We have been providing consulting services for over 20 years now, and while sometimes it may feel like it, it is not the “second oldest profession” as some have been known to call it. When to end the relationship with a consultant is a relatively easy decision and usually revolves around one of two events. In the first case, a project is completed and well integrated into the company’s activities. The second may be due to downsizing where usually the first ones in front of the firing squad are the consultants. Far more challenging is determining when to bring in consultants to get the best bang for your buck and to increase the likelihood of success for a project. We pondered this dilemma in terms of sustainability consulting. We ‘consulted’ with our clients, conducted research, and reflected upon our personal experiences. The result is the identification of four key characteristics that collectively present a compelling argument that “it’s time to call in the pro’s”.

• Characteristic One: A Persistent Itch

The Persistent Itch refers to a feeling or thought that something needs to be addressed, and while some efforts may have been made, there is still the sensation that more needs to be done. Many of our clients will have already implemented recycling in their staff rooms and developed printing policies, but feel they are just scratching the surface – and they are right.

• Characteristic Two: Knowing there has to be a Better Way

Knowing that more needs to be done, implies there has to be a better way of conducting business. However, because people are already fully engaged in their “real jobs” it is challenging to carve off the time to do the work required to explore alternatives and make new choices. Some clients have expressed a frustration that while there is much discussion within the work environment and much coverage about sustainability in the media, very little has actually been done to map out a plan that leads to quantifiable results.

• Characteristic Three: Caring

People are genuinely engaged in the sphere of influence and care about wanting to change collectively. There are enough people at all levels of the business that are concerned that something needs to be done and are willing to be part of the change. It is not sufficient to identify one person as the “green” person, who then becomes the ‘hall-monitor’ for green practices, the majority of stakeholders need to be willing to commit.

• Characteristic Four: Willingness to Support

It needs to be recognized that sufficient support will need to be provided to ensure the business or its resources are not overwhelmed by the effort required or not able to actually effect change. In other words, moving a business toward sustainable practices is not done off the corner a person’s desk, or even by a ‘green team’. There needs to be committed support at the board or executive level, along with a willingness to change.

So, if these four characteristics describe your situation, then you are ready to maximize a sustainability consultant’s services. For more discussion on this topic, we have created a Guide titled “When To Call in Sustainability Professionals” available for download.

Reducing Greenhouse Gases isn’t just about saving money and mitigating risks to profitability. It can also serve as driver for deciding how to best invest corporate philanthropic contributions that can drive customer loyalty and ultimately profits. In our efforts to help our clients transition to more sustainable business practices, we often recommend a realignment of their practices for giving back to their community. Almost without exception, businesses small and large give back to the community through direct financial contributions, sponsoring events, or providing logistical support. By aligning their community contributions to their GHG reductions goals businesses can reduce their environmental footprint and at the same time significantly improve their relationship within their community. To maximize results, a business needs to determine how to get the biggest bang for its buck, which we think is through local “grass roots” organizations. Supporting local organizations not only leads to positive long-term results for the community, it also enhances a business’ image, increases its local customer loyalty, and improves its market resilience during tough times.

To reinforce our argument, we refer to a report released this February by the US based National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy titled Cultivating the Grassroots: A Winning Approach for Environment and Climate Funders. It asserts “a vocal, organized, sustained grassroots base is vital to achieving sustained change.” It also argues that national organizations typically have one-off results, whereas authentic, local organizations build long-term leadership and capacity in the community to amplify change in the future. Supporting local organizers builds upon their knowledge of their social or environmental problems, helps them connect with others facing the same challenges and collectively take action to win concrete change. So how can businesses leverage this to their advantage?

At first blush, many of our clients have expressed concerns about getting engaged at the community level because it can be messy and take a lot time (can’t we just pay a carbon offsetter and be done with it?) However, there are seven steps a business can take to ensure it makes its contributions to the right group, minimize time demands, leverage staff interests, achieve quantifiable reductions in overall environmental footprint, and improve profitability.

Step One: Define Your Community
A community typically comprises people who reside in a specific locality, share government, and often have some cultural and historical linkages. While this may be more difficult to define for multi-nationals, it is a good starting point.

Step Two: Engage Your Staff
Your staff is your key to engaging in your community. Find out what local organizations they support and learn how you can support their interests and involvement. This can be done through employee volunteer programs such as providing ‘grants’ for employee supported community organizations that align with business goals such as GHG reductions. These organizations will likely involve gardening, tree planting, or bicycling related activities.

Step Three: Determine Financial Commit
As a starting point, we recommend allocating 25% of the total amount of financial contributions a business already commits to its community. Starting with 25% is a “safe” start and allows for assessing results to determine effectiveness of a program before committing more resources.

Step Four: Align Corporate Sustainability Goals with Staff Interests
Specify the criteria based on the business’s goals to determine which employee supported organizations are closest aligned. The criteria should emphasize future oriented benefits and consider supportive infrastructure or services your business can provide. In other words, the contribution does not just have to be financial. Community driven programs can have the greatest results when support includes technical assistance and know-how.

Step Five: Determine Metrics
Determine how you will measure success in terms of reduction in environmental impact, such as GHG reductions, as well as employee performance and customer loyalty.

Step Six: Engage with Your Community
Make your interest in supporting your community known, put in place a process that supports feedback from your community and supports your employees in their efforts. These can be done through traditional marketing, events, and recognition programs.

Step Seven: Assess Results and Repeat
Collect and analyze the data for the performance metrics aligned with your program, determine the effectiveness and identify areas for improvement. Tweak the program accordingly and start the cycle over.

In many cases this approach to winning the hearts and minds of your community will require a rethink of how you contribute. It means finding out what is important to your community, assessing your current contributions and possibly redirecting money and efforts. Some might argue that shifting your contributions is detrimental to long standing relationships. However, conditions change, businesses need to respond for the better. Supporting programs because you “always have” is not enough anymore. Alignments are key to value, and ensuring your staff and community are on-side is definitely valuable.

Who says everyone in the sustainability movement is guided by altruistic principles? We certainly do not, and we monitor for transgressions just to remind us to keep up our vigilance. This time we find $391,000,000 in carbon credit tax evasion in the EU!

In the EU, a carbon emissions Cap and Trade system is in place to help fight global warming. Companies must buy carbon permits if they emit more than allotted, and are allowed to sell permits if their emissions are less than allotted.

A German court found six men guilty for conspiring to evade taxes on carbon permits in the European Union from 2009 to 2010. They evaded taxes through a ‘carousal trade’ wherein emissions permits are imported into one country without paying the value add tax and them selling them.

Judge Martin Bach in the Frankfurt district court convictions ranged from three to seven years and 10 months.

Apparently imprisonment is another unpredicted impact of global warming.

By Karen E. Peterson – Staff Writer
I have RSS feeds and automatic subscriptions to a plethora of Sustainable/Green/Business online magazines, newsletters and informational sites. I scan them for common themes and scroll through quickly to pick up the threads of current conversations.

For example today I picked up that there was a significant bust related to stolen recyclable plastic (definitely a sign of our times), the EPA’s 2010 national analysis of its Toxics Release Inventory indicated that the release of toxics are actually up from the prior years’ data (boo), more electric vehicles are being designed (even VW coming out with an e-Bugster) and everyone is busy with their predictions for 2012 or summaries of the prior year – as is common for January (Greenomics does this too.)

But one of the writers decided that instead of looking to the future for our groundbreaking technologies and innovations – we should be looking around the corner. While I appreciate what he is saying, I find that we are all really into saying things these days – like we are looking for innovation in language itself. Hmmm. Maybe we should be looking down the alley or how about scanning the dumpster? Got me thinking about how we are using language in the Business of Sustainability.

One of the things I find interesting and useful but also irksome is the continued addition of terms and the need for redefining them. I know they all are important and specific to different things like supply chain management and not all of them are that hard to remember because they paint a reasonable picture in our minds– closed loops, cradle to cradle, biomimicry are all good examples. While we introduce this vocabulary to the mainstream to describe processes and resource usage I suspect we lose ever more people’s interest because they cant keep up with the jargon. No one likes to feel like they are out of the closed loop.

There is the added problem that comes from Greenwashing which is an abuse of words at its finest – eco in the front of anything is good, like eco-clean, or enviro – perhaps there should be an enviro-girl and she has green tights, but no cape. She will fight stains in her laundry and the bathtub with eco-alert enviro-particles. But most of us are used to this type of marketing – think of the invented names for facial creams; “micro vive cellular extending molecules”.

The other problem is the boring debate between professionals who are specialists in one field or the other. I did rather enjoy an article that talked about the difference between eco-efficiency and sustainability and that is because it answered for me why I am so uncomfortable every time they trot out Wal-Mart as a shining example of anything. The difference in these words is resource use versus resource availability.

Measuring how much water or energy we used compared to last year is simply about use itself and if we use less of anything – that must be better. But the main point is that we need to look at the location of the business, how much water is actually available and reasonably shared by the community at large, and what should be the prorata allotment to the business compared to what it takes out of the system. Is it sustainable at the current rate? And what if companies actually reported in those terms?

Because I have to say when I hear that someone used a whole lot less of anything than they did before I think –Wow, they are putting a really good spin on the fact that they were horribly inefficient and irresponsible with their resource use. Damn straight they better fix that before somebody catches on and determines fees and regulations around paying for those inefficiencies and waste…but then that’s probably just around the corner.

Anticipating evolving needs is critical to all organizations wishing to stay ahead of the competition, develop innovative solutions, and provide the best service possible. A key driver for the 21st century is the efficient use of resources, as global demand continues to rise, and virgin sources are depleted. This presents a new opportunity to capture resources headed for a landfill, thus reducing waste removal costs, generating revenue, and supporting local economic development. Greenomics has partnered with Gibsons Recycling Depot and Site Economics to create an innovative approach to help municipalities, regional districts, and others to seize this opportunity.
Our approach not only addresses Zero Waste goals, it also stimulates local economic development, public awareness, and identifies ways to generate revenue. As a collaborative consultancy we offer the following:

• Resource Recovery Assessments
• Community Needs Assessment
• Financial Analysis – The Business Case
• Site Analysis and Selection
• Facilities Design and Site Planning
• Project Implementation
• Stakeholder Engagement
• Community Liaison
• Post project assessments and Reviews for continuous improvement

What is Resource Recovery?

Resource Recovery is the extraction of useful resources that would otherwise be dumped at a landfill. The range of materials that can be viably extracted from typical waste streams includes compostables, metal, glass, paper, Styrofoam, cardboard, electronics, and plastics.
Our approach helps Municipalities, Regional Districts and other organizations achieve:

• Zero Waste Goals through Resource Recovery
• Community based employment opportunities
• Economic Development
• Social Engagement – opportunities to connect with community
• Behavioural Change
• Increased Revenues
• Reduced Waste Disposal Costs, and
• A Progressive Community Image