New Video Series: Vision to Value – The Profit in Corporate Responsibility

Welcome, everyone. Yesterday, I presented a webinar on From Strategy to Success – Ensuring Effective Implementation. There was an excellent turnout and some great questions. If you were unable to attend the webinar or would like to view it again, the video is available below or on the Resources page of my website. This webinar further explored the topics I covered in my February video series.

The next series I will be releasing in March will be Vision to Value – The Profit in Corporate Responsibility. In order to support a long-term business strategy, sustainability initiatives need to provide cost savings and/or generate revenue. Monetizing sustainability ensures continued management support and drives responsible growth. Optimizing and quantifying the financial benefits of Corporate Responsibility can be challenging. This series will provide insight on measuring the benefits of your Corporate Responsibility program and offer strategies for maximizing return on sustainability investments. Similar to the previous series, I will be presenting a live webcast on March 25 to delve deeper into this topic. Register here to secure your seat on the webinar now.

If you want to take your knowledge of sustainability to a new level, and apply it directly to your organization, I will be hosting a seminar titled Corporate Responsibility Revolution: Strategy to Success on May 7, 2014 in Philadelphia. This interactive full-day seminar will provide a roadmap to develop and implement an effective Corporate Responsibility plan that supports a successful business strategy. The videos and webinars I am releasing should be used as prerequisite learning for this seminar. They will provide a core understanding and critical steps to advance your business. Registration is open for May’s seminar, and you can find more information on it here.

Be sure to subscribe to the blog (top right) to get email notification of my video releases and future webinars to continue building upon the content I have already released. Also, use the link below for more details on the seminar and reserve your spot today. I hope you are enjoying the content and keep coming back for more.

– Tad Radzinski PE, LEED AP, SFP

Links:

Register for next month’s webinar.

Catch up on the February videos:

1.            Building Internal Sustainability Support

2.            The Importance of Collaboration

Collaboration – The Critical Component

Welcome, everyone! This week we continue our February video series with part 2 of From Strategy to Success – Ensuring Effective Implementation. Today’s video is titled The Importance of Collaboration, and highlights collaboration as a key aspect in successfully integrating sustainability into your organization. Collaboration in Corporate Responsibility can come in many forms, both internally and externally.

The best example of internal collaboration is employee engagement. Creating a sustainability team that includes members from every sector in the organization including management, operations, logistics, sales, and marketing is important in fostering collaboration and truly ingraining sustainability throughout the corporate culture. Tapping into a diverse group of contributors also allows for different perspectives and innovative solutions. This is increasingly important in organizations with several business units. Oftentimes, managers and employees in different business units are either not concerned or not informed regarding other business units, but sustainability can be used as a tool to break down these barriers and benefit the organization as a whole.

External collaboration is beneficial when your sustainability goals stretch beyond the organization itself. A common example is sustainable supply chain initiatives. In these situations, spreading sustainability throughout the supply chain requires extensive collaboration and communication with suppliers and even customers. As we continue to see a shift toward the sustainable economy, external collaboration is becoming more prevalent. This shift has even brought together competitors in order to collectively advance their industries.

We will dig deeper into the topic of collaboration in next week’s webinar, so be sure to register and reserve your spot now. These webinars are a good opportunity for you to ask any questions you may have, and have very well received over the past few months. Don’t forget to subscribe to my blog, top right, and keep providing your feedback and comments.

– Tad Radzinski PE, LEED AP, SFP  

Links:

1. Catch up on the videos and webinars you may have missed
2. Register for next week’s webinar: February 25 at 12:00pm EST

Waste Not, Want Not: Waste Diversion as a Direct Path to ROI

Welcome, everyone. I hope you are enjoying the February video series, From Strategy to Success – Ensuring Effective Implementation. The second video in that series, The Importance of Collaboration, will be released next week. This week, I wanted to discuss a major focus in the sustainability space, waste diversion.

Formerly serving as the EPA’s Waste Minimization Program National Expert for ten years, I have seen first-hand the significant impact that addressing waste has on the environment, as well as an organization’s bottom-line. Through collaboration with industry during my tenure at the EPA, we were able to implement initiatives that reduced 100 million pounds of waste, saved 1.6 billion gallons of water, and saved the industry $42 million. Many businesses are facing growing pressure to reduce waste generated from operations and to divert waste from landfills; however, this also presents financial opportunity, as waste equates to lost resources and profits. Reducing all forms of waste is critical to an effective and sustainable business strategy, and is one of the simplest ways to achieve ROI.

Each organization is unique, and there is no “standard solution” to reducing waste; however, the first step you should take is to fully understand material flows and wastes. You need to measure, characterize, and quantify material flows and all waste streams in order to properly understand your operations. When working with organizations to reduce waste, my consulting firm always starts with this process, because gathering information is critical to developing your action plan.

Last Thursday, two members of my team led a webinar titled The Path to Zero Waste - Reduce Impacts, Save Money, Get Certified, which you can view on-demand below or by following this link. This webinar provides you with vital information on how to reduce waste from your facility, and avoid sending waste to landfill, by implementing a comprehensive waste reduction program. Check out the webinar and make sure you subscribe to my blog (top right) to receive more free resources on sustainability.

I look forward to releasing next week’s video, and I hope you all can join me for this month’s webinar, From Strategy to Success –Ensuring Effective Implementation.

– Tad Radzinski PE, LEED AP, SFP

Links:

1. Last week’s video: Building Internal Sustainability Support
2. Register for the webinar February 25th

Building Internal Sustainability Support

Welcome, everyone. Today we kick off the February video series, From Strategy to Success – Ensuring Effective Implementation. The first video in this series is titled Building Internal Sustainability Support. Garnering support for your Corporate Responsibility program within your organization is a crucial factor that will affect its success. As discussed in the video below, there are several ways to increase internal support of your Corporate Responsibility initiatives.

It is important to engrain sustainability into the overall corporate strategy so the goals of your Corporate Responsibility program do not conflict with your business plan, but rather, are an integral part of its success. In order to gain momentum, support for these initiatives will need to come from all stakeholders, including employees, shareholders, executive management, customers, and suppliers.

Executive buy-in is critical for budgetary purposes; but for sustainability to be truly embedded in the corporate culture, it is necessary to engage all employees. Fostering employee engagement can be difficult; but training is a key tool for instituting organizational change (think safety, diversity, etc.). By empowering employees, innovative solutions to further advance your sustainability goals can be found throughout your organization.

For more guidance on building internal sustainability support, watch the video and register for this month’s webinar to explore this topic further. Be sure to subscribe to the blog (top right) and keep sending me questions and comments. Your feedback is helpful in developing valuable content to aid you in advancing sustainability in your organization.

– Tad Radzinski PE, LEED AP, SFP