Six Earth Day Considerations for the Modern Corporation

The Center for Sustainability and Excellence (CSE) had much to celebrate on Earth Day.  Like many companies with Sustainability at its core, CSE is continuously growing and improving.  Below are six trends which helped make CSE the success we are on Earth Day.

1. Leadership – CSE’s founder Nikos Avlonas and all management are committed to Sustainability first. What does the science show as best practice? What is the evidence for the business case for Sustainability? How do we incorporate what is good for people and planet to ensure enduring profit?  These questions supersede quarterly returns with which CEOs and CFOs are so familiar.  CSE research shows that by asking these kinds of questions, we create a strong and resilient environment for profitability.

2. Motivated team – The office (you can tell from our smiling faces) is driven by purpose. Look at how many Millennials we have. They work as a team, welcoming new colleagues who bring skills from many different fields.  Our two most recent interns are MBA students, one of whom comes from Medical IT – a great compliment to the emerging AI and Blockchain trends we’ve been following.

3. International mindset – The team in our Earth Day picture hails from the US, Puerto Rico, Egypt, Greece and Cyprus. We could have easily cropped in colleagues from Canada, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. On a globe where atmospheric events in one hemisphere impact the other, on the ground, we must welcome input and insights from around the world.

4. Offsetting with strategy – Every business has its sustainability challenges. Ours is travel. Our strategy is first to minimize.  We combine trainings and consulting to make the most of site visits.  Then, we engage responsible offsetting. We take our carbon footprint seriously and have partnered with a reputable firm to provide offsets closely related to travel.  This is a tactic gained through experience and which we share in our trainings.

5. Homage to place – Our trainings take a system. We work in many locations, each unique in typography and culture. Sustainability practices, even within a single corporation, should not and cannot be one-size-fits all.  Corporate survival means meeting the sustainability needs of the community in which the corporation functions.  Concerns in North America differ from those in Europe.  Know the differences!

6. Flexible and evolving – We often hear the lament that once a sustainability goal is met, another appears, as if this is an argument against trying to be sustainable. Guess what, the strongest corporations are flexible and evolve constantly, necessarily, to stay ahead of competition, to bring new products to market, to streamline operations.

Next year’s Earth Day will surely reveal different trends and lessons.  CSE’s exclusive Sustainability (ESG) Leadership Training Workshop for C-Suite Executives is a Fast Track designed to address key sustainability leadership challenges and equip business leaders with updated knowledge and practical tools to develop a sustainability vision and strategy, improve branding and ESG ratings, reduce stakeholder related risks and lead sustainable companies to deliver economic returns.  (Next workshop – September 30 – October 1, 2019, in NYC).

CSE works to bring Earth Day lessons, regularly updated, as part of our trainings.  Next up is the Certified Sustainability (CSR) Practitioner Program, Advanced Edition 2019 to be held in NYC, June 6-7, 2019.  This foundation course offers pragmatic methodology and tools to implement a corporate sustainability program.  This is the “how to” course for identifying stakeholders, material issues, goals, implementation and reporting.