreyer, Dr. Dirk Voeste (BASF), Christian Schwarz (Zschimmer & Schwarz)
