Whether you’re a business, a government agency, or an NGO, sustainability can be a complex and costly journey. However, if you follow the right plan for your organization, a successful sustainability program that pays you back in real benefits can be well within your reach. There are many cost-effective strategies you can employ to pursue your goals at the level of investment that is realistic for the current state of your organization, while you build a longer-term strategy for larger investments.
All of this is to say: If you find that you just can’t figure out how to fund your sustainability plans or that you aren’t getting the returns you expected, you may be going about it all wrong. Below are 9 of the costliest mistakes you could be making on your sustainability journey and what you can do to correct them.
Mistake #1: You’re skipping the small stuff. You don’t have to install renewables or overhaul your gasoline vehicle fleet to make an impact. Go after low-investment measures such as improving the efficiency of operational and logistical processes, adopting lean manufacturing practices, and upgrading low-cost facilities equipment (e.g., lighting and appliances). Focus on minimizing your waste, energy consumption, and water usage in your day-to-day operations before exploring solutions like what to do with your waste or what form of energy to use. Adopting simple and practical sustainability strategies like offering public transportation discounts, encouraging carpooling, collecting rainwater for non-potable uses, or reusing scrap paper and other resources may help you to unlock even more savings and long-term benefits than immediately pursuing costly technological solutions.
Mistake #2: You’re not partnering. Working with another entity, be it another business or a public sector agency, can help you cut down on costs and work more efficiently towards your sustainability objective(s). You might save as much as half of the capital costs on a given initiative when bringing a partner onboard. Consider how you might work with suppliers, end-of-life or waste handlers, utilities, government agencies, community organizers, other local businesses, and more. Check out this article for more recommendations about how to effectively partner.
Mistake #3: Your marketing is weak. A big part of your problem in reaping all the benefits of a sustainability program may be that you don’t understand how to build marketing and visibility around your sustainability performance and goals. You need a proper strategy to draw your stakeholders into your story using the terms and metrics that matter to them. Think about how to talk about sustainability in the right way, in the right places, to the right people, without misrepresenting or exaggerating. And don’t just write about it – deliver it to your audience. Take your communication beyond just a blurb posted on your website, and actually share your achievements and goals strategically, in the places where your stakeholders will see them. Remember that the more people know about your commitment to sustainability through your targeted (and honest!) marketing, the more likely they are to be partial to your products and services – and even pay more for them!
Mistake #4: You’re not engaging your stakeholders. If you haven’t solicited input and feedback from your stakeholders, then you might not be building the right solutions, and you can’t expect your stakeholders to take interest in your journey. You need to find out what customers, users, and affected communities have to say about your organization’s impacts and their own needs. Track what’s happening on social media, send out surveys, and even host workshops. Ask what else you can do to reduce harm and maximize value for your stakeholders. And don’t just disappear afterwards – let affected communities know that you’ve heard them and that you’re working on their concerns! Share successes (and challenges), and provide periodic updates!
This kind of engagement will make your stakeholders more likely to have interest in keeping up with your organization and celebrating your achievements in sustainability. By asking for their feedback directly, you can help your targeted groups to feel that they have a stake in your journey and are being taken along for the ride. And this whole process can teach you how to discuss your sustainability initiatives in the language that resonates with your audience. When all is said and done, your efforts will be repaid with greater interest in your products, services, or offerings, in addition to improved environmental and social performance.
Mistake #5: You’re not reporting. Something you’ll hear me stress quite often is that an ESG report is so much more than just a report – rather, it’s a tool to guide you in developing a strategic sustainability plan. Getting all your impacts on paper will help you understand your inefficiencies and weaknesses, brainstorm multiple solutions, and prioritize those solutions (potentially using cost as your assessment metric). You can even start with a basic sustainability audit to get you going (stay tuned for our upcoming postings on how to do this) and then build from there. The more comprehensive your report is, the more solutions you’ll be able to brainstorm, giving you more options for developing a cost-effective plan.
Mistake #6: You’re not taking advantage of government and utility incentives. There’s funding out there to support you on this journey! Check with your local, state, and federal governments for grants, rebates, subsidies, and tax incentives available to support you. Find out what additional offerings are available from your water and electric utilities. You’ll find that there are funding programs related to switching out to energy efficient equipment and lighting, installing renewable energy, increasing water use efficiency, implementing cleaner transportation, making building upgrades, and more.
Mistake #7: You’re not asking your non-executive employees. You’re almost certainly going to miss out on opportunities when sustainability planning is happening in a leadership vacuum. The staff who are running your organization’s day-to-day operations at the on-ground level often have a clearer perspective than executive-level leaders when it comes to where losses and inefficiencies are actually happening. Engage your employees who are on the factory floor, in the delivery vehicles, in the design shop, and throughout your organization in order to uncover all the places where your waste and overconsumption is hiding. Send out surveys and conduct interviews to start the conversation. Be sure to ask open-ended questions so that you can learn about employees’ authentic experiences in detail, and then follow up with more targeted fact-finding. Most importantly – incentivize your staff to get involved with developing solutions!
Mistake #8: You’re not driving innovation. You can (and should) use sustainability as a mechanism to drive creativity and to continuously improve your products and processes. You’ll often find that sustainable thinking comes with multiple simultaneous benefits. For example, a sustainability focus might lead you to develop an updated product design that uses less material. This would save you money on feedstock and might even improve the user experience (imagine, for example, an athletic shirt that’s more breathable because it uses less fabric in a way that doesn’t compromise durability).
The possibilities for innovation are wide-ranging. You might devise a creative solution that integrates your packaging with your product; combine two manufacturing steps or two product features into one; switch to a recyclable material that affords your product some performance benefits over the traditional design; or pursue many other types of sustainable innovations that can save you money or increase revenue. Don’t just look at general recommendations for how to become more sustainable – push towards deeper development that changes the way you make your products, upgrades the way you run your business, and differentiates you in the market.
Mistake #9: You’re not viewing sustainability as an investment. You might be fearful of going all-in because you’re viewing your sustainability initiative merely as an expenditure when, in fact, it’s an investment with a corresponding return. By adopting sustainable practices, you can unlock continuous financial benefits like monthly savings on energy bills, reduced production costs, and heightened operational efficiency, all while contributing to environmental well-being. Additionally, you can realize improved reputation and diminished risk, which each come with their own host of advantages. Take the time to properly understand and quantify the potential benefits of your sustainability program in the short and long term and then weigh those benefits against the investment costs. You’ll likely find that if your organization plans to be around for a while, sustainability will pay you back and then some.
If you’re making any of the 9 mistakes above, it may be keeping you from building a thriving sustainability program. Consider how you might use the given recommendations to improve your sustainability performance and achieve both short- and long-term rewards. I encourage you to take a swing at implementing some of these ideas and reach out to us if you need assistance.