5 steps to make a sustainability plan for your business

More and more Australian businesses want to bring their operations into line with community expectations when it comes to sustainability.

Our own iugis Sustainable Re-set Research found the majority of businesses and consumers want a sustainability led COVID recovery in Australia. More than 8 in 10 consumers think it’s important for the nation to adopt more sustainable practices to aid economic recovery, a sentiment mirrored by small and medium businesses surveyed.

The research shows that businesses have the will to make their business more sustainable but may not know where to start.

We’ve come up with five steps to help you successfully put in place a sustainability plan.

1. Define what sustainability means to you and your business

It’s important to start by reading up on sustainability and understanding how it relates to you and your business.

The United Nations defines sustainability as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

Businesses have to take into consideration people, profit and planet in their sustainability plans – basically an articulation of how they will contribute to financial, societal and environmental sustainability.

It can take into consideration things like climate action, energy use, reducing waste and investment in local communities. Aligning to global frameworks like the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals can help.

2. Assess your sustainability performance

Before you can get to where you’re going (sustainability goals), you first need to know where you are. Undertaking a benchmarking exercise to understand your sustainability performance is vital.

It helps you to see what you can actually measure, where you’re already doing well, where the gaps are and how your sustainability performance compares to other market participants.

Many businesses share publicly annual reports on their sustainability progress and goals to track their performance and reviewing the plans of others in the industry can be a good place to start.

3. Figure out where your business can have the biggest impact

Desmond Tutu once said, “there is only one way to eat an elephant, a bite at a time.” That’s how you have to think about sustainability planning for your business. Once you have a clear view of your sustainability performance, you’ll have a good idea of the areas where your business can have the most impact.

The reality is that you will have to balance different priorities and agendas and there will be tough choices between what you want to do and what you can afford to do as a business. Think about identifying 3-5 strategic priorities or pillars for your plan, keeping in mind these considerations.

4. Empower and engage your team

Sustainability is not just the responsibility of your sustainability manager or corporate affairs team. It touches all parts of your business and if you are able to engage and inspire your workforce to make important changes, the sustainability journey will be far easier.

More often than not you are going to have people working within your business that have a passion for sustainability. Empower them as champions and bring them into the planning process.

5. Establish targets and how you will measure them

Every good sustainability plan needs hard targets and a way to measure them. The targets should stretch your business but be achievable at the same time.

Data will be important and the use of IoT is making it easier for us to track all manner of information pertaining to sustainability. At iugis we call this Business Consumption Intelligence? and are applying tracking technology through connected devices across our waste and energy offerings.

Measuring impact is becoming all the more important, not just because customers and community expect it, but because we’re heading towards a world where Company Directors could be liable for the sustainability performance of their businesses and overstating sustainability impact could see your business face penalties.

Being able to track things like waste diverted from landfill and reduced energy and water use will be critical to demonstrate sustainability performance.

This blog first appeared on the iugis website here.