Sustainability Planning Services

Sustainability doesn’t just happen – it takes planning and some effort.  Eco-officiency offers sustainability planning services that can help your company make the transition to sustainability. Or if you already have a plan in progress, we can help you navigate through roadblocks you may be encountering.

Eco-offciency has a seven-step process to guide organizations through development of a sound sustainability plan.  Management or a designated green team is guided in a facilitated process to address each planning area. Each process builds on the previous, but can be a stand-alone too, depending on the company’s needs.

The following is a description of the sustainability planning process:

Conducting an Assessment

The assessment stage provides information on the current status of sustainability within a small to medium sized organization. It entails a series of questions with each major department or division to provide current understanding of business processes as it relates to sustainability. It also provides a framework to engage staff on possible options, solutions, and ideas that could be implemented in their department to create a more sustainable solution.

Once completed, the assessor will provide a final report that will consolidate all of the organization’s current green accomplishments as well as highlight suggested actions and initiatives to be implemented.  

Developing Vision & Purpose Statement

Without a vision and purpose, it’s hard to know if your company has achieved its sustainability goals – if you don’t know where you are going, it’s hard to tell when you’ve gotten there.  This process helps guide an organization through the process of describing the ideal state of sustainability an organization wants to achieve or become in the future. It also helps to clarity the purpose behind the initiatives so that employees and stakeholders can support it. Through various visioning exercises such as SWOT, back casting and scenario planning, participants use all this information to guide them in developing a vision and purpose statement. 

Developing Sustainability Goals and Objectives

This process will develop sustainability objectives and goals that support the vision and purpose statement. The participants will identify key objectives and goals for each primary sustainability area and develop a one to three year plan. 

Developing Initiatives and Metrics

Once one to three year objectives and goals have been determined, participants then brainstorm various ways those initiatives could be implemented. Each idea will be compared based on a variety of factors, such as, how easy the initiative is to implement, how much it will cost, how much impact it will have, etc.  Initiatives will be prioritized based on this factor rating. For example, if high impact, high improved efficiency, and low degree of difficulty are important to your organization, this process will help identify those initiatives that best meet those criteria. Once initiatives have been determined, participants will be guided through a process of determining how they are to be measured and what cost or savings are to be expected.

Establishing a Sustainability Project Plan and Timeline

In this process, participants will develop a sustainability project plan and associated timeline. The project plan will focus on the first year initiatives and determine sub-tasks, who will be involved, data being tracked and projected start and completion dates.  A comprehensive Return on Investment (ROI) will also be developed with the first year initiatives so an organization can clearly see expected costs and savings.

Evaluation of Stakeholders and Engagement

This process will identify key stakeholders within an organization including; clients, vendors, community groups, non-profit associations, government bodies, and other groups of people who impact and/or are impacted by your organization.  Once stakeholders are identified, the participants will determine type of relationship it has with each stakeholder and its relationship with sustainability initiatives.  Finally the participants map out steps to take to engage stakeholders in the sustainability process and plan.

Developing a Change Management Strategy

Although sustainability initiatives improve an organization and benefit the environment, the change involved can be stressful to employees and staff. It is important for organizations to understand the complexity of change and how to avoid sabotage. This process will guide participants to develop a change management strategy and plan to ensure the sustainability plan will be successful.  This process will also identify key leverage points in the sustainability plan along with identification of key individuals within an organization who will be integral to implementation.