‘Sustainability’ is a serious selling point

WITH the market and the world constantly evolving, there’s more to selling goods than gaining profit from it. For a business to grow, it needs to grow sustainably.

This is exactly the key takeaway during the 2016 Annual Conference of the Microfinance Council of the Philippines, Inc. (MCPI).

With the theme “Realizing the Sustainable Development Goals through Microfinance”, the recently-held MCPI conference discussed current efforts of the microfinance sector that are related to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) initiated by the United Nations.

The SDGs are intergovernmental set of aspirational goals to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all as part of a new sustainable development agenda. Each of the 17 goals has specific targets to be achieved over the next 15 years. World leaders adopted these in September 2015.

MCPI is currently fulfilling its role in achieving sustainable development targets on clean water and sanitation, resilient human settlements, clean energy, health and well-being, and its potential contribution in minimizing the impact of climate change on communities.

In Unilever, we also support fully the SDGs through our Unilever Sustainable Living Plan (USLP), which sets out environmental and socio-economic sustainability commitments and targets for the next decade.

This is what drives our business.

We believe the business case for sustainability delivers for us more growth, trust, lesser risk and lesser costs. The rhetoric that businesses cannot grow while doing good to benefit communities and the society is of the past.

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In fact, since launching the USLP, we have tracked that brands with a social mission delivered more than half of the company’s growth and grew faster than brands with no social mission.

USLP is a model that makes perfect business sense as it serves multiple stakeholders that include our employees, our partners, consumers, and more importantly, the citizen’s of the world—both present and future.

More companies with the power to do good should collectively embrace sustainability to grow their business, sustainably and responsibly.

And while the future looks bright for the Philippines, several challenges still affect the Filipino people: high poverty incidence, hunger and malnutrition, no access to clean water, poor sanitation and urban congestion, to name a few.

These are the problems we hope to address through our Sustainability Development Program. Our success depends on how we succeed in helping the people we serve, which is the very core of our “brands with purpose” principle.