Sustainability Planning

Ecologists agree that based on current trends, human society as a whole will demand twice as much as our planet can support by the mid 2030s. While there have been extraordinary improvements in human health, medicine, education, and material well being, the unintended side effect of our progress has been detrimental to our natural resources such as clean air, water and land. Most corporations are following the lead of organizations such as Interface Carpet, Wal-Mart, Nike and IKEA and are requiring that “cradle to cradle” sustainability plans be instituted with vendors and customers. This trend is equally trickling down to small businesses and municipalities striving to achieve greater fulfillment by upholding their values and meeting basic human needs for the respect and preservation of nature.

Insight is certified in the internationally acclaimed The Natural Step (TNS) framework for sustainability planning. In collaboration with Steve Martin, strategist and founder of Dia-Gnosis, and utilizing the framework and the TNS systems conditions, we apply strategic and practical planning methods to create the future resource planning footprint for your organization’s operations. The framework is grounded in best practices for triple bottom line planning, rigorous science and the contributions of thousands of experts from around the world.

The most compelling aspect of this framework for sustainability planning is that it supports you in judging what are the most sustainable and unsustainable practices of your business and industry. This allows your team to formulate competitive advantages and innovations around your own perceptions and values and how you wish to apply them to the framework.

As a result, this process will provide structure for identifying unsustainable problems in your industry and business and formulating sustainable solutions for today and tomorrow that will stop contributing to those problems. As a result you will:

• Gain awareness and complete a baseline analysis of all resources utilized within the life cycles of your operations
• Determine the biggest violators of the systems conditions and therefore the largest opportunities for improved sustainable practices
• Develop a compelling vision for your sustainable future
• Engage stakeholders such as employees, vendors and customers to engage input for innovative solutions
• Utilizing backcasting practices, develop a team(s) to implement priority projects that will lead towards the future vision – starting with the low hanging fruit and piggyback projects
• Complete ROI analysis for potential priority projects and determine next steps
• Track triple bottom line results