Consultant Details 12 Steps to Sustainability
Kanal Consulting, a boutique management consulting firm based in San Francisco, has released its "Twelve Steps to Sustainability" report, which focuses on practical ways that organizations can implement sustainability to improve the bottom line and the environment.
According to Managing Principal Vijay Kanal, "Successful companies have realized that sustainability is a key element of strategy, and are profiting from it. Our focus is on identifying opportunities and helping clients execute on them, and we have seen that when sustainability is tightly integrated with the business it is possible to achieve financial success while helping the environment. This report is a blueprint to help organizations succeed in both dimensions."
The 12 key points are:
- Integrate sustainability into the company's vision, values, or core mission statement.
- Set goals that are specific, credible, measurable, and normalized for business changes.
- Treat sustainability projects with the same business case requirements as other projects.
- Let the CEO and senior executives be the key spokespeople, and demonstrate internal commitment.
- Establish a strong governance model.
- Ensure employee engagement.
- Drive operational efficiencies.
- Implement technologies and policies to reduce business travel and commuting.
- Employ product life-cycle analysis to inform new designs.
- Communicate internally and externally.
- Partner with the Supply Chain.
- . Engage various stakeholders.
Kelly Flores, who co-authored the report, notes that, "Sustainability is about more than changing light bulbs and recycling paper. It is about creating a company-wide effort to find new ways to lower costs and increase revenue. Forward-thinking companies are realizing that 'being green' is not just the right thing to do, but is also an important catalyst for value creation."