Sustainability

During the first half of the year, there are several days set aside to promote awareness and action and celebrate the environment, in general, and water in particular (World Water Day, Earth Day, World Environment Day). While they might have started with a specific purpose and scope, they now share much in common – embracing a global focus, turning awareness into action and understanding the interconnectedness of human activities.

All actions are important to take (e.g., saving water versus recycling) and they often share common benefits.   As mentioned in a previous post, organizations are not always consistent in capturing all the risks and benefits.  For example, recycling does not just address a waste issue, it also benefits GHG emissions.  Similarly, reducing water consumption can result in GHG emission reductions.  These interrelationships are reflected in how both world water day and world environment day have similar climate change themes.   The interconnection has become more apparent with COVID-19.  It started as a health issue, is now an economic issue and may be linked to climate change and declines in biodiversity.

While many of us will observe these environmental anniversaries sheltered in place, there are still opportunities to make a difference by taking actions at home. No matter what action you take, make it count by:

• Don’t do it alone – As others have written, many of today’s issues are big and complex and will take everyone working together to solve. All members of society benefit when individuals take positive actions. With the current pause, it is more important than ever to think about how small actions add up to big results.
• Don’t make it a one-time activity. Find ways to make it fun and simple so the change will continue even after restrictions are lifted.

Here in Wisconsin we are uplifted at the sight of spring emerging from winter’s cover. The chance to get outside again in a safe manner gives everyone a little room to breathe. It’s a good way to be reminded of nature and the origins of these environmental anniversaries. Trees, sun, spring plants, rivers opening, and the coming warm weather are all positives. Better Days are ahead. Hopefully, you can take an action and enjoy nature no matter if it falls on April 22 or a future date.

Today’s environmental and sustainability challenges are complex. The challenges for footprint reduction and doing good have one fact in common. There is no one-size fits all solution. It is going to take more of us taking actions on multiple fronts to address the myriad of opportunities and risks which are part of a sustainable business. That means individual actions are important not only for the small benefit they make but also because individual actions can influence a collective action theme or trend. Individual actions are also important because they can have positive impacts that are not initially identified in a proposed project.

Small, consistent, individual actions over time can snowball into bigger results. The idea of the compound effect – reaping bigger rewards from repeated smaller actions is not new. It is the basis of personal investing, self-help, microfinancing and other initiatives. It can also be applied to environmental, health, safety and energy and sustainability. While sometimes an individual action, idea, or suggestion can be substantial, most times these individual actions, ideas, or suggestions have a limited impact to a specific location or activity. These smaller ideas and associated benefits should not be discounted as they have the potential to add up and create the snowball effect.   When one person takes an action, they can set an example. Others may follow or create their own action and sometimes the benefits extend beyond the organization. Each time an action is taken, the snowball gets bigger.   When you embrace this change be prepared to capture its benefits. Organizations will need to think, and act differently related to gathering and calculating savings from the more numerous individual/small actions over the traditional “big” projects.

Perhaps more importantly, organizations will need to think about the communicating the value of individual actions – why they are important and what it means to the organization. Individuals may not take an action just to be rewarded, but positive recognition is important. Rewards, monetary, tokens, or a “pat on the back” motivate and promote more involvement so that the culture to take action consistently takes hold.

Improvement actions often have additional hidden results.  Often because project teams are focused on achieving a specific intended result, they do not see there are other benefits. Also, some environmental, health and safety benefits are hard to measure and some impacts, such as the consequence of reducing greenhouse gas emissions on environmental and human health, are just beginning to be understood.

While calculating hidden savings can be difficult, it is necessary to either “sell” the project or show the total benefits to the organization and its sustainability initiatives. Developing robust tools to prompt collection of comprehensive information about individual or collective actions will help ensure all impacts are identified even if not all can be initially quantified. As organizations move forward developing saving calculators will also be useful. Standard formulas and conversion factors make quantifying benefits systematic with dependable results.