1. INTRODUCTION
Global warming, through rising
greenhouse gas emissions, is not only impacting on human populations and
ecosystems, it is also causing negative impacts on economic development (WEART, 2008).
Commercial activities of businesses are contributing to global warming through
unethical social and environmental behaviours.
Hillary (1995) believes that global
warming is mainly caused by business and industry; and this could lead to
between 5% to 20% decrease in global economic output (STERN, 2006). However,
due to the increasing regulations and incentive schemes for the businesses,
they have mainly accepted to implement some socially responsible and
environmentally friendly practices under the rubric of Corporate Social
Responsibility (CSR).
Also, businesses now are aware that
the customers scrutinise their activities. So, adopting social and
environmental practices to reduce their negative impacts on the ecology and
community will bring them a competitive advantage (SMITH; OAKLEY, 1994; BIONDI
et al., 2000; YUSOF; ASPINWALL, 2000; GERSTENFELD; ROBERTS, 2000; LEPOUTRE;
HEENE, 2006; DEEGAN, 2007).
Solving global warming will improve
the quality of human communities’ lives and ecosystems. It is specially the
case in Australia which is the highest greenhouse gas polluter among all the
nation members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
(OECD) (AUSTRALIA'S GREENHOUSE GASES, 2015).
1.4% of global greenhouse gas emissions are generated by Australia (THE CLIMATE
INSTITUTE, 2015). Considering the low population of the country, per person,
Australia is one of the world’s largest polluters. Based on the statistics,
Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions are nearly twice the OECD and more than
four times the world average (AUSTRALIA'S
GREENHOUSE GASES, 2015).
2. OUR ROLE IN GLOBAL WARMING
Playing a significant role in global
warming by businesses doesn’t exempt us from our responsibility towards our
planet. As individuals, we need to take responsibility and do small sustainable
actions every day to “meet the needs of the present without compromising the
ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” (BRUNDTLAND, 1987, p. 8).
Each of us counts in solving the
global warming and moving forward to a sustainable society. There are so many
small individual practices which can contribute to sustainable development,
such as sorting and disposing the wastes, using eco-cleaning services,
cancelling junk mails to reduce paper wastes, donating the useful clothes and
old stuff, using reusable shopping bags, turning off the unnecessary lights,
turning off the tap while brushing the teeth etc.
Collectively, all these small
activities play significant roles in creating a more sustainable community. It
is our job to reconsider our lifestyle and start implementing social changes.
Such changes take time, but it doesn’t mean they are impossible. It is possible
to make great positive impacts with all these negligible and small activities
because if we adopt such practices consistently, all of them will become our
daily habits after a while and change our behaviour and attitude towards the
planet and people.
When individual behaviour changes,
it creates the foundation for sustainability actions and adopting such actions
will result in greater sustainable community (PAPPAS; PAPPAS, 2014). However,
the main question raised here is that how we can motivate every individual to
adopt such small sustainability practices in their daily lifestyle? This paper
tries to answer this question from a business perspective.
3. MOTIVATION
Motivation determines what people
will do (SCHAPER et al., 2013). Based on Shanks (2012), motivation is the act
of providing motive which makes people to act. To encourage people to revise
their daily routine behaviour to more sustainable one, we need to create a
motivating environment.
Authors believe that if every
individual receives the tangible benefits of the sustainable activities they
adopt daily, there would be more courage and enthusiasm for them to implement
sustainable practices consistently.
Based on Schaper et al. (2013),
there are two types of motivation, intrinsic and extrinsic. Regarding
sustainability, intrinsic (or internal) motivation could arise from different
training programs to increase the people’s awareness about the current global
social and environmental issues. For example, if the education system in each
country starts to teach the topic of sustainability from the early stages of
students’ life, it will help to increase their intrinsic motivation to practice
more sustainable activities in their daily life.
As we can see, nowadays schools are
increasingly involving the different sustainability topics in their curriculum.
Also, there are some resources to help teachers, education providers,
curriculum coordinators and principals to include sustainability in the
schools’ curriculum. The “Sustainability in School” portal is one of these
resources which help to embed sustainability into the classrooms, schools and
communities in Australia (SUSTAINABILITY IN SCHOOL, 2018).
Apart from intrinsic motivation, we
need to provide some extrinsic (external) motivation for the people to get
involved in sustainability adoption. An extrinsic motivation could be something
like financial rewards or credits from the outside (SCHAPER et al., 2013).
If every individual could get
tangible benefits from their adopted sustainability activities, they will show
more readiness to do more voluntary sustainable activities. For example, as the
government of Australia has been committed to reduce the greenhouse gas
emissions to 5% below 2000 levels, they have initiated some tangible incentives
for the businesses to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions (AUSTRALIAN
GOVERNMENT, 2014).
For this purpose, the “Emissions
Reduction Fund” targets the Australia’s domestic emissions reductions and
provides strong incentives to reduce the costs of businesses and their
emissions to the environment (AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT, 2014).
Now the question raised here is that
how the government of Australia could initiate similar incentives for
individuals and households to practice more sustainable activities? Based on
Fielding et al. (2011), a fifth of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions are
coming from the Australian households.
So, there is a significant need to
motivate individuals and households to practice more sustainable activities.
Although there is a set of policies (through voluntary actions or pricing
mechanism) initiated to improve the household’s engagement with sustainability
like installing efficient appliances or increased price of water and energy, it
still requires fostering positive attitudes towards the sustainability
(FIELDING et al., 2011). As suggested by Fielding et al. (2011), social norms
which support sustainability need to be encouraged. Also, we need to find a way
to overcome the financial limitations faced by households in adopting some
sustainability practices (FIELDING et al., 2011).
4. BANK OF SUSTAINABILITY
In this paper, a business idea will
be presented which offers an extrinsic motivation for the individuals and
households to be more sustainable. As mentioned before, we need to offer some
tangible benefits to the individuals who adopt sustainability practices in
their daily life. This business idea is based on the common concept of a bank.
As we all know, individuals and businesses save their money into a bank account
to receive tangible benefits such as credit cards, accessing to home and
business loans, insurances etc. The same trend could be applied to the
engagement of people with sustainability. Against the financial banks which
work with financial capitals (like money), “Bank of Sustainability” will work
with social capitals.
Bank of Sustainability (BOS) is a
social bank concept which provides tangible benefits to its customers. Instead
of saving the financial capitals, customers of BOS will save their
contributions towards the sustainability in their bank accounts. In the BOS
system, there would be a scoring mechanism for each possible sustainable
activity that every person can adopt in the daily life. Based on the scoring
mechanism, customers of BOS will get credits for their engagement with
sustainable practices.
For example, if an individual opens
a bank account in BOS, based on the water bill uploaded, their average daily
water use will be recorded in the bank account. Then, based on the common
benchmark for the average daily water consumption, a target will be proposed to
that customer to reach. If the customer could meet the proposed target within
the required time, a credit or two or more (depending on the amount of water
saved) will be recorded in their bank account. Same trend could be done with
other household sustainable activities.
For further clarity, let’s have a
look on the below hypothetical example to find out how the BOS will give
credits to its customers;
David is a single man living in a
one-bedroom apartment in Sydney and based on his recent water bill, his water
consumption is around 800 litres per day. He opens a bank account in BOS to get
rewarded for his sustainability activities. He uploads his water bills and the
bank realises that his water consumption is well over the average one. Based on
the RWCC (2018), the average daily water consumption in Australia is 340 litres
per person. Now, a target of 500 litres per day is introduced to David from the
BOS to get one “Sustainability Credit”. Next month, when the bank realises that
he has met the offered target, one Sustainability Credit (SC) will appear in
his bank account. Also, a new target of 340 litres per day will be introduced
to him to get more SCs in the next month.
As mentioned before, same
benchmarking and rewarding mechanism could be introduced for other sustainable
activities. Some of the possible sustainable activities that can be rewarded
are carbon footprint, electricity and gas consumption, fuel consumption, number
of printed papers, donating to charities, blood donation, voluntary social
activities etc.
For each of these practices, a
benchmark and rewarding mechanism will be calculated and offered by the BOS to
its customers. Based on the required target, customers will try to get as many
SCs as possible to receive a higher “Overall Sustainability Credit”. Customers’
Overall Sustainability Credit (OSC) will be monitored every few months to make
sure that they are adopting sustainable practices consistently and if they fail
to adopt such practices, their OSC will be reduced gradually. In this way, the
BOS customers will always make sure to be sustainable consistently and will control
all their activities to impose less harms to the environment and society.
Now, the main question raised here
is that how the customers could get tangible benefits from their OSC awarded by
the bank of sustainability? Going back to the previous example, how David will
be motivated to get more SCs and how his OSC will bring some competitive
advantages for him?
5. USING SUSTAINABILITY CREDITS
Through the commonly known banking
system, customers receive different financial services such as deposit their
pay checks, take out different loans, set up saving accounts, receive helps and
advice for the investment etc. Due to all these tangible benefits, people are
motivated to open a bank account and save their money into it. Same functions
need to be adopted for BOS to motivate people to open a “Sustainability Account”
and receive tangible advantages through it. Authors believe that for this
purpose, a collective agreement and will is required from the businesses and
governments to give some competitive advantages to the people with good OSC.
In other words, customers of BOS
need to see that some extra bonus or advantages are offered to them if they
adopt more sustainable practices in their life. It is like a situation when you
save more money in your financial bank account, you will receive more benefits
like increasing your credit card’s limit or receiving personal loans etc.
The following arguments discuss some
of the possible tangible benefits that customers of BOS with high OSC could
receive:
As we all know, the immigration
office in Australia uses a point-test system to issue some permanent skilled
visas (AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT, 2018). This system is actively reviewed by the
Australian Government. Apart from the main requirements such as age limit,
employment history, qualifications etc., a small portion of this point system
could be allocated to OSC of the interested applicants. In this way, the
Australian Government could limit the new immigrants to the sustainable
individuals and households who have shown a good record of adoption of
sustainable practices through their BOS accounts.
Based on the statistics, the skill
stream visa accounted for 67.3% of the total Australia’s 2016-2017 migration
programme outcome (AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT, 2017). Considering some few points
for the migration applicants’ engagement with sustainable activities could
contribute significantly to the Australia to meet its targets in reducing the
greenhouse gas emissions every year.
Priority in employment is another
competitive advantage that could be offered to people with high sustainability
credit. In this way, job applicants with higher sustainability credit in their
BOS account will have more chances to be recruited. Employers could consider
some employment priorities for the sustainable applicants leading the
sustainable employees recruited by the companies. To receive more SC, such
employees will always try to adopt more sustainable activities in their daily
life including when they are at work. This helps the companies to save more
resources and become more sustainable as the sustainable people will create a
sustainable culture in the workplace as well. And developing a sustainable
culture in the businesses will lead to better engagement with sustainable
practices (SALIMZADEH; COURVISANOS, 2015).
Sustainable people would use more
public transport options to reduce the private cars’ emissions and petrol
usage. Through their BOS accounts, they could receive SC for this action.
Hence, offering some discounts for purchasing public transport tickets will
motivate them more to commute using public transport systems. One of the
competitive advantages that government and public transport companies could
offer to sustainable individuals is to offer some discounts and vouchers for
using public transports. If the sustainable people receive such advantages,
they will show more enthusiasm in using public transport leading to less
traffic jams, cleaner air, less petrol usage and less greenhouse gas emissions.
Receiving some discounts to buy sustainable
goods like solar panels, gift shopping vouchers, paying less tax, discounts for
some financial services like a home mortgage’s interest rate are some of the
possible competitive advantages that could be offered to BOS customers with
high SC.
6. CONCLUSIONS
To survive in the planet, it is
required to maintain what humans need or want from the environment like clean
water and fresh air. As societies and communities move towards the
sustainability path, markets try to provide a range of environmentally oriented
products and services. In this regard, national governments use different tools
and resources to develop sustainability adoption for businesses, whereas, the
prominent role of individuals and households in the progression of
sustainability has been neglected (SALIMZADEH, 2017).
Although political and economic
drivers at the national and international levels are critical for setting the
sustainability framework, the key role of people and households should not be
neglected in the transformation of the communities toward sustainability.
Recent organisational and management studies have paid much attention to the
concept of Corporate Sustainability (CS), but the adoption of sustainability
practices within households has received limited attention and study.
Global warming and climate change
have been very influential in business sustainable development (POTTS, 2010) and changing the way that
governments plan for such sustainability (SALIMZADEH,
2016). However, individuals and households should not be excluded from
the government’s planning for sustainable development. In Australia,
household’s contribution to greenhouse gas emissions is 20% (FIELDING et al.,
2011). To motivate individuals and households to reduce their greenhouse gas
emissions, tangible benefits should be awarded to those who adopt sustainability
practices.
Bank of sustainability is an
innovative business idea which could provide such motivation to the individuals
and households to adopt sustainable practices in their daily life. This social
bank needs to receive adequate support from the governments and businesses. As
shown in figure 1, through this bank, people could save their engagement with
sustainability and gain sustainability credits whenever they do something to
protect the environment or support the society.
Figure 1: Conceptual Framework
of Bank of Sustainability
Source:
developed by authors for this paper
Sustainable practices of customers
(such as reducing water, electricity and gas usage) are recorded in their bank
accounts. Based on their closeness to the common benchmarks, one or two or more
sustainability credits are offered to them. These credits are accessible
through their bank account and they can use them for different purposes such as
receiving some discount when buying some sustainable goods like solar panels.
Calculating a benchmark for all the
possible sustainable activities is a very time-consuming process. Even for some
of the social activities like blood donation, it is very difficult to calculate
the common benchmarks. However, receiving credits and benefits for the main
activities of less usage of natural resources could lead to significant results
in solving the global warming. Also, the idea of BOS is a very newly born one
and needs more research and support. So, it could be the future research topics
to investigate how each sustainability practice could be quantified in the
format of numbers then transformed to the social credits.
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