I’ve had a chance to travel and meet and talk with a lot of great people, but two of the conversations I had this summer will stay with me for a while.

The first was a conversation where I was told the benefits of Bio-Mass as an alternative energy source and why Bio-Mass was better for the environment instead of Nuclear Power. The second conversation was one where the topic of RCRA, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act,  came up. The interesting thing about this conversation was that the speaker didn’t know what RCRA was or why it should be considered relevant to his business.

Now, here’s where it gets really interesting. The first conversation was with a nine year old boy and the second conversation was with a senior VP of a waste company!

I was impressed with the amount of knowledge that this young man had on the subject of bio-mass. He was able to present his thoughts in a straight forward manner, he knew why he thought what he thought and why he believed what he believed in. The seasoned sales professional on the other hand didn’t know what RCRA was or why he should be concerned with it or the impact that it might have on his team.

So many things were running through my mind during both of these conversations. I was proud of the nine year old, amazed at his grasp of the topics he was describing. I kept thinking this is one person that commercials and greenwashing were not going to sway. The other, well I kept going back to a passage from The Ecology of Commerce, where Paul Hawken wrote about companies telling consumers not to worry, “We are going to solve the problem with recycling and clean-up”. So, forget about the reasons and regulations that govern how waste industries operate and just focus on selling new accounts.

These conversations drove home a thought that I’ve had for a while and I’m sure that research scientist have done many papers on it. People really do see the world differently!

The young-man’s view was not based on next quarters earnings report, but make no mistake, he has an understanding of the value of a dollar, he spoke with me after he and his brother finished working. He lives on a family farm and knows that they each have a job to do in order for the farm to function properly. This young man saw an issue that was affecting the world that he was going to inherit. A world that he was going to grow up in and raise a family. He wanted it to be as rich and wonderful for his children as it was for him now.

The VP saw the next quarter numbers, quotas, pipelines and revenues. Not that those things aren’t important, but you have to know that understanding regulations and how they impact your business are equally important.

Can you image what would happen if a waste company combined both of those views? Is it possible for this to happen? I believe it is and I’ve had a chance to work with a few. It may sound impossible, but a waste company can conduct it’s services with one eye on the environment and regulations and one eye on revenues. With more and more companies targeting zero landfill waste, I believe that the waste industry is going to need to develop this type of focus in order to succeed in the future. And, I’m looking forward to having those conversations.

Ray was one of the most vocal proponents of environmentalism’s role in business. He founded Interface, a producer of free-lay carpet tiles, in 1973, and it grew to be a $1 billion company and the world’s largest manufacturer of modular carpet.

Ray’s journey to become a radical industrialist and understand the role that business played with the planet began in 1994 in two parts, first when a short handwritten note was sent to him by Jim Hartzfeld. On it was this simple question: “Some customers want to know what Interface is doing for the environment. How should we answer?”  The second part, as he described, was pure serendipity,  a book The Ecology of Commerce, writtern by Paul Hawkens, arrived on his desk. When he finished reading the  story of St. Matthew’s Island, in the  book, he describs that moment as a spear in the chest. “It was an epiphany, a rude awakening, an eye-openingexperience, and the point of that story felt just like the point of a spear driven straight into my heart.” – Ray Anderson

I, myself, was amazed to learn just how much stuff the earth has to produce through our extraction process to produce a dollar of revenue for our company. When I learned, I was flabbergasted. We are leaving a terrible legacy of poison and diminishment of the environment for our grandchildren’s grandchildren, generations not yet born. Some people have called that intergeneration tyranny, a form of taxation without representation, levied by us on generations yet to be. It’s the wrong thing to do.-Ray Anderson

From that point on, Ray was on a mission. One in which InterfaceFLOR would be a leading, responsible business.

This lead to the development of the  Mission Zero ™  sustainability strategy, which aims to turn InterfaceFLOR into a zero-impact organization.  Ray often spoke about how climbing the sustainability mountain in business was akin to climbing Mount Everest and that there were seven paths to get there:

• Eliminate Waste: Eliminating all forms of waste in every area of business;
• Benign Emissions: Eliminating toxic substances from products, vehicles and facilities;
• Renewable Electricity: Operating facilities with renewable electricity sources – solar, wind, landfill gas, biomass, geothermal, tidal and low impact/small scale hydroelectric or non-petroleum-based hydrogen;
• Closing the Loop: Redesigning processes and products to close the technical loop using recovered and bio-based materials;
• Resource-Efficient Transportation: Transporting people and products efficiently to reduce waste and emissions;
• Sensitizing Stakeholders: Creating a culture that integrates sustainability principles and improves people’s lives and livelihoods;
• Redesign Commerce: Creating a new business model that demonstrates and supports the value of sustainability-based commerce;

Ray left these tested and proven paths behind so that we can follow him up the sustainability mountain.

While we mourn his passing, we are all a little better off thanks to him, his efforts and his legacy.

Thank you Ray for your leadership, vision and mentoring.

You can hear Ray speak on the Business Logic of Sustainability here

I’ll admit that I smiled when I read that press release.

For me this was another example in a long line of experiences that demonstrated how individuals react to new concepts that challenge the status quo. They can ignore the issue, change the subject, use denial or just laugh.

Urban Mining, for me, is another example of a concept that challenges the status quo.

I’ve gotten several emails recently that asked me “What did I mean by urban mining?”, “What is urban mining?” and “Is that a different name for dumpster diving?” They came from inquiries regarding urbanmining.org, a website that I co-founded. I understand that urban mining is often used to describe the concept of recovering gold, silver, platinum, iridium and a range of other metals from old electronics. However, I believe that urban mining goes beyond electronics.

My definition for Urban Mining is -  The process of reclaiming compounds and elements from products, building and waste.

This definition is based on the concept of Sustainable Development, the fact that our ecosystem is finite, non-growing and materially closed and on industrial ecology, which examines materials and energy flows in products, processes, industrial sectors and economies.

Our current predominant model is the linear Take-Make-Waste model, in which we take a material use it to create a product and when we have finished with the product we send it to the waste phase, often called the end-of-the-pipe.

By broadening the definition of urban mining to include products, buildings and waste we can extract materials from the end-of-the-pipe and use them in a circular production model as described by Bob Doppelt.

Urban mining goes beyond “Dumpster Diving”, it requires a systems approach that utilizes industrial ecology when viewing our end-of-pipe activities for materials recovery. One of my most favorite examples of this type of approach is the example Paul Hawken described in his book, The Ecology of Commerce that took place in Kalundorg, Denmark. Residual heat and steam from a power plant was used for heating other nearby facilities. Surplus gas from the refinery was used in the place of coal. Sludge from a pharmaceutical plant was spread on local farms. Gypsum, a byproduct of the pollution control scrubbers at the power plant was used by a Sheetrock manufacturer. The fly ash from the coal generation is used in road construction. This is a circular systems approach that works! A city is viewed as an “Urban Mine” and resources are mined, or extracted,  from what was once considered waste.

Professor Thomas E. Graedel, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Science, takes it further and includes energy into the concept of urban mining.

“The energy used for primary production is embodied, to a large extent, in the metal and, consequently, in the building too. Today’s buildings and their contents therefore present large “urban mines” of around 400 million tonnes of aluminium metal that can be extracted and recycled by future generations through the use of only 5% of the originally used energy, not just once but repeatedly.

Aluminium is extensively employed in buildings, but it does not remain permanently in place. Buildings are remodeled periodically, and even deconstructed, thereby freeing the aluminium for recycling. Therefore, it is not inaccurate to regard this aluminium as “urban ore” and cities as “urban mines”.”       Professor Thomas E. Graedel

These are just a few examples of the benefits of urban mining and we haven’t even touched on the economic or political benefits of utilizing urban mining in your organization’s sustainability strategy. But, I hope that this gives you a better understanding of the rationale behind my definition of urban mining and maybe gives you a new process that you can use when looking at your organization.

While urban mining may have started out in the electronic recycling industry. I believe that the concept has value in a far broader sense when dealing with sustainable development; one that might even make Buck Rogers proud.

Comments

Jesse,
Great article. My first read that furthered my interest into sustainability was Paul Hawkens “Natural Capitalism.” The expansion of the concept of Urban Mining from drilling for resources in landfills to looking for synergies from by-products from one process to be the input of another. When doing a project in one of my sustainability classes I came across an article about using poultry feathers to produce low heat biodegradable plastics. The process could eliminate large amounts of solid waste from the poultry feathers and create a product that has less of an impact on the environment than its traditional alternative.
Posted by Shawn Georgeson

The mining of metals has been the primary source of metals. For some metals, mining is already the activity that supplements the mining of existing stocks in society. While there are many other factors at work that will determine future demand for materials, the stocks of metals in society will be the dominant source with traditional mining only needed for “topping up” and replacing the inevitable losses through multiple product cycles.
Posted by Bruce McKean

I work with a lot of mining companies in the sustainability space. The analogy is very apt. In fact if you take a long view and consider the huge capital outlays required for uncertain gains in the traditional boom bust mining and primary processing sector, it is amazing how frugal investors have been in the area of urban mining. Imagine further that urban infrastructure was designed to be mined – wouldn’t the intellectual property opportunities be huge?
Posted by Sam Nelson

Merriam-Webster defines innovation as: the introduction of something new, a new idea, method or device.

Does it mean that we need better products or does it mean we need better processes or does it mean that we need both?

Based on the old adage, “If you keep doing what you’ve been doing, you’re going to keep getting what you’ve been getting”; I believe that it means, both. Not a very Ivy League definition I know, but it does hold true.

So, this brings us to where we are today. Companies are looking around and wondering what they can do that will differentiate their products or services. They know that they need to change, but the where and how, seems just out of reach.Sounds a lot like sustainability efforts doesn’t it. We can sense it’s there, but we don’t seem to be able to convert it into a tangible asset. So, let’s make it tangible by putting it into a frame that we can all recognize.

Many innovations have been developed out of a desire to improve production processes, reduce materials used, reduce environmental damage, replace products/services, reduce energy consumption and in order to conform to regulations. Perhaps they are not done in the name of sustainability, but they can and will produce sustainable results.

Innovation doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It is not a haphazard or a once a year activity performed at the Corporate Mountain Retreat. It is  starts by taking a hard look at where your company currently is developmentally, economically,  and culturally.

Making sure that you actively listen to your customers and hear what they are saying and not saying about you, your products and or services can provide you with valuable insight as to where you should start your initiatives. However, you shouldn’t just wait for your customers to tell you what they want! Remember, no one called and told Detorit, “Hey, I would like a nice, comfortable, and roomy van that I can use to haul my kids to soccer practice in.”

The title of this post, “Innovation is hard to schedule”, is a quote that is attributed to Dan Fylstra, a pioneer of the computer industry. I like it because I think he is right. Innovation is not something that you can call a meeting on Monday about and set a delivery date of Friday at 3:45 pm on. You need to know what it is that you need to work on, decide what area it is that you need to focus on, and make sure you have the right people involved in your efforts in order for the process to succeed.

Another key factor of innovation is, change. As  William Pollard said, “Without change there is no innovation, creativity, or incentive for improvement. Those who initiate change will have a better opportunity to manage the change that is inevitable.”

So, maybe what everyone is simply saying is that we need to change!

He told me that his competitors have been using more and more social media activities and he was concerned that he might be missing something.

I asked him if his company was currently using any social media platforms. He said they were on Facebook and Twitter. I asked how they were using them. He said that they posted coupons, tried to track customer complaints and posted recent company press releases.

I didn’t see a pretty picture developing here, so I thought before I told him to jump on the bandwagon and throw open the barn doors we should go back to the beginning and start by looking at his question from a sustainability perspective instead of purely a social media one.

I asked him about his current stakeholder engagement activities. I wanted to know what they had done to engage their stakeholders in their sustainability initiatives. I was told that they post information on their website. I quickly went to the site and saw paragraphs about the amount of cardboard they had recycled, new lighting they had installed and a few other items.  These are good actions, but they were not engagement activities. They didn’t draw me in, they didn’t involve or engage me. That’s what lead us to a discussion on stakeholder engagement.

So, where do you start?

Taking a cue from Andy Savtiz you start first by understanding your current level of engagement by asking several questions:

• Does your company engage in open, two-way dialogue?
• Does your company listen actively or passively?
• Do you ignore?

Do you understand your current attitude and approach to stakeholders?

• Is it Systematic or ad hoc?
• Is it trusting or suspicious?

Have you taken the time to identify your stakeholders?

Do you know what issues affect your stakeholders?

Have you asked yourself how your stakeholders can affect you?

Take the time to determine what you want to get out of this engagement!

This last point allowed us to get back to his original question regarding social media. I don’t profess to being a social media expert, but I do know that social media deals with the activities, behaviors and sometimes the beliefs of a group of individuals who gather together online to exchange information and opinions in a conversational setting. So, before you jump in and start talking, thinking that this constituents a conversation, you need to follow the advice of Lon Safko and David Brake and ask yourself: Will this allow you to engage with stakeholders by facilitating communication, collaboration, education or even entertainment.

If you can answer yes and you have identified and understand your stakeholders, and most importantly that you know what it is that you want to say; then I believe that you are ready to let the dialog begin. If not and you still feel the need to jump in, then you better be ready for the greenwashing comments and negative tweets.

I participated in the meeting and didn’t say anything about the missing potential team members, until the end of the meeting. That’s when they asked me if I had any other thoughts or questions I’d like to add…You know I did.

I asked where the team members from the Facilities Management, New Construction and Architectural groups were.

I got the expected replies, “We are working to select our business and marketing initiatives”, “We’re trying to make sure our customers know what we are doing to help them”, “We’ve got to get our story straight”. Then finally I was asked, “Why do you ask?” I love it when we ask questions!

I said that I agreed that we have been talking about how to tell our story, what stories we wanted to tell and how to use our website and social media to tell the stories, but I haven’t heard us talk about what we could be doing internally to help push sustainability into our core. They said we talked about our reduction in our power bill. I agreed. Saving money and reducing power needs is a good thing. But I wanted to know what we did to reduce our need for raw materials in the construction of our new buildings. How did we take into consideration the affect of building materials on employees when selecting materials for construction? What siting criteria did we use for our new buildings? Did we consider collecting and reusing storm water runoff for parking lot cleaning or landscape watering in areas where water use is limited or perhaps more expensive? What materials did we reuse and how?

This seems to be something that happens around us today. We want our company to be part of the sustainability program, but we don’t really stop to think sometimes that Green House Gases and Power Usage are just two parts of the multifaceted program. Facility Management is an area within just about every business, waiting for us to examine and ask “What can we do here?” Think about it, buildings represent some of the largest investments that companies make and yet we rush to build and occupy them so we can “start” the business.

What if we started the business with the structure? I know, LEED has certifications and guidelines. But, what if we started our sustainability discussions with the building and not just the product. What if we looked at what we had to work with and started to make “it” more sustainable? Would that help us to make products more sustainable? Granted, this would be easier if we were starting a new company. But, what about a company or an institution that has been in business for years?

This is the area where the unsung heroes of sustainability can shine! For years people have thought of the Facility Management department as the folks that keep the heat and air conditioning going. They are located in the basement, and not exactly as glamorous as some of the other “top line” groups within the organization; sort of out-of-site out-of-mind.

Yet Facilities Management is at the heart of cost-effectiveness, productivity, efficiency and the social issues of employee quality of work. These managers are now dealing with air emissions, indoor air quality, water quality, water use restrictions, and multiple waste management issues that were not even thoughts their previous counter-parts dealt with. They have to be prepared to not only order office furniture, they have to be able to know what the furniture is made of, where it was sourced from and how will they dispose of the items when they have served they function within the organization.

These men and women are a lot more than “wrench turners”!

This is a great area that any organization can tap into when looking at the strategic advantages that sustainability has to offer. Facility Managers are involved in multiple aspects of your organization. They work with grounds maintenance, building maintenance and road maintenance. They provide construction project management activities. They establish facility emergency management activities that range from threat assessment and planning to recovery. They may be responsible for fleet management or records management. Your Facility Management group may have even established its own supply chain and can help with your procurement process or perhaps even help other groups with its contacts and vendors.

The image at the top of this posting is from a great website, Today’s Facility Manager. Visit the International Facility Management Association website and check out FacilitiesNet for check out some of the great resources that are available for Facility Management and see what you can learn and share.

We’re often told to look within for answers, well, maybe this time it’s more than just an expression. It might just be the key to helping you develop a more rounded sustainable business.

So, instead of trying to write another blog that tries to prove the benefits of sustainability or show how sustainable practices can help your organization. I sat back and asked myself isn’t their someone that could speak on the topic of sustainability and reach across both the environmental and business groups?

It seemed like for every person I could think of, I could also think of a reason why they wouldn’t work. No, she would only be considered a tree hugger by the business community. No, he would come across as a “I’m only here for the profit” businessman.  Then it hit me, what about the man who invented management? So then I wondered, “What  would Peter Drucker have to say about CSR, Sustainability and Business?”

I didn’t have to look very far before I started finding insights into his beliefs on the relationship of business, management and CSR. I soon discovered that not only was he the “Father of Management”, Peter Drucker was also considered a “Pioneer of business social responsibility.”

William A. Cohen writes in Drucker on Leadership that “Drucker believed that the first “social responsibility ” of business is to make a profit sufficient to cover future operational costs.” An important distinction here, he didn’t say the business of business was to make a profit. He is saying that if this basic “social responsibility” was not met, then no other “social responsibility” could be met either.

Makes sense, if the company goes out of business then they won’t have any funds to put into CSR programs, the existing programs will end, employees lose their jobs, suppliers don’t get paid and their companies are put into jeopardy and we all go back to square one. The circle of life seems to also apply to the circle of business.

Drucker didn’t view this philosophy as a license to slash-and-burn. He warned leaders to be careful of unintended consequences and said that it was the responsibility of the company to assume the responsibility of the outcomes of their actions. Cohen writes that “Drucker taught that since impacts are inevitable, the first thing that an organization needs to do to be socially responsible is to minimize them and not to do foolish things in the name of “doing good.”

Drucker also felt that business leaders should take a “first, do no harm” approach in regards to social responsibility and general business ethics. Not a bad guideline for us all to adopt.

While other business leaders felt that social responsibility was the the responsibility of business, Drucker felt that social responsibility was not only a duty but could provide a competitive advantage beyond simple public relations. Sound familiar? Competitive advantage versus Greenwashing. Drucker saw that CSR could provide flexibility for an organization, allow companies to attract and retain talented employees, reduce employee turnover, provide a return on investment (ROI), and yes; Increase sales and profit.

I wish that I could have met this man. He seems to have had the ability to view business from multiple angles and not be held to one rigid view of what business is or should be. He saw that business had a “circle of life.” A process that should be nurtured and allowed to change, but at the same time required to hold certain points as guiding principles through out the ages. Which I suppose is what sustainability is about; changing, growing without doing harm to current and future generations.

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