JOANNE FLINN

Chair Sustainability Leadership, EGN

It felt like someone had hit Ctrl+Alt+Del but the computer of life was not rebooting. Sustainability took on a new dimension. It moved beyond cash and climate to include care for each other. Realizing our degree of interdependence, we took the lead in creating and running more peersupport networks. The new frontier of sustainability will be in business models and finance. Customers, employees, and investors will ask for proof of action, accelerating the value of sustainable, purposeful business. Greenwashing will become unsustainable. New opportunities for products, services, and business partnerships that involve less carbon, considerate of people, and clear in their provenance will increase revenues and find access to the EU and USA markets easier. Directors and C-suite with vision will view increased compliance, regulatory and documentation diligence as a mindset shift from doom to more dollars. Social media will disproportionately magnify corporate successes and failures, regardless of their true financial impact. In eCommerce, competing online retailers will collaborate to eliminate free returns for environmental cost reasons. And at an individual level, people will walk 250m to their nearest burger joint rather than ordering their super-sized Coke online. As influencers and change-makers, we will say 2022 is the year business took the lead for sustainable profit, purpose, people, and planet.