Sustainability Programs - by William Borges & John Grosskopf (Hardcover)

About the Book

"The triple bottom line (TBL) is a sustainability framework that revolves around the three P's: people, planet and profit. By maximizing all three bottom lines, organizations can achieve a positive impact on the world while enhancing financial performance. The United Nations Brundtland Commission defined sustainability as development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. In business, it is about balancing the economic, environmental, and social concerns, with a focus on minimizing or eliminating negative environmental and social impacts while enhancing its financial performance. Integral to sustainability is corporate social responsibility (CSR), which is the business practice of social accountability to itself and its stakeholders through environmental, philanthropic, ethical, and economic responsibility. Leaders, sustainability champions, practitioners, and their supporters, who are interested in creating an SMS, improving an existing one, and/or looking to achieve green certifications will find this book invaluable. Researchers studying sustainability practices and instructors teaching related courses should find this book essential to their endeavors. Students in environmental and business management courses will benefit from its "here's how it's done" approach."-- Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

Go-to guidance for designing, implementing, and managing effective sustainability programs and their management systems

Moving past vague concepts, buzzword overloads, superficial efforts, and flavor-of-the-month misdirections, Sustainability Programs presents a pragmatic, step-by-step approach to creating and managing adaptable, organization-wide sustainability programs to achieve People, Planet, and Profit (3P) objectives with least cost, effort, and risk. Key steps covered in this book include reaching a programmatic "Go" decision, developing sustainability policies, designing an organizational framework, defining the most pressing sustainability needs, and cascading 3P goals, tactics, targets, and initiatives into business units, functions, and departments to create new capabilities and improve performance.

By following the principles and practices in this book, any organization can better achieve sustainability's full promise of social responsibility, environmental stewardship, and financial performance. Written by authors with a wealth of practitioner experience in the field, Sustainability Programs explores topics including:

• Creating social, environmental, and financial strategies, tactics, targets, and initiatives that create new capabilities and resolve 3P performance issues
• Avoiding ad hoc projects that fail to address critical sustainability issues, wasting valuable resources and squandering competitive advantages
• Overcoming technical professionals' lack of business management experience and helping management professionals understand sustainability's benefits and intricacies
• Understanding sustainability through the management lenses of risk reduction, improved efficiencies through eradication of wastes, increased revenues via innovation, and enhanced competitive advantages fueled by greenwash-free transparency.
• Responding to the demanding data capture, analysis, and reporting challenges of environmental, social, and governance (ESG).

Acknowledging that one size does not fit all, this book delivers individual concepts and methods adaptable across any organization's value chains. It is an essential read for leaders and practitioners working within private and public enterprises of all types and sizes, especially those with 2,000 to 5,000 employees.

"Rejecting the notion of sustainability as a burdensome add-on, the book provides a flexible, step-by-step, continuous-improvement 'Sustainable Management System' model that mitigates risks and unlocks new opportunities. The authors emphasize that genuine sustainability within a value chain reduces costs and expenses, increases revenues, and gains competitive advantages through greenwash-free transparency... Ultimately, 'Sustainability Programs' presents a clear, how-to-do-it framework for transforming organizations into more responsible, resilient, and financially successful entities."
Salem Afeworki, MSc, Municipal Energy and Sustainability Services Division Manager, Global 40 Under 40 and Top 100 Environment + Energy Leader

From the Back Cover

Go-to guidance for designing, implementing, and managing effective sustainability programs and their management systems

Moving past vague concepts, buzzword overloads, superficial efforts, and flavor-of-the-month misdirections, Sustainability Programs presents a pragmatic, step-by-step approach to creating and managing adaptable, organization-wide sustainability programs to achieve People, Planet, and Profit (3P) objectives with least cost, effort, and risk. Key steps covered in this book include reaching a programmatic "Go" decision, developing sustainability policies, designing an organizational framework, defining the most pressing sustainability needs, and cascading 3P goals, tactics, targets, and initiatives into business units, functions, and departments to create new capabilities and improve performance.

By following the principles and practices in this book, any organization can better achieve sustainability's full promise of social responsibility, environmental stewardship, and financial performance. Written by authors with a wealth of practitioner experience in the field, Sustainability Programs explores topics including:

• Creating social, environmental, and financial strategies, tactics, targets, and initiatives that create new capabilities and resolve 3P performance issues
• Avoiding ad hoc projects that fail to address critical sustainability issues, wasting valuable resources and squandering competitive advantages
• Overcoming technical professionals' lack of business management experience and helping management professionals understand sustainability's benefits and intricacies
• Understanding sustainability through the management lenses of risk reduction, improved efficiencies through eradication of wastes, increased revenues via innovation, and enhanced competitive advantages fueled by greenwash-free transparency.
• Responding to the demanding data capture, analysis, and reporting challenges of environmental, social, and governance (ESG).

Acknowledging that one size does not fit all, this book delivers individual concepts and methods adaptable across any organization's value chains. It is an essential read for leaders and practitioners working within private and public enterprises of all types and sizes, especially those with 2,000 to 5,000 employees.

About the Author

William Borges has directed and participated in 100+ sustainability and environmental management projects. His work includes restructuring departments during the financial turnaround of an eventual Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award winner in Silicon Valley, designing and introducing one of the first environmental management systems (EMS) at a United States military base, and initiating an EMS consulting practice at a major research institute. He has also designed and taught professional development and university-level sustainability courses.

John Grosskopf has helped hundreds of public and private organizations worldwide dramatically improve their environmental, health, and safety (EHS), security, and sustainability performance while simultaneously reducing their costs, risks, and impacts. He was a principal architect of General Dynamics' pioneering EMS and its Zero-Discharge program. He is a management systems innovator that has advanced systematic and systemic EHS and sustainability management practices to help organizations better address climate change threats, ESG practices, and marketplace competitiveness.