REI case study

SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS PRACTICES AT REI: REI adapted to a “process-driven approach” towards sustainable business thinking in 2005. The key drivers were financial gains and environment and social responsibility. The company’s sustainability goals were very aggressive. Kevin Hagen, the director of CSR, rejected the notion that the company needs to trade off between being environmentally sustainable and financial growth. The objectives of the stewardship program were: connecting company’s purpose and business practices, improving financial performance and reducing cost. Thus the CSR director was trying to achieve all the three objectives by following a no trade off approach.I am very inspired by the director’s approach towards transitioning as a sustainable company. He truly has the desired leadership skills to guide an organization towards being sustainable (read profitable -socially, environmentally and financially). According to him, the implementation sees several stages from seeing the opportunity by denying the intuition, to shifting the outlook towards the solution as non-compromising in nature, to “radical collaboration” among all the departments. I am impressed by how they are trying to reduce their carbon footprint even if it means buying the carbon offsets where reduction in emissions is not possible at all. Of course they are trying to cut down and eventually zero their emissions in every other area of their operations. Their redesigning of the packaging in order to reduce there waste to landfill is very innovative and proves that if we do not allow any room for trade offs then eventually we will come up with great solutions that will enable sustainability and thus be a win-win for all the stakeholders of a company.ECONOMIC ASSUMPTIONS FOR PHASE 2 FINANCIAL ANALYSIS: Unlike Phase 1 project, that had been approved as a learning exercise and the sole focus was to achieve carbon neutrality, Phase 2 solar installation decision was to be handled as any…