Giving Compass' Take:

• Elizabeth Sturcken provides steps for companies that want to shift towards sustainability in 2019 to increase profits and protect the planet. 

• How can philanthropists help to guide companies to true sustainability, rather than greenwashing? 

• Learn about a strategy to distill CSR reports in two gauges. 

Sustainability targets create business value and companies stand to lose big financially if they don’t act.

Now that you have (hopefully) a reason for setting a sustainability goal in 2019, here’s my final piece of advice – how to do it:

  1. Start by evaluating your operations and supply chain before you set a goal in order to figure out your environmental impact and find the quickest wins and biggest opportunities to reduce that impact. Use tools like The Sustainability Consortium or CDP, to report publicly. This will help you set audacious, public and science-based targets for greenhouse gas emissions.
  2. Collaborate for scale by working with others – including NGOs like EDF, companies, and governments – in strategic and selective ways to create change beyond your boundary of control.
  3. Engage proactively on environmental policy to ensure long-term competitiveness, innovation, and bottom-line efficiencies. We can’t get where we need to go without driving large-scale change and we cannot do that without policy.
  4. Accelerate environmental innovation. 21st-century problems require 21st-century solutions. Using technology, data analytics, and visualization, companies and investors can make environmental problems visible and actionable – and even profitable.

Read the full article about steps to shift towards sustainability by Elizabeth Sturcken at TriplePundit.