Bruno Sarda - On Business and Sustainability
Bruno Sarda is Director of Sustainability Operations for Dell, an adjunct professor in the School of Sustainability and a Senior Sustainability Scholar in the ASU Wrigley Institute. His interests lie at the intersection of business and sustainability, and in demonstrating how sustainability supports an organization's broader strategy.
Transcript
My name is Bruno Sarda. I'm Director of Sustainability Operations for Dell. And I'm also an adjunct professor with the School of Sustainability at ASU and a Senior Sustainability Scholar in the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability.
Describe your area of expertise.
My focus is really around the intersection of business and sustainability. So why does sustainability make business sense? And how to integrate it in the core business. So that's my role at Dell. In the courses that I teach at ASU, I try to prepare the students for how to go successfully apply sustainability in a business context. And within the construct of the Walton Sustainability Solutions Initiatives, I was also asked to help design and develop a new executive program.
So we're not just about teaching and training the next generation of sustainability leaders, but trying to help the ones who are on the job now. Most people in sustainability today, myself included, were never properly trained in this science and in this field. So how do we educate executives who are trying to make this happen now within their organizations to be more successful at it.
What is the real-world application of your work?
Where I think my work has the biggest impact is I help make business sense of sustainability. For too long, sustainability was living outside of the core business practices of large multinationals and therefore, was always stunted. The more we can help integrate the principles of sustainability as an imperative for business success, as opposed to a detriment - or maybe a limitation - to business success, the more we can align sustainability with business success, the more sustainability happens and gets leveraged.
That's also what I try to instill to my students - is how to actually drive a successful change agenda. If sustainability is your passion, is your mission, is your lens, how do you bring that in a context where others will embrace it, champion it, support it, and help advance it? So I think it's important to be grounded in the science and the moral imperatives of sustainability. But also knowing how to express it in terms that really help others, in any given organization. Whether it's taxpayers, whether it's the finance department, whether it's your executive suite. To understand that, by supporting your change agenda, they're actually supporting the broader organizational strategy.
Describe your areas of interest.
A couple of areas: One is how do we further weave sustainability into procurement standards? So specifically, how do we get governments, municipalities, businesses, different types of organizations to really codify what does it mean to buy with sustainability in mind? Because again, the purchasing power of organizations, which is hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars - as soon as those dollars are directed in ways that drive more sustainable practices, we're going to see a huge uptake, if you will, of sustainability practices in organizations.
And then the other one, which is kind of related, is this notion of how do we account for nature? How do we account for ecosystem services within the context of business accounting? Again, this is more on the science side, but truly, if as a business, we rely on services that nature provides, and those services are not properly priced - and therefore, the risks of losing those services are not properly priced.
Again, I think the day we do that - the day we properly account for, what would I have to pay if nature just didn't provide water, rainfall, clean air, you know? Soil where plants grew or those kinds of things. Whenever there's a disruption to nature's services in those regards, we immediately find it's amazingly costly. And yet, we don't actually value those things until they break. And then we treat it as a disaster. So I think the proper accounting of those things as part of core business operations will immediately create a sense of urgency for better protecting and/or shoring up those ecosystem services.
Why do you study sustainability?
I grew up in France, originally, watching Jacques Cousteau convincing the world that the oceans and ocean life was worth saving. And I loved how we did that. He didn't go around telling people they were bad for polluting the oceans or killing marine wildlife. He dedicated himself to showing the beauty of what he loved. And making people fall in love with the oceans and the ocean wildlife, which then made people want to protect it. Not feel like they had to, but want to.
And I think there's something very strong there that's been guiding me. Not how do we make people do something, but how we make them want to do it. And so that's really what I try to do in sustainability. Again, to try to align people in organizations-- natural drivers and motivation-- with more sustainable outcomes.
So that's why, in business, it's about why does sustainability make business sense? As opposed to business is bad if it's not sustainable. Business is better if it's sustainable. So that's really what drives me. And, I think, where I find I can best apply my skills and talents.
Describe your area of expertise.
My focus is really around the intersection of business and sustainability. So why does sustainability make business sense? And how to integrate it in the core business. So that's my role at Dell. In the courses that I teach at ASU, I try to prepare the students for how to go successfully apply sustainability in a business context. And within the construct of the Walton Sustainability Solutions Initiatives, I was also asked to help design and develop a new executive program.
So we're not just about teaching and training the next generation of sustainability leaders, but trying to help the ones who are on the job now. Most people in sustainability today, myself included, were never properly trained in this science and in this field. So how do we educate executives who are trying to make this happen now within their organizations to be more successful at it.
What is the real-world application of your work?
Where I think my work has the biggest impact is I help make business sense of sustainability. For too long, sustainability was living outside of the core business practices of large multinationals and therefore, was always stunted. The more we can help integrate the principles of sustainability as an imperative for business success, as opposed to a detriment - or maybe a limitation - to business success, the more we can align sustainability with business success, the more sustainability happens and gets leveraged.
That's also what I try to instill to my students - is how to actually drive a successful change agenda. If sustainability is your passion, is your mission, is your lens, how do you bring that in a context where others will embrace it, champion it, support it, and help advance it? So I think it's important to be grounded in the science and the moral imperatives of sustainability. But also knowing how to express it in terms that really help others, in any given organization. Whether it's taxpayers, whether it's the finance department, whether it's your executive suite. To understand that, by supporting your change agenda, they're actually supporting the broader organizational strategy.
Describe your areas of interest.
A couple of areas: One is how do we further weave sustainability into procurement standards? So specifically, how do we get governments, municipalities, businesses, different types of organizations to really codify what does it mean to buy with sustainability in mind? Because again, the purchasing power of organizations, which is hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars - as soon as those dollars are directed in ways that drive more sustainable practices, we're going to see a huge uptake, if you will, of sustainability practices in organizations.
And then the other one, which is kind of related, is this notion of how do we account for nature? How do we account for ecosystem services within the context of business accounting? Again, this is more on the science side, but truly, if as a business, we rely on services that nature provides, and those services are not properly priced - and therefore, the risks of losing those services are not properly priced.
Again, I think the day we do that - the day we properly account for, what would I have to pay if nature just didn't provide water, rainfall, clean air, you know? Soil where plants grew or those kinds of things. Whenever there's a disruption to nature's services in those regards, we immediately find it's amazingly costly. And yet, we don't actually value those things until they break. And then we treat it as a disaster. So I think the proper accounting of those things as part of core business operations will immediately create a sense of urgency for better protecting and/or shoring up those ecosystem services.
Why do you study sustainability?
I grew up in France, originally, watching Jacques Cousteau convincing the world that the oceans and ocean life was worth saving. And I loved how we did that. He didn't go around telling people they were bad for polluting the oceans or killing marine wildlife. He dedicated himself to showing the beauty of what he loved. And making people fall in love with the oceans and the ocean wildlife, which then made people want to protect it. Not feel like they had to, but want to.
And I think there's something very strong there that's been guiding me. Not how do we make people do something, but how we make them want to do it. And so that's really what I try to do in sustainability. Again, to try to align people in organizations-- natural drivers and motivation-- with more sustainable outcomes.
So that's why, in business, it's about why does sustainability make business sense? As opposed to business is bad if it's not sustainable. Business is better if it's sustainable. So that's really what drives me. And, I think, where I find I can best apply my skills and talents.