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The recycling system was in desperate need of innovation in North America in 2020. The average person was generating 12 times their body weight in landfilled trash annually, and the equivalent to a dump truck full of plastic waste was entering the world's oceans every minute. This crisis prompted Ainslie Simmonds and Mark Manley to develop MeCycle, an innovative, technology-enabled platform to help change consumer behaviour and increase recycling rates. This case examines consumer behaviour with regards to recycling, explores barriers to recycling, describes MeCycle’s business model, and estimates the potential environmental and economic gains from hypothetically implementing the MeCycle platform in London, Ontario, Canada.

In May, 2020, Rio Tinto PLC, a global mining company, blasted a 46,000-year-old Aboriginal site in the Juukan Gorge, an area in Western Australia. While Rio Tinto’s actions were legal, the company was nonetheless widely criticized for its blasting of the sacred site, which contained remains and artefacts dating back tens of thousands of years. Furthermore, investigations revealed that Rio Tinto had knowledge of the sacred nature of the site. Internal investigations also revealed that the company had earmarked the site as being important to the Aboriginal peoples. The reaction to the blast was swift and unforgiving.

Patrice Mousseau was an Indigenous woman in Canada who founded an organic skin care company, Satya. From Satya’s modest beginnings and early challenges, the company had several subsequent successes before Mousseau faced significant challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Mousseau’ s Indigenous values and influences shaped her approach to launching and developing Satya. Additionally, Mousseau’s collaboration with a women-only network of investors (SheEO) and the support they offered not only aligned with her desire to achieve social change and impact through Satya, but also proved to be a vital virtual lifeline during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2007, JTD Group (JTD) was founded in the port city of Xiamen, China. Within two years, the founder began pursuing business opportunities in Africa. By 2020, JTD owned a 300-square-kilometre stone mine in South Africa. It was one of Africa’s biggest Chinese companies in the stone industry. From 2018, JTD had started to increase its investment in the neighbouring country of Namibia. Despite COVID-19-related challenges, Chinese market demand for stone, especially premium products, was booming in 2020. The founder had been thinking about how to better capture the market opportunity. Many issues needed attention, including the investment decision in Namibia, human resources policy in Africa, and being a responsible community member in both Africa and China.

In this Ivey Business Journal Q&A, Ivey Business School Professor Tima Bansal—one of the sustainability field’s most cited scholars—explains why there is nothing anti-capitalist about sustainability, while making the case for old-school capitalists to embrace Ivey’s ambitious Innovation North initiative, which aims to save the planet (and capitalism) by disrupting traditional approaches to innovation. She says sustainability suffers from two issues. First, some people think that sustainability is about asking them to do less. The second issue is that many people, including executives, just don’t know what to do about sustainability and how to do it. Bansal claims we need to reframe the discussion as prosperity—an opportunity to realize better health and community. Instead of talking about sustainability as reforming capitalism, we need to think about sustainability as innovating for prosperity. Innovation North assembles senior business leaders, academics, and world-renowned systems thinkers every three months to discuss how to innovate the innovation process. It is working with partner companies to create a toolkit that bakes systems thinking into innovation—the Innovation North Compass. This uses both ideas (as in the stage-gate model) and solutions (as in design thinking). Ultimately, Bansal says, a systems thinker thinks differently than how we teach people to think in business schools. They work though problems differently, not looking for the right answer but instead looking for patterns and possibilities.

In June 2021, as Toronto-based Flashfood Inc. (Flashfood) continued to grow dramatically, its founder and chief executive officer was facing critical questions about how to manage both the firm’s mission and its business model. Flashfood partnered with grocery chains to sell near-expiry food to consumers via an app, and it had an expanding network of locations in Canada and the United States. The firm had a clear sustainability-driven objective: to reduce food waste and feed people more affordably. But how should the firm focus its ongoing investment and scarce resources—both strategically, in terms of market development and service offerings, and tactically, in terms of product pricing and app improvement? Could the firm achieve sustained success while avoiding any potential tendency to drift from that mission? Note to instructors: This case also includes a supplemental student spreadsheet. See "Supporting Materials" section below to download.

Student spreadsheet to accompany product W28461.

Confecciones La Montaña (CLM), a social business founded by former Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) combatants in rural Colombia, emerged out of the peace deal signed between FARC and the Colombian government in 2016. The business was part of the effort of former combatants to rejoin civilian life and help alleviate poverty in conflict-affected areas, thereby nurturing appropriate conditions to sustain peace in the country. However, the workshop had a limited productive capacity, which hindered its ability to grow, and, in 2021, the general manager had to determine the best way to increase capacity and ensure the sustainability of the business. Should CLM outsource some of its manufacturing to others in the area, or should it support the development of other clothing workshops created by former combatants across the country?

If all goes well, a new body within existing accounting standards institutions will soon drive standardized approaches in sustainability reporting in Canada. There are some important challenges and critical questions that need to be addressed when forming the Canadian Sustainability Standards Board (CSSB) and defining its focus, composition, and mandate. The authors identify the following major questions that the committee should consider as it contemplates future oversight of sustainability standards: 1) How can Canadian standards setting be a model of reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples? The consultation process needs substantive Indigenous involvement or participation in the formation of the committee and in the development of the related consultation paper. 2) How will the CSSB manage tensions between international consistency versus local adaptation? In the establishment of the working rules of the new CSSB, it is important that maintaining international comparability is the north star for standards setting, and the development of the Canadian versions focuses primarily on additional elaboration that facilitates and enables adoption in the Canadian context. 3) How will the CSSB manage tensions between single-materiality (i.e., primary consideration of the impact of sustainability issues on the firm and its immediate stakeholders) and double-materiality (also providing comprehensive and comparable information on the wider impact of the firm on the environment and society)?

In February 2021, the managing director of The Shakti Plastics Industries (Shakti) was facing challenges related to the Indian government’s announcement of a complete ban by 2022 on single-use plastic—a key item that Shakti had been recycling through technological innovations over the previous few decades. The company was eager to support the government’s vision of enabling a circular plastics economy. However, changes in the regulatory landscape were likely to impact millions of people who were directly or indirectly employed in the unorganized Indian plastic waste sector. The time frame for plastic waste processors and manufacturers to adapt to the changes was short, particularly during the pandemic-induced resurgence of single-use plastic in the form of medical waste. Moreover, there were several other challenges, including price volatility of plastic waste, influenced by disruptive intermediaries in the supply chain; low awareness levels among consumers about waste segregation at the source; and a lack of eco-friendly alternatives to single-use plastic. Shakti needed to make decisions to maintain and advance its competitiveness in the plastic waste recycling sector, in line with the government’s proposed vision for a circular plastic economy.

Circulr was a start-up that provided a solution for consumer waste by collecting used packaging, washing it, and selling it back to the original brand and product manufacturer so that the packaging could be reused. Instead of building its own washing facility, Circulr rented spare washing capacity from industrial kitchens. The company’s co-founders had ambitious goals for Circulr, but in order to achieve them, there were two essential issues that needed to be resolved. The first issue was that of incentivizing brands, manufacturers, and end-users to reuse their packaging. Disposable packaging remained extremely convenient for consumers, and Circulr needed to develop a collection system that made it easy and rewarding for consumers to place their used packaging in Circulr’s collection bins instead of in the garbage can. The second issue was that of operational scale and configuration. If Circulr were to successfully grow demand and supply over time, how would its operational system evolve to achieve the necessary capacity and capabilities? Could the use of third-party washing facilities continue to be sustainable at scale? How would processes and policies evolve to gain competitiveness?

Spreadsheet to accompany product W28382.

In 1965, Smithtown, Arkansas, had virtually no natural resources, core competencies, human capital advantages, or infrastructure advantages. The local river was impassable and not suitable for transport, and the town had no rail line and no airport. Smithtown’s young population (about 18,000 scattered across two counties) was pretty much stagnant and comparatively less educated than the rest of the United States. Although Smithtown had low-cost land and labour, which was ideal for tourism, it lacked anything that tourists typically looked for and had just a few natural attractions, although nothing spectacular. The town’s leaders wondered what the future would hold and whether there was anything they could do to steer the town’s future direction and avoid its ruin.

In May 2021, Claire Reid, the founder of social enterprise start-up Reel Gardening, spoke about her ambitious ten-year plan to help secure nutritious food for impoverished people in South Africa and elsewhere in the world. Reel Gardening produced and sold a paper strip packed with seeds and fertilizer. Although the company had grown significantly, it had to manage the dual mission of social contribution and financial sustainability. The company had to determine whether expansion would shift it away from its social mission. Should Reid pursue an ambitious growth strategy, or should she keep the company small, grow it slowly, and focus on the larger social impact? Going forward, how should the company manage its growth, both strategically and financially?

In April 2020, the head of the corporate social investments (CSI) division of Investec South Africa (Investec SA), was working to ensure that Investec SA CSI could continue to create opportunities for young people to become active economic participants in society while it also salvaged the school year for students already enrolled in its flagship education program, Promaths. To save the school year, he would have to shift the entire curriculum online, and this presented both an opportunity and a dilemma: How could he harness the crisis of the pandemic to scale up the Promaths program and reach more learners by using quality and affordable program delivery? How could he adapt quickly to make a greater impact with the online Promaths program? He knew that this had to happen fast, but he also saw this as an opportunity to amplify the reach and impact of the Promaths program.

Axis Bank was the fifth-largest bank in India, one of the world’s fastest-growing economies. In 2006, the bank set up a trust, Axis Bank Foundation, to manage its corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. In Phase 1 of its CSR journey, it had followed three of the Millennium Development Goals of the United Nations and achieved the mission of “generating one million livelihoods in a sustainable manner,” ahead of schedule. Encouraged by the success of Phase 1, Axis Bank planned to include three additional Sustainable Development Goals to guide Phase 2 with the mission of “generating livelihoods in a sustainable manner for two million households.” Rajesh Dahiya, who oversaw Axis Bank’s CSR initiatives, was faced with several key decisions for framing the CSR strategy for Phase 2 based on an evaluation of the performance in Phase 1 and the lessons learned in that phase.

Makena Wanjiru, chair of Kiri Mount Kenya Conservation Network and Resource Centre (Kiri), wondered whether turning Kiri’s loans business into a co-operative bank would be in the group’s best interest. The challenge was to convince the rest of the board members of the idea. The board of directors would meet on July 18, 2019. Wanjiru had to draft a report before then explaining how the idea was consistent with the group’s current strategy and would benefit Kiri for years to come. Wanjiru also needed to consider strategies to grow Kiri’s agribusiness beyond the Mount Kenya community.

Based in southern Germany, Richard Henkel GmbH was a manufacturing firm focused on its triple-bottom line rather than on its sales turnover. Driven by its sustainability ethos in both its products and its manufacturing processes, it saw itself as a champion of a post-growth, sustainable economy. The case pivots on co-managing director Susanne Henkel’s decision concerning a lucrative sales order: the order would place significant stress on its existing steady-state manufacturing operations and potentially compromise its sustainability performance. In deciding whether to accept the order, Henkel had to confront a pivotal question: How much growth was necessary and sustainable, and how much was too much?

Spotify Technology S.A. (Spotify) was facing significant problems with public relations due to artists’ claims of poor treatment. They had accused Spotify of underpaying artists, obscuring its business practices, and being overly litigious. The objections reached a critical point with a union of creatives, the Union of Musicians and Allied Workers (UMAW), submitting a petition to Spotify and on March 15, 2021, protesting at its global offices. Spotify management must decide how to navigate this issue.

The Center for Sustainable Agriculture was founded in 2004 as a solution to various problems in India’s agricultural industry. The founder developed a sustainable agriculture model to help farmers lower crop failure risk and reduce production costs, to which pesticide and fertilizer use contributed over 30 per cent. The Center for Sustainable Agriculture built a sustainable agriculture model by collaborating with farmers, producer associations, governments, and markets. The introduction of organic products allowed the company to integrate sustainability into its core business plan. In 2021, after achieving success in Telangana, India, the founder was planning to expand his organic farming model across the country, but he wondered what challenges he would face in other states and how he could overcome these.