Triple Bottom Line and Sustainability

The decisions you take when you buy products and services can have an impact outside your organisation. Communities and the environment can benefit from the money you are spending but you may unwittingly be contributing to harm.

This is why it is important to have as much information as is possible about your supplier, and not just about their prices. For example, their relationship with their employees and where they get their raw materials from.

This is what is meant by sustainable development. Business brings jobs and prosperity to the community, but this should be ‘sustainable’. This means thinking about the longer-term impact of the decisions you take.

One way to approach this is by adopting something known as the ‘triple bottom line.’

This triple bottom line is made up of three elements, the three ‘Ps:

Profits: an organisation’s focus on the financial gains it receives from the products or services it sells.

People: a focus on those within and outside the organisation who are affected, including your employees, the communities where you operate and your markets.

Planet: a focus on the organisation’s environmental impact. For example, wastewater or pollution from the fuel you use.

The triple bottom line should form part of your approach to Corporate Social Responsibility, or CSR. As well as being the right thing to do for society and for the environment, CSR makes good business sense because it is valued by investors and customers.

This is why it is important to think also about your supply chain:  if your organisation is linked in any way to practices that indirectly harm people or the environment, the damage to your name could cost you important orders and also incur fines and potential litigation. We should also remember that these principles apply equally to public sector organisations.

By adopting the three ‘P’s you become part of an international movement supported by the United Nations. The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals cover a number of areas linked to procurement, including:

• Provision of decent work
• Reducing inequality in the supply chain
• Responsible production
• Supporting communities

You don’t have to be a big company to think about the three Ps or CSR. Organisations should feel free to develop their own approach to corporate and social responsibility, guided by their own circumstances and the needs of their own communities.