Environmental sustainability can be defined as a responsible interface with the environment for avoiding the deprivation of natural and environmental resources. In today’s business world, most of the organizations use these practices to avoid the negative impact of business processes and activities on environment and its different components. By developing these practices, organizations are becoming able to make effective decisions and capture opportunities, which are in the interest of environment. This report is prepared by considering Brittany Ferries that is a French shipping organization and operates its business in United Kingdom, France, Spain and Ireland. This report includes different concepts of environmental sustainability and their critical evaluation in relation to Brittany Ferries Organization. To collect the relevant data, qualitative methodology is used and data is collected from organization’s websites. Environmental practices are evaluated by using three course concepts. In order to evaluate these practices, some examples are taken from real business world. Furthermore, some environmental practices are identified by linking them to the theoretical concepts and review.
The requirement for environmental sustainability is progressively recognized in the policy areas through the developing and developed world. These policy areas include various core concepts of environmental sustainability, which assists the organizations in practical implementation of these sustainability practices. Societal need theory of environmental sustainability can assist in understanding this concept. It states that organizations should consider the needs and requirements of society and its people. The organization should manufacture nothing, which will need future generations to sustain vigilance. It needs to design the products and services, which make contribution to more sustainable environment and economy. There are several concepts, which can be considered to analyze the environmental sustainability practices. The three concepts, which are used to understand and evaluate the sustainability practices of Brittany Ferries, are environmental standards, Corporate Social Responsibilities (CSR) and Solid Waste Management (Marshall, McCarthy, Heavey, and McGrath, 2015). These are the concepts, which ensure the organization that it operates its business processes by implementing the practices in interest of environment and natural resources. The concepts of environmental sustainability state that natural resources should be considered and maintained as an economic input resource.
Environmental standards are the policies and guidelines, which regulates the impact of human and business activities on environment and its different components. It includes various quality conditions, which are followed or sustained for environmental and natural resources. These standards assist in controlling the pollution in environment (Yuan, Zhang, Wang, Wang and Zuo, 2017). It focuses on minimizing different types of pollutants such as; air pollutants, water pollutants, noise pollutants and land pollutants. To understand this concept, Maga Construction is a real world example, which has adopted effective environmental policies and guidelines. The organization has identified as an award winner for implementing environment integration activities. As it is a construction company in Sri Lanka, so it is developing environmentally sustainable premises and buildings. It is engaged in reducing the adverse impact on environmental components by maximizing the efficiency of resources and using renewable properties (McKinnon, Browne, Whiteing and Piecyk, 2015). This organization has applied various environmental standards and completed green building missions in 2017. There are some environmental sustainability projects of Maga Constructions such as Clearpoint Residencies, Green University Town etc.
Corporate Social Responsibility is a kind of self-regulated policies of a company, through which the organization monitors and make it sure that it is complying with ethical standards, laws and international regulations (Song, Li, and Zeng, 2015). In an organization, the major objective of CSR practices is to hold the responsibility for the actions of company and enhance the positive effect through its business processes on environment, employees, customers, stakeholders, communities and other components of public domain, which can be considered as its stakeholders. This is the most effective way through which an organization can generate the returns by developing value for the environment and society. However, it is beneficial for the organization, but they need to shift from profit making objective and they invest their funds on community welfare. For example, BP is implementing CSR activities by incorporating five components like; employees, ethical conduct, relationships with suppliers and customers, safety and environmental performance and control (Clapp and Rowlands, 2014).
Solid waste management is a process, which is used to collect and treat the solid wastes. It provides the solutions for recycling the products, which do not belong to the category of thrash and garbage. The people, who are living in residential and settlements areas, solid waste and garbage has become a major issue. This mechanism is related to controlling the generation and storage of solid waste materials in an effective manner, which addresses the environmental and health considerations (Morelli, 2013). There are so many organizations, which implement the process of solid waste management with objective to minimize and eliminate the negative effects of waste materials on quality and economic development off life. The World Bank is the best example from real business world that is providing finances and capital investments for waste management. This organization is advising on solid waste management projects by using different products and services, financing, loans and technical advisory (The World Bank, 2017).
Brittany Ferries is a French shipping corporation, which runs a fleet of cruiseferries and ferries beetween United Kingdom and France, Spain and Ireland and Spain and United Kingdom. It is a leading shipping organization in the country by implementing effective strategies and tactics. The organization has an insightful respect towards environment and focus on the need to preserve the natural resources. This is the major reason, why the organization is able to reduce the adverse effect of its business processes on environment. In addittion to this, it also assists the people, who work for energy conservation. By doing this, the firm has gained an identification for its efforts for environmental protection (Brittany Ferries, 2018). The organization is able to gain a better and sustaianble competitive advantage in the shipping industry. With a strong maritime history, the organization focuses on need of protecting the marine environment and the living things, which live there. Britanny Ferries is working with several marine charities to protect and emphasize the seas and their life. Moreover, it is conducting programs to educate the customers about requirement of environment protection and marine conservation. These sustainability practices of organizations have a positive impact on its brand name and competitive position in the industry (Lun, Lai, Wong, and Cheng, 2016).
Brittany Ferries is using different processes and utilities which are organized to control and monitor emission for improving the air quality in atmosphere. This organization has been successfully implementing above mentioned concepts of environmental sustainability. At Brittany Ferries, one of the major sustainability practices is solid waste management process. Solid waste of all the ships such as; cardboard and glasses are fixed and crushed on board. After that, they have been disposed or recycled by an authorized contactor. It manages its own provision for the disposal of waste materials. In addition to this, the operations of Brittany Ferries are planned to reduce the fuel usage and causing the emissions of CO2 by minimizing the speed on immediate overpasses (Brittany Ferries, 2018).
Furthermore, the company is using effective environmental standards, which assisted the organization in gaining better competitive advantage in the industry. Under this, one of the major steps, which are taken by the organization, is the introduction of ships driven by Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG). When it is burnt, it creates a lower level of air pollutants and CO2. Honfleuer is the first ship with LNG that is resulting in reduction of pollution through its shipping business activities. Additionally, all the ships of the company are manufactured with water treatment components, which release only uncontaminated water in sea (Brittany Ferries, 2016). The water that is polluted by oil and chemicals is disposed by authorized waste disposal contractors. It checks out its contractors regularly for ensuring that they adhere with domestic and government environmental regulations.
For Brittany Ferries Organization, Corporate Social Responsibility has worked as most profitable environmental sustainability practice. Under corporate social responsibility practices, the organization is engaged in the practices, which are beneficial for both the environment and its people as well. The mission statement of the company states that it always makes efforts to understand the impact of business processes on environment, economy and society. Brittany Ferries does not consider CSR as extra burden. It is an important part of staying competitive as responsible organization (Liang and Renneboog, 2017). CSR practices at Brittany Ferries assist in developing green ships, encouraging health and security of stakeholders and managing supply chain in ethical and responsible way. By doing this, the company is able to establish its brand image as “quality shipping organization”.
Conclusions
From this analysis, it has been concluded that environmental sustainability is significant for the development of organization as it is not point of distraction or additional practice but it is a necessity and responsibility of organization. This report includes the environmental sustainability practices in relation to Brittany Ferries. The company is implementing various practices, which are in the benefit and interest of environment and society. Three concepts, solid waste management, corporate social responsibility and environmental standards have been discussed to define the environmental sustainability practices of Brittany Ferries. These practices are assisting the company in reducing the adverse impact of business processes on environment and society.
It is hereby recommended that organization should conduct a training program and encourage its internal and external stakeholders to become eco-friendly. They should work for developing environmental friendly practices. It should conduct a policy and ethical conduct, which may have positive impact on the company’s brand image. As it is a shipping company, so it should make focus on marine environmental protection. It should try to become more energy efficient by using recycled materials. By considering these recommendations, the organization will be able to gain more competitive advantage and sustain its competitive position in the shipping industry.
References
Brittany Ferries, 2016, Brittany Ferries orders new LNG powered ship, Retrieved from https://www.green4sea.com/brittany-ferries-orders-new-lng-powered-ship/. (Accessed on 14 February 2018).
Brittany Ferries, 2018, Reducing emissions, Retrieved from https://www.brittany-ferries.co.uk/information/environment/reducing-emissions. (Accessed on 14 February 2018).
Brittany Ferries, 2018, Sustainability – on board, retrieved from https://www.brittany-ferries.co.uk/information/environment/sustainability. (Accessed on 14 February 2018).
Clapp, J. and Rowlands, I.H., 2014. Corporate social responsibility. The Essential Guide to Global Environmental Governance. London, Routledge.
Liang, H. and Renneboog, L., 2017. On the foundations of corporate social responsibility. The Journal of Finance, 72(2), pp.853-910.
Lun, Y.V., Lai, K.H., Wong, C.W. and Cheng, T.C.E., 2016. Adoption of Green Shipping Practices. In Green Shipping Management (pp. 17-29). Springer, Cham.
Marshall, D., McCarthy, L., Heavey, C. and McGrath, P., 2015. Environmental and social supply chain management sustainability practices: construct development and measurement. Production Planning & Control, 26(8), pp.673-690.
McKinnon, A., Browne, M., Whiteing, A. and Piecyk, M. eds., 2015. Green logistics: Improving the environmental sustainability of logistics. Kogan Page Publishers.
Morelli, J., 2013. Environmental sustainability: A definition for environmental professionals. Journal of environmental sustainability, 1(1), p.2.
Song, Q., Li, J. and Zeng, X., 2015. Minimizing the increasing solid waste through zero waste strategy. Journal of Cleaner Production, 104, pp.199-210.
The World Bank, 2017, Solid Waste Management, Retrieved from https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/urbandevelopment/brief/solid-waste-management. (Accessed on 14 February 2018).
Yuan, X., Zhang, M., Wang, Q., Wang, Y. and Zuo, J., 2017. Evolution analysis of environmental standards: Effectiveness on air pollutant emissions reduction. Journal of Cleaner Production, 149, pp.511-520.
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