5 Lessons from a Sustainability Story Eight Years in the Making

The message for today’s business leaders is clear: sustainability is now an indispensable element of business operations. There’s no escaping the urgent need for improving processes at all levels to make them more environmentally friendly. Ignoring this can lead to incredibly damaging ramifications, not just in the eyes of regulators and the public, but also in terms of the missed opportunity for greater innovation and business efficiency.

There are now agreed upon government-level initiatives, of which the Paris Agreement has the largest scope, that look to generate serious reductions in the level of carbon currently being produced across industries. However, the impetus is no longer simply adhering to regulatory requirements, it’s now the case that becoming more sustainable can actively lead to performance improvements, reductions in expenditure and technological innovations that benefit the industry as a whole.

With the general public well aware of the importance sustainability has in the modern world, organisations are expected to implement definitive changes that are led by a greener mindset.  

Producing change

While sustainability hasn’t always been the core priority in the metals sector, the industry has made marked progress over recent years as it’s moved further up the corporate agenda. This is a change ArcelorMittal is proud to have played an important role in spearheading. Reducing carbon emissions and taking steps towards net-neutral business opportunities has been a main focus for our company for a significant period of time.

This has been highlighted recently by a novel initiative to convert carbon into Steelanol at our Ghent steel plant. Originating in 2013, and now close to completion, the project helps to highlight that large-scale change involves more than just paying lip service to growing issues.

The starting point for the project was the desire to reduce carbon emissions from the blast furnaces that are needed during steel production. Our research into more sustainable solutions led us to partnering with LanzaTech, a carbon recycling company whose revolutionary concept was to convert this waste product into bioethanol, creating a circular economy.

Following almost a decade of research, trial and error, and eventual success, the project will go live next year and reach its full capacity in 2023. This Steelanol production will support our target of reducing carbon emissions in our European operations by 30% within the next ten years and to become carbon neutral by 2050. It also creates new market opportunities for ArcelorMittal and is a blueprint for other businesses to follow when looking to implement their own more sustainable practices moving forward.

5 lessons on delivering a sustainability initiative

From this experience, there are several key lessons we learned that can be applied to other organisations as they look to enact more sustainable options into their business operations.

1. Don’t try and do it alone

This is not a situation where one person will find a magic solution to all the problems out. There is no panacea for reducing harmful emissions. After all, even the largest organisations have found difficulty in assembling the necessary resources, time and expertise required to fix these deeply rooted issues.

Instead, it is about tackling these problems as a collective. Becoming part of a unified ecosystem of companies and adopting an open innovation model will help fill knowledge gaps and promote new ideas. In our case, working with partners like Rockwell Automation, LanzaTech and our funding partner the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program, helped us to cover more bases that we could individually.

Changes are required on a local, national and global scale, involving corporations and governmental bodies providing financial support to get these ideas operational and make significant changes.  

2. Trial-and-error will increase the odds of success

Every business is different, and therefore every business has different challenges. This allows for innovation to happen in ways or places that other organisations would be unable to conceive. Areas in which you are able identify potential sustainable improvements initially may not be the place where you uncover the largest breakthroughs.

By encouraging an approach based on a trial-and-error mentality, companies and industries will be able to devise creative ideas and find innovative solutions that turn carbon issues into business opportunities, as is the case with our Steelanol plant. It’s about applying previous learnings and insights to help create the next positive solution.

3. Focus on economic viability

For a green initiative to be truly embedded into wider organisational practices, it has to make economic sense. Without this in place, momentum and motivation for the concept will quickly fall apart.

Fortunately, enacting more sustainable approaches isn’t just the right thing to do morally and ethically, it’s usually also the most economically sound approach you can take. Analysis of the wider economic impact sustainable changes can have on your business need to be illustrated from the start as without clear evidence that these initiatives will contribute positively to your balance sheet, they become that much harder to enact.

4. Take the time, get it right

When it was signed, the Paris Agreement seemed a long way in the distance. Now, the deadline for it is approaching at a rapid rate.

For some, this might cause feelings of panic and the need to make changes quickly. However, doing this could actually end up doing more harm than good. After all, it’s taken us eight years to reach this point of success in our plants, but we had no playbook to follow, no example to base our approach on, and this means that you have to take the time and get it right.

Learn from your peers, and your own endeavours, and build on the work of others to help elevate and improve the process. Rushing towards a half-finished solution won’t create lasting change, even if it does meet the deadline.

5. Get the word out there

If you’ve seen success is specific areas, or found solutions to previously impossible problems, don’t be afraid to shout about them. A surprising impact we didn’t conceive of when developing our Steelanol initiative is that we’ve now become a magnet for prospects and partners who share more sustainable visions for the industrial space.

Tell your workforce, your industry, and the wider world in general what you’re doing – it’s likely that they’ll want to listen. Take the initiative to have your executives and experts talking about it, presenting it publicly and championing the steps you’ve been taking and the ones still to come. This has the potential to lead to crucial connections that can help bring your vision to life and encourage others to follow suit.

Your Next Steps

Committing yourself to a greener vision is not something you can just dip you toe into and expect to succeed. Short-term measures will not elicit the results you need or want. It’s about committing to the goal, understanding the steps needed, and then taking them.

It starts with a vision that the decision-makers in your organisation can commit to and then allocate the necessary time, resources and dedication needed to turn it into a reality. It may seem like a massive change to make, and one that will encounter many difficulties along the way, but that dedication will pay off in the long run; for your organisation and the world in general.

If you want to learn more about achieving sustainability in manufacturing, visit the Management Perspectives Hub.

Funding was obtained from various sources, including the Flemish government and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No 656437.