Introduction to Sustainability
Sustainability refers to the capacity to sustain a process without interruptions over time (Millington et al., 2021. The strategy seeks to dwell much on the future economic, social, and environmental effects of the policies of a given organizational setup. The belief typically reflects the conviction that if significant management changes are not undertaken, the earth will suffer irreparable harm. There are three different aspects of sustainability, which include
Economic sustainability is formally known as sustainability for profits, preserving natural resources, including both renewable and finite resources that supply the physical or biological inputs for economic development (Millington et al., 2021. This sustainability is always to ensure that the natural resources are not depleted and will be available shortly.
People Sustainability: This is commonly called corporate sustainability, an act to ensure that businesses or organizations are responsible to themselves and the general public (Millington et al., 2021). This can be measured through how they take care of their effects on the environment and the people at large to ensure they are not affected by their operations.
Planet sustainability stresses ecosystems essential for economic and human existence, like the land. Planet sustainability keeps a sharp attention on how profit systems impact the communities at large and cultivates ideas to bring to an end poverty and reduce the social inequality. It is also known as environmental sustainability (Millington et al., 2021).
Introduction to Yarra Valley Water’s Sustainability
Yarra Valley Water was founded in 1995 to operate as a government agency that mainly specializes in the supply of clean water, water conservation strategies, and sewage service, among others. (Millington et al., 2021). The company’s organizational purpose—to promote the health and welfare of our clients and build an improved tomorrow for societies and the environment—captures our dedication to sustainability on all levels. The company is doing its part to maintain a healthy environment. Providing its services while safeguarding the water required for healthy rivers is part of its restorative policy regarding the environment. Supplies found in nature are limited. For this reason, Yarra Valley Water is committed to lessening its influence on the surroundings and operating within the universe’s limits of support for viability in the foreseeable future.
. Regarding how it works and conducts business, Yarra Valley Water is heading into a more environmentally friendly economy. Apart from actively promoting ecological diversity on property, the company also aims to support ecologically sound environments. By providing dependable sanitation and water services, the company also assists individuals. The general public anticipates that the company will offer clean drinking water, dependable service, and quick response times to any concerns raised. The company’s dedication to its cause is unwavering.
In its 2020 plan of action, the company increased its involvement in the wellness and well-being of society at large by doubling its social value. Moreover, the company is implementing programs that address domestic assault, susceptibility and challenges, social wellness, and harmony with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations.
Within the company and the community, Yarra Valley Water fosters inclusive, balanced development and economic growth. It upholds Australian standards for outstanding durability businesses. By making wise financial decisions and creating flexible plans for the future, the company protects equitable relations between generations and makes sure that the regions it services never lack fresh water. In particular, the company pledged to a budget freeze in 2017–18, accompanied by bill hikes beneath the inflation rate.
The company’s purpose and vision statement is to create and promote healthy well-being for its clients and the society at large and generate a mix that satisfies changing consumer demands in a world that is going carbon neutral. It is a place for curious individuals who value their work and co-workers, are daring in seeking more effective methods, and are equipped to quickly change in response to new situations and opportunities. And the go-to partner for consumers, authorities, and neighborhoods.
Approach to Sustainability
The company’s primary goal is to source much better ways to supply the communities with clean and healthy water, the main driving force for its sustainability approach. The company believes that innovation and constant development are encouraged for continuously supplying the healthy water that most people use in their daily lives in the safest and most environmentally friendly manner possible (Espinosa & Walker, 2016).
The company conducts its business with sustainability factors heavily ingrained. The corporate strategy is centered on combating climate change and transitioning to a low-carbon economy. By promoting an environmentally friendly society by providing clean and healthy water, Yarra Valley Water is up for decarbonizing its assets, assisting the clients in doing the same, and increasing the water supply critical to the energy transition.
Yarra Valley Water focuses on achieving flawless environmental, people, and authority credentials to align society’s expectations to business activities. The company also ensures that every point of action they come up with is embedded in sustainability considerations. The company is also championing the correct beliefs and values. To achieve the objectives, the company puts much effort into cultivating the proper attitude and culture, pushing the team members to collaborate to create innovative solutions, and creating partnerships with people with whom they share aspirations.
The company sustainability framework gives insights into how they can handle the environmental, social, and governance issues crucial to them and the stakeholders, as well as how to contribute to the United Nations Goals for Sustainability (SDGs). It entails giving individuals and society access to profitable opportunities, defending and advancing healthcare happiness, championing the human rights of individuals and communities, battling climate change, and acting as responsible caretakers of the scarce resources entrusted to them.
The company ensures its sustainability agrees with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, recognized globally as the worldwide framework for a sustainable livelihood. The company approach focuses on two main objectives: sound production and consumption and economic growth; these are the key issues that the company feels are most pertinent to conducting its business ethically and have the most significant impact.
Through the approach that Yarra Valley Water company has put in place for sustainability, its target is to eliminate emissions from all of our operations by 2050 while supplying the communities with healthy water, taking on the role of a responsible resource partner while reducing adverse effects in the ecosystem and societal heritage, taking responsibility to guard water sources to contribute to a significant rise in the capacity to cope with the transforming climate change.
How Sustainability Impacted Operations
Stakeholders engagement: Stakeholders happen to be involved in the companies or organizations’ activities and programs, including the workers, the community at large, authorities, and even the competitors (Giles-Corti et al., 2020). The modes used to engage with the stakeholders should differ from one to the other. The interests of different stakeholders have influenced how the company’s operations are carried out. The fact that Yarra Valley Water operates in different facets of the economy has ensured that its operations meet the stakeholders’ expectations by taking care of its operations and being accountable to them by publishing audited reports. Some of the ways Yarra Valley Water operations are impacted based on each stakeholder include;
Working staff: For sustainability to be practical, the company puts in place the standards and policies that the employees should adhere to when carrying out their day-to-day activities in and out of the business premises, incorporating training and development to the employees, enhancing staff communication this is to ensure that every staff is at par with the sustainability actions, and also to ensure that the performance is communicated on the surveys carried on the engagements.
The community at large and the company’s operations are significantly impacted as the company focuses, besides its main objective on the socio-economic programs, the company ensures that it takes care of the waste and impacts the community by ensuring the availability of clean and healthy water. The company also ensures that the complaints and grievance mechanisms are efficient.
Investors and Authorities: The operations of the company are impacted from the investors’ perspective as the company produces periodic reports, which are also used by the authorities for taxation purposes, and holds general meetings measuring the level of achievements to the United Nations Sustainable Development, producing local content agreements and strategies for contractor safety and ongoing development.
The company operations are tailored to meet environmental responsibility; for significant companies in the mining industry, Yarra Valley Water is not excluded, and reducing the environmental impact of the activities is essential to their continued existence. The companies typically contribute to environmental degradation, demand much energy to run, and produce much garbage. In its operations, Yarra Valley Water evaluates the long-term impact of its projects on the environment; the company categorizes its environmental focus into land, biodiversity, water, and air.
Yarra Valley Water is also changing its focus to climate change in its operations. It has dramatically recognized the changes in rainfall patterns and water availability, and it has acknowledged that this is hurting the profitability performance to minimize the impact on the locals and the staff. Yarra Valley Water has set objectives to help other companies achieve reduced to zero carbon issuance by the year 2050 and reduce carbon strength by 30% by 2030, citing environmental change as the most significant risk (Matikainen, 2022).
Economic Responsibility operations refers to the company’s obligation to satisfy its social and environmental obligations while still generating long-term profits for its stakeholders, particularly its shareholders. Yarra Valley Water in its operations ensures that the places where its operations are located are transformed. These take many forms, including local hiring, purchasing, paying taxes, and investing in the community. They invest several million dollars in local investments and billions in taxes and royalties. If used appropriately, these payments and investments have a significant positive impact on the communities.
Where Results and Initiatives Can Be Found
Sustainability reports are the primary means by which a business or organization can publicly discuss its environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance and positive and negative impacts. The results of the company’s performance on the sustainability initiatives, the three main facets of the report are the environment, economic, and Corporate social responsibility. Yarra Valley Water has continuously published its sustainability reports to the public as a measure of transparency and accountability for its actions (Famiyeh et al., 2021). Through the reports, the public can deduce the results and measure the impacts of the company’s performance; this enables the company to ensure its performance is improved over time. Through the published sustainability reports, the public can increase their trust in the results of the company’s actions. The reputation of Yarra Valley Water has dramatically improved through the work of published reports. Yarra Valley Water demonstrates its commitment to its objectives and its concern for the environment through routine sustainability review and reporting. By establishing a reputation for being proactive and open, the trust of stakeholders solidifies your reputation and differentiates the business from the competition.
ESG (environmental, social, and governance) considerations are becoming increasingly critical to investors as they become aware of how much of an impact they may have on long-term sustainability and financial success. In light of this, Yarra Valley Water considers it wise to make all its sustainability reports easily accessible.
Operations statement: This statement is unique to the companies, making known its initiatives to ensure sustainability. Through the report, the companies present the milestones they have covered over time. From the statement, the responsible stakeholders can get the results of the company actions and initiatives they have yet to take. As a global champion of sustainability, the company has made its Operation statement public, citing its achievements and initiatives, such as having an initiative to achieve and supply clean and healthy water to communities.
Media release: The media has dramatically acknowledged Yarra Valley Water’s efforts on sustainability, as on the community support media released about the company’s collaboration with Wildcats to hold the community basketball in Australia. The results and initiatives of the company’s sustainability actions can be obtained through media releases.
Websites: The company’s website is another platform available to obtain the results of its sustainable actions and the initiatives they are likely to take to better the community’s lives and ensure that the ecosystem is well-balanced. The company is also ensuring through the website that the Social Development goals aligned with the UN SDGs are implemented and results published through the website (Zhang et al.,2019).
The Aspects and Guidelines of Corporate Sustainability
Corporate sustainability is ensuring that the market provides benefits to all of society. Some of the aspects and guidelines include;
Sustainable growth is progress that satiates the wants of the present society, not necessarily jeopardizing the capacity of the next to satisfy their wants. Although companies have historically driven forces behind economic growth, they need to take a more proactive approach to balancing their drive with social justice and environmental protection. Environmental protection, social justice, equity, and economic development are the three areas of performance that businesses should pay particular attention to. Sustainable development also contributes to the vision and societal goals that the firm should aim for.
Corporate Social Responsibility: This calls for corporate executives to consider and address societal requirements and meet their interests ethically (Matikainen, 2022). Organizational accountability is to give a justification or accounting for the activities for which one is held accountable under the law or ethically. The companies must justify, describe, or explain their activities.
Organizational accountability theory contributes to business sustainability by defining the interaction between company management and the rest of society. Additionally, it outlines the justifications for why businesses should provide information on their economic, social, and environmental performance in addition to their financial performance.
Benchmarks of Progress
These criteria or metrics assess an organization’s, a product’s, or a project’s performance in the environment, society, and economy. Some of the benchmarks include;
Engage in dialogue; this can be used to get feedback, input, or cooperation from customers, staff, vendors, investors, or regulators. You can use them to highlight your accomplishments, difficulties, or sustainability-related goals. Doing this can increase your reputation, trust, and credibility while gaining insight into other people’s ideas and experiences (Matikainen, 2022).
Compare and contrast to other information sources can be done by crosschecking how the same notion is defined and measured using various standards. This will aid in the identification of the gaps for improvements.
Recognizing the settings, one must comprehend the background of a sustainability standard before delving into its specifics. Who created it, and for what objective? What standards, procedures, and presumptions are employed? How dependable and pertinent is it for industry or locale? By responding to these inquiries, one may evaluate the benchmark’s advantages and disadvantages and how well it fits with the company’s vision and beliefs.
What Yarra Valley Water has achieved and how it has developed
The Service Excellence in a Service Center (Medium) category of the 2022 International Service Excellence Awards was won by Yarra Valley Water. The Customer Service Institute of America (CSIA) bestows the esteemed accolade on companies that exhibit the most significant level of service to their clients (Matikainen, 2022). Yarra Valley Water has also provided an impactful relationship with the community where it operates by ensuring that it is responsible for its actions. The company also ensures that the ecosystem is not impacted negatively and is involved in recycling and land and water protection.
Conclusion and Recommendations
Yarra Valley Water is in some areas of a sector that unethical and unsustainable practices have long plagued. The company has succeeded in realizing the value of sustainability and is integrating it into its core operations. The company has a long history of CSR, and its emphasis on sustainability has allowed it to thrive in the sector. The company is trying to act morally despite failing in some attempts. The company can adopt the following recommendations;
Yarra Valley Water’s focus on innovation and development is pegged on the existing procedures and products. Yarra Valley Water can seek interruptive innovations; it should also endeavor to speed up the company’s shift to more ecosystem-friendly products. Yarra Valley Water has an attractive process for bringing different stakeholders on board. However, the company should involve everyone affected by their decisions.
In conclusion, from the research, it is evident that Yarra Valley Water has been ensuring sustainability for quite a long time. To minimize its sustainability impact by improving its procedures, it has been able to create sustainability strategies using the tools and update them as new information becomes available. It has developed special initiatives for climate, people, and profit responsibility by implementing the sustainability goals involving the key players in reduced issuances and waste; the company should also pay attention to the staff’s working conditions and enhance human rights championship.
References
Espinosa, A., & Walker, J. (2016). A complexity approach to sustainability. Series on Complexity Science. https://doi.org/10.1142/q0060
Famiyeh, S., Opoku, Robert. A., Kwarteng, A., & Asante-Darko, D. (2021). Driving forces of sustainability in the mining industry: Evidence from a developing country. Resources Policy, 70, 101910. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resourpol.2020.101910
Giles-Corti, B., Lowe, M., & Arundel, J. (2020). Achieving the SDGs: Evaluating indicators to benchmark and monitor progress towards creating healthy and Sustainable Cities. Health Policy, 124(6), 581–590. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.healthpol.2019.03.001
Matikainen, L. S. (2022). Addressing sustainability in the mining industry through stakeholder engagement. South Asian Journal of Business and Management Cases, 11(1), 35–48. https://doi.org/10.1177/22779779221078673
Millington, R., Giles, A. R., van Luijk, N., & Hayhurst, L. M. (2021). Sport for sustainability? The extractives industry, Sport, and Sustainable Development. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 46(3), 293–317. https://doi.org/10.1177/0193723521991413
Zhang, J., Djajadikerta, H. G., & Trireksani, T. (2019). Corporate Sustainability Disclosure’s importance in China: Financial analysts’ perception. Social Responsibility Journal, 16(8), 1169–1189. https://doi.org/10.1108/srj-10-2018-0272
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