RUBIZMO Café Talk Cycle #03-1 - How to integrate sustainable issues in SME business models
Channel: Rubizmo Rural Business Models
Date: 2021-03-19

This encouraging Café Talk of Camille Poutrin from GreenFlex, France presents different options how to integrate sustainable issues in small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) business models. 

The session was part of the third live RUBIZMO Café Talk Cycle taking part in February 2021. Follow the Playlist "How Europe can anticipate and support rural innovation" and discover even more opportunities for rural development. 

After the 15min. presentation the senior lecturer was answering all questions of the audience. For more insights, read the following Q&A: 

Q: If you're a small company, how do you cover your costs for acting sustainable or could this even recover costs?
A: If your company works on energy waste water, you would see the effect directly. So, it's not so complicated to say: OK, we will start our sustainable change by reducing our consumption of paper and waste, by trying to recycle, these kinds of things. So, this first step is not a big cost, and you are on the way of having a lower impact in your work and can also motive people for more initiatives.

Q: Do you think the sustainability or responsibility agenda is still driven by policy or do you see evidence where consumers are really influencing behavior instead of encouraging companies to change? What if the employees or consumers are encouraged to ask the supermarkets what the ultimate consequence of lowcost food is?
A: I'm working a lot with food companies, and they are very impacted by the consumer willingness. For example for retailers green means to win. Some retailers in France are acting to reduce pesticides, because every six months there´s a lot of very bad communication about it by Greenpeace. That´s a very interesting example of how a civil society can change things and we are already seeing that in many companies. 
One of the big issues is climate change and carbon neutrality is the topic of this year and biodiversity is another one. Many companies think we need to act now. So this is moving and not only because of regulation.

Q: Doing more for the sustainability in an SME is not the easiest thing to do, is it?
A: Many people think that sustainable development is very easy and this is only one, two, three steps and we know everything about it. But the things are more complicated in details. And of course, very interesting is how to connect that to our goals in an enterprise, the economic, social and environmental. And I think from the point of view of market success, we should have very good communication with the market. We should talk about it and show our customers, our society what we do in this area. There are more and more people that are looking for products with sustainable goals. So big companies, big concerns do it because they have people, they have the budget and they know that it's very important. And the point is how to change the situation and to also show small enterprises how to use that and how to make it. It's also about  marketing needs and knowledge - especially in the area of our landscapes, our villages. Many people don't know if this is really important or not, or how to do it. And I think we need to inform the customers more about the possibilities, to enhance the acceptance of the enterprises, but also the awareness of consumers.
And it's true that when you are doing something sustainable, you have to organize a strategy, even if it's a small one. Like: I'm doing some stuff for the environment, social issue, territory by territory, for example, with this clear strategy it's always easier to communicate and talk with your consumer B2B relations, these kind of things. It's always easier to have a smart strategy.

Q: My question is if a strict consideration of sustainability in the food market implies to drastically reduce food variety in food as we wouldn't import so much. So, the only thing we were going to sell would be local products. Is that correct?
A: In the best world, I would say, yes. There is some studies that say if you get an apple from Chile or from France, it´s quite the same greenhouse gas impact. I don't know if it's true or not, but I would always prefer to have products and food products from my region. So, yes, it's not sustainable to eat banana, avocado, this kind of things every day. But there are quite a few problems in the calculations as it depends on how large the transport scale is, how this reduces the cost per tomatoes. So sometimes local transport carries a lot of greenhouse gases per tomato. But we always have to count the whole picture and global positive externalities for your territory. 

Follow-Up: I think it will be compulsory for all of us, for the whole food industry to follow this sustainable trend because there are strong debates across the whole food chain and dealing with the definition of sustainability. But even if this is difficult, the commission is encouraging these tasks. So yes, we are going to follow these trends and it should be a compulsory decision.