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Leading Change Towards Sustainability
02 de June de 2022
The Power of “Sustainable Natives”: This Is How Generation Z Will Change the Philosophy of Companies
This far into the movie, no one doubts our involvement with sustainable actions. Our lives are filled with eco products and proximity products, recycled and green. Tags and slogans that show a commitment to sustainability. This trend can be good and bad at the same time: good in the sense that, for consumers and users in the marketplace, corporate social responsibility is highly valued and in high demand; bad because fashion can, in many cases, hide reality or act as a mere facade.
Greenwashing —market strategies that are void of any real content— can be dangerous when companies don’t have a firm intention to incorporate sustainability precepts in every activity and process. What’s good about an “eco” product that has been distributed and transported with no sustainability guarantees? In order for a company’s interest to coincide with the health of the planet, it’s necessary to count with the involvement of the whole world and we all have to chip in, from consumers to the leaders of the future.
Beyond the Environment
The environmental aspect has taken the spotlight when it comes to a company’s social responsibility policies. But, the change towards a mentality that drives real sustainability has to broaden our view and embrace global strategies. Sustainability must also have a social side — carrying out initiatives to create a fairer and more equal society, with more opportunities and responsible governance at every level.
It shouldn’t be a commercial strategy, but a corporate philosophy that permeates every level of a company and that embraces the change in consumption and development models championed by the new generation of users.
How Is Generation Z Going To Lead Change?
Generation Z —people born between 1997 and 2012— is the generation of digital natives. They have grown with technology all around them, always connected and used to a multi-screen world without the need of a transition or an adaptation process.
But, at the same time, they’re what we could call “sustainable natives”, since they have grown up imbued with values linked to the protection of the environment and to new and sustainable ways of producing.
They are different from previous generations in their philosophy — one through which they will lead change in the coming decades with their insertion into the labour market and with their access to leading positions in companies.
-Responsibility and Awareness:
Sustainability awareness is an innate quality of the new generations. They have grown up watching the planet face challenges and seeing the first steps towards reverting the damage and the channelling of the world’s production towards more sustainable models. Generation Z take responsibility for their environment and hold companies accountable from their role as users and consumers. Their almost unlimited access to information, which they surf like fish in the water, turns transparency into a mandatory value.
-Resources Austerity:
These sustainable natives promote decreasing and models that aim for rational use of resources and that integrate tools that benefit the planet in their production and logistic processes. Austerity is not at odds with competitiveness or benefit, but they applaud value propositions that go beyond pure results. Their goals are others.
-Work-to-Change Attitude:
They bring a new attitude to their integration to the marketplace and in forging new leaders, embracing innovation in order to make sustainability flourish. They are not scared of change, nor of the transition of the production and energy model. They champion that change and foster it through their decisions in the labour market. Re-thinking the whole philosophy and all the process is their speciality.
What Can Companies Do for Change?
For companies, aligning themselves with the interest of the general population is crucial in the long term. In the same way they had to adapt to change and the new technologies in order to stay attractive and useful, sustainability now calls them to do the same.
As sustainable natives integrate in companies, that DNA will pour into all the different areas of the company, until it will show behaviours and lifestyles that align with the precepts of a fairer world that is more respectful towards the environment. It’s a slow transition in which we’ll have to take risks and put in the effort, but that will pay back on society and will have companies better represent us all.
Investing in the new generations is a good first step to make the philosophy of GenZ permeate the marketplace and provide new production models that are more fitting to the times we live in.
The new generations will assume the leadership of the transition process towards sustainability — one that must be comprehensive and cross-sectional in order to be effective and put forward a new production philosophy.
Article written in collaboration with Bethlem Boronat, Director of EAE’s Master’s in Customer Experience & Innovation, and Jonathan Maestre, Admissions Counsellor at EAE.