3 Steps to Sustain Your Bottom Line and Support Sustainability

Whether it’s corporate social responsibility or pressure from consumers, companies are looking for solutions to shed their wasteful ways. The traditional take-make-waste linear model is falling out of favor as the push for circularity grows. But the big question companies want to know is – can you help the planet and turn a profit? In this post, we’ll take a look at three steps to support sustainability in business while remaining profitable.

3 Steps to Support Sustainability in Business

The core of the Circular Economy is to regenerate products and materials and design out waste and pollution. Many companies are searching for profitable ways to move from a throwaway economy to a circular one. So, how do you get started?

Set objectives to support sustainability in your business

Setting the right goals is mission-critical to making money while creating a more circular economic business model. You’ll want to remain focused on objectives that align with your company’s purpose while still fulfilling your customer and employee’s needs and expectations. The goal is to provide clarity to your mission, ultimately yielding better results. What does that look like? Take a look at some of these corporate objectives:

• Amazon is on a path to powering its operations with 100 percent renewable energy by 2025 as part of its goal to reach net-zero carbon by 2040.
• Dell will reduce Scopes 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2030 and source 75 percent of electricity from renewable sources across all Dell facilities by 2030 — and 100 percent by 2040.
• Microsoft commits to being carbon negative, water positive, and zero waste, all by 2030.
• By 2030, Google aims to be carbon-free.

Once the objectives are set, you can create the roadmap for your business to meet its goals.

Watch others

One of the best ways to succeed in sustainability in business and become more profitable is to learn from others in a similar situation. Regardless of industry, many companies have made the move to a more profitable and sustainable business model.

For example, let’s look at the global consumer goods giant, Unilever. They’re on a mission to pursue a circular economy approach – one in which resources are kept in use in a closed-loop system, rather than thrown away – across every aspect of their business. From plastics and packaging, food waste and other waste from factories and operations, they’re dedicated to finding innovative ways to reduce, reuse and repeatedly recycle materials in a circular system.

One way they’ve been able to support sustainability while sustaining their bottom line is through their reverse logistics strategy. They’ve found an intelligent solution to keep overstock and shelf pull inventory in the economy and out of the landfill. They’ve partnered with the world’s largest B2B recommerce platform, B-Stock, to auction off this excess inventory into the secondary market. There, business buyers all across the globe bid on and buy this merchandise to resell.

Use intelligence

In order to be successful, you have to have the right people, processes, and technology in place. You can’t change what you can’t measure, right? So after setting clearly defined objectives and putting the right procedures in place, you need to have the right technology to make informed decisions and track your progress towards sustainability in business.

For retailers and brands, warehouses and stockrooms can pile up with last season’s products and customer returned inventory. You need to regularly offload this merchandise to keep up with seasonal trends, new inventory, and consumer buying patterns. But stock clearance can be a time-consuming process if you don’t automate it.

Online stock clearance auctions via a private, B2B marketplace allow you to reach a broader selection of buyers. Proven market recommerce leaders like B-Stock have a vast network of fully-vetted business buyers just waiting to bid on your excess inventory– driving higher recovery rates. Plus, online auctions offer a fast turnaround. This level of efficiency means your merchandise will move out quickly, freeing up space and capital.

And better yet? This recommerce solution keeps this merchandise in use and out of landfills. If you’re interested in launching your journey or continuing your path towards sustainability in business, get in touch today.