It occurred to me during the conversation that these were the same questions I have been asked by companies and organizations. I told the students that many of the companies they were looking to go to work with were asking the same type of questions.

I gave an example of a company that recently directed two recruiters to me. They had told the recruiters to ask me what type of person would be needed to fill the positions and to see if I knew of any viable candidates.

I thought this was a little strange. They didn’t ask me if I was interested in the positions, but they wanted me to help them understand the requirements and find people. Wasn’t I good enough to work for the company in one of the roles? But my favorite call so far has been the one where the recruiter called and told me that she had been hired to fill a Sr. Sustainability Director position. She wanted to know if I could tell her what that was. I started to wonder what this was telling me. Did it mean that this is such a new field that people just don’t understand it yet? No, I didn’t buy that. This planet and it’s inhabitants have sustained themselves for centuries.

Maybe it’s like the quality push of the 80′s. If you walked up to someone on the street and asked, “What is quality?” you would get multiple answers. It didn’t mean that they were wrong, it just meant that each person had their own definition of what quality meant to them. So, we developed guidelines and produced tools that could be used across organizations and allow individuals to come together as teams or groups and speak with a common language.

So it often is with sustainability, multiple people have multiple definitions. One recent concept seems to have emerged as universally recognized, and I said recognized not understood, the triple bottom line.

This venn diagram has been used just about everywhere.

It doesn’t mean it’s completely understood, but it is used to describe sustainability.

So, back to the classroom, the students an organizations know that the environment, social and economic labels are used in the diagram; however, when I asked if anyone in the room knew what RCRA stood for only one person could name the first two letters. The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), enacted in 1976, is the principal Federal law in the United States governing the disposal of solid waste and hazardous waste.

I asked about a few more like WEEE, RoHS, and SWPP. Nothing but concerned looks. I moved on to the social and economic areas and asked similar questions. More strange looks.

So let’s start here.

If you as an individual or a company are trying to understand what type of skill set you or your company needs for a sustainability professional, remember it is more than just a journalist that will write press releases about the environment and employee activities. It’s more than a marketer that will send out your press releases and talk with the media. And, remember, you are not the compliance police. Now don’t get me wrong, these are important skills, but they are not the only skills required. Robert Shapiro once said, “Far from being a soft issue grounded in emotion or ethics, sustainable development involves cold, rational business logic.”

A sustainability professional should have an understanding of environmental policies, rules and regulations. They should also be familiar with environmental and civil engineering concepts and techniques. You should be familiar with business ecology and industrial ecology and the difference between the two. Depending on what business you are in you might need to add green chemistry to your tool kit.

They should have the skills for dealing with internal and external share and stakeholders. They need to understand and demonstrate change management techniques within organizations. Machiavelli was right, “There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.”

They should be familiar with accounting techniques, methodologies and ecological economics. You should have an understanding of scorecards, dashboards and reporting methodologies such as GRI. You are going to have to speak the language of Accountants, CFOs and Wall Street Analysts, so you better be prepared.

A sustainability professional is one that will work with your company to establish competitive business strategies. These strategies may be innovative or they may be old ideas that associates have had in one plant and you help bring them to the entire organization. Either way, your job is to generate, develop, and lead competitive business strategies that will allow your organization to sustain itself for generations to come.

“Leaders establish the vision for the future and set the strategy for getting there; they cause change. They motivate and inspire others to go in the right direction and they, along with everyone else, sacrifice to get there.”

John Kotter

Comments:

Read your Sustainability as a profession piece – had to chuckle at the recruiter calling for info not offer – Apparently I’m not the only one.  Matt

The title of their article is “Leadership in the Age of Transparency“, not one mention of sustainability, corporate social responsibility, philanthropy or green. They cut straight to the point, “Leadership”, the place where organizations want their brand! How many times have you sat through a corporate meeting and heard “We will position ourselves as the leader withing our industry.”

Their article deals with a change in the rules of doing business. They point out that it is no longer possible for companies and organizations to ignore externalities. Maybe that’s why I enjoyed their article so much, externalities have been a big part of what I do and have done for years.

A few years ago I was told that I was suppose to work with a big consultancy and help them understand sustainability. This was a group of accountants, they didn’t have an environmental or ecological group. They dealt with dollars and cents. They analyzed data, located under performing departments, developed strategies and made recommendations.

So, when I met with them for the first time they were not that excited about this “green issue”, their term not mine. I asked them what they thought sustainability was and they gave me the green tree hugging emotional charged concepts that you have heard over and over.

I started talking about industrial ecology and the impacts that organizations and businesses make on the communities they operate in. Before I could get any further one of the consultants interrupted me and blurted out “Your just taking about externalities!” Now, this is were it pays to know your audience, I had learned earlier that day that this young man was expecting his first child. I asked if he meant externalities like those used by companies that publish reports that say chances of reaction or death from a chemical or product was one in a million? He replied “Yes, but that was a normal process of product development and just another cost of doing business.” I asked him if the one child in a million happened to be his child would he still just view it as a cost of doing business?

The whole atmosphere in the room changed. Four months later the consultancy had a sustainability department and they were engaged in research that focused on activities that were previously viewed as externalities.

So, not to give away any other of the great points within the article I’ll stop here and encourage you to read the article and see what other insights you can gleam that will help your organization take that next step towards a leadership position.

Comments:

Excellent article Jesse, great blog. I love it when you can throw out ROI and externalities in one sentence. Especially, when you can use both terms, but many haven’t heard the latter. By not only speaking on their level, but also throwing something in there like a teaser, you can be sure there’ll be people gooleging during lunch, then throwing it around like a new toy by that afternoon !
Posted by Melissa

Nice blog and article. My work focuses on the other flavor of externalities as well – the positive kind. I view sustainability from the land resource perspective that includes forestry and the agro-economy. Both industries have the capacity to generate positive and negative ecological externalities. Internalizing positive externalities (clean water, carbon cq, wildlife) can generate direct value (market access, gov incent. credit trades, liability prot., etc) as long as a unified method to commicate these value evolves.
Posted by Tim

This is exactly the kind of approach that those interested in sustainability need to take when looking to enact change at a business level. We need to engage corporations in their language and methodologies which they understand. When you sit down and present a CBA (cost-benefit analysis) – or as mentioned above include externalities – which will impact their bottom line they will sit up and listen. Get them to buy in due to these reasons and then slowly mange the change so that sustainability becomes part of the culture. Trying to force the sustainability issue first will be a much harder uphill battle.
Posted by Heather, MBA

So, in this post we’ll go over a few and point you to other resources that you can use to help you spread sustainability throughout your organization.

Some may call them trends in sustainability, but trends, like acid washed jeans and parachute pants, come and go. Sustainability is not a trend and it is not a wave crashing against the shores of corporate activity. Sustainable Development is as real of a business practice as Safety, Loss Prevention, Marketing and Governmental Affairs. As I mentioned in an earlier post, Speaking the Language of Sustainability, we need to stop going after the headline grabbing PR buzz words and focus on the activity of implementing sustainable business practices into our everyday activities and make sure that we present them within a proper business framework.

Here are a few areas that you can review and see where you can incorporate them into your organizations current and future activities:

1) Educational Needs

In this shrinking global world businesses will increasingly be using more workers from developing countries. As you look around your organization ask yourself if the education and training programs that you have established are enough to ensure your continued success. And if you haven’t established these programs ask what are we waiting for.

2) Overconsumption of Resources

I’ve read that each year it takes between 45 and 85 tons of natural resources per person to support the economy of a typical industrialized country. I’ve also seen that if we continue consuming at this rate we will need 3 to 4 earths to keep up with this rate. Look at your products and services and ask “Is there a better way?” Think of Xerox and it’s activity of product cannibalization. Get a copy of Cradle to Cradle, read it and look at the chemicals that go into your products.

3) Freshwater Depletion

It has been said that 70% of the freshwater is trapped in glaciers and snow cover, a little over 20% is used for irrigation, 8% is consumed for commercial and industrial uses, that leaves about 1% for human consumption. We’re using groundwater faster than it can be replenished. Take a look at your organizations water usage. Can you find areas of improvement and reduction?

4) Wetlands Destruction

Wetlands are the most valuable of all ecosystems. They include marshes, swamps, ponds and bogs. Think twice before you jump on an opportunity to drain a swamp and put in a parking lot or manufacturing plant. You’ll hear some say, “But, we’re making something out of nothing.” Just remember, that nothing plays an important part in recharging groundwater, controlling floods, and removing water pollutants.

5) Credibility of Corporations

A 2003 Gallup poll for CNN/USA Today found that a mere 18% of those responding felt that the honesty standards of business executives were high or very high. That number maybe higher seven years later, but I some how doubt it. But, you can help your executive “get it”. Ray Anderson and Jeffery Hollander are two that come to mind.

6) Transparency

Investors, employees, and consumers all want to know what they can expect from your organization and your products and services. They have questions such as “What are the risks? How is the organization dealing with them? How can it affect me? Take the time to answer these questions and determine how you can pass the answers to your stake and shareholders.

7) Supply Chain

Andrew Winston presented this in his recent book, Green Recovery. On October 22, 2008, Wal-Mart called a meeting of Chinese manufactures to discuss its supply chain goals. At this meeting Lee Scott stated that suppliers who don’t follow the path for envir0nmental and social standards, energy use and transparency “will be banned from making products for Wal-Mart.” Look at your current supply chain and see where you can improve or reduce activities. Think about it, do you want to be the one taking the orders or do you want to be the one that is setting the new direction and giving the orders.

Hopefully this will help jump-start your thinking. The following sites can provide you with additional information and resources.

CSRwire

Ethical Corporation

Triple Pundit

Sustainability Forum

FabianPatterg.com

CSR-Reporting

Global Reporting Initiative

That’s when it hit me. He thinks sustainability is only about climate change!

I told him no, I didn’t think that the sustainability movement was over. Climate change was a part of sustainability, but it wasn’t the sole issue of sustainability. I told him other challenges existed that also needed to be addressed in order to provide his company with a sustainable development program. We discussed several other areas over the next few minutes. Energy, not just power used to turn on the corporate, factory, distribution centers and store lights, but also the power that was used to power the products sold to customers. Water, contaminated runoff from buildings and parking lots and the water used by consumers with products purchased. Biodiversity, and how the buildings, office complexes, warehouses, factories and stores affect the ecology of the area. The use of chemicals in business operations and in the manufacturing of products sold. Labor, meaning workforce diversity and child labor policies in place for your manufactures. And waste, the amount and type of materials generated by employees, factories, warehouses, distribution centers and stores and the materials generated from customers due to packaging.

He said that made sense and there seemed to still be a lot of things to cover.

I started wondering after he left, if an intelligent, college educated, business professional thinks that sustainability is only about climate change, how many other people out there also feel the same way? I mean, I don’t think I can blame them with all the excitement over an Oscar and Nobel prize and it seems that every where you look we are placing a green leaf on something trying to tell others “Hey look at me, I’m green.”

It did make me more aware of the words I’ll use in the future when I speak about sustainability and showed me that we still have opportunity to spread the word!

So the next time someone ask you what you do or what is sustainability, don’t stop with a definition of “environmental sustainability” tell them the whole story using examples of social, environmental and financial activities.

I was having lunch with a colleague and she was saying that the Triple Bottom line should be described as “Profit, People and Planet”. I mentioned that it was most commonly referred to as “People, Planet and Profits”.

She said that we were saying the same thing, that it was just semantics and moved on to another topic. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, I didn’t think we were really discussing semantics.

I believe that we were really discussing something bigger. I think we were having a discussion that has been going on for quite some time and is one of the stumbling blocks of sustainability; Micro vs. Macro Sustainability. I couldn’t find any papers or articles on this topic so I’ll coin the term and try to explain it for others to build on.

In economics 101 we learned that Microeconomics is a branch of economics that studies how households and firms make decisions to allocate limited resources. Macroeconomics is the branch of economics that deals with the performance, structure, and behavior of the economy of the entire community, either a nation, a region or the entire world.

Using this structure as a framework for Micro and Macro Sustainability, we could view Microsustainability as the area of sustainable development that focuses on how individuals, organizations and business decide what activities they should engage in and how to and where to allocate their resources. Macrosustainabilty would then be the area of sustainable development that focuses on how a nation, region or the entire world would establish large scale behaviors for sustainability; the Kyoto Treaty would fall into this category.

That’s what I believe we were discussing, not a simple matter of semantics but two entirely different view points. My colleague was a speaking from her position as a corporate environmental manager. She believed that she had to first look at the profit that she could demonstrate from her activities, then determine what other departments she would need to bring into her project and then as a result of her project, the by product would be some benefit to the earth.

I had heard the term “Triple Bottom Line” and my mind had gone straight to the Macrosustainability arena and framed the discussion as a world view.

I believe that we all sometimes run into this type of discussion, or in some cases argument, when two well intentional groups come together and try to establish future sustainability initiatives and goals. We each have our own individual points of view that are created from our past experiences. We tend to frame our positions from our own individual, safe, comfortable and time tested reality.

I believe that it is important to remember what Einstein said,

“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”

Albert Einstein

So, now we’re back to the forest and the trees. Remember when you are discussing or establishing your sustainability projects, initiatives or goals that there are two points of view or two areas of operation that you should consider when framing your activities, are you looking at a tree or the forest.

I didn’t say anything, and trust me, that took great restraint.  I caught myself and realized that with all of the recent “green” and “sustainability” buzz going around some people were just now getting exposed to this and other sustainable development concepts.

Which brings us to today’s blog, “What is Biomimicry?”.

Let’s start with the guru, Janine Benyus, who coined the term biomimicry in her 1997 book, Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature. “It’s about taking the genius of the natural world and learning something from it.”

Just as we learned what “Biology” meant in Junior High, Biomimicry from the Greek “bios”, meaning life, and “mimesis”, meaning to imitate. So, Biomimicry means to imitate life!

It is an old concept, but as with many things in life, what was once old is now new again. Think of the fashion industry, hem lines go up and down, fashions go in and out of favor. Remember this one, “Green is the new Black.”

Recently however, biomimicry has been brought back to mainstream. Architects, designers, and businesses are using biomimicry to design and develop processes that examine nature, its models, systems, processes, and elements— and emulates or takes inspiration from them to solve human problems sustainably. Biomimicry is also  an innovation method that seeks sustainable solutions by emulating nature’s time-tested patterns and strategies.

The goal is to look at what has worked for nature for thousands of years and create products and or processes that are able to help use utilize resources and reduce our impact, or ecological footprint, over the long haul.

Probably one of the best known examples of Biomimicry is Velcro. Invented in 1941, George de Mestral took the idea from burrs that stuck to his pants and his dog. When he viewed the burrs under the microscope he noticed tiny hooks on the burrs that caught on anything with a loop.

The Lotus Effect is another example. The surface of the lotus leaves are bumpy and cause water to bead as well as to pick up surface contaminates in the process. The water rolls off the leaves and takes the dirt with it. Now researchers have taken this concept and developed plastics and metals that evoke the same effect.

Janine provides three key guiding principles for the use of biomimicry:

1. Nature as Model. Biomimicry is a new science that studies nature’s models and then imitates or takes inspiration from these designs and processes to solve human problems, e.g., a solar cell inspired by a leaf.

2. Nature as Measure. Biomimicry uses an ecological standard to judge the “rightness” of our innovations.

3. Nature as Mentor. Biomimicry is a new way of viewing and valuing nature. It introduces an era based not on what we can exact from the natural world, but on what we can learn from it.

BIOMIMICRY, Innovation Inspired by Nature, Janine M. Benyus

In 1998, Janine co-founded the Helena, Montana-based Biomimicry Guild with Dr. Dayna Baumeister. The Guild is an innovation consultancy providing biological consulting and research, workshops and field excursions, and a speakers’ bureau. The Guild helps designers learn from and emulate natural models with the goal of developing products, processes, and policies that create conditions conducive to life.

In 2005, Janine founded The Biomimicry Institute (TBI), a nonprofit organization based in Missoula, MT.  TBI’s mission is to nurture and grow a global community of people who are learning from, emulating, and conserving life’s genius to create a healthier, more sustainable planet.

Janine Benyus and Paul Hawken launched the Biomimicry Venture Group in 2008 and recently the AskNature.org site was launched. AskNature.org is a biomimicry encyclopedia for designers backed by Autodesk.

Now you should have an understanding of and resources for Biomimicry. So, use them and make something great happen!

And remember what Da Vinci said, “Those who are inspired by a model other than Nature are laboring in vain.”

In 1994, Interface founder and chairman Ray Anderson set an audacious goal for his commercial carpet company: to take nothing from the earth that can’t be replaced by the earth. Now, in the most inspiring business book of our time, Anderson leads the way forward and challenges all of industry to share that goal.

The Interface story is a compelling one: In 1994, making carpets was a toxic, petroleum-based process, releasing immense amounts of air and water pollution and creating tons of waste.

Fifteen years later Interface has:

• Cut greenhouse gas emissions by 82%;
• Cut fossil fuel consumption by 60%;
• Cut waste by 66%;
• Cut water use by 75%;
• Invented and patented new machines, materials, and manufacturing processes;
• Increased sales by 66%, doubled earnings, and raised profit margins.

In his newest book, Anderson shows that profit and sustainability are not mutually exclusive; businesses can improve their bottom lines and do right by the Earth at the same time.

From the introduction to the book:

The book that follows this introduction was largely written while the Dow was falling from around 13,000 to around 10,000, oil’s price was rising, and gasoline was topping $4 a gallon in the United States. But concern for the future of the American banking system, and the unprecedented entry of government institutions into the world of private finance — to rescue it, no less — never once entered my mind, though smart people I know and talk with regularly have been saying financial upheaval was coming. Yet, quite intentionally, I was writing about the future, the future of the real economy — the place where real stuff gets made and sold, and real services are rendered. It is quite distinct from the financial economy, with its stock market and its various indexes, altogether a sort of imperfect analogue of the real economy.

The point of my story is deceptively simple. Business and industry — not just American business and industry, but global business and industry — must change their ways to survive. Some people have been saying this for a long time. Many more are saying it today.

I make no claim to prescience, only to conviction. And by survive, I do not mean maintain identity and integrity within the context of a financial system in meltdown, either. By survive, I mean business must be steered through a transition from an old and dangerously dysfunctional model to a far better one that will operate in balance and harmony with nature — thrive in a carbon- constrained world, and put down the threats of global climate disruption, species extinction, resource depletion, and environmental degradation.

In a word, develop a business model that is sustainable.

I had a chance to talk with Ray Anderson and ask him a few questions about his new book and Interface.

Jesse: What is a “Radical Industrialist”?

Ray Anderson: That’s an industrialist that woke up one day and realized that he had been doing it all wrong for many years and that the system he was part of needed to change towards sustainability as opposed to the consuming system that we have.

Jesse: So, you’re not a big fan of the linear take-make-waste system in industry today?

Ray Anderson: No. The more we looked at this system we realized that this linear system had to change to a cyclical system. A system more like nature, where there is no waste. Where materials come back into the manufacturing process as “feedstock”. We have to recognize that “end-of-pipe” solutions are unsustainable.

Jesse: That type of thinking has helped you find a better solution for recycling carpet. In your book you write about how you and your team were able to find a machine in Italy that would be the key to recycling carpets.

Ray Anderson: Yes. I knew that someday, somehow we would have to close the loop and use 100 percent recycled or renewable content to become sustainable. That trip to Italy helped us climb higher toward the summit. About 35 percent of our raw material today is recycled, but we will get to 100 percent.

Jesse: What do you think has been the biggest change that Interface has had to go through on your climb up Mount Sustainability?

Ray Anderson: The biggest change was in the attitude and the mindset of our people. We started with a company full of skeptics. No one really knew what all this meant in 1994. Not even I, but with a lot of reading, study, conversation and collaboration, we developed a clear view of what sustainability meant for Interface. One mind at a time our people came aboard.

Jesse: Is business capable of moving to sustainability?

Ray Anderson: They will either do it or be superseded by those who do. The industrial system that operates today is undermining the basis of the industrial system; it’s committing suicide because nature is that under-girding factor. There’s no business that can operate without air and water and food and energy and materials and climate regulation and ultraviolet radiation shields and pollination and seed dispersal and distribution. All of those are supplied by nature. If we kill nature, we will certainly kill the economy.

Jesse: Do you believe that what has been accomplished at Interface is transferable to other companies?

Ray Anderson: Yes. I discuss this in the book and give a real example of how other companies have been to Interface and talked with our folks about our “Mission Zero”. They have walked away from those discussions with an understanding that the success of the vision is not just based on “Ray”, but it is felt and believed throughout our organization. And that’s the secret, it has to be incorporated in every level within an organization, from the top to the bottom.

Jesse: Thank you and Interface for all that you are doing and thank you for your time. Talk with you again soon.

Ray Anderson: Thank you.

So, indulge me for a minute here. Too often we get caught up in the “Big Picture” of corporate activities and lose sight of the millions of little companies that are out there working every day to help us keep this economy turning.

On a recent business trip I stumbled on one such company, and it made me stop and think about the importance that these guys have on helping to create truly sustainable local communities and economies.

Gallo Blanco, located inside the swanky Clarendon Hotel in Phoenix, AZ, is just such a place. The owner of the cafe, Doug Robson, a native of Mexico City, is one of those great people you meet unexpectedly that “gets it.”

Doug talked with me about the planning that he put into the cafe, how the furnishings he used were re-claimed. He told me about a friend that had a family member that owned a cabinet shop saved the scraps and created his great-looking tables and how that the main cabinet top in the center of the cafe had come from a fallen mesquite tree that was laying in a field.

Doug also talked about the importance of buying his produce, meat and breads from local suppliers. He had stories about how he had reduced his waste volumes by making operational changes within his kitchen and moving from disposable dinnerware. Doug is active in local sustainability initiatives and is planning to open another establishment in Phoenix later this year.

I’m not a restaurant critic, but if you are in the Phoenix area and are looking for a great place to eat that also is working to help bring sustainability to the table, stop by and visit with Doug.

Don’t laugh. I’ve been there. If you haven’t, good for you. You are one of the fortunate ones. I’m still surprised that after all this time we still have the mentality that goals can be pulled out of the air and then we act shocked when we are unable to accomplish the, often publicly, stated goals.

So, how do you go about establishing goals for your programs? Is their a better way? I think so and that’s what we are going to talk about.

But first, let’s look at a few reasons why goals fail.

1. The measures aren’t credible with intended data users

2. Management isn’t interested in the results

3. Results are reported too infrequently

4. Not enough time is allowed for corrective actions to take effect

5. Lack of accountability or recognition

6. The goals drive the wrong performance

7. The results aren’t used to make business decisions

William R. Blackburn, The Sustainability Handbook

You’ve seen examples of these in your practice. The data isn’t useful to your intended audience, data doesn’t come in a timely fashion, no one seems to be driving the process, and the results of the program aren’t used to bring about business practice changes. You do have goals, you are collecting data and you will be able to provide a colorful chart in your next CSR report. But, are you able to bring about the required change that your business needs in order to sustain it’s growth?

What is missing? We had our meeting, we talked, we brainstormed and selected what we thought was a good goal. A key element that is often overlooked and should be present in your goal, is that it must be elevating! It has to personally challenge your team members and it must create a sense of urgency. John Kotter writes in his book, a sense of urgency, “Underlying a true sense of urgency is a set of feelings: a compulsive determination to move, and win, now…feelings are more influential than thoughts.” Kotter also provides four tactics for increasing a sense of urgency.

Four Tactics for increasing a sense of urgency

1. Bring the Outside in

2. Behave with Urgency Every Day

3. Find Opportunity in Crises

4. Deal with the NoNos

Ok, so urgency is important, got it. What other attributes should our goals have? Here is where you go back to the time tested and proven S.M.A.R.T method. Sometimes the old ideas are the best.

S.M.A.R.T. refers to goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time Framed.

Specific: Goals need to be something specific. To set a specific goal you must answer the six “W” questions:

Who: Who is involved? Have you identified all shareholders and stakeholders?
What: What do I want to accomplish?
Where: Identify a location. Where is this going to take place?
When: Establish a time frame.
Which: Identify requirements and constraints.
Why: Specific reasons, purpose or benefits of accomplishing the goal. Don’t be afraid to ask “Why are we creating this goal?”

Measurable: Goals need to be measurable. Establish concrete criteria for measuring progress toward the attainment of each goal you set.

Achievable or Attainable: Goals need to be reasonable and achievable.

Realistic: Goals need to be realistic. To be realistic, a goal must represent an objective toward which you are both willing and able to work.

Time Framed: Goals need to have a time frame. Having a set amount of time will give your goals structure. With no time frame tied to it there’s no sense of urgency.

When you establish your goals with these concepts in mind you will be surprised at how much excitement you’ll bring to your company’s initiatives. You’ll be able to create more that just colorful graphs and charts, you might find that you are able to bring real lasting change! At the very least you should be able to make sure that you don’t have to sit quietly through another corporate meeting, now you have ideas, suggestions and questions you can ask to liven up things.

Granted, waste management is a key component of sustainability. Daniel Esty and Andrew Winston listed it as one of the top ten environmental issues facing us today in their book, Green to Gold. It’s not just ensuring that we legally and properly manage our waste that is important, it is ensuring that we work to reduce and eliminate our waste. Not just the things that are going into the dumpster, but also the waste that is occurring within our organization.

Now we get to one of the most interesting parts of sustainability, Change Management, working with others to help them develop a new way of thinking about business and their processes, and exposing them to the new possibilities  that are available through the development of a new mindset.

The first change is to help your organization redefine what they mean by waste and develop programs and initiatives that will help them reduce and eliminate those wastes. I’m talking about much more than starting a recycling program in the breakroom.

Before you start you need to expand your definition of “Waste”. It’s not just for the dumpster anymore.  Years ago Taiichi Ohno, considered by some to be the father of the Toyota Production System, defined seven categories of “Muda“, a traditional general Japanese term for an activity that is wasteful and doesn’t add value or is unproductive.

The Manufacturing Institute

Ohno’s 7 Wastes :

1. Transport : Movement of materials is a waste. Minimize the amount of movement by arranging processes in close proximity to each other.
2. Inventory : Too little inventory can lose sales, too much inventory can hide problems. Aim for “Just in Time” (JIT) manufacturing to expose problems to be eliminated and reduce cost.
3. Motion : Remove unnecessary motion of the operations and improve the ergonomics of the workplace.
4. Waiting : Minimize waiting time and maximize “value adding” time. Aim for a smooth flow.
5. Overproduction : Always aim to make exactly what the customer orders, just in time, to the correct quality standard.
6. OverProcessing : Use machines which are of an appropriate capacity and capable of achieving the required quality standard.
7. Defects : Reducing the number of defects directly reduces the amount of waste. Aim for zero defects.

From these definitions you can see that waste means more than just garbage in a dumpster. Ray Anderson, in his latest book Confessions of a Radical Industrialist, writes that “The greenest Dumpster is the one you never fill.” He goes on to write, that through 2008, the fourteen-year cumulative total of costs avoided by attacking waste was $405 million. Not bad for a carpet company that took the time to redefine what they meant by “waste”.

However, there is another dimension of sustainability that moves beyond the simple waste of your manufacturing or operating process. This portion of sustainability involves the most important part of your organization, your people.

Chauncey Bell a U.S.-based business management consultant, identified five new waste in his blog post:

1. Not Listening: Tolerating working together in conditions in which people do not and often cannot effectively speak and listen to each other.

2. Bureaucratic Styles: Working together bureaucratically, undertaking to design and produce our work through sterile procedures — sequences of movements and activities — in which our concerns show up at best only briefly before and after the work, but not during it.

3. Worship of Information: Orienting ourselves, our actions and our attention around information and information systems, valuing “data” and “measures” above the interpretations of the human beings in the enterprise.

4. Suppressing Innovation: Tolerating ways of working in which people, ideas, and practices that are different, unusual, or new are avoided, feared, or rejected, so that it becomes all but impossible to develop flexibility and evolve practices for dealing with a changing world.

5. Work as Toil: Tolerating the interpretation that work consists fundamentally of unrelenting sequences of “things to do” that have only commercial value, we invent a kind of ‘modern indentured servitude.’ We sell ourselves into service in exchange for money and fleeting “real” lives available to us outside of working hours, outside of work.

So, hopefully now you can see that sustainability really does mean more than just starting a recycling program. It also means more than just simply looking at your environmental activities. Sustainability involves people, processes, products and policies. If you are going to seriously move down this path you have to make sure that you and your team understand that this is a multi-discipline, multi-prong activity that can truly change your organization if you’re ready.