When you seriously engage in sustainability, clients, partners, and talent come easy to you.

This is a conclusion that I’ve seen unfold again and again for more than a decade, and the impact of such serious engagement in sustainability just keeps growing.

But don’t just take my word for it.

With my team, I’ve done a bit of a literature review to discover what other research projects, studies and reports have found out when it comes to this question about the business side of sustainability?

Is sustainability really good for business?

And the answer is a clear and compelling and loud YES!.

This clear and loud YES, comes from studying more than 30,000 companies all being smaller or medium sized companies, and all here from Europe.

We actually looked to the rest of the world as well and looked at larger companies, and the conclusion is the same.

Let me share with you some of the more interesting key findings from all these companies.

1). Implementing circularity in your process leads to reduced costs. This conclusion is based on more than 13,000 companies. But circularity also leads to an increase in productivity, concludes a study of more than 4,000 companies.

2). Sustainability leads to an increase in sales. This is a conclusion based on more than 11,000 companies being studied. Bear in mind that it is relatively simple measures that they’re introducing to see this increase in sales. It’s things like using renewable energy, recycling more, or designing your products to make them easier to maintain, upgrade, and repair.

3). Introducing sustainability measures in your business leads to an improvement in your reputation with your customers. This was the case for more than half of 500 companies studied and more than a third of them had already seen that it has led to an increase in sales.

4). In a survey of 600 companies 80% of the manufacturers said that they’ve already seen commercial benefits from implementing environmental programs.

These are some of the interesting conclusions out of this literature revenue exercise. What I find really interesting about these numbers, apart from the fact that it documents this learning that I’ve made myself, is that they’re relatively simple measures that have been taken here.

They are far from fulfilling the actual business potential of the circular economy, and of seriously engaging with sustainability in your business.

You might now be sitting and thinking “I want dive in, I want to get some of these results”.Then I will tell you that if you do it properly, you should expect far more than what I’ve just shared with you here today.

Perhaps you are now wondering, how do I go about this? How do I make sure that I get the kind of results that you are showing? What’s the fastest way there?

I have made a five step method for you to go through that will get you the results that you’re looking for.

And a little while ago, I made a video about it.

If you’d like to see that, just click here here: How to Create a Competitive Edge Using Circular Economy and that will take you right to it.

It will explain to you the five steps that you need to cover to make sure you get a competitive edge out of your work with sustainability and circular economy.