‘You can’t be green if you’re in the red’: How can businesses be sustainable and hold bottom line?

euronews (in English)

Businesses have never been under so much pressure to deliver on sustainability but balancing it with profitability is becoming increasingly complex in a world of geopolitical unrest and disinformation.

Transcript

00:00So, when we think about sustainability, we think about ultimately getting to an economy

00:05in which business, people, and planet can all thrive.

00:09And today, we're out of balance with that.

00:12And then when you look at 2024 and what it means, businesses have to deal with a lot

00:18today.

00:19And so they have to deal with geopolitics and misinformation and the advancement of

00:23AI and sustainability and climate change.

00:27And so it's making sure that we're able to have this long-term view while businesses

00:32are dealing with everything coming at them today.

00:35So businesses have to think about, is it possible to be both sustainable and profitable?

00:41We once had a client say, you can't be green if you're in the red.

00:44And I think that's a really important way to think about things.

00:48Businesses have to manage risk associated with sustainability.

00:52Is climate change impacting your supply chain?

00:55Do you have manufacturing facilities that are now in areas that need to be cooled in

01:00a different way than they did before?

01:02They need to think about what the regulatory requirements are.

01:06They also need to think about how their client and customer demands are changing.

01:09Are their customers asking them for something different?

01:12And how fast is that moving?

01:14And then they have to look at ways to innovate for the future.

01:17There are a lot of opportunities to drive innovation that will fuel the energy transition.

01:24In this world in which there are a lot of allegations around greenwashing and concerns

01:28that companies aren't doing what they say they're doing, the role of the CMO is incredibly

01:34important.

01:35We're living in a place where there's everything from green hushing, doing things on sustainability

01:41but not wanting to talk about it, all the way through to concerns about greenwashing

01:46and saying you're doing something that you're not.

01:48And so CMOs can really help understand authentically what the business has set out to do, how they're

01:56going to do it, and then make sure they can articulate it in a way that their customers

02:00understand.

02:02We see AI as having an incredible opportunity to drive innovation and change.

02:09It can help you better predict weather patterns.

02:11It can help you identify where you might have a methane leak that needs to be addressed.

02:17But it also comes with a lot of energy usage.

02:20So as we're thinking about AI, we need to think about how we use it for good, but also

02:26how we implement and build up data centers in a way that doesn't further contribute to

02:31the issues we face.

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