Why good sustainability intentions fail (and what to fix first)
Why good sustainability intentions fail (and what to fix first) Most businesses that struggle with sustainability aren’t short of motivation. The desire to do something meaningful, for the environment, for their people, for the long-term health of the business, is usually genuine. What gets in the way is rarely a lack of will. It’s a lack of the right foundations. Understanding why that happens, and what to do about it, is where the real progress starts. The problem with good intentions There’s a well-known phenomenon in consumer behaviour sometimes called the “bag for life” problem. A person commits to stopping single-use plastic bags. Each time they forget to bring one, they buy another reusable bag instead. Over time, they accumulate a collection, and when you account for the full environmental cost of producing each one, the total footprint is often higher than the single-use bags they were trying to replace. The intention was right. The system around it wasn’t. The same pattern plays out in businesses regularly, and across every area of sustainability – energy, procurement, carbon, governance and beyond. The initiative gets launched, the commitment gets made, but the underlying conditions that would allow it to work haven’t been
