September 16 marks the International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer, commonly known as World Ozone Day.
Ozone depletion may feel like an environmental issue from another era. Yet its history offers a valuable lesson for businesses navigating today’s sustainability challenges.
In the 1980s, scientists established that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), widely used in refrigerators, air conditioners, and aerosol products, were depleting the ozone layer, raising concerns about increased exposure to harmful ultraviolet radiation and its effects on human health and ecosystems.
In response, countries adopted the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer in 1987. Through coordinated international action to phase out ozone-depleting substances, the ozone layer is now on a long-term path to recovery.
The Montreal Protocol is widely recognized as one of the world’s most successful examples of international cooperation on an environmental challenge.
But the lesson for businesses goes beyond the importance of environmental protection.
What is particularly relevant today is how scientific evidence changed public understanding, which in turn shaped regulation, markets, and ultimately the business environment itself.
When a Social Issue Becomes a Business Issue
CFCs were once widely used across many industries because they were stable and easy to handle.
However, as their environmental impacts became clearer, public awareness began to shift and international regulations followed. Substances that had previously been used as a matter of course became subject to regulation, requiring companies to reconsider areas such as product design, technology, equipment, and procurement.
This pattern also has parallels with many of the sustainability issues companies face today.
Climate change, resource circulation, human rights, and natural capital can all affect business management in a variety of ways—not only through regulation, but also through customer expectations, procurement requirements, and investment decisions.
These changes do not necessarily happen overnight. Signs of change can emerge across many areas, including scientific research, policy and regulatory discussions, customer and investor interest, and technological development.
For this reason, when considering sustainability, it is important to understand where external changes may intersect with a company’s own business activities.
Honeywell: Turning Market Change into Opportunity
Regulations aimed at protecting the ozone layer required companies to adapt, but they also created opportunities for new technologies and markets to emerge.
One example is the U.S.-based technology company Honeywell.
Under the Montreal Protocol, CFCs were gradually phased out. Then, with the Kigali Amendment adopted in 2016, countries also agreed to phase down hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), which have high global warming potential.
Honeywell anticipated the growing need for low-global-warming-potential (low-GWP) technologies more than a decade ago and invested in the research, development, and production capacity of its Solstice® technologies. According to the company, its cumulative investment in related R&D and new production capacity has reached USD 1 billion.
Solstice® technologies are used in a wide range of applications, including automotive air-conditioning systems, supermarket refrigeration, and building insulation materials. Honeywell also stated that, as of 2021, the global adoption of these technologies had helped avoid more than 250 million metric tons of potential CO2-equivalent emissions.
What is important here is not simply that the company responded to new regulations.
It recognized changes in society and the market and connected those changes to decisions around technology development and investment.
Should environmental action be seen as a cost that companies address only once it becomes necessary? Or can it also be viewed as a source of insight into future markets and customer needs?
Even when companies face the same external changes, the options available to them may differ depending on how they interpret those changes.
What Could Become the Next “Business Issue”?
Of course, no company can accurately predict every future regulatory or market change. Nor does every business need to address every sustainability issue at once.
That is why it is important to start by looking at your own business.
For example, companies can begin by asking questions such as:
- How does our business interact with environmental and social issues?
- In which areas are regulations, markets, or customer expectations beginning to change?
- What kinds of risks or opportunities could those changes create for our business?
- Are there new forms of value we could provide by leveraging our technologies or strengths?
A topic does not automatically need to become a company’s priority simply because it is receiving attention in society.
What matters is understanding the relationship between external changes and your own business, and identifying which issues should be prioritized from your company’s perspective.
From there, companies can translate those priorities into strategies and concrete actions as needed. This is one way to begin integrating sustainability into business management.
Turning Early Signals into Management Decisions
Looking back at the response to ozone layer depletion, we can see how scientific discoveries contributed to shifts in public awareness, which were followed by international rules and changes in technology and markets.
For companies, the important question is not necessarily, “What will be regulated next?”
Rather, it is about recognizing environmental and social changes, identifying what matters most to the business, assessing potential risks and opportunities, and connecting those insights to management decisions and concrete action.
Sustainability is not only something companies respond to because it is required.
It can also provide a lens for considering how the future business environment may evolve, where a company may need to prepare, and where it may be able to create new value.
Connecting Sustainability with Business and Management
At Neuromagic, we support companies in identifying and strengthening the connection between sustainability and their business and management priorities.
Taking into account international standards and regulations, as well as market and societal trends, we help companies clarify the relationship between external developments and their own business activities, identify priority sustainability issues, develop strategies, design KPIs and roadmaps, and support internal implementation according to each organization’s specific circumstances.
If you are thinking about questions such as:
“How can we better connect our current sustainability initiatives with our business and management priorities?”
“What should we focus on next in light of changes in the external environment?”
Please feel free to contact us.
