What is Sustainable Development?

Innovative Approach

Sustainable development, applied to business, aims to deliver a strong economic growth by integrating social and environmental criteria into the decision process.

The world's political and economic complexity in which companies are evolving require that they consider new stakeholders that have started challenging the industry on grounds of environmental and social commitment. Recently, influential and highly skilled stakeholders have emerged such as associations and NGOs. It is common for rating agencies to integrate extra-financial factors in their risk analysis, for the media to talk about environment on a day-to-day basis, and for National Governments and the European Commission to focus on the issue.

Companies have little choice but to identify these stakeholders, evaluate their legitimacy, weight their importance, establish and integrate a clear hierarchy of their expectations and requirements while bringing a project into compliance with environmental sustainability.

Sustainable development is not a marketing fad, but a strategy that allows companies to better control their risk management, to distinguish themselves from their competition, to achieve market growth expectations, to maintain or create leadership and very often, just to answer tenders.

A Complex Field of Regulations

The European Union is very active in regulating environmental issues as this is the European Commission's main focus. Some recent regulations it imposed to the 27 Member States are widely known and have had intensive impact on companies:

• The RoHS Directive (Risk of Hazardous Substance) restricting the use of certain hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment


• The WEEE Directive (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) obliging producers to organize and finance the collection and the recovery of their end-of-life equipments


• The battery directive that sets the same set of requirements as the WEEE, but specifically for batteries


• REACH, Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals. An 11 year's implementation project impacting 30,000 chemical substances where the producer must provide the innocuousness of the substances as a preliminary condition to their use


• EUP (Energy-using Products), establishes a framework for the setting of eco-design requirements for energy-using products.

These directives combined with coercion tools (high penalties, banishment from the market), follow two main principles: producer responsibility enlargement, and incentives for an enhanced product life cycle.

A Great Opportunity to Get Ahead of the Competition

Environmental and economic goals are compatible. Many success stories have already provided evidence. Companies that have the will to act more responsibly will notice that sustainable development can be a sound and rewarding opportunity. It can become a key success factor in maintaining leadership. As an expert in this area, Conseils-Plus has chosen to take the challenge with them!