A webinar the Jindal School hosted last summer explored ways corporate leaders and partner organizations are formulating sustainability strategies.

“Sustainability can be broadly defined as thinking and acting in terms of rational allocation of resources,” said Dr. Habte Woldu, a Jindal School professor of organizations, strategy and international management and director of JSOM’s Sustainable Global Business Initiative (SGBI).

The initiative, a collaboration between JSOM’s Center for Global Business and the Ann and Jack Graves Charitable Foundation, hosted the July 16 Summer Sustainability Webinar, which evolved from a virtual conference — Sustainability as a Solution to Global Business Challenges — held in April.

The trio of featured speakers at the July event came from:

• a nonprofit founded by former first lady Laura Bush, Texan by Nature;
• a multinational food and beverage corporation; PepsiCo;
• a heating, air conditioning and refrigeration manufacturer, Trane Technologies

The representatives discussed their approaches, tactics and results in regard to sustainability.

The Pandemic a Plus for Conservation

Jenny Burden, program manager at Texan by Nature, the nonprofit founded by Laura Bush to help businesses advance conservation across the state, spoke about how the coronavirus pandemic had affected the organization and its partners, and what to expect in the future.

Although the pandemic caused funding shifts and reductions for conservation organizations, Burden said, it also proved that natural resources were important to communities — urban and rural — all over the state, due to the need for outdoor spaces to help maintain social distancing.

“It wasn’t a few weeks into the pandemic,” she said, “[and] we were already hearing how important park space was, how much usership was rising among parks and green-space users.”

Rethinking Consumption and Customer Needs

Ryan Spicer, senior manager of global sustainability at PepsiCo, said company leaders think about sustainability in terms of the company’s entire value chain. From its own manufacturing and distribution capabilities to sustainable practices of its supply partners and agricultural sources, the company looks for ways to reduce its carbon footprint.

“We’re trying to rethink — how do people consume our products and does it have to come in a plastic bottle or a metal can?” he asked. “Is there a different way for us to meet customer needs?”

Reducing the Carbon Footprint

Ben Tacka, sustainability programs leader at Trane Technologies, said company leaders understand they are part of an industry capable of addressing about 25 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. The company, he said, has set a “whole host” of commitments to accomplish by 2030, including reducing customer carbon footprints by 1 gigaton and achieving carbon net neutral operations globally.

“The transition,” he said, will involve becoming “an entire building-management services business in which we are vertically integrated with the best equipment in the world so [that] we are providing systemic reduction of energy, waste and intensity.”