Our latest posts on ‘sustainability consulting’
We all know what we need to do to make our companies more environmentally friendly: use less energy, water, and paper, travel less and make less garbage. But yeah, it’s easier said than done especially if you’re in a carbon intensive business like manufacturing or energy production. What’s the company without a lot of time or expertise to do? Well, hire someone, of course! Who do you hire, and how do you know what to look for? Here’s the lowdown on the biggest and smallest players in the newest consulting game and how to separate the wheat from the formerly-unemployed-newly-rebranded “Sustainability Consultant.”
First, you need to know what you are looking for. Different consultants have different kinds of expertise:
“Climate change and climate policy in Europe and the U.S. – Opportunities and Challenges in the Run-up to the Copenhagen Summit and beyond”
Thus was billed a recent conference I attended last week at the Aspen Wye River Conference center located in rural Maryland along the eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay. The two-day conference was yet another step in the Transatlantic Climate Bridge began earlier this year between Germany and the U.S. in hopes of fostering greater understanding and cooperation on energy and climate issues, especially now in the final days before the Copenhagen summit.
The conference brought together journalists from both sides of the pond, along with a select group of advisors, consultants, negotiators, and policy experts on the front line of the issues facing the world next month in Copenhagen. Since the journalists (and blogger) at the conference are subject to the Chatham House rules, I am not able to attribute specific positions to any particular speaker, but the ideas discussed and the perceptions explored in the dialog are worth summarizing – kicking it off with the burning question in the wake of news over the weekend that world leaders have “agreed not to agree” to a fully binding treaty at COP15: Is there any real hope left for “success” in Copenhagen?
In a word, yes. There is not only hope, but a realistic chance for success at Copenhagen. That is, if we can engage in “expectation management” and tailor a definition of success within those expectations – let the qualifications begin.
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The first online Sustainable Brands Boot Camp produced by the folks at Sustainable Life Media who convene the annual Sustainable Brands Conference kicked off yesterday.
CEO KoAnn Vikoren Skrzyniarz recently spoke to one of the SB community members, Diane MacEachern, Founder and CEO of Big Green Purse about what drove the launch. We’ve published the whole interview below. The Boot Camp, which continues weekly for 13 weeks, pulls together many of the top sustainable business consultants and teachers in the US to provide an inexpensive, convenient 360 overview of the principles and current best practices of building a sustainable brand. 3P readers looking to boost their career would do well to consider participating.
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Lost in all the talk about whether or when nations and industries will have emissions targets, is the question of who, exactly, is going to measure those targets.
Without a pool of trained and certified professional GHG managers, climate change initiatives — from the United Nations Framework down to the sustainability plan for the shop around the corner — could stall.
Worse, a lack of accountability could turn the “greenhouse gas expert” into the snake oil salesman of the 21st century, peddling a dubious product whose ingredients change from one bottle to the next.
Enter the Greenhouse Gas Management Institute. The Institute provides professional training in greenhouse gas accounting and verification, primarily online, and its ultimate goal is to create a professional society for greenhouse gas accountants and verifiers, similar to the way other fields — architecture, law, medicine, accounting — have national or international certification bodies.
The Institute was launched in 2007 as a non-profit by Michael Gillenwater and Tom Baumann, two recognized experts in emissions measurement, who realized that there was an emerging need for standardization in their field.
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It’s a Consumer Reports or CNET type of comparison shopping service for the eco-conscious crowd.
Eco-rate is the brainchild and a labor of environmental love and activism founded by a Seattle couple, Brycelaine Self and Colby Self.
“The Eco-rate idea is to allow people to compare common household products, based not only on their green attributes, but also on their affordability,” says Brycelaine Self, co-founder of Eco-rate and principal of a related green building, green marketing and energy consulting company, Eco-innovations.
Launched in mid-May, they spent more than two years designing and developing the Web-based product and technology rating and comparison resource for shoppers looking to make ecologically-intelligent choices on just about any product out there, from autos to dishwashers to TVs to paint to water heaters.
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Today, many companies acknowledge that they can play a significant role in addressing climate change and sustainability in general. Some have even begun proactively beating a path to transform their businesses, reaching for lofty goals such as zero waste, carbon neutrality, or even restoration of degraded ecosystems. Most, however, are only just starting to figure out what it means to be a sustainable business. In a previous post, I discussed the 5 levels of sustainability management maturity, through which a company must progress in pursuit of a sustainability transformation. So where should a company invest to successfully reach their sustainability goals?
In my opinion, there are four primary areas that you should consider when developing a sustainability investment plan: management infrastructure, eco-efficiency programs, strategic initiatives, and marketing programs. Clearly, there is a need to address these areas somewhat sequentially; you cannot successfully market sustainability before making strategic changes, and you cannot develop strategic initiatives without already having an appropriate management infrastructure in place. There is, however, room for overlap, and most mature companies manage to do all four in parallel.
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By Deborah Fleischer, Green Impact
Ever since I studied adaptive leadership with Ronald Heifetz at Harvard, I have been interested in the intersection between organizational change, systems theory and sustainability issues. Many sustainability professionals seem to lack an understanding of what it takes to create enduring, lasting change within an organization or system. As illustrated with the recent departure of Van Jones from the White House, a change agent needs a strategic understanding of how to navigate the dangers of leading change without getting scapegoated or sidelined.
I recently learned that Sustainable Silicon Valley (SSV) is offering a two-day Sustainability Change Agent Training with Alan AtKisson, November 16th and 17th. I’m excited that I will have the chance to attend (I will be attending to cover the event for Triple Pundit).
I realize many of us have “workshop-itis” these days after attending a few too many workshops and conferences. But I feel this topic has not been well covered at past green trainings. And Sustainable Silicon Valley is offering Triple Pundit readers a discount of $100 off the registration fee (applies only to SSV partner and non-partner rates). Go to the registration page and use the code “triplepundit” when registering.
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These days, we hear more and more that a company’s stance on social and environmental issues plays a significant role in choice of employer. A recent survey found that over 50% of American workers report being inclined to work for “green” companies. Women and Generation Y in particular want their company’s mission to go beyond profitability, encompassing benefits to the wider community, on social, environmental and economic dimensions (with men and Boomers not that far behind). They are eager to work with companies in which they feel they can make a difference.
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Employee engagement is a growing strategy for driving performance and building competitive advantage for companies with a commitment to sustainability.
“The engaged workforce will find more opportunities to get lean and identify more opportunities to innovate and create products and services that lower customers’ environmental impacts. All of this work will improve the top and bottom lines,” comments sustainable business expert Andrew Winston, in his recent book Green Recovery.
Based on his book, and some of the other recent literature available, I offer the following three tips for engaging employees in sustainability:
- Look at the big picture and identify your greatest impacts across the value chain;
- Involve staff in sustainability on multiple levels, both at work and at home; and
- Integrate sustainability into operations and everyday decisions on products throughout their life cycle.
Catalyzing your employees to integrate sustainability into both their lives and work decisions can be a low-cost strategy for saving money, driving innovation and keeping employees happy.
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If more people perceived the word “sustainability” to be synonymous with “wealth creation,” I imagine many of the barriers to forming a green infrastructure simply wouldn’t exist. Blue Skye, a San Francisco-based sustainability consulting firm, is seeking to establish that synonymy, helping business leaders use sustainability to craft new, inventive wealth generating strategies. The message that environmental and social issues are part of the core of any green business – a message Blu Skye consultants convey to businesses big and small – has achieved significant results. If efforts like Blu Skye’s are successful, more companies – and job seekers – stand to benefit from the business possibilities inherent in sustainability.
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A centerpiece of the stimulus package is an effort to put 3 and 4 million people back to work over the next two years.
The site Recovery.gov includes a map of the U.S. with the estimated jobs expected under the Recovery Act superimposed over each state. California leads with 396,000 anticipated jobs, while North Dakota and Vermont expect the least job growth with 8,000 each.
I’v been curious to better understand who is leading the charge on training the workforce for the wave of new green jobs we are expecting. Are companies taking the lead? Federal agencies or state governments? It seems to be a bit of a chicken and egg scenario. If you deploy training programs without partnering with business, you will have a trained workforce, but no jobs. And if you create the jobs, but neglect workforce development, critical shortage of specialists in growing professions could occur.
According to the National Renewable Energy Lab, the major barriers to a more rapid adoption of renewable energy and energy efficiency in America are insufficient skills and training.
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Driving sustainability into the operations of a company is an oft-stated goal for sustainability departments. How many times have you heard (or said!): “My vision is that one day our department will go away…and sustainability will be just part of everyday business, and the sustainability department will be out of a job.” But how do we actually make that happen? How do we ramp up a sustainability program from a departmental focus to an organization-wide set of capabilities? And how do we move from many disparate efforts to a cohesive set of coordinated initiatives? The answer is an effective sustainability governance solution.
So what to do?
To solve these challenges, a “governance” solution is required that addresses both the diffusion of sustainability into the organization (from the sustainability department into general operations) and sustainability collaboration across the organization (to establish synergies such as the sharing of best practices, resources, tools, etc.).
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We all know what we need to do to make our companies more environmentally friendly: use less energy, water, and paper, travel less and make less garbage. But yeah, it’s easier said than done especially if you’re in a carbon intensive business like manufacturing or energy production. What’s the company without a lot of time or expertise to do? Well, hire someone, of course! Who do you hire, and how do you know what to look for? Here’s the lowdown on the biggest and smallest players in the newest consulting game and how to separate the wheat from the formerly-unemployed-newly-rebranded “Sustainability Consultant.”
First, you need to know what you are looking for. Different consultants have different kinds of expertise:
Read Full Article » Discuss This »
Environmental Defense Fund and
Ashoka are organizing three upcoming Green Innovators Unconferences in Boston, Silicon Valley and Austin. The goal of these gatherings is to connect participants with other innovators to share experiences and ideas, explore new trends and opportunities and brainstorm out-of-the-box solutions to the challenges we’re all facing.
Unlike traditional conferences, there are no formal panels or speeches. They use an participatory, “open space” format. All participants will have an opportunity to share, discuss, network, collaborate and learn throughout the day. For those of you familiar with other meeting facilitation models, think Future Search meets World Cafe with a dash of Open Space thrown in.
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