The Green Tie

Emerging Leaders Series: Setting the Next Generation of Sustainability Targets

March 12, 2012 at 5:00 pm 3 comments

As a graduate student at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies my days are filled with classes, reading assignments and group projects. With all the school work, it’s not always easy to get out and learn directly from those who put the theory into practice every day. Fortunately, my Business and the Environment Consulting Clinic this semester has allowed me to do just that, taking me out of the classroom and into the corporate offices of Diageo, a leading premium drinks business.

As part of this course, Diageo’s Global Environmental Manager, Roberta Barbieri, has asked two colleagues and me to help research what the next generation of environmental sustainability goals for the industry might look like. Like many businesses, Diageo has set impressive 2015 environmental sustainability targets around carbon, water and waste, and has made great progress toward reaching them.

Most of these targets relate to the company’s direct operations. As stakeholders continue to demand greater transparency, however, leadership companies are beginning to establish targets for environmental issues from across the value chain. Diageo is one of these companies and wants to ensure that its programs aim to meet these expectations.

To support Diageo in this area, my colleagues and I are benchmarking Diageo’s current environmental targets and analyzing those of other companies in the food, beverage and retail sectors. To learn about other innovative ways to set targets and future sustainability trends we also spoke to corporate sustainability experts from NGOs, consulting firms and academia.

Our project deliverable will be an analysis of industry-leading environmental targets for the beverage supply chain. Throughout my research process I have wondered how other companies go about setting sustainability targets. After meeting some of NAEM’s members at the Forum in Tucson this past fall, I know that many of you are experts in corporate sustainability. You may also be responsible for setting your company’s environmental targets, so I thought I would pose some questions to you all that I’ve been thinking about:

• Do most companies conduct a risk assessment or materiality analysis to discern which environmental areas are most critical for target setting?
• What matters most when it comes to environmental sustainability targets: The feasibility of the target? The reputational benefit the target may bring? The environmental benefit the target spurs? The cost savings a target could help bring about?
• Does partnering with an NGO help a company develop stronger targets and metrics?
• Are absolute targets always better than relative ones?

Margo Mosher is a graduate student at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, where she is pursuing a Masters of Environmental Management. She is focusing her studies on corporate sustainability and will be graduating in May 2012. Prior to attending Yale, she taught urban ecology field studies in Boston as part of the AmeriCorps VISTA program. She is a member of NAEM’s Emerging Leaders group.

Entry filed under: Emerging Leaders Series, Managing Global EHS programs, Metrics, Sustainability, Uncategorized. Tags: Corporate Social Responsibility, Corporate Sustainability, corporate sustainability management, csr, EHS, EHS leadership, EHS Management, ehs metrics, EHS Trends, Environment, Environment Health and Safety, Environment health and safety management, environmental sustainability, esg, ESG metrics, Stakeholder Engagement, Supply chain management, Sustainability, sustainability management, Sustainability Metrics, Sustainability Reporting, sustainable business, transparency.