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Sustainable practices, such as using less energy and reducing packaging complexity, are no longer an odd couple with businesses that want to stay competitive, even in an economic downturn, a global managing partner of Accenture said.

John Jackson, who leads the management-consulting and technology-services company's consumer goods and services high-performance practice, told The Nation in an exclusive interview that companies must move their sustainability policy beyond merely being a marketing or "window-dressing PR" into an integral part of their business strategies.

Major retailers including Tesco, he said, will soon begin to report their "carbon footprints" and will ask suppliers to check their supply chain for how much carbon they emit during production.

"And this is not only an environmental but a cost issue, especially because of high energy prices," he said.

Suppliers must first understand how their own processes cause carbon emissions and they should know how to measure them. Packaging also comes into play since suppliers will be encouraged to move away from plastic, which is oil-intensive, to cardboard, which uses less energy to manufacture and is easier to recycle.

Because now "cost is the issue", Jackson said, the hot sustainability topics include energy consumption, raw-material consumption, packaging complexity, as well as local sourcing because the latter benefits the local economy and environment while reducing transport and energy costs.

"Water consumption will be next," the Accenture executive said.

Packaging complexity means companies will reduce the amount of packaging. In the modern economy, producers tend to "over-package" their products. One category is fruits and vegetables as well as meat, which are sold in stores wrapped in plastic and are put again in plastic bags when purchased.

"This is because in the past, it [plastic] was cheap. [Another force is that] in the next three to five years, garbage disposal will be expensive. Consumers will have to pay for waste disposal. This already happens in Europe," he said.

Jackson predicts that supermarkets will roll back the clock and start selling loose meat, fruits and vegetables as is commonly seen in traditional fresh-food markets in Thailand.

Another driving force will be consumers. Contrary to the belief that consumers in developing countries do not care about the environment, an Accenture survey conducted last year found shoppers in China are as concerned about climate change as their peers in the UK, Germany and the United States.

Jackson believes the results will also be similar for consumers in other Asia-Pacific countries because environmental problems - such as air quality, product safety, noise pollution and water purification - are having a direct impact on their daily lives even more than people in the West. However, among the significant obstacles are the lack of reliable information about the constituents of the products as well as the fact that there is a regulatory gap.

"[As per the survey], 45 per cent consumers want to buy [green products] but don't know what green is."

Hence, the Accenture executive suggests that producers and consumers should come up with their own standards and labelling. In the UK, for example, Pepsi has begun providing information on the carbon footprint of their products.

Besides reducing cost, forward-looking retail and consumer-goods companies in Thailand can use sustainability to build intangible assets such as corporate and brand reputation, growing revenue by achieving product differentiation and selling premium-priced products, and manage risk.

The sustainability wave is likely to hit Thailand as soon as multinational companies become capable of meeting the conditions, Jackson said. He anticipates Tesco will initiate a carbon-footprint policy at its stores in Thailand within the next one to two years.

pichaya@nationgroup.com