University of Colorado System

First Steps in Making the Business Case for Sustainability

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Cours 1 sur 4 dans Specialization Become a Sustainable Business Change Agent

The Business School at the University of Colorado Denver wants to help you become a change agent for sustainable business. We hope that with the skills and concepts you gain from this specialization that you will help your business reduce its social and environmental impact. Being a change agent is hard. It takes courage and passion and knowledge. To implement change also requires being able to make the case for that change in terms that people in your company or organization respond to and understand. After completing the specialization, you will be able to: * Discuss the threats and opportunities that major global trends such as climate change present to businesses; * Identify ways a company can improve its environmental and social performance; * Evaluate and compare companies’ sustainability activities and products; * Develop a business case for implementing sustainability investments; * Identify key criteria of green businesses and product design; * Be a change agent in your organization; * Understand emerging topics in sustainable business, including those in the public policy space. We're very excited about offering this MOOC specialization and hope it gives you the first step toward learning about and taking action to make the places you work and the products you buy more sustainable. Sustainable business changes daily with new products, innovations and ideas, so you will be important in keeping the class current. We look forward to learning from you as you take this green journey! ______

À partir de la leçon

Sustainable Thinking

Sustainability Thinking Intro (Start Here)1:26

Lesson 1 - Sustainability Thinking #1: Life Cycle Thinking7:40

Lesson 2 - Sustainability Thinking #2: Circular Thinking6:49

Lesson 3 - Sustainability Thinking #3: Long Term Thinking7:37

Lesson 4 - Sustainability Thinking #4: Resilience7:44

Lesson 5 - Sustainability Thinking #5: Systems Thinking7:10

Sustainability Thinking #6: Context-Based Thinking8:44

Assignment Intro: About the B-Lab Assessment - Oxana Trotsenko7:11

Rencontrer les enseignants

John Byrd
Senior Instructor
Managing for Sustainable & Finance

The B Impact Assessment simply builds upon the important work that

other organizations and industry groups are doing to define and measure impact.

The assessment is easy to work with and

intuitive, think of it as a pyramid, you start at the top with governance which is

supported by workers who work in the community which exist in the environment.

As a summary appoint, the assessment circles back to the section on governance

by asking of your business follows and the impact business model.

Before you begin the assessment it is a good idea to familiarize yourself with all

the questions on the first run by simply reading them and then come back later to

fill in the answers, after you click submit, you will not be able to go back

and modify your answers so make sure you give it your best.

You will be able to print a PDF of your assessment after you complete it, so

let's begin.

The assessment consists of five major areas, governance,

workers, community, environment, and the impact business model.

The first section on governance is the section that covers best

practices of the insurer that the company is built to last.

Specifically focuses on the company's core mission, stakeholder engagement,

governance structures and overall transparency of the company's practices.

There are two helpful sections, Explain This and in Practice,

which will give you a definition and a few examples of what the question is about for

example level of impact is designed to determine

if your business is more of a traditional business model or sustainable one.

Next section on workers covers how the company benefits it's workers

through compensation, benefits, training and

ownership best practices, it also focuses on the overall work environment within

the company through management and worker communication, job flexibility and

cooperate culture and worker health and safety practices.

In many small and medium sized businesses a lot of data are undocumented,

sometimes you have to be creative with sources and preliminary research to

prepare yourself for answering questions on that assessment.

For example here before you can answer high to low pay question,

you should have all salaries for all position in your company handy.

The community section evaluates a company's supplier relations,

diversity and involvement in a local community.

The section also measures the company's practices and

policies around community service and

charitable giving, in addition, the section includes if a company's product or

service is designed to solve a social issue including access to basic services,

health, education, economic opportunity, arts, and

increasing the flow of capital to purpose-driven enterprises.

Some questions on the assessment might not be applicable to your business, for

example, let's take a look at the local supplier question,

if you are a coffee company or a coffee roasters in Colorado 97% of your supplier

will be foreign, because your material coffee does not grow in US.

The environment section of the assessment evaluates the companies environmental

performance through it's facilities, materials, resource and

energy use in the missions.

We are applicable it also considers a company's transportation,distribution

channels and environmental impacts over supply chain.

The section also measures whether a company's products or

services are designed to solve an environmental issue including products

that aid in provision of noble energy, conserve resources, reduce waste,

promote land wildlife conservation, prevent toxic hazardous substance or

pollution, or educate measure, or consult to solve environmental problems.

Some initiatives can be cost prohibitive for a small business, for

example, you might be operating in an older building that you lease in

green building standards would be out of you reach due to cost and

the pure fact that you do not have much control over the building maintenance.

At the same time, things that seem to be out of reach now could become

the focus of your future impact improvement efforts.

Maybe you will be expanding your operations next year, you could look for

a location that is in compliance with some of the items on the list or

maybe you could negotiate your lease based on the green building improvements.

Knowledge is key here,

the more familiar you are with what the assessment focuses on, the better you will

be prepared in transitioning to sustainable business model.

The last section of the assessment impact business model, examines

to what degree your business hits into the different issue of the social enterprise.

And now, let's do a simple exercise, think about the company where you work or

recently worked or where a friend or family member works, which of the areas

addressed by the assessment tool would you expect this company to score high on?

Which would you expect them to score lowest on.