Sample page from Clif Bar's sustainability report

 

I recently presented at the Greater Phoenix Chamber of Commerce’s Green Roundtable and thought I’d share this section that attendees found particularly helpful. 

Most conversations for adopting sustainability programs and initiatives make it seem like a particularly onerous task. If broken down into practical ideas on how your organization can get started the journey becomes more exciting and within the realm of possibility. A good first step is developing a set of standards to measure your efforts against.  Three practical areas to consider are: 

  • Audits
  • Metrics
  • Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)

     

AUDIT   

At Brain Lab we believe it’s important to first take a look at where you are with the concept of green and sustainability to establish a baseline and some benchmarks. A Green Audit is the perfect mechanism for doing  just that. Our Green Audit includes the following:   

  • Employee survey
  • Office/building survey
  • Carbon footprint analysis
  • Onsite visit by auditor
  • Final report with recommendations

The final results give you practical steps toward creating initiatives and finding solutions that will have a positive impact on your bottom line AND increase brand equity.  

You can also adopt your own similar audit using online survey tools and utilizing free carbon footprint calculators. A particularly good calculator for small businesses can be found from the Berkley Institute of the Environment. Armed with information on how your employees feel about sustainability and the organization’s current efforts, along with a basic carbon footprint calculation you should be able to develop your own reasonable sustainability goals. 
  

METRICS
  
If an audit sounds like too big of an undertaking, just begin to create your own standards. By taking an in depth look at specific areas around social and environmental aspects of sustainability you may uncover areas of strengths you hadn’t considered. Review your organization’s progress on the following social and environmental metrics:  

  

Social Metrics     

  • Education – average hours of training and personal development per employee
  • Social events – number of employee/family social events held
  • Volunteer hours – employee volunteer hours in community activities
  • Contributions – dollars to external organizations
  • Safety performance

Environmental Metrics    

  • Waste elimination
  • Water
    - Consumption
    - Reclamation
  • GHG emissions
  • Energy use
    - Consumption
    - Renewables
  • Recycling
    - Avoided cost from waste elimination activities

 

GLOBAL REPORTING INITIATIVE (GRI) 

A very robust methodology for developing sustainability initiatives would be to utilize the GRI framework for developing a corporate social responsibility report.  In essence the guidelines offer the following:     

  • Principles to define report content: materiality, stakeholder inclusiveness, sustainability context, and completeness.
  • Principles to define report quality: balance, comparability, accuracy, timeliness, reliability, and clarity.
  • Guidance on how to set the report boundary.

For instance you will assess your organization against a set of environmental indicators that ask very specific core questions such as “Initiatives to mitigate environmental impacts of products and services, and extent of impact mitigation.”  To meet the needs of beginners, advanced reporters, and those somewhere in between, there are three levels in the GRI reporting system. They are titled C, B, and A. As a beginner I would recommend reporting at a C level.  This framework certainly takes the guesswork out of what you should (or should not) include in your report. For more information I suggest reviewing the G3 QuickReferenceSheet.      

Hopefully this information provides a fresh perspective on what and how you can begin viewing your organization from a sustainability lens.    

Good luck and let us know if you have any questions.