Sustainability: The Big Difference Small Business Can Make
It’s not often that we have the opportunity to be removed from our daily routine, and instead, find ourselves immersed in a topic that we are passionate about and believe to be of historic importance. For me, this week is one of those very rare times indeed.
This week I will be attending the University of British Columbia’s (UBC) Summer Institute in Sustainability being held at the Point Gray campus in Vancouver, British Columbia. This innovative program is part of The Continuing Studies Centre for Sustainability (CFS) at UBC, and is one of several programs focused on sustainability that the university offers.
Over the next five days, I will be sharing my thoughts, views and observations on what I have learned while attending this program, and hopefully provide a few insights of my own that will be of benefit to you and your business.
As I drove from my house in White Rock, B.C. into Vancouver towards the beautiful UBC campus, I found myself wondering – “just who exactly attends a full week dedicated to Sustainability”. So let’s start there for my first post of the week.
As it turns out, and not surprisingly, the issue of sustainability is of keen interest to a rather broad cross-section of people. As I look across the room, many colleges, universities and various institutions of “higher learning” are well represented. We have participants from various levels of government, as well as some people that work for crown corporations (quasi government organizations that operate with varying levels of independence).
Big business is represented, and we have a fair number of advisors and sustainability consultants (including yours truly) that are participating in the activities this week. However, one group that I do not see adequately represented is small business. This is not surprising of course – as I am sure you will agree.
There are very few small business owners that have the luxury of removing themselves from the “front-line” to attend a week long course on sustainability. However, the sad truth is that we can ill afford as a society not to have this critically important group actively engaged on this topic.
In many places across the globe, it is the small business owner that is the engine for economic prosperity. In British Columbia, nearly 6 out of every 10 individuals in the private sector are either self employed or are employed by a small business (those that employ 49 employees or fewer). And of the 378,700 companies operating in British Columbia, just 8,100 (or 2%) have 50 employees or more.
How can we hope to make meaningful progress on such an important issue unless we have active participation from small business leaders? Maybe that‘s the job of consultant like myself and the others that are attending this week’s program. Maybe we need tailored programs that meet the unique needs (and time requirements) of small business leaders and entrepreneurs. Or maybe the small business community has not been convinced of the business case for sustainability (something I will write about later on in the week).
I don’t know the answer, but I do know that it’s a question (among many, many others) that must be solved in rather short order.
Tomorrow, I will be writing about why so many of us struggle with defining Sustainability in a way that everyone can understand (and why it’s so important to do so).
-Justin Lacey is the founder of Walk Softly Communications