Only collaboration can make the impossible possible Saravoot Yoovidhya highlights three ways to energize collaboration towards sustainability goals

The “Collaborative Partnership for Sustainability” forum is TCP Group’s first sustainability event that provides a platform to exchange ideas and discuss new approaches in driving sustainability among business partners across all sectors. It also accentuates the company’s new purpose, “Energizing a Better World for All,” highlighting a Caring strategy – energizing our environment, and transitioning the company into an organization that achieves sustainable business growth while creating positive impacts on society and the environment, both in Thailand and abroad.

At this event, Mr. Saravoot Yoovidhya, Chief Executive Officer of TCP Group, took the stage joining the discussion on “Overcoming Challenges for Sustainable Business Transformation,” noting that 2022 was an important starting point for TCP Group which adopted a 360-degree sustainable business model marking the company’s most significant efforts at achieving business resilience in its 66 years of operations.

“There is no denying that the COVID-19 pandemic has changed our lives. We have learned many things. Everyone had to quickly adapt to new and evolving situations over the past two years. Likewise, due to the pandemic, TCP Group has accepted the idea to change the way we think, how we work, and how we transform our business towards a better future through a new business model that recognizes the importance of environmental, social and sustainability dimensions,” said Mr. Saravoot.

Mr. Saravoot reiterated that achieving sustainability goals requires collaborations, the key factor in making the impossible possible. However, the important question is how we can build partnerships to work together to drive sustainability that will, in turn, create new opportunities for future growth. Mr. Saravoot shared the following three approaches to achieve sustainability:

1. Collaborate, Collaborate, and Collaborate! Repeating this word three times underlines its importance. When it comes to gaining knowledge to achieve our goals, this is something that cannot be done alone, so we need the cooperation from various organizations and parties whether it is different levels of government, the private sector, or consumers.

• Government level: Governments can help to revitalize the economy and reduce carbon emissions by investing in clean energy research and development. This includes regulating and facilitating advanced technologies that can handle new problems and be easily brought to market, supporting innovative products that are competitive compared to those using fossil fuels, and enabling products with sustainable packaging to be more competitive in the marketplace.
• Company level: Requires working together to develop and implement innovations and new business models so that businesses in the private sector can rely on each other to achieve sustainability goals.
• Consumer level: Begins by reflecting on how to make lifestyle changes. A recent research survey of 100 consumers reported that only 26% choose sustainable products[1], indicating that many must be more serious about supporting green products to create positive change.

2. Sharing resources and knowledge: While important matters should be kept confidential within the organization, when it comes to sustainability, there should be no secrets. Accomplishments should be shared among us so that we can learn from one another. We are in a race against time that global temperature is increasing 1.5 degrees Celsius. Therefore, it is time we work together to solve this urgent problem. The more we hurt our planet, the sooner global temperatures will increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

3. Resilience and setting realistic goals: The word "possible" has two dimensions, namely the technology dimension (the way to make things happen) and the dimension focusing on goals that are worth striving for. For instance, we demand packaging that is totally recyclable but this would involve a doubling in the product price which may not be completely sustainable. Today’s discussion is part of TCP Group's approach to defining and building a sustainable business model that has a positive impact.

“Based on these ideas, TCP Group will work with everyone in all sectors to make the impossible possible. Today, we have spoken about our goals and invite our partners to join us in doing the same to ensure that in the end, we achieve our sustainability objectives together,” concluded Mr. Saravoot.

 

[1] Gill Hyslop. (2022). Brands cannot afford to ignore consumers’ sustainable packaging demands, Retrieved, 2022, August 18.