On April 27th, 2009 the next version of LEED will launch. Changes are planned in multiple areas including credit alignment and weighting, regionalization, and the creation of a feedback process that allows for continuous improvement and flexibility of the LEED 2009 system. As part of the larger LEED 3.0 upgrade, you will also see changes in administration of professional credentialing, project certification and LEED Online features.

So, how does this affect the product manufacturer? In order to effectively communicate with your customers you need to be prepared to discuss the difference between LEED 2.2 and LEED 2009 and know exactly how your products relate to the new system. One thing has not changed. Architects, specifies and designers are still going to want to know how your products will help them achieve points. Are your sales and marketing staff ready to sell for LEED 2009?

According to the USGBC, in LEED 2009 the allocation of points between credits is weighted based on a set of impact categories. These categories reflect the potential environmental impacts and human benefits of each credit. The USGBC website states “the impacts are defined as the environmental or human effect of the design, construction, operation, and maintenance of the building, such as greenhouse gas emissions, fossil fuel use, toxins and carcinogens, air and water pollutants, indoor environmental conditions.”

As a result of credit weighting, there is a considerable change in allocation of points from LEED 2.2 to LEED 2009.  Changes reflect the important environmental issues we are facing today and emphasize energy use reduction, green house gas emission reduction, and embodied energy of materials, water and solid waste.

For a limited time, Green it Group is offering discounts on a LEED 2009/V3 Credit Category Analysis™. We will assess your product for compatibility with the new LEED rating system, provide you a verification logo for use on all LEED related marketing materials and create a user friendly credit matrix catered towards the needs of architects, specifiers and interior designers.

[originally posted on the triple pundit.]

Assessing your current operations is critical to understand how to move forward with incorporating sustainability into your business. If you do not know where you are in terms of material use, energy use, water use, waste consumption, the receptivity of personnel in your organization to change and the receptivity of your customers to your products and services, it is difficult to set realistic sustainability goals and create metrics to track those goals.

Most importantly, setting your benchmarks early allows you to measure and track sustainability ROI. This weekend, I sat on a marketing panel at The Presidio School of Management with Dan Geiger, Jay Tompt and Jill Albeson. We were addressing the topic of certifications and marketing. As always, Dan raised a great point – the easiest way to convince people that sustainability is feasible is to show them financials. In order to create the strongest financial case for sustainability you must benchmark your organization’s performance before you implement your program.

An assessment helps identify the different systems in your organization and clarify how these systems function. For example, a few systems you may identify are purchasing, building management regulations, transportation norms, employee communication norms, external communication norms, recycling and waste norms, and energy and water usage. The assessment helps you evaluate each of these systems and determines if they are functioning optimally or if you need to change them.

When doing your assessment, keep in mind that, at a minimum, a sustainable business accomplishes the following:

• Saves energy
• Conserves water
• Reduces waste
• Minimizes travel
• Buys sustainable products
• Produces greener products and services
• Builds community
• Increases employee engagement and leadership

Take some time to consider how you would examine your organization based on the eight categories bulleted above. It is best to gather your team, just as you did for your visioning session, and agree on the sustainability indicators that your organization will use to benchmark your performance. As I mentioned in the last post, engaging your stakeholders is a key component to all phases of corporate sustainability implementation.

Benchmarking the sustainability standing of your organization, products and services through auditing not only enables you to improve business operations; it protects you against greenwashing by providing back up documentation for your marketing claims. If you are going to make claims about being a sustainable company or selling a sustainable product you must have verification to back up those claims!

Using meaningful metrics and accepted protocols as reliable measurements of an organization’s efforts is critical to the success of any sustainability program. When Green it Group engages with clients for sustainability benchmarking, we use a customized method of auditing as part of our Sustainable Growth Management ™ program. It helps our clients achieve compliance with leading environmental standards and prepare for GRI reporting, LEED EBOM certification and B Corp certification. This allows us to determine areas for increased efficiency and cost reduction and make sure the organization is “bridging the chasm” between marketing and operations.

So far in this series we’ve covered sustainability visioning and benchmarking. Two crucial steps in setting the foundation for your sustainability program! Next week we will learn how to create achievable goals that align with your vision by using the benchmarking data collected during auditing. Stay tuned.

[originally posted on the triple pundit.]

In the last post, I covered a basic understanding of what sustainability means, why it is important and what changes are arising in the marketplace. Now it is time to determine how you want to integrate these concepts into your business. The first step in executing any sustainability initiative or program is to determine where you want to go by creating your sustainability vision and defining your goals. Just like any mission statement, your sustainability vision (also referred to as a sustainability mission or sustainability positioning statement) serves as a compass for your organization.

In this post, we will focus on sustainability visioning and creating a sustainability positioning statement for your organization. In next week’s post I will circle back around to goal creation. To create your sustainability vision, follow the following steps:

• Seek Outside Facilitation

While this is not a necessity, companies often benefit from seeking leadership from an outside facilitator. Working with someone who has a background in sustainability helps you create realistic, achievable goals. If you are not working with an outside facilitator, be sure that someone on your team has sustainability experience. It also helps assign a note taker to capture everyone’s input.

• Gather a Team from Your Business

A shared vision helps everyone in an organization understand how he or she individually and collectively contributes to the success of that company. This can greatly impact the effectiveness of external communication to clients and customers by creating a coherent and congruent message.

To increase stakeholder engagement, gather a team that represents different levels and departments in your organization, which will help you create a message that will resonate with the majority of your employees. This will help you elicit buy in from all employees – especially those who were not involved in developing your company’s sustainability vision - when rolling out your sustainability program.

Just last week my colleague Prudence and I conducted a visioning session for a new client, Marazzi USA. After our meeting, everyone realized the value of bringing in stakeholders from various departments into the room. Now, their entire team is excited about moving forward with incorporating sustainability into their organization and engaging all employees in the process.

• Determine What Sustainability Means to Your Business

Sustainability is a value-based term. No definition can possibly encompass all cultures, nationalities, worldviews, races, businesses, and so on. Really drill down to the core meaning of sustainability, and how that relates to your business, for each stakeholder participating in the visioning process.

Below are a few of the questions we ask clients when working with them to map out their sustainability vision.

1. Where would you like your organization to be in five years?
2. How will your organization relate to the natural environment, stakeholders (community, employees and shareholders), and other businesses?
3. What do you want your clients to say about your organization?

After all involved participants have a chance to voice and discuss their opinions, use information gathered during the session to create your organizations sustainability vision. Some companies use this as their external sustainability positioning statement and some choose to craft an additional external statement. Each organization is different. The key component … be sure your external messaging reflects your internal action. This will build brand credibility and protect you from greenwashing.

[originally posted on the triple pundit.]

What Is Sustainability?

What is all this buzz around green anyway? Some choose to think of “green” only in terms of the environment. However, I encourage you to think beyond green and incorporate a social dimension into your green initiatives. This merging of environment, society, and economy brings us to the idea of sustainability. According to Webster’s Dictionary, sustainable means “capable of being sustained.” When we take this definition and apply it to the environment and society, sustainability can mean a multitude of things. We can use it to describe resources used in a way that does not take more from the earth than can be replenished or to describe a company that empowers workers to be innovative and balanced. Sustainability can also describe a society or business that energizes people to be productive contributors to their communities. In short, sustainability is about balancing the intricate cyclic systems of ecology, economy, and society.

By applying the same cyclical approach to our business systems, we can help ensure that we will have a continuous supply of resources, rather than depleting them and leaving nothing but waste. Instead of devouring resources and leaving nothing useful afterward, we want to return those resources to the cycle so they can continue to be productive. For example, when we use water, instead of polluting it with waste products so that it is no longer usable, we want to be aware of what we mix into our water supply and clean it before we put it back into the system. This protects our neighbors as well as our planet. We can replicate this idea with any resource we use, including human capital.

Why Sustainability Is Important

Business has thrived for the past 150 years by feeding natural resources such as water, oil, coal, and agricultural products into our economy. However, the process of retrieving those elements from the earth has often created waste products and pollution. In addition, human life and education have been devalued, contributing to increasing societal and health issues. Today, we are beginning to see the real cost of depleting our natural resources and discarding the by-products. We are also realizing the inherent value in maintaining a positive, productive workforce.

Today’s global population is estimated to be just over 6.7 billion people. Over the last two centuries, the global population has skyrocketed, and global trends show that it will continue to rise at a rapid rate. To put that into perspective, according to NOVA science programming, the population of the earth in 1927 was around two billion. Until around 1950, the population growth rate remained steady at around 1 percent per year. About this time, advances in public health, including the use of antibiotics, allowed for longer life spans, adding to the population issue. By 1960, the global population reached roughly three billion. In the past 50 years, the global population has increased by almost four billion people, and by the year 2050, it is expected to hit nine billion. Our planet and societal systems will have to provide for nearly three billion more people than they do now - three billion more people who want to live without resource restriction.
All of these factors – resource depletion, increased population, and increased perceived need for commodity items - present a risk for those doing business as usual. Is your business ready to take on the challenges and opportunity of incorporating sustainability into its organization? Stay tuned for weekly “how to” posts and prepare your organization for the New Economy.