Love your cousin Kate!

i love to horseride and i like dogs

ella is a very close and good friend of mine and so is matha

Businesses need to show leadership in this new consumer market and continue to demonstrate to their customers that they strive for perfection, innovation, and progress in all that they do- and this means showing real commitment towards the environment.

Sustainability should not be an add-on or tick box to meet short-term aims. It is much more- sustainability is the essence of good business. Respect for the environment and social responsibility may be the new buzzwords of many an annual corporate report, but this has become more than just a new moral crusade.

With the economic crisis, there has been a re-evaluation of how companies run their operations and look to reduce waste of time, money and resources. There is no fundamental contradiction between concern for the environment and the profit motive that drives businesses. Choosing to teleconference instead of flying may reduce your carbon footprint, for example, but it also saves you time and money.

Acting in a ‘sustainable way’ allows companies to become more competitive, more resilient to shocks, nimbler in a rapidly changing world, more likely to attract and hold clients and the best employees, and more at ease with increasing environmental regulation.

Yes, the concept of ‘sustainability’ may be better described as an ‘objective’ or a ‘vision’. But semantics aside, this does not mean that we should give up and not bother. On a grander scale, whilst the challenges of achieving ‘sustainability’ are huge, they are no less significant than those of the human race wanting to achieve, say, an end to poverty or world peace! Important, but seemingly impossible goals that we need to strive for to ensure the very survival of the human race!

Whether we choose to admit it, or bury our heads in the sand, our planet’s resources are finite and all businesses (and consumers) will face restrictions on what we currently produce and buy, at an alarming rate. Next on the list? Tuna. This much loved lunch-time favourite will disappear from our bento boxes in less than 5 years if we do not do more to ensure sustainable fishing practices…for example.

Who knows exactly what will happen to our planet over the next 20, 50, 100 years? But what is clear is that markets can and must be made to work to help fasten the pace towards our vision of a ‘green’ future. There is no going back and the alternative is too scary to contemplate. Without real commitment from advertisers, marketers and consumers, progress towards achieving a goal/objective/vision of global sustainable development will be much more difficult, if not impossible, to achieve.