Understand why companies need to care about the planet

Whenever I visit my mother in Santos, on the coast of São Paulo, I spend some time looking at the cargo ships in the port and their faded containers. I wonder what each of them holds: cheap plastic toys, jewelry, clothes and fashion accessories that get “old” every season, electronic equipment made to last a short time, useless trinkets for all ages, cosmetics that turn into toxic waste in the waters. The list borders on infinity.

A little discouraged, I come to think that many of these things should not even be produced on the planet – much less consuming fossil fuels and, even less, with child labor or analogous to slavery. We would be happier, and even freer, without this wheel of consumerism that, being so commonplace, has accustomed us to finding it “normal” for a company to harm people and the Earth and still profit from it. Want an example?

Impact of agribusiness

Here in Brazil, agribusiness is directly related to deforestation in the Amazon and Cerrado. Around 60% of the areas that suffer forest loss in these biomes become pasture, in a business model that does not stand still: for every R$ 1 million in revenue from cattle raising, there is a cost of R$ 22 million in environmental impacts not remedied by producers, according to data from the Brazilian Business Council for Development sustainable and German Agency for International Cooperation.

For some time now, however, this crude logic of capitalism has been questioned among executives and investors in the “market”. Not so much because of the damage caused (which still doesn’t seem to affect these people’s sleep), but because of the uncertainties regarding the survival of the business in a horizon devastated by problems that the companies themselves companies helped to create; among them, the two greatest current challenges: social inequality and the climate crisis.

How much longer will it be possible to explore the planet and its people? Where is this going to take us? Would slowing down the damage to produce and pollute longer be enough to avoid the collapse? Take a breath. Have you ever stopped to think what the Earth would be like if, before profit, the purpose of companies was to make the world a better place?

Dreaming is part of the transformation

It may seem like utopia (a good one!), but there are already those who bet on it as the only possible path. In the book Positive Impact: How Courageous Companies Thrive By Giving More Than They Take (Sextante), the former CEO of Unilever, Paul Polman, in partnership with Andrew Winston, an exponent of corporate sustainability, confront the idea that the only function of companies is to obtain profit. Throughout the publication, they show that organizations that generate positive impacts are an important key to saving the world. In short, their suggestion is something like “heal the world first, and then you’ll make your investors happy”.

Take a look: even with a daring sustainability plan, which has already yielded gradual and profound internal changes, the multinational managed to increase its shareholders’ return by 300%. “The new goal for business is to profit and grow by solving – not creating – problems in the world. This in itself is a fundamental shift from a system based on the obsession with short-term shareholder value that has been the dominant criterion for the past 50 years,” writes Polman.

The power of self-responsibility

Although this discourse is somewhat incipient, we really live in other and new times. And what the authors argue is that companies need to take responsibility for their actions in the planet (seems so obvious, doesn’t it?), seek an honest purpose to guide them to results that balance success and wealth, on the one hand, and justice and equity, on the other. “We must not pretend that everyone in business cares about the condition of the world. But most CEOs are human. They have children and grandchildren who question their actions… and they might care,” they write.

In this sense, (re)building an organization with a positive impact is not something that happens overnight. But we need to start this journey. “To be a relevant company today is to enrich the world”, state the authors. We already have examples of CNPJs who are born to make a difference, who see prosperity as a consequence of good work. This is the case of Brazilian fintech Impact Bank, created in October 2020 by a group of activists. They say it like this: profit is when everyone wins, when territories and society evolve together. “If someone or the planet is at a loss, no one profits from it”, argues co-founder and CEO Gabriel Ribenboim.

be the example

With 15,000 customers and 35,000 in the queue to open a new digital account, in two years Impact Bank has already surpassed R$16 million leveraged for initiatives (in amazon, mainly) that collaborate for a fairer and more regenerative future, through the Transformation Fund. “Our goal is to accelerate the transition to a regenerative society by working more directly with the transforming agents, which are NGOs and impact businesses”, says Gabriel.

Someone might ask: but is it really possible to profit from this? “It does and will only make a profit if that’s how it works”, reinforces Gabriel. And you, me and each of us in this story? We are all actors of transformation. Our daily choices sponsor and maintain the world that is there. If we want to change it, it is also our task to review some things, from small to big choices. Perhaps, like me, when you see a freighter landing on dry land, you ask yourself: how does this make Earth a better place?

By Giuliana Capello – Vida Simples magazine