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Patnaik: Sustainability is currently the buzzword in business strategy and will remain so for quite some time.

While the concept has been around for decades, it was often regarded as something that was “nice-to-do” but not “need-to-do.” That has changed.

Patnaik: Multiple studies have shown that companies that adopt sustainable strategies experience greater risk management and more innovation.

Promoting these strategies leads to a broader and more loyal customer base, enhances employee loyalty and greater sales and profit.

Patnaik: But companies must be genuinely invested in sustainable initiatives, instead of merely using them as marketing props. It may be tempting to embellish a company’s social or environmental impact but when that is discovered, the business’s reputation is severely damaged.

That’s called “greenwashing,” when a company is more concerned with marketing themselves as environmentally friendly — with deceptive or embellished claims — than reducing their negative impact on the environment.

Patnaik: How many plastic bottles have you seen with colorful images of pristine mountain lakes and the labels "compostable" or "biodegradable?"

Recognizing that such claims are misleading without disclaimers about how quickly the product will biodegrade in a landfill, California banned the use of these labels on plastics.

And an oil company was fined for falsely labeling their biodiesel fuel as “Green Diesel” and eco-friendly.