Your business is a powerful thought leader and influencer in society.

By commencing planning years ahead of time you will not only meet your future personal and financial goals but also help identify your ideal successor and set them up for future success in your practice. 

Some more benefits of a well thought through succession plan are: 

• Maximising the value of your business to achieve the best commercial outcome
• Achieving work/life balance prior to exiting your business and prolonging your enjoyment in the practice
• Witnessing your practice remaining independent and thriving beyond your ownership, while ensuring your patients are in good clinical hands into the future
• Transitioning smoothly into retirement, or your next business adventure   

You’ll move step by step toward sustainability, because it is a journey. It will begin by looking at your business’ current impact on the environment, and your ecological and carbon footprint. By getting a picture of your business’ carbon footprint, you’ll be able to identify measures that best apply and then find data that can give you meaningful information. You’ll gradually increase and expand your actions and often it will begin by putting your own house in order, looking internally at decision-making, operations, culture, and other areas. You may move on to partnering with suppliers, vendors and other companies can that help you learn and share best practices.

Next, we’ll help you identify and join up forces with community stakeholders. You’ll then tell your audience and market your initiatives to new segments. You’ll communicate strategically how you’ve invested in sustainability and what your position is. You’ll utilise our marketing team to create the assets and be guided on the right marketing activities for your channels. This will attract new sustainably-minded market segments and engage your current audience, that will in turn help to solidify their relationship with you.

But first up, let’s hear from one of our valued supplier partners, Safilo Group, and how they are creating and looking forward to a sustainable future together. We have been working with them on learning about consumers today, and Safilo Group is proof that sustainable businesses see greater financial gains than unsustainable counterparts.

Ultimately, no single business or company can create sustainable development, it is a collective effort. That’s because many sustainability issues, such as climate change, are so huge that they require action by many citizens and organisations. For any single company to create zero emissions, it needs suppliers to innovate cleaner products and regulators and customers willing to support their efforts.

Sustainability requires new forms of collaboration and new thinking about the economy.

Corporate sustainability may not be simple, but it is necessary. Those companies that embrace the full complexity of sustainability ideas sooner than later will contribute to a better world and experience higher long-term profits.

Why wouldn’t we all want to work towards that vision?

The earth has an energy budget.

Energy comes in – through sunlight – and goes out – by radiating back into space. A number of gases in the atmosphere, known as greenhouse gases, trap the heat radiated from the eath towards space. This is known as the greenhouse effect, and when it operates naturally, energy debits and credits remain in balance, keeping the planet warm and habitable.

Burning fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and creates most of the human-caused portion of the greenhouse effect. When too much CO2 and other greenhouse gases enter the atmosphere, they trap even more heat, and many scientists believe this has contributed to the global warming of the last 150 years.

A second effect of unnaturally high greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is the ozone hole, which has expanded over the Southern Ocean. This threatens the abundance of life there and throughout the southern hemisphere because ozone-poor air disperses and allows more ultra-violet rays to reach the earth. In optometry we know, this can cause cataracts. It also causes skin cancer and reduced immune systems in mammals.

“Australia has the highest per capita greenhouse emissions in the developed world. It’s more than twice the OECD average and four times the world average” – OECD.

Organisations that understand sustainability and manage it ongoing stand to benefit the most.

Sustainability in the optical industry.

There are two key stakeholders in the optical industry: wholesalers/manufacturers and retailers (practices). Both parties have the opportunity to improve their current position around sustainability, but first let’s look at wholesalers. 

It may surprise you to know that there is significant waste produced in the manufacture of optical product, especially considering the small size of items. The eyewear industry consumes lots of energy, produces excessive waste, and despite modest progress in the past few years could be doing more to meet its ethical and environmental responsibilities. Let’s take a closer look at different product categories: 

Frames:

For every patient frame or sunglass, there has been a long journey from initial design and prototyping to mass production, with the environmental costs building up at every step.

Most frames are made from a combination of two materials: metal and/or cellulose acetate. Each plastic frame is cut from a rectangular sheet of acetate which (due to the nature of eyewear design) requires two cutout holes, so up to 80% of the plastic used in the manufacturing process can essentially be wasted (unless a recycling process is in place).

Once the frame has been milled from the acetate sheet, metal screws and hinges are fitted to build the functionality and form into the frame (with a further 20-30% of metal wasted in the trimming process). The frame is then fitted with plastic ‘blank’ lenses to ensure the frame doesn’t warp, with these usually discarded to create even more waste. And this is just the raw material component, excluding the waste generated by the manufacturing process itself.

Contact Lenses:

Demand for contact lenses has been growing consistently for decades, but this growth presents its own sustainability challenges for the eyewear industry. Plastic microbeads* have long been around in the cosmetic industry, but disposable contact lenses are also guilty of contributing to this problem as they contain microbeads.

It’s estimated that 15-20% of disposable contact lenses wearers flush their daily contact lenses down the sink or toilet each day. Given that 304,000 million Australians use daily contact lenses, that is a serious amount of plastic entering the water table annually.

Once flushed, these tiny plastic lenses pose a risk to marine and ultimately human life. When plastic lenses reached wastewater treatment centres, microbes weaken the bonds in plastic polymers of contact lenses.  In laymen’s terms, these treatment plants are producing microplastics* from the larger plastic items such as disposable contact lenses.

In the US alone, even if only 15% of people were to flush their lenses daily that still equates to over 1.8 billion contact lenses a year. That is a lot of waste – but is it avoidable?

* Microbeads are tiny solid plastic particles, measuring 1mm in diameter or less. They are deliberately added to cleaning products, skincare products and cosmetics to give exfoliating properties, create ‘gloss’ and to act as fillers to bulk out products. They are a type of microplastic, a more general term given to tiny plastic particles less than 5mm in diameter.

Many of these microbead-containing products are designed to be rinsed off, meaning this plastic is designed to go down the drain. Microbeads are non-biodegradable and take a long time to break down, and their small size makes it almost impossible to filter them out of the water systems and from the environment. Greenpeace has labeled microbeads as toxic time bombs as they are mostly not captured by water treatment plants and end up in rivers, seas, and oceans.

Once in the water, microbeads pose a threat to wildlife, who ingest the plastic particles. This builds as smaller fish are consumed by bigger fish (who are in turn eaten by humans). If the plastic alone wasn’t enough concern, plastic actually binds to chemicals in the ocean, making it more resistant to environmental degradation.

Sheriden

The Sheridan sustainability journey began over 50 years ago when it was founded by passionate environmentalist Claudio Alcorso. The brand’s enduring reputation for quality was founded on his belief that products must be designed to last, and to last beautifully.  

The Iconic

Generally, fashion production brings with it many social and environmental concerns and The Iconic wants to encourage more customers and brands to join the conversation about sustainability and ethical sourcing. They aim to support customers who share their concerns about sustainability by giving them the ability to shop for products that are better for humans, animals or the environment than conventional alternatives.

Tools for assessing, measuring and reducing your footprint.

As our sector transitions to a low-carbon future, governments at the federal, state and local level are responding with support, advice and funding for businesses to do more with less.

Here are some of the government support that is available for Australian retailers looking to become more sustainable and reduce the social, environmental and financial impact of running their business.

There are many small business resources for building your sustainability plan. Explore state and federal resources for business and industry we have researched below:

• Federal Business Energy Advice Program
• NSW Sustainability Advantage 
• Reduce Energy Use in Your Business – Sustainability Victoria
• NSW Sustainability Advice 
• QLD ecoBiz Program 
• QLD Government Climate Change Resources for the Business Industry
• SA Green Industries 
• Environmental Management and Your Business – Federal Government
• Resources for Business and Industry Tasmania EPA
• Make Your Business Envrionmentally Friendly – Australian Government
• City of Perth – Sustainability
• Sustainable Living – Northern Territory
• Why Green Your Business – Victoria

You can’t change what you can’t measure. Measurement is a difficult aspect to achieving sustainability and goals. Carbon offset organisations have great tools to get a broad estimate on your emissions. You can find footprint calculators online.

There are tools that can help you get an estimate of your footprint. Contact your local universities to find students studying sustainability and measurement to see if they can support you.

There are a number of existing commitments that are made to reductions in greenhouse gas, elimination of plastic, water use reduction and pollution reduction. Your sustainability goals should meed any relevant industry goals.

Carbon – achieving a target factor of emissions per product sold, achieving carbon neutrality.
Green commute – team members car pooling, using public transport or walking to work.
Green freight / shipping – Emissions associated with freight and shipping products cut by x%
Fresh water use reduction – Using less fresh water to operate practice
Zero waste – Waste generated by supply chain upstream and downstream is cut
Eliminate plastic – eliminate the use of materials that become rubbish and are potentially dumped into the environment. Donate to causes that that actively remove these from the environment.
Energy efficiency in practice operations – effects of temperature control and lighting and solar panels.

We’ve created a template for you to develop your practice education plan to build awareness.

To help build awareness across your practice team, ideally sustainability should be discussed on a regular basis – firstly to introduce the concept and eventually to ensure that successes are celebrated in terms of your Practice Plan milestones being reached.