How would you like the value of going “green” revealed through practices that save money, boost retention, clean up the environment and competitively position your company in the “green” economy?  Read on to learn how to schedule a FREE one-on-one conference for a Green Audit that will:

• Identify ways to save money immediately, thereby increasing your profits
• Position your company to immediately benefit from Cap and Trade legislation when it passes
• Give you something to tout with your existing customers to spur additional sales
• Increase employee morale and retention using a green focus   as a point of pride
• Gain new customers and employees – people who make   decisions on the basis of which companies are “walking the walk”  when it comes to making a difference in the world

The BOTTOM LINE? Your business can make a difference and experience returns. So where should you start?

That’s where Brain Lab comes in. We partner with companies and organizations to build and enhance internal and external “green” practices, processes and culture that support the triple bottom line of sustainability– people, planet and profits. With our solid understanding of sustainability issues and an expertise in marketing communications and branding we believe clients can “do well by doing good.”

Statistics support the fact that strong community involvement and new green building practices are increasing employee retention through an enhanced work environment.  Other companies are realizing cost savings in addressing environmental factors such energy, water, waste, materials, processes and transportation. In fact simply turning off lights in the evening, ensuring computer screens are switched off and making full use of natural light has been shown to decrease a business’ energy use by 20%. And this is just a brief snapshot of cost saving strategies.

This information is available within your company and accessible through a Green Audit.

A Green Audit is essential because it arms you with knowledge to establish a baseline and launch your own “green” plan. This methodology will take you through the process of collecting and analyzing data, understanding employee awareness around green issues, and creating a green action plan based on your carbon footprint results. Plus we’ll benchmark your results against other organizations that are going green.

Each Green Audit includes the following:  

• Employee survey
• Office/building survey
• Carbon footprint analysis
• On site visit by a green auditor
• Final green audit report with recommendations

And, the final results give you practical steps that will save money and increase your profits; position your company favorably for impending environmental legislation; spur additional sales with customers; increase employee morale and retention; and gain new customers and employees.

We believe in building partnerships and as such we encourage an initial FREE one-on-one conference at your office to further discuss implementing a Green Audit. Once we spend time together we’re certain you’ll find us a good match to help you on your sustainability journey.  We’re so sure in fact that we’re offering the first ten companies who schedule a conference a 33% discount off the price of their Green Audit.

Call 602.578.7930 or email lisa@brain-lab.com to schedule your FREE one-on-one conference to discuss a green audit for your company.

I look forward to hearing from you and helping your company uncover its profitability in “greening” the planet!

Lisa Barnard, LEED AP

P.S. Brain Lab offers this innovative methodology as the only Green Auditor in Arizona and is backed by the power of a Washington, D.C. based certifying body. The 33% discount for a Green Audit that will DRIVE PROFITS, BOOST PRODUCTIVITY AND SAVE THE PLANET expires on August 31, 2010, so make your call to 602.578.7930 today!

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: 

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. 
  

Social Metrics     

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.

OB ad -- Use OB tampons instead of applicator brands and save up to one pound of waste per year

I just had to share it. It’s true, and the reason I’m a customer, but for some reason I just didn’t expect to see it in print. Or maybe I was just hoping not to. Why should I be shocked? Nothing is sacred, is it?

Hope that wasn’t too much information. This is the era of TRANSPARENCY after all.

For more fun and interesting ads check out  The GreenWashing Index.

Plastered on the back of one of those huge gas guzzling pickup trucks was this bumper sticker. Not ONLY was it there, IN MY FACE, but the driver was actively practicing what he/she preached… gunning the accelerator and wildly passing slower moving vehicles in rush hour traffic. Granted it was Sun City so there were a number of slower moving senior citizen vehicles but it really wasn’t necessary.

So hey good for you “Mr. or Mrs. Suckin’ Gas and Haulin’ Ass” for sticking to your ideals but I sure wish you could pick something else to take a stance on. Seriously, your energy, OUR energy, could be spent in much more productive ways.

Whether or not you believe in global warming, climate change, solar energy or hybrid vehicles it seems just about everybody agrees we are facing an energy crisis. So while I’m not asking that you drive a hybrid or ride your bike everywhere could you please not be so obnoxious about how you’re using our precious non-renewable resources. Thanks.

P.S. Does anyone else find this disgusting or is it just me?

What is servant leadership?  I think the quote below from Robert Greenleaf who coined the term in the 1970s says it best.

The servant leader is a servant first. It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. The best test is: Do those served grow as persons; do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? 
~ Robert K. Greenleaf

A couple of interesting figures bringing home the bottom line case for servant leadership were:

1. Servant-led S&P 500 companies pre-tax portfolio returs were almost 15% higher than non servant-led S&P 500 companies;
2. Of the 500 largest publicly traded companies as outlined in Jim Collins’ book Good to Great, the servant-led businesses outperformed their peers by 224%.

Five elements related to leadership and organizational success are strategic leadership, operational leadership, employee passion, customer devotion and organizational vitality.

While listening to the presentation it occurred to me that the notion of servant leadership is a perfect tool for an organization looking to adopt a sustainable business model. This path to leadership really speaks to the heart of the social pillar of the triple bottom line. The critical element of servant leadership is about stakeholder engagement as is true of the social, environmental and economic aspects of sustainability.

What better way to effect lasting (sustainable) change than to create a organization where the focus is on what people need, promoting collaboration, sharing power and leaders becoming facilitators.

Perhaps if you’re needing one more point to add to your business case for sustainability, servant leadership will offer something more practical.

Denver Water campaign by Sukle Advertising

Affecting change in this sustainability movement starts with the people. This is about all of us, not just the politicians, the scientists or the hard core environnmentalists. It’s everyone making small changes to affect the condition of the planet and our place in it.

Speaking of of hard core environmentalists, Adam Werbach use to be one and he’s changed his direction after creating WalMart’s sustainability programs and witnessing the impact of their thousands and thousands of associates in shifting the conversation ( birthofblue is a great read on Werbach’s about face).

It’s not a popular notion in our hyper-consumer driven world but give it try next time you reach for something at the store. Do you really need it? Do you already have something similar at home? It’s not always easy, trust me, but the tough economy certainly has made it easier to use only what I need.

Here’s Ray Anderson of Interface from a TED Talk last month. I’m consistently blown away by his vision of more than a decade ago that business needed to shift its thinking to protect our finite resources. As he says, what business is/was doing should be considered the “theft of our children.”

Some make the argument that its easy for big business to tackle sustainability because of their limitless resources, but I say those same organizations are behemoths to navigate . It seems to me that if an organization like Interface can make a Mid Course Correction then the little guys should  be just as nimble and innovative.

For stat fiends the highlights are:

• Net GHG down 82%
• $400,000,000 in costs savings due to waste stream recovery
• and Interface’s BHAG (big hairy audacious goal) 0 carbon emissions by 2020 – Anderson says they’re halfway there

You be the judge.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iP9QF_lBOyA]

SSC Certified Green Auditor

I recently completed Strategic Sustainability Consulting’s Green Audit certification program in Washington, D.C. and was very impressed with the President/Founder, Jennifer Woofter’s thoughtful and well-reasearched approach to conducting a green audit. Most impressive is the proprietary carbon calculator developed in collaboration with D.C. based think tank, Redefining Progress and San Francisco based, The Green Office.  The quantitative analysis provides some hard facts on where the real savings in going green can be found.

Its true that reducing,  reusing and recycling does have an overall impact to the environment as well as employee morale. It can definitely be a boost and draw folks closer together when a recycling program or “green” awareness campaign is started. However paper and waste generally is a small contributor to most office-based businesses overall carbon footprint.

The true opportunity for cost savings in this integrated methodology is looking at embedded carbon in a number of factors such as commuting, air travel and office infrastructure (these have some of highest embedded carbon). In many companies air travel is the number one contributor to its carbon footprint. Given the high cost of air travel, there are significant savings to be realized by developing an alternative to frequent travel such as video conferencing. Commuting is also a high contributing factor to many organizations carbon footprint and analysis via employee survey can provide hard data on determing if a telecommuting program would be a good approach for lessening your impact.

If you’ve been looking for the numbers approach to making the case for green, this audit provides both robust quantitative data and qualitative analysis to put a plan into action.

Specifically the audit includes the following five components:

• Employee survey
• Office/building survey
• Carbon footprint analysis
• Onsite visit by auditor
• Final green audit report

Plus results will be benchmarked against your peers so you can understand how you compare to other organizations going green.

If you’re interested in more detailed information please check out the link above.  Brain Lab is certified by SSC to conduct these green audits and would be happy to talk with you further.

If you’ve implemented your own cost saving initiatives I’d enjoy hearing about them.

John Friedman echoes my thoughts on employee engagement and offers five additional key benefits to sustainability in business in this article “The Six Business Benefits of Sustainability.”