By Nicola Robins (2 February 2012)

Communicating sustainability is less about information, and more about attitude. It requires seeing the social and environmental trends that are present in virtually any topic. There is no clear line on what is or isn’t a sustainability issue.

For example, when Mike Schmidt founder of Frankies soft drinks decides to take Woolies to court for nicking their IP, it’s a sustainability issue. Why? Because pushback from small companies against corporate power play is a social issue.

Of course, it’s also a branding issue, a competitive issue, a legal issue. But, following the ruling on Wednesday giving Woolies three months to remove the offending products from their shelves, it is the social aspect that tips the scales on reputational damage. Bullying small guys is not cool, whether or not that’s in fact what happened.

Commodity prices should be another hot sustainability topic. If you are into chicken production, you are interested in the maize price. That means along with fertiliser prices, you are carefully tracking the risks associated with a changing climate and declining soil fertility levels. At the very least you should know you are not immune to them. Free range and hormone-free are also important, but the maize price is as much a sustainability variable as these more ethical concerns.

A typically sceptical group of investment analysts got notably more engaged when asked whether mining productivity had been hampered by unforeseen weather events in the last six months. Seems rain stopped play rather more radically than expected last year. And let’s not even start on energy prices.

But there is more to it than risks, most of which are by now hopelessly beyond our capacity to control. For a company able to act on their feet, sustainability offers endless opportunity to engage on the issues their customers want to talk about.

A week or two ago, 567 CapeTalk was tussling about what to do with cans of food that had passed their expiry date. That’s a perfect opportunity for a phone call from the sustainability manager of PnP, Woolies or Shoprite – as long as they have a clear mandate on their commitment to extended producer responsibility.

That in turn requires that they’ve had some out-of-the-box dialogues with the relevant can suppliers. And that possibly means better supplier relations, which few retailers can afford to ignore. And so, properly embraced, the sustainability movement finds its way into every aspect of the business, making for more agile, informed decisions.

One way to approach sustainability comms is to drop the need for safe guidelines in favour of more personality and a gut feel for trend. Know the social and environmental trends that are reframing the competitive playing field in your sector and be prepared to engage on them, forthrightly and with the courage to learn every step of the way.