Sourcing Journal’s Sustainability Summit will explore the gap between ambition and action. Ahead of his keynote at our Sustainability Summit, Sourcing Journal caught up with Tufts University professor and former Timberland chief operating officer Kenneth Pucker to get his take on the divide between goals and progress.
On the divergent priorities between business operations and sustainability:“The rules and incentives of our system demand increasing revenue, profit and cash flow. If you're the chief sustainability officer or the chief sourcing officer, and everything is geared towards 'more,' you already have a profound challenge on your hands, because less damaging typically means less. So the engine is pushing towards more and you're trying to minimize damage—that already creates an immense challenge. What makes it harder is that your voice isn't as important as that of the CFO.”
On the challenge of making the business case for sustainability:“Folks have been writing and saying for years that green leads to gold, that there's lots of opportunities to deliver win-win solutions. If we trade out incandescent light bulbs for LED bulbs, the planet's better and our bottom line is better. If we eliminate waste and improve our cutting yields in a factory, the planet’s better, our margin is improved. If we swap to machinery that's more efficient and less polluting, it is a win-win. It's true that such opportunities do exist, but they're not the majority opportunities. The majority of investments in sustainability are net present value (NPV) negative, meaning they over time won’t deliver the promised win-win. It becomes challenging for CSOs to ‘make the business case for sustainability’ if the investments don't have a positive payback and they're competing with other investments that do.”
On brands’ approach to rapidly approaching 2030 goals: “Many of the companies that were front-and-center leaders of sustainable practice have retreated from prior commitments, and it's for a host of reasons. 2030 is closer, and they're doing the math and figuring out they can't get there. Second, they've probably already done the highest return things that they can do and finding out it's harder and harder the more progress they make and cost more and more. Third, there are increasing amounts of regulations to prevent greenwashing. If I have the threat of being sued, I might want to be more careful about what I'm saying I'm doing.”
On the need for legislation: “Sustainable practice is often undertaken by the same 10 brands. They're doing their best, and they’re doing it voluntarily, but they're less than 1 percent of the total production of our industry. If we want the industry overall to clean up, that's insufficient. In order to have a profound impact, we need everyone to lift the floor.”
