It’s no good investing in an environmentally friendly product and the odd sustainable production process if sustainability isn’t at the core of company culture. This was the message of Mathias Wijkström, head of global Scania production system office, at last week’s AMS Livestream Hour on Strategies for Greener Production.

“You maybe have a sustainability general, or you actually have a sustainability department at your company, but I think it is extremely, extremely important that initiatives are strategy-focused,” he said. “It has to become part of your DNA. It has to be part of your decision models; it has to be part of the methods and principles that guide the operational activities.”

If the whole company isn’t on the same page, it becomes impossible to make a real dent in the waste and emissions of the company. Wijkström explained the traditional way of dealing with waste – sending it off to landfill or incineration – was easy because it easily fits into a linear business model. A major goal for many OEMs is to switch to recyclable packaging, and if possible, to close the loop on the recycled material by using it to make new packaging.

Wijkström reckoned that if there is no joined-up sustainability drive within the company, it will be an uphill battle: “inside a company you have to go outside your functional responsibility and you end up with purchasing and then it becomes very important that you have a corporate strategy for those kinds of missions, because if you end up with two different functions with different KPIs, controlling where you’d like to go with sustainability and circular business, you will also fail.”