{"id":5923,"date":"2019-10-16T09:19:47","date_gmt":"2019-10-16T06:19:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africasustainabilitymatters.com\/?p=5923"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:30:36","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:30:36","slug":"does-going-green-give-your-business-a-competitive-edge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/2019\/10\/16\/does-going-green-give-your-business-a-competitive-edge\/","title":{"rendered":"Does Going Green Give Your Business a Competitive Edge?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The\nneed to regulate and protect our environment from issues resulting from human\nactivities is attracting a lot of action from organizations, businesses and\nindividuals but experiences grudging acceptance: widespread because everyone\nwants a livable planet, grudging because of the lingering belief that\nenvironmental regulations give businesses and those practising environmental\nsustainability a competitive edge. The prevailing view is that there is an\ninherent and fixed trade-off: that is the ecology and the economy.  On one side, we find the tradeoffs are the\nsocial benefits that arise from setting up environmental standards. On the\nother hand, are the industry\u2019s costs- that factoring environmental friendly\nmeasures can lead to high prices due to demand and reduced competitiveness. The\nbalance of power is hard to understand leading to a stalemate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nconcept of resource productivity opens up a new way of looking at both the full\nsystems costs and the value associated with any product. Resource inefficiencies\nare most obvious within a company in the form of incomplete material\nutilization and poor process controls, which result in unnecessary waste,\ndefects and stored materials. But there are also many other costs hidden in the\nlife cycle of many products from different companies. Packaging discarded by\ndistributors or customers, for example, wastes resources and adds costs.\nCustomers bear additional costs when they use products that pollute or waste\nenergy. resources are lost when the product that contains usable materials are discarded\nwhen customers pay- directly or indirectly for product disposal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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the world\u2019s largest beverage company and voracious water user manages to replenish all the water it uses|photo|greenbiz.com<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The environmental\nimprovement efforts have traditionally overlooked the system’s costs making\nmost businesses think that they cut on costs and get more profits by going\ngreen. These traditional systems have focused on pollution control through\nbetter identification, processing and disposal of waste-costly approaches. In\nrecent years, however, more advanced companies and regulators have embraced the\nconcept of pollution prevention, sometimes called source reduction, which uses\nmethods such as material substitution and closed up loop processes to limit\npollution before it occurs. One such company is MTN<\/a> which uses solar\npanels to run its base station hence reducing energy costs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although pollution prevention is an important step in the right\ndirection, ultimately companies must learn to frame environmental improvement\nin terms of resource productivity. Business managers and regulators focus on\nactual costs of eliminating or treating pollution. If they are to make profits\nby being green they must shift their attention to opportunity costs of\npollution- wasted resources, wasted effort, and diminished product value to the\ncustomer. At the level of resource productivity, environmental improvement and competitiveness\ncome together. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Use of technology is\ntaking a new paradigm in businesses to boost innovation and help businesses\ncatch up with the digital way of doing business. most technological approaches\nare meant to minimize the cost of dealing with pollution once it occurs. The\nkey to these approaches often lies in taking resources embodies in the\npollution and converting them into something of value. Companies get smarter\nabout how to process toxic material and emissions into useable forms, recycle scrap\nand improve secondary treatment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Embracing\nenvironmental sustainability will not automatically generate profits. Properly\ndesigned environmental standards can trigger innovations that lower the total\ncost of a product or improve its value. That is where the secret lies. Such\ninnovations allow companies to use a range of inputs more productively- from\nraw materials to energy and labour- thus offsetting the costs of improving the\nenvironmental impact and ending the statement. Ultimately, enhancing resource\nproductivity makes businesses and companies more competitive, not less.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The need to regulate and protect our environment from issues resulting from human activities is attracting a lot of action from organizations, businesses and individuals but experiences grudging acceptance: widespread…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5924,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economic-responsibility"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5923\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}