Written by Werner van Dyk
One does not often connect communication within a business with environmental sustainability. It is, however, one of the key elements when a business wants to think more sustainably and implement environmental stewardship practices. In the realm of environmental compliance, communication is crucial for responsible decision-making, collaboration, facilitating awareness, management systems, and overall progress toward a more sustainable business. Think about it this way: if the business owner wants to recycle their organisational waste, but there is no communication with the workforce about managing this practice, then the idea and the practice do not correlate.
Similarly, if a business wants to ensure all possible risks are mitigated by having adequate ways to log grievances or complaints, then it’s necessary for everyone in the business and even within the business value chain to be able to communicate this effectively.
One can summarise the importance of communicating about environmental risks and compliance requirements into four main parts:
- Cooperation: By effectively communicating within a business, management and employees create better cooperation. This leads to more effective ways of working together to prevent and address potential shortfalls.
- Awareness: Creating awareness of potential risks is probably the best way to ensure everyone in the business understands what is expected of them, what needs to be protected, and what practices are prohibited.
- Mitigating Environmental Risks: Communicating effectively within a business and allowing others to communicate about potential risks increases the chances of identifying and resolving them.
- Community Engagement: Environmental factors impact more than just the immediate surroundings. Watercourses, soil health, alien invasive species, and the use of hazardous substances all impact the larger surrounding communities of farms. It is, therefore, crucial to allow for community engagement and stakeholder involvement when it comes to reporting environmental practices.
What we see and experience daily is connected to people at work. One cannot remove the element of human engagement from a farm as it is linked in multiple ways. For example, if a farm has a natural watercourse like a river, and someone on the farm contaminates the river with hazardous waste, this will impact not only the farm’s ecosystem but the surrounding community as well. Therefore, one should have a system whereby these practices can be reported and looked into to allow for immediate attention and improvement. It can include various aspects, including natural environmental conditions like extreme heat, floods, or damaging weather patterns. Workers will need to understand and know what to do in these cases and how certain environmental practices can be impacted. If there is spillage of hazardous containers or oil tanks following damaging winds, there must be effective communication between those responsible for reporting this and those responsible for correcting this.
Think about it this way – can we protect the future of the natural environment without adequate communication?
Feel free to contact the SIZA Environmental Sustainability team for more information. You can email enviro@siza.co.za or contact the SIZA office at 021 052 8184.