There needs to be a regulation on ESG practices – simply marketing that you are a sustainable company is not enough.

Case and Point: How H&M is being sued for false “green” marketing.

The goal was quite magnanimous: To institute a glass factory within the footprint of their retail store that would showcase how they took old clothes and spun out yarn that could be later woven into garments made in local micro-factories using Additive Manufacturing/3D printing. But they ran into an issue when they had to mix polymer additives and glue to bind old cotton/wool so that they could be be made into strings.

“A batch of toxic waste from your clean textile plant” said the Penguin in Batman Returns to Max a greedy industrialist who only cares about money.

A similar issue was related to the concerns of using plastic straws arose a few years ago. Paper straws, their replacement, consume far more water, use glue that is carcinogenic and don’t work as well. Then some establishments resorted to having reusable sippy cups (that nobody reused) – made of plastic!

HOW TO MAKE ESGs REAL

“The ‘how’ of a company’s environmental, social, and governance (ESG) proposition starts with recognizing what companies should be solving for: maintaining and reinforcing their social license to operate, in the face of rising externalities. Rising scrutiny of how companies address ESG means that a robust approach is more critical than ever, irrespective of whatever name one may choose to give to the attempt to address these externalities, whatever contours one may define for them at a given point, and whatever organizational or governance construct one may put in place for them. Indeed, we believe one may be agnostic to the term ESG but not to its underlying concerns.”

McKinsey & Company states that it is unrealistic for companies to account for all 3 dimensions of E, S and G and have to make tradeoffs within them or lead on them. It calls such companies forward looking which approach ESG decisions by seeking to gain a deep, evidence-based understanding of their own business and its broader potential effects.

OUR TAKE

Our endeavor at Numorpho Cybernetic Systems (NUMO) is to connect the dots so that there is exact validation for claims such as those for sustainability. Utilizing Blockchain and other emergent technologies, our Digital Twine validates every operational and transactional record with immutable references so that there is traceability and accountability in all the process activities.

NI+IN UCHIL Founder, CEO & Technical Evangelist
nitin.uchil@numorpho.com