Innovation for sustainability is developing from the efforts of critical and environmentally sensitive entrepreneurial leaders. The strategy gives direction to new methods of creating products and services developed to enhance the health, prosperity and the equitability of the global environment. The concept of sustainability is diverse from the conventional business strategies as they largely integrate the goal for economic performance to the vitality of the community, protection, and management of the ecological system as well as the promotion of human health. The study analyses the Seventh Generation Company to explore institutions and actors involved in green innovation.
Understanding the Seventh Generation
Seventh Generation is one of the pioneer companies in America established on principles of sustainability. The company has its headquarters in Burlington, Vermont. It is owned and operated privately to produce and distribute environmentally friendly personal and household care products (Lundberg, 2018, 13). Eneizan and his friend hold that the company is founded on a marketing strategy that emphasizes the four Ps that include; place, promotion, produce, as well as price (Eneizan, Abd-Wahab, & Obaid, 2016, 8). The company manufactures its products only by using recycled, natural or renewable materials with nontoxic characteristics. Similarly, the company concentrates its efforts on minimizing the impacts of its operation on the natural environment.
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The company was founded by Jeffery Hollender, a man born and raised in New York City. According to Eneizan and his colleagues Jeffery's inspiration stemmed from his discontent with his immediate environment as he was growing (Eneizan, Abd-Wahab, and Obaid, 2016, 9). He did not like how people around him could spend their time drinking alcohol and smoking, and so he would turn to surf in a quite rebellious way. His early discontent not only made him break the expectations of his own life but also changed his consumer and business practices. His bond with nature, along with the marketing skill he had acquired from his dad Alfred; marketing executing in the New York City Firm. His entrepreneurial trials landed him into a partnership with Mr. Alan Newman an 'eco-prenuer' (Lundberg, 2018, 12). The partnership led to his acquisition of a mail-order catalog that was based on energy conservation. The mail-order subsequently changed its name from Renew America to Seventh Generation in the year 1988.
Lundberg describes the company to have begun as a small mail-order in 1988 had grown into a $150million brand by 2011(Lundberg, 2018, 6). Jeffery admitted the difficulty he faced in establishing the company as its partners soon split. However, not only his personality, unique passion and values to provide eco-friendly products sustained the company, but also dominated its branding. The company derives its marketing plan from its core mission of empowering consumers towards making deliberate choices that would encourage the production of environmentally friendly products; consequently leaving a positive mark on the planet. The company grants its customers the opportunity for making conscious choices by providing them with their eco-friendly paper towels, laundry and personal care detergents among numerous other household products. The company's branding approach has assisted it in differentiating its products within a highly competitive market.
The company’s several awards; including being recognized as the seventh most environmentally responsible company in the United States can be attributed to its commitment to sustainability. The company has sustainability as an intricate part of their characteristics that cut across leadership, sourcing, product development, and lifecycles as well as marketing (Eneizan, Abd-Wahab, & Obaid, 2016, 8). Its commitment to sustainability is more evident in its effort to create a positive impact on the planet in the most transparent way possible.
Innovation and Sustainability of Business
Business sustainability can partially be conceived in the conventional understanding to imply the ability of a business organization to general enough revenues to carter for production, invest for continued competition and replace used assets (Buijs et al, 2016, 10). Such conception originates from the long-held belief that organizations must have their indefinitely extended continuation. On the other hand business sustainability can be viewed in terms of making a significant contribution towards the general goal of sustainable development (McCann, 2017, 1820). In this perspective, innovations possess evaluation criteria that extend beyond those of the conventional conception of business sustainability. Business innovations for sustainable development aim towards providing goods and services that meet the three aspects of sustainable development which include economic development, social development, and environmental health.
Popper and colleagues regard sustainable business approaches as those that not only work towards attaining economic performance using socially and environmentally sensitive strategies but also carry out activities supporting the equitability, health, and cleanliness of the natural environment; consequently contributing to a more stable world(Popper et al, 2016, 17). Business entrepreneurs inspired by the concept of sustainability acknowledge its role in providing opportunities for innovation and creativity as well as the greater value and the profitability involved. Buijs et al (2016) describe large business corporations as having a great impact when they decide to transform their policies and guiding principles towards the greater good of the planet and the society (11).
There is a significant increase in the number of business organizations that demonstrates an acknowledgment of the need for sustainability in their operation (Kawai, Strange, and Zucchella, 2018, 933). By 2010 90 percent of the total CEOs sampled agreed to environmental stability as an important determinant of the total profit (Popper et al, 2016, 19). McCann noted that although 71 percent of the total CEO sampled felt that their companies did not harm the environment, 61 percent acknowledged the need for their companies to reduce the impact they leave in the environment(McCann, 2017, 1816). Similarly, a significant majority not only agreed to the need for adopting more cleaner and greener products but also believed the demand for their product would increase if they were greener and cleaner.
Seventh Generation and the Four Concept of Innovative Sustainability
Large companies have great can leave large positive impacts when they decide to transform their practices and policies for the greater good of the planet and the global society. Seventh Generation is committed to leaving a great positive impact through the four concepts of sustainable development.
Seventh Generation and Dematerialization
When a business organization adopts policies supporting leasing, sharing and renting among others reduces the dependency of an organization on continuously setting up structures when looking for new raw materials (Buijs et al, 2016, 13). The strategy reduces the environmental impact a company leaves behind upon its relocation to a new raw resource site. Similarly, strategies such as supplying, servicing, and collecting end-of-use products for recycling significantly limit the ecological footprint left by a company as it closes the material loops. The practice is also cost-friendly to consumers as they are provided with a cheaper bill compared to purchasing new products every time (van de Wetering, Mikalef, and Helms, 2017, 73). On the other hand, merely selling products to consumers without caring to collect the end-of-use material leads to the dumping of hazardous wastes on the physical environment. The practice not only escalates environmental degradation but also encourages the exploitation of natural resources for raw materials; thus leave greater negative impacts on the environment.
According toLundberg, Seventh Generation is committed towards dematerialization through its commitment to ensuring that it maintains the utilization and renewal of its raw materials a rate lower than its rate of depletion. The company manufactures laundry and cleaning products from natural and safe products. Similarly, it uses natural products to create baby diapers, baby wipes, as well as natural lotions that are safer and healthier to use(Lundberg, 2018, 15). Moreover, the company creates hygienic feminine products made out of organic cotton as well as safer training pants. Similarly, the company does not own personal manufacturing facilities. Instead, it partners with other companies in the United States, Germany, and Canada to manufacture their products for them (Eneizan, Abd-Wahab, and Obaid, 2016, 3).
However, it employs an extensive auditing process to monitor the facilities owned by its manufactures, as well as their utilization of power, water, as well as their emission of greenhouse gasses and discharge of hazardous waste. It also monitors its manufactures' recycling efforts to ensure they meet the company's expectations for sustainability. The company minimizes the materials used for packaging by concentrating their cleaning products; thus creating minimal impact on the environment by reducing the packaging space. Similarly, the company offer refills especially for baby wipes, reconstructing their packaging to use limited material (Eneizan, Abd-Wahab, and Obaid, 2016, 5). The company has demonstrated a higher commitment to recycling the overuse of raw materials.
Open Loop
Kawai and Colleagues describe an open loop as the business organization that repurposes products that were once discarded as wastes(Kawai, Strange, and Zucchella 2018, 934). Good examples of such companies would include these reusing plastic wastes, metal wastes, and food wastes to make products such as furniture, wrappings and other useful products. Voegtlin and Scherer (2017) refer to the concept as "urban mining" and significant to both the environment and the economy (Voegtlin and Scherer, 2017, 229). Companies that map their business plan towards the open-loop approach as having a long-term goal for sustainable development.
The seventh Generation produces products from 100 percent recycled facial and bathroom tissues, paper towels, and napkins. The organization conducts a plastic-collection initiative, to collect used plastics for their raw products. Similarly, they buy plastics recovered from the waters by ocean cleaning initiatives and send them to their manufacturing companies for the production of their products. The company also manufactures trash bags made out of between 60 to 80 percent of used plastics (Lundberg, 2018, 5). The company employs the concept of open-loop sustainability to create products that promote environmental sustainability.
Low Carbon
The approach not only incorporates ways of financing low-carbon energy projects but also reinforces the importance of collaboration (Voegtlin and Scherer, 2017, 232). A good illustration would be a company relying on each other, for the recycling and reuse of waste material. For instance, a drug company would collaborate with an energy company. The drug company would provide the energy company with its emissions to be processed into energy. The collaboration reduces the costs incurred by the energy company is looking for alternative sources of raw material while enabling the drug company to carryout cleaner operation as it earns from selling its emissions. Seventh Generation attains low carbon emission by outsourcing other environmental friendly manufacturing companies to produce their commodities (Eneizan, Abd-Wahab, and Obaid, 2016, 4). The company does not own any manufacturing company.
Restorative Sustainability of Seventh Generation
The concept of restorative sustainability focuses on restoring environmental and social balance, as well as the health of the ecosystem. Restorative sustainability stems from Michael Braungart and William McDonough's thinking that even if a car moves south slowly down its course that will not make it head in the opposite direction (Warnke et al, 2016, 26). The car must turn around to head north. In this perspective, tackling the major issue of economic, social and environmental problems that have been caused by unsustainable development requires a complete shift in how things are done. Ockwell and Byrne maintain that more than half of the earth's natural resources have been used. Given the present rate of population growth and economic development, the earth would need three times the amount of resources on the planet to sustain the needs of the growing masses by 2050(Ockwell and Byrne, 2016, 20). organizations that are leading in the implementation of sustainability measures as only having managed to slow down the speed the natural environment was being destroyed (Saunila, Ukko, & Rantala, 2018, 635). There is a need to change businesses towards sincere practices of restorative sustainability.
Social/cultural Determinants of Seventh Generation Innovation
The social-cultural determinants of the Seventh Generation Company are visible on its marketing focus on societies, resources, and profit. The company focuses on providing customers with a chance to select products based on their commitment, idealism, and passion to conserve environmental resources. The business is committed to educating its market and encourage them to help them in the creation of healthy would for the greater well being. The company achieves its objectives by developing a more conscious population of consumers, citizens, and workers in their production, communication, and distribution. The company appeals to the cultural and social perspectives of its market through its mission statement that emphasizes the creation of a value-rich world rather than an artifact-rich world (Eneizan, Abd-Wahab, and Obaid, 2016, 5). Similarly, the mission highlights its efforts to establish a social system and governance that will improve the capacity for understanding other perspectives and points of view that might differ from the one it holds.
Sustainability and Digital Media
Digital environmental sustainability and digital technology have long existed as extremely exclusive concepts. Factors behind the two terms are seemed quite unrelated. Whereas digital media was related to technological transformations caused by the internet and the robotic; environmental sustainability was driven by geopolitical instability, climate change as well as environmental degradation (Wellner, 2019, 135). Environmental sustainability seems to need completely different approaches that are more concerned with conservation and governance of environmental resources, as well as those determined to decarbonizes the atmosphere.
The relationship between the two concepts emanates from the realization of the inability to continuously meet the rapidly increasing demand for goods and services only using a one direction increase in production(Saunila, Ukko, & Rantala, 2018, 635). It would be impossible to solve problems related to the social and ecological environment without transforming the models for business innovations. It would be difficult for companies to set measures to reduce their pollution without digital technology. Strategic business idea is one which bridges the ability of the digital media to sustainable practices (Liu and Yan, 2018, 3998). Such business differentiates itself among its peers and secures future liabilities among its regulators, markets and their communities of operations.
Li and his colleague identified ways in which digital media can be used for sustainable development to include the use of a smart electrical grid to monitor and control factors of production in a bid to minimize wastage (Li &Found, 2017, 72). Other methods entail the optimization of energy forecasting systems, protection of power grids using solar flare prediction, assessment of renewable energy plants, the establishment of decentralized, optimized peer renewable energy systems, as well as establishment of optimized virtual power plants among others (Sengupta et al, 2017). Other businesses have identified an opportunity for their goal of sustainability in digitizing their chain of supply using a high-technology data-centric application to manage their sources(Roblek, Meško, and Meško, 2016, 21).
Seventh Generation effective use of digital media for sustainable development is visible in the company's commitment to handling their activities from a perspective of systems, which enables them to perceive the greater image as it is, rather than a fragmented world that they may want to see. The company has risen above their point of view, which would only be composed of what they would want to see that would be in their point of view; to understand the world as being endlessly interconnected. The organization’s use of digital media has helped them to coordinate their chains of supply from the raw materials to product distribution with ease (Eneizan, Abd-Wahab, & Obaid, 2016, 7). The company uses the internet as well as its mass merchandisers like Walmart and Target to distribute their products to the consumers.
Conclusion
Consumers, workers, and employers have started to push towards more sustainable practices. Similarly, environmentalists and labor unions that had initially conflicted are now working together in alliances to facilitate the change towards a cleaner planet. There is a consensus that organizations supporting new forms of green economy fight pollution and poverty while creating clean energy employment opportunities. Several other companies have implemented measures such as producing environmental products and reducing energy consumption to save funds and increase their market share. a shift from a more wasteful system of the economy to a more material and energy conservative one would significantly reduce the emission of harmful wastes and eventually reverse social inequality and environmental degradation that has resulted from economic development. Such a shift would involve practices such as urban mining that require a collective effort of all stakeholders of the society.
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