3.
Your business strategy should strike a balance between improving your impact on the planet and ensuring you continue to make a reasonable profit. After all, you can't help save the planet and its people if you're out of business.
Create two layers in your strategy:
Small sustainable changes
Big sustainable changes
Small changes can be simple things like turning off electricity and heating at night or using a motion sensor to automatically turn off lights when no one is in the building. It could also include activities like changing your current packaging to more environmentally friendly materials.
Bigger changes take longer to implement, but can lead to more impactful results. For example, you could establish local initiatives to provide living wages to community artisans who help make your products or replace your current equipment with energy-efficient versions.
Your strategy should lead you toward your sustainability goals, so it’s important to choose goals that you can realistically measure.
4. Implement your sustainable practices
Creating a strategy and implementing it are two very different things. Once you've decided what canadian consumer email lists you want to achieve and how you're going to get there, it's time to put the steps in place to make it happen.
When implementing your sustainability practices, think about:
What resources do you need to make it possible?
What milestones can you create to make it more manageable?
What will the schedule be for each activity?
If you need support from external stakeholders
How you will analyze the results of your efforts
5. Evaluate your results
Like any strategy, you won’t know if your sustainability plans are successful unless you track them against your initial goals. Remember to review your goals regularly to make sure you’re still on track and getting the results you hoped for.
This is a good opportunity to determine whether you need to change tactics or set more ambitious goals.
Choose key metrics to track, such as your carbon footprint, waste percentage, reduced electricity bills, or the number of local organizations you’ve partnered with. This will give you clear, measurable ways to track your progress.
Examples of sustainable businesses
The sustainability strategies you choose to implement in your business will be unique to your operations, missions, and industry—no two strategies are exactly alike.
This means that sustainability in business can take many different forms, including:
Use of sustainable materials in the manufacturing process
Optimizing supply chains to reduce emissions
Partnering with community initiatives to reduce waste
Sponsoring educational needs in marginalized communities
Using renewable energy sources to power production lines
Here are some business sustainability strategies in action.
Meow Meow Tweet: Sustainable packaging with clear instructions
Vegan and natural skincare company Meow Meow Tweet does a great job of working with sustainable packaging. There is an optimal way to dispose of or recycle each element of their packaging, including paper boxes, glass jars, and paper tubes, and they make this very clear to customers.
On every product page, you'll see "The Breakdown." Take the page for Rose Geranium Deodorant , which states that its paper tube and seal can be disposed of in your municipal compost or your garden compost.
Meow Meow Tweet has a section called The Breakdown on every product page that shows how the packaging can be recycled.
Meow Meow Tweet has a section called The Breakdown on every product page that shows how the packaging can be recycled.