“In the nearly 12 years I have been working in this field; I have seen how the understanding of sustainability has evolved. It was very difficult to move away from the idea that CSR and sustainability were only about sponsorship campaigns at the local community level—valuable initiatives, but sustainability is not about that. We have progressed to a more advanced stage and now understand that sustainability is about doing less harm to the environment, but even that is still incomplete,” Mihaela Croitoru, Sustainability, Climate & ESG Adviser, CEO Sustainability Lens said during Circular Economy Conference organized by The Diplomat-Bucharest and Sustainability Today.
“Ultimately, sustainability is about business performance. Of course, we want our businesses to reduce their impact on the environment, but no business will focus only on the environment if it is not competitive.”
Key statements:
• “Sustainability is not just about the environment; it also includes how we manage human resources, customers, suppliers, and governance. Governance is extremely important. It is very much a current topic—the listing of stakes, the expansion of state-owned companies, or even companies that are not yet listed. Why are we trying to list them? The answer is simple: governance. Because it provides transparency, and a transparent business is much easier to monitor and manage.”
• “The circular economy has done something extraordinary: it helped companies understand what it really means to integrate sustainability. The circular economy is that part of sustainability which has enabled companies to integrate it—it is the entry point of sustainability into a business. What is it about? Resources, risks, opportunities. In other words, the circular economy has been better understood by companies because it speaks the language of business.”
• “We do not actually need to wait for a directive, a regulation, or any national normative act to force us to analyse our business in order to see how we can concretely integrate sustainability. Or rather, let’s see how we can make our business more profitable and more efficient. Isn’t that what it’s all about? Don’t we all want our businesses to be profitable?”
• “Why do I insist on this idea of performance? In my discussions with clients, I often use the term ‘sustainability performance.’ And people look at me in a very strange way, because they don’t understand what I mean.”
• “I recommend that you analyze your business to see, at every stage of the value chain, how much value you are losing and how much value you are able to recover.”
