The Key to Sustainability Success
Stephen Ashkin
Father of Green Cleaning | Influencer | Thought Leader | Green Cleaning and Sustainability Expert
When an organization begins its sustainability journey, what do you think will be the key to the program's success?
That’s what we recently asked LinkedIn members, and this is what they told us:
While most of the respondents believed "Leadership from the C-suite" is the key to an organization's sustainability success, what is now proving to be the most critical element is "sustainability analytics."
Here’s why.
Not long ago, businesses adopted sustainability practices as a "noble aspiration," aiming to do good and showcase their efforts to customers and the public.
However, organizations have evolved from having noble aspirations to focusing on the savings and profits realized by adopting sustainability practices.
Organizations now recognize that sustainability not only enhances operational efficiency - leading to significant cost savings - but it can also help attract new customers and help an organization stay ahead of ever-evolving regulations domestically and globally.
However, to fully realize these benefits, organizations must become familiar with sustainability analytics.
Analytics have transformed sustainability into strategic business decisions. They empower organizations to collect, process, analyze, and interpret data. Doing so provides them with valuable insights into their sustainability practices and outcomes.
Among the types of analytics collected are the following:
????????? Use of natural resources such as water, raw materials, and oil.
????????? Greenhouse gas emissions emitted by an organization including emissions from the use of traditional cleaning solutions.
????????? Waste generation.
????????? Efficient use of water, energy, and fuel.
Moreover, sustainability analytics allow businesses to proactively manage risks and address all dimensions of ESG: environmental, social, and governance.
By adhering to these standards, organizations can minimize their environmental footprint, promote social equity, enhance their reputations, and once again, generate improved financial results.
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Accuracy is Key
As crucial as sustainability analytics are to an organization's sustainability journey and progress, inaccurate information can lead to misguided conclusions and erroneous decisions. Providing accurate data, a keystone of the Green2Sustainable (G2S) system, empowers businesses.
G2S allows organizations to measure their progress, benchmark their performance against their own goals and industry standards, and effectively – and correctly – communicate their efforts to key stakeholders, giving them a sense of control and confidence in their decision-making.
And this is vital.
According to the Harvard Data Science Review, "incomplete [or inaccurate] data can significantly impact the accuracy of evaluating [sustainability] performance and lead to inaccurate predictions of such performance."
Further, the repercussions of collecting incomplete or inaccurate data can have serious implications beyond being able to make informed sustainability decisions.
Flawed or misguided information can:
????????? Undermine the sustainability efforts of an organization.
????????? Cause key stakeholders, investors, customers, regulators, and employees to question an organization's credibility and sustainability efforts in the future
????????? Damage an organization's reputation.
????????? Lead to inaccurate forecasting of risks to an organization, which can lead to overlooking critical dangers, and failing to take necessary precautions.
????????? Result in an organization being fined or penalized by government regulators if the sustainability data reported is found to be inaccurate.
As we can see, sustainability analytics are vital and fundamental to an organization's sustainability success, decision-making, its ability to manage risks, meet regulatory compliance, provide a competitive advantage over competitors, and long-term profits.
However, all of this can be lost and undone if the information collected is inaccurate.
At Green2Sustainable, we emphasize to our clients that their sustainability efforts will be questionable without credible and quantifiable data – and that’s why preventing this from happening is key to the G2S program.
-Steve