Sustainability Starts From the Top Down: Heineken Case Study

A recently released case study focuses on Heineken's attempts at integrating sustainability into their corporate structure. The case study demonstrates the need for real commitment at the executive level, as well as the challenges facing big business when trying to implement measurable change. From the case study:

"While Heineken’s general objective is to maximize its positive impacts and minimize its negative impacts on society, the company has established clearly defined targets for its sustainability program. They are a mix of quantitative goals for key indicators and measurable actions to be accomplished. Progress against these goals is monitored through an internal reporting structure and other review processes."

The chart above represents the way sustainability has been integrated structurally into the business. But executive buy-in isn't the only requirement; a company must set realistic goals, apply appropriate change techniques and, even then, remain flexible. When Heineken acquired a series of high energy consuming companies, they watched their overall reduction in energy consumption slow to frustratingly low levels, making it harder to meet their target reduction levels by 2010. The plan they had implemented to address Heineken's own energy consumption didn't necessarily account for converting new company acquisitions.

It's this sort of holistic thinking that must expand if sustainable practices are going to take hold throughout big business. The beauty of it is, looking beyond immediate ROI, accounting for "what-if" scenarios, and being able to consider what hasn't happened yet are things we can all do in businesses of any size.

[Note: the case study linked to above suffers from poor editing; several paragraphs are repeated verbatim.]