Assessment 1 – Reflective Journal – Sustainable Business - 2018 1. Assessment Details Over the first three weeks of this course, students are required to consider the sustainability-related issues...

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ASSESSMENT 1 – REFLECTIVE JOURNAL – SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS – 2018
Approaches to environmental sustainability is intricately related to the success and failure of a business organisation. It is a matter of fact that every company needs to be aware presently about the activities they are undertaking that are potent to cause harm to the environment. On the other hand, companies, which are wary of the environment and place it foremost in planning their organisational strategies, succeed to create a prolonged impact for them in the market. Bocken, Short, Rana and Evans (2014) have cited the reason for this as the customers being more attracted towards firms, which conduct their business activities responsibly. Nevertheless, with my knowledge of sustainability that I have gained so far, I can understand that the issues related to sustainability, which are occurring now a days very commonly, such as carbon footprinting and global warming due to industrial wastes, are causing negative impact not only on the reputation of the organisation, but also on the well-being of its people as well as customers. Besides, sustainable business practices are so important because these help to reduce the ecological footprinting done by the business organisations.
Ecological footprinting is the measurement of the demands that human beings have on the nature for living their lives properly and for fulfilling their economic needs. As criticised by WWF (2018), as and by the demands of the individuals increase, they require more resources for fulfilling them. Therefore, they make use of the nature from where they get all the important components, such as food, water, air and fossil fuel that make lives as well as business operations easier for them. Hence, for ecological footprinting, an ecological accounting system is used to track how much more demands are occurring due to changing patterns of needs. Thus, I have tried to understand this concept by relating its usage by organisations to produce the amount of profitability they need. Therefore, nature is being consumed in the following way to support business operations and activities, leading to negative impact on nature.
Figure 1: Ecological Footprinting
(Source: Global Footprint Network, 2018)
Hence, the theme of “Sustainability, the Triple Bottom Line & business” appropriately indicates the intricate relation that exists between these aspects, and which is inevitable or indispensable. According to Schulz and Flanigan (2016), Triple Bottom Line (3BL) gives the business organisation an opportunity to create not only profit for themselves, but also value in the market. I know that organisations with value are looked up to more than those only generating profits. The reason is very obvious for this because organisations, which have been successful in maintaining their social and environmental...