Corporate Sustainability Plan Outlines

Hi Anne

This is my consulting area. I call it "scaffolding", you do not construct the building for the corporation, merely support them while they do it themselves. Especially for corporations, they do not like the prescriptive approach. Here a simple framework I use.

Step 1 - select or invite people to form a Green Team, develop policy

Step 2 - encourage everyone to input ideas, create core values statement

Step 3 - sift ideas into categories of use & costs, etc & act with lots of feedback, positive reinforcement

Step 4 - get people inspired with green employee incentives

Step 5 - get your finance people to look at the low hanging fruit, save some $$

Step 6 - use those $$ to drive highly visible green incentive programmes or difficult-to-fix things

Step 7 - survey customers, suppliers, receivers of sponsorship programmes to see opportunities there are for outreach

Step 8 - take it to higher level management & shame them/teach them/lead them, whatever.

Step 9 - develop indicators to show improvement (% waste reduction per unit visitation, $$ saved on energy consumption, etc)

Step 10 - go to the internet and release publically your company green page, with real data and a green policy & see what happens next...

The key aspect is getting corporations to develop sustainability indicators. Here is some information on indicators..

http://www.csin-rcid.ca/ Canadian Sustainability Indicators Network

http://www.globalreporting.org/Home Global Reporting Initiative

http://www.sustreport.org/business/report/trends.html Trends in Corporate sustainability

http://www.naturalstrategies.com/publications/sb_epis.pdf

Hoping this is of assistance. What I find most frustrating of all is when corporations commence in an ad-hoc manner, neglect stakeholder participation (suppliers, partners, sponsorships, customers, etc), do not admit to limitations and therefore don't try to overcome them, and are not consistent throughout the company.

Best of luck

Regards
Melissa Hellwig

Sustainability Strategist
Niagara on the Lake
Ontario CANADA

Hi Anne,

Have a look at the publications on our web site at: http://www.sustainability.vic.gov.au/www/html/1519-search.asp?search=1&intLocationID=1519&keywords=EMS

There are several papers on setting up and operating an environmental management system. The item at the following address lists the steps to take in establishing an EMS:

http://www.sustainability.vic.gov.au/resources/documents/IA_tool_EMS_final_Sep_011.doc

Regards
John

John Osborne 
Renewables, Sustainability Victoria
T: 03 8626 8783 
F: 03 9663 1007 
Level 28, Urban Workshop,
50 Lonsdale Street, Melbourne 3000 

Anne,

two places to check on: The CERES (formerly Valdez) principles http://www.ceres.org/Page.aspx?pid=416 and The ISO 14000 Environmental management Series http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_14000_essentials

John Harrington

Program Officer
Greater Minnesota Housing Fund
332 Minnesota Street, Suite 1201-East
St. Paul, MN 55101
Phone: 651.221.1997, Ext. 115
Toll-Free: 800.277.2258, Ext. 115
Fax: 651-221-1904
www.gmhf.com