When she wants to eat in a restaurant, 24-year-old Annisa Filania has an affinity for places that do not list dishes made from tuna or shark on their menu.

“If a restaurant does not sell tuna or shark, it means that the place supports sustainability in running its business, given that the population of tuna is shrinking, while sharks have protected status in this country,” Annisa, who is also a scuba diver, told The Jakarta Post on Friday.

Unlike most people her age, Annisa stands out as a person who is aware of the importance of sustainable processes in conducting business. In general the awareness of sustainable business practices in Indonesia is still relatively low, although some products that are sold in higher-end supermarkets in the country do carry eco labelling, which indicates that the products are produced through an environmentally friendly process.

Gitra Putri Prasasti Praja, 29, a mother of one, said, however, she still preferred buying regular products rather than those which carried eco labelling because the latter were usually more expensive. “If only I was a rich mother, I would not think twice about buying a ‘green’ product, which is dubbed as healthier than other products in general, but have higher prices,” Gitra said.

Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Kadin) vice chairperson, Shinta Kamdani, said that only a few Indonesian companies ran their businesses based on principles of sustainability, which means produces environmentally friendly products, empowering the local community and protecting the environment among other factors.

“The number of local companies in the country that uphold sustainability as a tenet is below 10 percent. It is difficult to convince them that applying such business concepts will benefit them in the future,” Shinta told the Post.

Shinta said many companies opted to use normal production methods because it was too costly to establish a production system that focused on the three core aspects of sustainability called the three bottom-lines: profit, people and planet.

In the 2016 Sustainable Business Awards (SBA), which honors companies that apply sustainable business practices, only “a few local firms” out of 50 companies entered the pre-qualification phase of the competition, said Tony Gourlay, CEO of Global Initiatives, a Singapore-based institution that initiated the awards.

Gourlay said many local companies were still in the early stage of practicing sustainable business. “That’s why there were more multinational corporations in the awards.”

Publicly listed Unilever Indonesia, the subsidiary of Anglo-Dutch consumer goods giant Unilever, received the accolade as the Best Overall winner at the SBA ceremony held in Jakarta on Thursday. The company also won two category awards: Best Stakeholder Engagement and Materiality, as well as Best Business Responsibility and Ethics.

Unilever Indonesia governance and corporate affairs director Sancoyo Antarikso said the company had been discussing with its raw material suppliers over the last two years concerning the need to become sustainable in doing business.

Pricewaterhouse-Coopers (PwC) Indonesia, in cooperation with Global Initiatives in the SBA, said in an e-mail to the Post that the government played a pivotal part in encouraging companies to be sustainable and to increase consumer awareness on the value of sustainable products.

“Government can play its role in promoting this communication through standardization such as eco labeling and nutrition information. Incentives from governments can also help to make the sustainable products more competitive in the market as price is still one of the factors affecting consumers’ buying decisions,” the e-mail read. (mos)

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