Posts tagged ‘EHS and sustainability’
Who really cares about sustainability data?
Mike Wallace
Like so many environment health and safety (EHS), and sustainability professionals, you are probably working hard to make sure sustainability is a core part of your organization’s overall business strategy. This means integrating it into your company’s operations, providing a constant source of relevant information, continuous operational improvements and, of course, a return on investment.
But does anyone really care about all that effort? Fortunately, the short answer is, “Yes!”
We’ve seen significant changes in the public’s interest in sustainability issues, with more concern and media attention to issues like global warming, human rights, conflict minerals and corruption. For business, this has meant much closer scrutiny of environmental and social impacts, and in many cases, a demand to see disclosures on more than just the typical environmental metrics.
This has resulted in a multitude of ways for companies to be transparent about their activities, from publishing sustainability information right in their financial reports, to signing up for initiatives like the United Nations Global Compact or disclosing to initiatives like the Carbon Disclosure Project. And in the past decade or so, producing more extensive sustainability reports. In this series of five blog posts for the Green Tie, I’ll look at who’s asking for sustainability data, what that means and how you can make sure your information effectively and efficiently reaches your intended (and unintended) audience.
The audience for sustainability information is much wider and more varied than you might think. Stakeholders come in many shapes and sizes, ranging from investors and business partners in the supply chain, to employees and even your local mayor. These stakeholders are analyzing and evaluating your company’s performance on a variety of levels, using data directly disclosed by companies, sustainability listings and an ever-growing number of rankings and ratings.
How do you distinguish good raters from bad, useful from useless? How do you make sure the questionnaires you answer give you an entry point to the right people?
All the surveys you’re getting are just the tip of the iceberg, hinting at the proliferation of rankings, ratings, listings, research tools and sustainability indices. Companies aren’t fully aware of how many entities constantly monitor, analyze and convey sustainability information about them and their competitors, entire industries and/or entire indices.
Mainstream investors are increasingly examining sustainability information (sometimes through the intermediaries mentioned above) and even stock exchanges around the world are exploring what sustainability means to their institution and to their listed companies. Business decisions are no longer solely based on financial information.
It seems obvious that requests for disclosure are only going to increase and a GRI report is the recognized method of communicating sustainability performance. More than 80 percent of the Global 250 are using the GRI Guidelines to report on their sustainability performance, and those are just the ones that we know. You can see a snapshot of those in the North American GRI Reporters based on a review we did in January 2012. There is a clear upward trend in the number of organizations that are reporting across all regions and sectors.
In this sea of information, how do you keep it real? Efficiently gathering the relevant information and transforming it into a credible communication for the mix of interested stakeholders is key. To understand who is looking at sustainability information and how this information is being measured, take a look at my presentation Measuring Sustainability Performance.
In closing, there are a couple of key questions you might want to consider:
If you are using the GRI Guidelines for your sustainability report, does GRI (and the world) know it? Search the global GRI database and register your report at – http://database.globalreporting.org/
Are you fully aware of the Application Level and how and why it is being used by reporters? Get the latest at GRI’s Report Services https://www.globalreporting.org/reporting/report-services/Pages/default.aspx
Mike Wallace is Director of the U.S. Focal Point for the Global Reporting Initiative and is responsible for supporting the growth of sustainability reporting in the United States. You can follow him on Twitter at @M_A_Wallace.
How a New Design Revolution will Change Supply Chain Management
Howard Brown
Stories about Henry Ford’s genius with manufacturing abound, though it’s rarely clear which ones are actually true. One of my favorites is his insisting that parts manufacturers deliver their products to his plants in wooden crates of his design, which he then dismantled and used as floorboards in his cars.
Supply chain management has grown in sophistication and importance since Ford’s time. The quality movement, just-in-time manufacturing, corporate responsibility initiatives, enterprise-wide information systems, environmental impact analyses like life-cycle assessments, and growth in transparency and public access to information have all brought about major changes in supply change management. Now a new design revolution is about to create an even bigger change in supply chain thinking. The change will come both from new materials and products and from new manufacturing technologies.
Radical new materials and products (such as the ones we feature in the dMASS Insights newsletter) will themselves disrupt traditional supply chain relationships. For example, there are composite materials that exhibit behaviors with the potential to replace mechanical appliances, tools, and other machinery – even entire factories. There are materials that can be used to generate electricity by movement, temperature differences and solar energy conversion. Others have the ability to interfere with the growth of harmful bacteria, actively transfer heat or emit light with minimal energy subsidy. The cumulative effect of new materials and products will be shorter and simpler supply chains.
New manufacturing technologies will be at least as disruptive as the products themselves. Nano-scale manufacturing technologies such as Additive Layer Manufacturing (including 3D printing) and bio-manufacturing (the growing of products) stem from recent advances in the scientific understanding of how nature organizes itself at the most fundamental levels of matter and energy. Similarly, biomanufacturing stems from new discoveries in the fields of genetics and micro-organisms. The common thread among each of these technologies is a growing knowledge of nature’s tendency to self-organize, and an ability to leverage this knowledge.
Three-dimensional (3D)printing, in particular, has the potential to drastically cut resource demands, costs and dependence on resource-intensive supply chains, as well as pollution and waste. Advanced computer-aided design (CAD) systems bring design down to the level of individual molecules. The entire downstream supply chain for a 3D-printed product can be a set of printer cartridges containing different chemical elements. When laid down in precise proportions, the atoms arrange themselves into material structures with the desired characteristics. Printing can often be done in small shops, portable facilities, or even in the home. There is little or no need for high-temperature smelting in parts manufacturing, high-speed grinding or stamping that produces manufacturing scrap, or glues, adhesives, staples, rivets and other parts to hold separate pieces together.
Henry Ford’s tactic saved resources a century ago by creatively taking advantage of existing supply chain resources and harvesting value from waste. Nano- and bio-technologies will radically transform supply chain management in a new way. Business success will increasingly require understanding these technologies and taking advantage of the changes they will bring about.
What are your thoughts? Have you begun to experience supply chain changes due to commodity prices or supply problems, or due to the availability of new materials, products, or technologies?
Howard Brown is a noted entrepreneur and the founder of dMASS.net, an organization focused on helping businesses improve resource performance. For more than 20 years, he was CEO of the consultancy RPM Systems, Inc. (Resource Planning and Management), where he worked with companies such as International Paper, Mobil, BP, Duracell, Avery- Dennison, Whirlpool, SaraLee, and Wrigley, earning a worldwide reputation for developing practical strategies that merge environmental and business goals. To learn more about dMass, visit: http://www.dmass.net/wordpress/
Meet the NAEM Board of Directors: What are the EHS and sustainability trends to watch in 2012?
As part of NAEM’s 2012 Member Appreciation Week celebration, we sat down with members of the NAEM Board of Directors to talk about the EHS and sustainability trends to watch in 2012. Featuring Michael Miller of Dean Foods; David Newman; Mark Hause of DuPont; and Verne Shortel of NRG Energy.
Meet the NAEM Board of Directors: What are some of the lessons you learned in 2011?
In honor of this week’s 2012 Member Appreciation Week celebration, we sat down with members of the NAEM Board of Directors to talk about trends in EHS and sustainability management. Featuring Deb Hammond of Abbott Laboratories; Stephen Evanoff of Danaher Corp.; Bruce Karas of The Coca-Cola Co.; and Minda Sarmiento of Shaw Environmental Inc.
