Sustainable Business Practices Essay For Kmart Corporation.

Overview of the Kmart Corporation Company

Discuss about the Sustainable Business Practices Report for Kmart Corporation Company.

An organization sustainable business development usually involves the application of sustainability principles to a company or organization business operations. A sustainable business, therefore, is any company or organization that participates in environmentally friendly or green activities with the aim of ensuring that all the business processes, products, and manufacturing activities adequately address the current environmental concerns (Goralski & Luoma, 2016). Sustainability in most cases can be seen in three different categories including ecological sustainability, social sustainability, and sustained economic growth. Sustainable business movements have been developed as a major component of the broader movement towards greater corporate social responsibility. Eco-efficiency is a term used in understanding sustainability in business organizations and has been used to describe an organizational goal with respect to the environment. This concept of eco-efficiency is therefore achieved by companies or organizations by delivery of competitively priced goods and services that satisfy human needs and bring quality of life while on the other hand reducing the possible ecological impacts and resource intensity through the business life cycle to make them become in line with the earth estimated carrying capacity (Painter-Morland et al. 2016). This report, therefore, seeks to provide an understanding of the overview of Kmart Corporation Company in New Zealand in terms of its sustainability practices and the available sustainability concepts and models in the current corporate world.

The Kmart Corporation Company has been largely recognized as the best shopping company in New Zealand. The company was established in 1899 as a joint venture between G.J Coles and S.S. Kresge Company and runs over 240 grocery and shopping stores across the Australia and 20 stores in New Zealand. The company has been striving towards sustainable operations an idea that has formed a big part of the organization thinking ((Schuler et al. 2017). The company has a nationwide network of supermarkets, four distribution centers, three processing plants and to support offices and therefore the goal of the company towards sustainability has been reducing environmental impact during the process of business growth and this initiative has meant concerted efforts across all areas of the business. The company introduced more energy by reducing electricity consumption and green house emission and aims to increase this effort to see a 30 percent reduction by the year 2020. The company has therefore won the 2015 Energy Star Partner Award of the year for their work in increasing energy efficiency and reducing carbon emissions (Farias & Farias, 2016). However, the company has great opportunities for even improving their business sustainability and achieves business growth as well.

Kmart Corporation Company Sustainable Practices

Increase in Energy savings and Carbon Emission goal

One of the sustainable practices that the company has been practicing has been through the Carbon emission reduction and energy savings goal. The Energy Star Awardin which the company won in 2015 or was recognized for seeks to recognize the outstanding contributions made by various individuals, organizations, businesses and communities to protect and enhance New Zealand environment (Kortmann & Piller, 2016). The company was therefore awarded due to its efforts in reducing carbon emissions despite the increase in the company production activities as well as sales. This reduction as mentioned earlier was achieved through an energy management focus to drive operational excellence the introduction of energy efficient systems in the market. This move has seen the company work towards increased resource productivity. This refers to getting more goods or services from less material or energy or energy. The company had been relying on the traditional green business of recycling and waste management. The method of increased resource productivity helps the company save money because the less the energy and materials used, the lower their operating cost (Nambiar & Chitty, 2014).

Waste from the company business operations can be problematic in several ways. In most cases, waste disposal has been said to be very costly to the business while some of the waste materials are hazardous if an industrial process is wasteful by extension it also means that the company input costs will equally be high (Pryshlakivsky & Searcy, 2017). The company has therefore committed itself to a waste diversion goal of 75 percent. It has also established remanufacturing strategy in which the remanufacturing is said to be the process whereby several businesses are using the technique to reduce waste  management and obtain more productivity from what they produce. Therefore waste reduction in the company through efficient material use and waste  management has helped the company or their business practices become more sustainable (Sacco et al. 2014).

Recycling has been one of the outstanding sustainability practices conducted by Kmart Corporation Company. The company has been recycling a variety of material used throughout the company operations (Herremans et al. 2016). The company recycling cardboard as well as their plastic wrap has increased over the years by 4 percent to around 152 000 tonnes of wastes which shows that the company recycling tonnage is currently at 26 percent as provided in a report of 2015 by the company and has also developed. The company is also developing more sustainable and suitable packaging options for their products. Due to this fact, the company in 2015 introduced new recyclable plastic containers which can be used by their shoppers in all their stores (Yadava & Sinha, 2016). The developed packaging trays are made from food-grade recycled PET commonly referred to as RPET (recycled polyethylene terephthalate). Therefore the company’s continued efforts to improve its recycling capacity have led to the development of sustainable business by the company.

Increase in Energy savings and Carbon Emission goal

Plastic bags have been one of the most pollutants of the environment and have been hindering the development of sustainable business practices. Kmart Corporation Company has therefore developed a strong stack record on taking action on plastic in a way that works for the company customers and also minimize the impact on the environment (Rego et al. 2017). The company through the corporate responsibility and sustainability report has increased its efforts by continuously working towards social and environmental sustainability by encouraging their customers to reduce the use of plastic bags by bringing their own reusable bags or purchasing reusable bags in the company store. The company has reported an increase of 130 percent on the sale of reusable bags which shows that their customers are choosing to use less plastic bags. The company has also developed some soft plastic recycling bags which are available in 130 of the company 184 stores in New Zealand.

The management of the company has decided to implement ISO standards in their bid to improve on their business sustainability practices. ISO 14001 are the internationally standards that have been set and agreed upon as requirements for an effective environmental management system(Rajput & Jhawar, 2015). These standards are designed to help improve the organizational environmental sustainable practices or management through facilitating a more efficient use of resources and waste reduction which enables the organizations to gain a competitive advantage over her competitors and gain the trust of their stakeholders. The ISO 14001 standards are considered to be suitable for all organizations and require the organization to consider all environmental issues relevant to its operations.

Kmart Corporation Company had been engaging in sustainability mechanisms which were not certified such as through their company recycling policies and waste management policies. These were only instituted company policies and were not in accordance with the international sustainability and environmental management standards(Haffar & Searcy, 2017. The company practices of carbon reduction efforts as well energy consumption reduction mechanisms as well the most effective company sustainable practice of waste diversion all were certified and therefore the practices could not be measured and compared with other those of other international companies in which they could have helped the company gain a competitive advantage and even receive more awards. Therefore the practices of waste management, reduction of carbon emission as well as the energy consumption were great ideas of business sustainability however they were against the standards of the ISO 14001 as the practices were not certified and had no basis or standards of measurements which could have been used to determine the organization compliance with the current statutory and regulatory requirements (Sacco et al., 2014).

Waste reduction, diversion and management

Transition to renewable energy by the company

One of the greatest and most hazardous elements of environmental degradation is the emission of carbon from fossil fuel. The effects don not only affect the business growth but also bear significant impact on the environment and the people living in it (Bradshaw & Zwick, 2016). Therefore there has been a growing need for businesses in the modern corporate world to transition to the use of renewable energy due to the inability of the current energy supply to meet the increasing business demands and also due to the fact that the world has begun to experience the end of the fossil fuel era. Many businesses including the Kmart Corporation Company can respond to this effect by reducing their dependence on fossil fuel and increased the use of solar energy, wind and any other renewable source of energy that will be environmentally conscious and friendly.

There have been profound changes in the corporate world and our case study company has not been left behind on how businesses provide goods and services through the current extension of the producer responsibility beyond the sale of the product (Marques, 2017). This has helped the company improve on their product production decisions as they look into the future impact of the manufactured product. The extended producer responsibility has helped the company therefore to become much more interested in the design of their goods because once the useful life of the good is over, the goods come back to the producer and therefore increases the producer interest in designing goods that are either biodegradable or recyclable and hence promote sustainability and business growth. This has influenced the company in designing special packaging trays for certain products which then come back and are recycled for other uses in the company and has resulted in improved waste management and business sustainability (Borland et al. 2016).

Business organizations and companies are been called to be accountable for their practices towards the environment. This is because sustainable business development is one aspect of the growing interest in the corporate social responsibility (Rajput & Jhawar, 2015). The company can, therefore, develop its unique triple bottom line or supplementary environmental report formats which includes or covers the financial, environmental and social performance of a business. Such reporting framework help in environmental and sustainability assessment of a business and therefore it establishes important explicit standards of performance measurements which can be through a single business entity or through an agreement with different businesses to use specific standards in measuring business sustainability. However future actions are needed to attain sustainable business development in the company towards a sustainable economy (Shank &Shockey, 2016). The company has however obtained green certification through engaging in green programs which aim at creating sustainable businesses and platforms for economic growth. The green certification is an important step in moving to a more sustainable economy. However vigorous standards are needed with respect to sustainable ecological scale. The certification standards need to become the culture or the norm of the company either through the established legislation or through a social or market incentives.

Recycling waste materials or products

The Maori perspective is a myth used to explain the relationship between people and their surrounding environments. The ideology behind his school of thought is that environmental resources should be conserved as they act as gifts or treasures for the current and future generations (Yang & Lin, (2014). He argues that it is important for the Maori leaders of tomorrow to be aware of their unique relationships with the environment and of the ways in which the long-term sustainability of the environment, society, the economy as well as cultural values. In his perspective the conservation and protection which is a culturally sustainable management mechanism he argues that conserving and protecting the natural environment promotes community awareness of inherent values within the environment. He is also of the view that everything in the world is connected to sea, land, and air whereby the relationships between people and the environment are all part of this larger whole and argues that a healthy environment equally translates to a healthy people (Thomas, 2016).

In an example, mauri provides that a positive relationship between humans and a river would be evidenced by human land management practices that enable the river to maintain and enhance its mauri which would result in its life generating capacities being maintained (Goralski&Luoma, 2016). The mauri people are also maintained through the provision of food and other resources to the humans from the river. Through maintaining the mauri the river, the mana and dignity of the river are seen to be maintained as well as that of the people. Such analogy of perspective is therefore very important to understanding the relationship between the environment, business activities and even human and therefore the relationship existing between the people and the environment is ensuring sustainability of business practices (Frauman, 2017). The company can, therefore, imply this perspective with the understanding that when one goal either of sustainable environment it translates to equal goals in the growth of the business.

Critical analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the sustainable practices used by Kmart Corporation

Strengths- the use of the carbon foot goal strategy of ensuring sustainable business practices ensures that the company can control all the carbon emissions from the business and therefore promotes the growth of a carbon-free environment which improves not only the economic life but the social lives of people. The reduction in the use of plastic bags helps in maintaining a conducive environment and provides a platform for innovation for the company to come up with reusable bags (Frauman, 2017).  The reusable bags help in reducing costs to consumers of certain products and helps the businesses generate more revenue through sales hence growth. Through waste management, the company can reduce costs due to remanufacturing of products as the output of one process can be used as material in another process. When the company also transitions to use of renewable energy the company can reduce the effects of fossil fuel to the environment which are hazardous to human life.

Reduction in use of plastic bags

Weaknesses – the sustainability practices adopted by the company, however, have major weaknesses in that the implementation of the carbon emission reduction goal as well as the production of reusable bags and transitioning to use of renewable energy may bring additional cost effects to the company. This will, in turn, affect the financial growth of the company yet for sustainability in business practices the company should make sure that the triple bottom line of the business is achieved which seeks to address the financial, environmental and social sustainability.

Opportunities- the development of sustainability initiatives in the company presents more opportunities for business growth through improved business social responsibility which improves the business corporate image. It also provides the company to become more innovative in coming up with sustainability mechanisms such as the development of the reusable bags or the soft plastic bags which are used for packaging some products like the summer fruits such innovations help the company to grow in terms of being a problem solver through the provision of effective solutions. The opportunities open up the business and therefore create an avenue for business growth.

Threats – the company strives to achieve sustainability in its operations may also encounter threats resulting from different bodies in the society. Some of these threats may include the government legislation rules and taxes governing the environmental policies. There may be a restriction on development of soft plastic bags by the government or even total ban of the use fossil fuel which the company is still using and therefore may encounter the risk of adopting renewable energy which may increase their financial costs. Transition to renewable sources due to the increasing demand and the shortage of supply of the renewable sources of may affect the growth strategy of the company as well as its ability to meet the demands and expectations of their customers.

The Kmart Corporation Company has been doing great in the development of sustainable business practices. However, other than the usual tradition green practices of recycling and waste management through waste diversion it should seek to develop other mechanisms which will help the company achieve its objective been truly sustainable (Cranmer, 2015). The recommended initiatives include the discussed suitable sustainability practices such as the transition to renewable energy in their production and operational activities, it is also important to extend the company producer responsibility, adopt the being green buy green strategy as well as being accountable to the environment. These together with the existing strategies and initiatives can help the company achieve its sustainability goals.

The implementation of ISO 14001 By Kmart Corporation Company

Conclusion

The development of business sustainability is therefore very important in ensuring that the business growth and meets it’s environmental as well as social obligations. The growth motive where business would only focus on their profitability is outdated and the in the modern corporate world where competition has become the order of the day businesses need to develop effective sustainable practices to create that unique feature of the business that will help them retain their customers and grow confident with their stakeholders (Zeidan et al. 2015). Businesses, however, need to get over the traditional sustainability practices of recycling and waste management to more innovative practices which will bring value creation to the company as well to their clients and the society at large (Haffar& Searcy, 2017). It is therefore important or the business organizations to make sustainable development as their key policies in their organizations and lay down an effective framework to implement the strategies and initiatives.

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