Mine Your Own Business: Eight Win-Win Strategies for Business and the Environment

mine your own businessEight Win-Win Strategies for Business

and the Environment

Erik FoleyFounder and PrincipalDais Consulting Group

talking pointsMain message: by understanding sustainability strategy you can better link your energy work and increase uptake, compliance, and innovation

Roadmap • Spaceballs wasn’t joking. . . .we have a problem• The rise of sustainability• The way to win-win• The eight win-win strategies

Now we have the evidence to show us that that our human activities,

the footsteps of our own time, will affect negatively the lives and

Bro Harlem Brundtland, Prime Minister of Norway, led a UN Commission on the Environment and Economic Development that traveled to five continents

“Now we have the evidence to show us that that our human activities…..will affect negatively the lives and choices we leave to future generations in a potentially disastrous way…We face a moral challenge to act and to act in time to protect Planet Earth and the livelihood for new generations.” (1987)

“How can businesses respond to the challenge of sustainable development?”

John Elkington

The Triple Bottom Line

Thought-Action Gap

Source: Terrainfirma www.terrainfirma.co. uk

pollution

toxicity

degradation

equity

Strategic Sustainability Framework

8 win-win strategies

Biomimicy

Service model

Natural Capital

Human Capital

Waste is Food

The New Green

Consumer

Eliminate Toxicity

ResourceProductivity

#1 Radical resource productivity examines inputs and doubles or triples utilization rates reducing operating costs and environmental costs.

Frederick Winslow Taylor,

Father of Scientific Management

“Hardly a competent workman can be found who does not devote a considerable amount of time to studying just how slowly he can work and still convince his employer that he is going at a good pace.”

Energy efficiency is a common example of resource efficiency but it includes any and all inputs.

Increasingly, we are focusing on ways to double or triple efficiency using, for example, DOD using waste heat from a

tank to serve soldiers on reconnaissance/surveillance missions.

#2 Biomimicry is the strategy of mimicking the designs of nature in products, systems and processes.

Speedo helped Michael Phelps become the world’s fastest man in the water by copying. . .

#3 Service over products means viewing products as value-producing assets designed for adaptive reuse.

Do you really want to own your TV?

Or copier?Or generator?

Or solar panel?Or carpet?

Or iPhone?Or air conditioner?

Instead of selling the customer a product that you

hope she’ll be able to use to derive the service she really wants, provide

her that service directly at the rate and in the manner in which she

desires it, deliver it ever as efficiently as possible, share as much of the

resulting savings as you must to compete, and pocket the rest

People don’t want to own carpet. They want the service it provides.

Fact: 3 billion pounds of carpet landfilled every year in the U.S.

Interface Corporation

$37 trillion

=

#4 Strategically investing in natural capital ensures supply chain resilience and social license to operate

“Priceless”

“If our planet was a business, how much would it ask to be paid for the services it provides to a company in order to operate?” –Jochen Zeitz, PUMA Executive Chairman

PUMA would owe nature $200 USD

million/year

New York City invested $2 billion in natural capital (to protect its watershed) instead of

$4 billion to build a filtration plant.

#5 Investing in human capital, the skills and capacities within people, ensures community well-being and a source of innovation. (Plus, humans are awesome)

• Cross-functional teams• Participatory decision-

making• Purpose/Mastery

Autonomy• Emotional intelligence• Innovative and

Entrepreneurial work cultures

• Accountability

0 1000 2000

7 billion

Year

World Population

An keystone human capital strategy for sustainability is stakeholder analysis and engagement aimed at measuring and managing social and environmental costs and benefits within and beyond the organization.

Stakeholder Mapping Tool

On April 24, 2013, more than 1,000 people lost their lives when a nine-story factory building collapsed suddenly in Dhaka. The garment workers made clothes for Gap, Walmart and other retailers.

The cost of not including social and environmental risk assessment beyond the organization (supply chain).

Patagonia’s “Footprint Chronicles” is a good example of the race to transparency among many leading corporations where sources of raw materials and suppliers are shared to demonstrate investments in human capital in the supply chain.

#6 Going beyond waste reduction to eliminating the idea of waste reduces costs, risk and develops new products and services.

11th Commandment: Thou shalt not make, produce, create, or invent anything that cannot safely be either a composted or used to make something.

#7 Tap the emerging green consumer and

investor/funder.

Interests and demands are varied and worth analyzing carefully for your particular customers.

#8 Reducing or eliminating toxicity reduces regulatory, storage and health

& safety costs and environmental impact.

Herman Miller

Your assignment: make a chair….with none of these:

To date Herman Miller has over 20 Cradle to Cradle CertifiedCM Products. They have conducted a greenhouse gas emissions inventory for all operations and all of the electricity used by Herman Miller facilities worldwide is powered with 100% renewable energy.

8 win-win strategies

Biomimicy

Service model

Natural Capital

Human Capital

Waste is Food

The New Green

Consumer

Eliminate Toxicity

ResourceProductivity

First cost

Full cost

Bonus strategy….#9 Full cost accounting and life cycle costing ensure an organization understands the true costs of decisions whether capital investment, procurement, etc.

But how do you know which set of strategies are best for your

organization?

That’s another presentation…..but….

Understand Sustainability

Assess Current State

Identify Priorities & Create the Business Case

Set Goals and Develop Metrics

Create a Vision

Develop an Implementation Plan

Six

Ste

ps o

f S

usta

inab

ilit

y P

lan

nin

g

Internal

External

TomorrowToday

Strategic Sustainability

Compass

Supplier assessment survey

Product innovation

Survey and focus group with clients/customers

Develop an employee engagement plan

Facilities resource use assessment and reduction plan

Establish internal carbon trading

Link compensation with sustainability KPIs

Move to clean tech

Source: Stuart Hart

review: talking pointsMain message: by understanding sustainability strategy you can better link your energy work and increase uptake, compliance, and innovation

Roadmap • Spaceballs wasn’t joking. . . .we have a problem• The rise of sustainability• The way to win-win• The eight win-win strategies

Blight to Bright: First solar farm on a Superfund site. The Reilly Tar & Chemical site is about 120 acres. The Hanwha Q CELLS solar farm, dubbed the Maywood Solar Farm, is a 10.86 MW. (Indianapolis)

How to leverage sustainability strategy to further energy projects:

• Become sustainability literate and know the issues, standards, opportunities for your business and industry

• Build relationships with your sustainability staff and learn about their charge and goals

• Position energy efficiency and conservation (and EnergyCAP) as a strategic investment that advances sustainability goals

• Develop a broader energy efficiency and conservation program to include technical, behavioral and strategic aspects to engage employees, customers and suppliers

• Identify, measure and manage key performance indicators using appropriate technology