In This Chapter
Now that you have learned how to develop your vision, goals, and strategic sustainability plan and how to benchmark and gauge your organization’s current environmental and social impacts, it’s time to combine this knowledge and use it to implement your strategic sustainability action plan. This chapter outlines areas to focus on as you implement your plan and gives concrete examples of each focus area.
One way to start writing your policies is to review the questions you answered in the assessment and base your policies on what changes you want to see happen in your organization. For instance, if you investigated your purchasing processes and found you need to make several changes, you can write a green purchasing policy. Write your policy so anyone making purchasing decisions will understand what he needs to do based on the organization’s principles on sustainability. A good policy outlines the high-level issue you are addressing and gives a method for how to execute the solution.
For example, your policy might be to purchase copy paper and other paper products—including envelopes, post-it pads, folders, toilet paper, paper towels, scratch pads, and so on—at minimum 35 percent post-consumer recycled content.
Note
Post-consumer recycled content is material that has been used directly by a consumer and then recovered. Any green purchasing policy should outline purchasing requirements for at least 30 percent post-consumer recycled paper products.
Following is a list of other items to consider when outlining an environmentally friendly paper purchasing policy:
Chlorine-free paper
Tree-free paper, such as products at www.ecopaper.com
Products produced by a company with a stated commitment to minimizing ecological impacts and ensuring long-term, sustainable production
Go through all your practices as you determine your policies based on what you need to change, how you can best educate your staff about the changes, and how to assist them in executing the changes. After you have a draft document, get feedback from all your staff or a select group that represents the staff. This will help you recognize which policies will be difficult to implement and where your staff might need some training.
Even though this section is about establishing environmentally friendly policies, remember to think about social policies you can include that go beyond green by incorporating both social and environmental initiatives into your organization.
The following are examples of high-level policies:
“We will provide all associates with a safe, friendly work environment and will treat each of them with respect, openness, honesty, and fairness. We will solicit and respond to the ideas of our associates and reward their meaningful contributions to our success. We will provide a living wage to all Timbron employees, including comprehensive health benefits to full-time employees.”
“We will minimize waste pollution and develop and operate environmentally sound waste management procedures.”
“We value America’s diversity, so we will strive to reflect that diversity in our workforce, the companies with which we do business, and the customers we serve.”
“We will engage with suppliers and employers to reduce the life cycle impacts of our operations and products.”
Note
A living wage is the minimum hourly wage necessary for a person to achieve a specific reasonable standard of living. In developed countries such as the United Kingdom or Switzerland, this standard generally means that a person working 40 hours a week, with no additional income, can afford a specified quality or quantity of housing, food, utilities, transport, health care, and recreation.
This concept differs from the minimum wage in that the latter is set by law and may fail to meet the requirements of a living wage. It differs somewhat from basic needs in that the basic needs model usually measures a minimum level of consumption, without regard for the source of the income.
Greening your office space is a major part of implementing any sustainability plan. Not only will greening your office space help your overall organization reduce its environmental footprint, but it will also get employees engaged in your sustainability initiatives. Making green changes to the work environment of those who are in the office every day and getting them involved in footprint reduction will ingrain environmental values into your organization. Refer to Chapter 4 for detailed suggestions and instructions on how to reduce your office’s environmental footprint.
It is useful to create a green office guide customized to your organization that describes in detail environmental policies that relate to your general office space so all your employees understand them and know how to implement them. Also give employees an explanation for why you have chosen to implement the policies you have developed and why they are important to your organization. Make the guide as engaging and user-friendly as possible. Use Chapter 4 as a resources for creating your customized green office guide.
Your organization’s supply chain refers to the network of retailers, distributors, transporters, storage facilities, and suppliers that participate in the sale, delivery, and production of a particular product. In short, a supply chain is comprised of every person, company, and resource involved with the manufacturing of a product from beginning to end. When looking at your organization from a lens of sustainability, incorporate a systemic approach when thinking about this supply chain. Your supply chain is connected to the rest of your organization and is an inherent component in the creation of your sustainability program. If your organization produces products, read Chapter 10 for detailed information on how to make your products more sustainable.
Going Green
When implementing your sustainability action plan, don’t forget to include your products and manufacturing processes into the equation. After all, what you produce is not only integral to the success of your organization, but is also often the greatest contributor to an organization’s environmental and social impact.
If you are a product producer, your supply chain is an area where your organization will have the greatest environmental impact, so it is important that you understand the magnitude of this impact. You can do this by conducting a life-cycle assessment for your products. This life-cycle assessment analyzes the environmental impact of a product from “cradle to grave,” or from raw materials extraction through end-of-life disposal (see Chapter 10).
After you understand the impacts of your supply chain, create policies and plans to improve them. These policies will cover what you need to do to reduce the impacts of your supply chain. Perhaps you would like to reduce your transportation footprint. You would then create a policy that outlines your goal of transportation footprint reduction and outline a detailed plan of how to reach that goal. Another example might be improving the social impact of your supply chain. Perhaps you would like to ensure that the people actually making your product work in humane conditions. To achieve this goal, you outline a “no sweatshop” rule and develop ways to enforce it to ensure all your products are produced in humane work environments. Each organization’s environmental and social policies will be different depending on the needs of that organization.
A productive way to keep your organization on track when implementing your strategic sustainability action plan is to create checklists that will help employees remember the action items necessary to achieve your sustainability goals. Checklists keep people engaged in your plan and provide tangible, actionable items that each employee can accomplish. If you use the suggestion mentioned earlier and develop a green office guide, you can include the checklists in that document. If you are creating PDF checklists, be sure to design forms that can be filled out on the computer. Using electronic checklists such as PDFs will reduce your organization’s paper consumption.
Most scientists agree that global climate change is exacerbated by human impact, so reducing your company’s greenhouse gas emissions and carbon footprint should be part of your action plan. When you understand what your impacts are, you can determine the most efficient ways of reducing them. Learn more about calculating your carbon footprint in Chapter 6, or work with a sustainability consulting firm to assess your carbon footprint and to help you develop a Climate Action Plan.
After you’ve developed your baseline carbon footprint, it’s time to reduce your emissions. Remember that every reduction you make in energy use will result in reduced costs. In addition to the suggestions given in Chapter 4 for energy reduction, take the following tips suggested by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) into consideration when implementing your emissions reduction plan:
Manage office equipment energy use better—this includes personal work stations and company-wide IT servers.
Look for Energy Star–qualified products for the office.
Ask your office building manager if your office building has earned Energy Star certification or if energy efficiency upgrades have been implemented in the building.
Use less energy for your commute and product transportation.
Reduce, reuse, and recycle.
For more tools and resources on how to reduce your emissions and implement a Climate Action Plan, visit www.epa.gov/climatechange/wycd/stateandlocalgov/tools_resources.html.
Fresh water constitutes only 3 percent of the available water supply on Earth. With an increase in population and increasing growth, water demand and consumption also increases. To protect your business from increasing water costs and water use regulations, create and implement a water use reduction plan as soon as possible.
As you did with your plan to reduce emissions, refer to the information in Chapter 4 for suggestions on what initiatives to include when implementing your water reduction plan. You may want to categorize your water reduction plan into two segments: engineering practices and behavioral practices. Engineering practices include reductions based on modifications in equipment, plumbing systems, or water supply operating procedures. Behavioral practices include changes in personal water consumption habits.
Include the following actions in your water reduction plan:
Install low-flow faucet aerators and shower heads.
Install low-flow toilets or utilize a toilet dam system.
Use water-conserving ice machines.
Fix leaks on all sinks, toilets, and other water sources.
Reuse and recirculate water when possible. This is particularly important in manufacturing operations.
Treat and reclaim water when possible.
Use nonpotable water when possible and look into installing a greywater system.
If you have the ability, use water cisterns to store rainwater for later use. This is particularly useful for landscaping.
Design operational processes that consume less water.
Make waste reduction the center of any sustainability program. When you think about reducing your waste, think beyond the recycling bins, composting bins, and garbage cans to your entire operation. Your goal should be to see your entire operation through the idea of zero waste.
When you implement your waste reduction plan, be sure to give employees the resources necessary to carry out your goals. Your plan may include the use of composting and recycling bins in your facility to improve diversion rates, so make it easy for your employees to reduce waste by placing waste disposal stations in convenient locations. Make sure each employee has a paper-recycling bin at his or her workstation and is in close proximity to composting and additional recycling. Also create recycling centers for batteries, compact fluorescent light bulbs, and other types of hazardous wastes so your employees won’t throw them in the trash. Clearly label these areas and mark each container with the type of material that is to be put into it. To further encourage employee participation, hold a brief training session explaining the new waste diversion system. Highlight each new waste receptacle and the material that is to be disposed in it.
Note
According to the Zero Waste International Alliance, zero waste means designing and managing products and processes to reduce the volume and toxicity of waste, conserving and recovering all resources, and not burning or burying materials.
Remember, waste is a result of inefficient business processes. The more efficient you make your operations, the less waste you generate and the more money you save!
Although you should feel a sense of accomplishment for reaching milestones you’ve laid out in your sustainability action plan, remember to strive for continuous improvement.
As you implement your sustainability action plan, reduce your environmental footprint, and improve your social performance, be sure to track your progress. This serves as vital data for measuring the effectiveness of your program, determines areas for improvement, helps you measure your return on investment (ROI), and serves as the backbone to many of your green marketing initiatives that we will cover more in depth in Chapters 20, 21, and 22.
Every small change a business makes to reduce its environmental footprint and improve its social impact adds up. Starting small is a great way to ease into implementing your sustainability plan and to see how your new initiatives benefit your bottom line.
Heather’s friend Anna works at a large environmental consulting firm in Concord, California. When Anna took the initiative to be the green champion in her office building, she used the Bay Area Green Business Program’s guidelines and started making small changes to her office space, such as increasing recycling programs. Upper management was happy Anna was taking an interest in the company, but she felt it did not fully support her or the greening program she was trying to initiate. One day, as Anna was assessing the facility’s water use, she realized that the firm had been watering its neighbor’s lawn for over five years, costing them over $17,000 in increased water costs. When Anna pointed this out to her superiors, they were ecstatic about her findings and the cost savings associated with them. After this, Anna was encouraged to continue with her greening initiatives, including creating a water use reduction plan for the facility, and was even allowed to take an afternoon off work to attend the Bay Area Green Business recognition day.
This is just one example that shows how paying attention to details can result in large cost savings. As you implement your green program, remember that cost savings will add up over time. You might not see an ROI right away, but eventually your organization will become more efficient, save money, and operate through a lens of sustainability!
Although achieving sustainability may seem overwhelming at the outset, you’ll find that each small step you take—whether improving your waste management practices or increasing efficiency of water and energy use—will move you closer to your goals. As you make these small steps forward, you’ll likely find that the habits are easy to adopt. And you’ll soon find even more ways to reduce your environmental footprint as well as your costs.
Creating a strategic sustainability action plan is key to your success.
Sticking to a well-planned implementation timeline will make executing your plan easier for you.
Establishing energy, waste, and water reduction programs will help employees fulfill your plan.
Implementing specific plans will result in increased savings for your business.