We’re all doing our part to be more eco-friendly, but let’s not beat around the bush: At the end of the day, even saving the environment needs to have an ROI. The primary function of a business is to generate revenue, after all; if your company doesn’t have revenue, your Green initiatives are kind of a moot point.

Corporate sustainability is not a new idea. While the term “greenwashing” didn’t come into use until the ’80s, and “business sustainability” until John Elkington’s 1994 paper for California Management Review, the concept behind both dates all the way back to the ’60s and Westinghouse’s “clean and safe” nuclear power plants.

It’s been around a while, in other words, so let’s look at some recent numbers.

85% of S&P 500 index file regular sustainability reports. Over 80% of investors factor ESG (environment, social, and governance) data into their decision-making. At the start of 2016, $22.89 trillion in assets (26% of all managed assets) were the result of sustainable investments – a nearly 5% increase since 2012. By 2020, sustainable assets under management $35.3 trillion (36% of managed assets).

“Going Green” isn’t just about paperless memos and reduced carbon footprints, though. It’s only through the commitment, performance, and efforts of your employees that you can effectively adopt environmentally aware practices. This requires a complete shift in your business’s values and cultures – a shift that is only possible if backed by your employees.

For your employees to adopt pro-environmental behaviors (PEB), you need to have established human resource practices that encourage them. You need, in other words, to “Green” your HR management, or as it has been creatively termed, Green HR management (GHRM).

As I’ll show you in this Process Street post, not only does GHRM create more environmentally aware employees, but environmentally aware employees are more engaged at work and have higher job satisfaction.

Here’s the rundown:

• What GHRM can do for you
• Walk the talk: Promoting Green values within your company
• Ability: Green branding, not Greenwashing
• Motivation: Recommend, reward, recognize
• Opportunity: Sustaining a culture that thrives

Let’s get started!
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Agent *reader*, I call upon you today as we’re at a time of crisis. Humans have annihilated 83% of all wild animals and are disrupting a natural climate balance, throwing us into a projected future that is 4.1 – 4.8°C (39.38 – 40.64 °F) warmer.

It’s our duty, as citizens, business owners, and employees to change the narrative for our children’s lives; to kickstart a transition into a more sustainable future, one that enriches biodiversity and a balanced climate. And for this, we turn our attention to sustainable cities.

According to the World Health Organization, the global world population living in urban areas is expected to increase to 66% by 2050, making cities a perfect place to transform society and support biodiversity and a balanced climate.

In this Process Street article, we’ll become time-travelers, zipping into the future to assess two separate predicted scenarios.

• Scenario 1: The continuation of human activity as normal.
• Scenario 2: Transforming into a more sustainable future, starting with our cities.

Today, we meet at a crossroad, where our future could go two ways. We’ll explore these two separate scenarios, before addressing the role of sustainable cities in creating a more desirable world. We’ll look at how businesses must adapt to survive in a future that is carbon-neutral with rich biodiversity.

After all, who wouldn’t want such a future? 🌻

• What are sustainable cities?
• Our future cities are sustainable
• Sustainable cities: Key takeaways for corporate sustainability

Seat belts on, time-machine ignited, to the future here we come! 🕔🚀🕤
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This article started with a cold cup of tea.

I was in the middle of a power cut, and the teabag floated despondently in a sad, mottled brew. In the confusion, I’d allowed the beverage to cool for far too long. All of that precious energy transferred to raise the temperature of the kettle to boiling point, gone to waste, and there was nothing I could do about it.

This is an example of poor energy management on my part.

As I sulked over the absence of my morning brew, it did get me thinking, would society ever face these kinds of energy management problems, like I easily had?

“Welcome to the energy crisis” – Lawrence J. Becker, Welcome to the Energy Crisis

Some of you may have already experienced, say, aggravating waits in lines for gasoline, or your pocketbooks taking a punch from inflation. But, energy problems – like a cold cup of tea – are not only personal, they permeate into society and our economy.

80% of U.S. energy comes from fossil fuels. According to BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy, we have 115 years of coal and roughly 50 years of oil and natural gas remaining. To compound this, we also need to leave ~80% of current fossil fuel reserves untouched if we stand a chance of meeting IPCC 1.5°C (34.7°F) warming targets.

Energy management is the process of tracking and optimizing energy consumption for your business. It’s a continuous process, easily implemented by following the correct procedure.

In this Process Street article, you’ll learn about best practices for energy management, how you can successfully manage energy in your business (and beyond), as well as how to adopt best energy management practices using a handy free checklist to help you save time and money.

Don’t cry over cold tea. Learn how to manage energy properly, for a healthier business and a healthier planet. Click on the relevant subheader below, or continue reading as you please:

• What is energy management?
• Energy management: Improve energy efficiency
• Energy management: Conserve energy
• Energy management: Renewable energy
• Quarterly Energy Management Plan Template

Let’s not waste any more time, and get right into the basics of energy management.
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In 2018 the green technology market was valued at $6.85 billion.

This figure is projected to increase to $44.61 billion, with a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 26%.

This change comes as a response to our present-day environmental crisis. In this sense, green technology provides a knife for our noose, to help us move forward, past plastic pollution, poisonous chemicals, and climate degradation.

“The concept of ecological modernism, which sees technology as key to solving big environmental problems, is getting a lot of buzz these days.” – The Guardian, Technology as Our Planet’s Last Best Hope

Like The Guardian, at Process Street we also believe technology plays a vital role in helping society move forward, to work with the environment and our planet… rather than against it.

In this article, you will learn what green technology is, why it is important, and 6 easily applicable ways you can utilize green technology in your business or line of work today.

In addition, Process Street as a green tech solution gives you free access to our leading business sustainability templates. Sign up to Process Street here for free and check out our ISO 14001 Environmental Management Self Audit Checklist below for a taster.

Click here for free access to our ISO 14001 Environmental Management Self Audit Checklist!.

Click on the relevant subheaders or scroll down to find out how to be both lean and green in business.

• What is green technology?
• Green technology as a positive and proactive approach for solving our environmental crisis
• Green technology examples: 6 top examples of green tech for your business
• Using Process Street to become more sustainable

Right tech-perts, let’s get started!
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“They’re going to lose their houses, they’re going to lose their jobs…this is like, the end of capitalism, this is like the dark ages all over again” – The Big Short

Debuting in 2015, The Big Short is an American comedy-based drama showcasing the 2007-2008 financial crisis. I remember watching the movie, in quiet disbelief that a financial failure of such magnitude slipped through all areas of caution, potential management, and mitigation.

The 2008 financial crisis was the result of unsuccessful systemic risk management.

A crisis that the Federal Reserve Board estimated to have cost every single American ~$70,000.

For me, this single example communicates the importance of understanding, managing, and mitigating systemic risk items. With that in mind, we begin this article on systemic risk.

In this Process Street article, we will explain what systemic risk is and how it differs from conventional risk. You are given tips to help you identify prevailing systemic risks so you can be proactive, plan for, and manage these risks for your business and line of work.

Before concluding the article, we acknowledge climate change as a potent systemic risk that urgently needs to be addressed and managed. For this, we give you free template resources, uniquely designed to support the movement towards business sustainability. A movement that runs hand-in-hand with carbon footprint reduction.

Click on the relevant subheader below to jump to that section. Alternatively, scroll down to read all we have to say about systemic risk.

• Risk management: Conventional risk vs systemic risk
• Systemic risk: An explanation for the concept
• Systematic risk: The difference and its relation to systemic risk
• Systemic risk examples
• Identifying systemic risk elements: Too big to fail, too interconnected to fail
• Systemic risk mitigation: Approaches to managing systemic risk
• Global systemic risks of today, a new challenge
• Climate change as a systemic risk
• Using Process Street to become more sustainable, mitigating against climate change

Let’s get started!
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90% of the largest companies are filing sustainability reports, with 80% of mainstream investors considering environmental, social and governance information when making decisions.

Understanding and practicing correct corporate sustainability strategies has never been more important.

In this article, we at Process Street explore what corporate sustainability is, taking a system thinking approach to acknowledge the complexity of the problems.

We then turn our attention to top business owners and employees across the globe, asking the question: How are you managing sustainability in your business day-to-day?

Here you are provided with our top 5 never-before-seen best practices to achieve corporate sustainability.

But before that, we begin this article with Process Street’s 6 leading corporate sustainability templates, which you can access for free.

Click on the relevant subheader below to jump to that section. Alternatively, scroll down to read what we at Process Street have to say regarding corporate sustainability.

• Corporate sustainability templates
• Corporate sustainability definition
• How to be more sustainable: System thinking
• Capturing opportunity for corporate sustainability
• Use Process Street as a tool to help you achieve corporate sustainability

Let’s jump straight to it!
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“Global stock markets post biggest falls since the 2008 financial crisis.” – The Guardian, 9th of March 2020

It was a Tuesday morning and my phone buzzed me out of my groggy, lethargic state, flashing open the above notification. The Coronavirus had hit businesses and our economy hard, potentially costing 2.7 trillion globally.

A viral risk, that went viral. Was something like this not foreseeable?

In this Process Street article, we turn our attention to the concept of business risk. As we write this article, the corona crisis is unfolding. We were warned about the risk of a virus outbreak but it appears we weren’t as prepared for it as we could have been.

But viruses are not the only risk we face. The 2020 Global Risk Report from the World Economic Forum (WEF) highlights a host of other risks, which we’ll turn our attention to in this article.

To get started, click on the relevant subheaders below to spring to that section. Alternatively, scroll down to read all we have to say regarding the concept of business risk.

• Confront business risk with a risk management process
• Business risk: What is it and why risk items need to be identified
• Business risks: Global business risks from the World Economic Forum
• What is a risk management process and how do we use it?
• Incorporating the Global 2020 Risk Report results within your risk management process
• Risk item 1: Extreme weather, cause, and economic effect
• Risk item 2: Climate action failures, cause, and economic effect
• Risk item 3: Biodiversity loss, cause, and economic effect
• Risk assessment: Why sustainability is part of a good risk assessment
• Sustainability risk management: How you can document your processes with Process Street

Belts and braces on, let’s jump to it!
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In the words of Jean Rostand, a French Biologist, and Philosopher:

“The obligation to endure gives us the right to know” – Jean Rostand, Silent Spring

Greenwashing, as a marketing tactic, thwarts our right to know as consumers. Unfortunately for us, 98% of green-labeled products are greenwashed.

Greenwashing is unethical. Greenwashing is risky. Greenwashing needs to be prevented.

You can think of this Process Street article as an antidote to greenwash. We give you the information you need to identify and stop greenwash in its tracks. We do this because greenwash is not good for you as a consumer, and it is not good for you as a business owner or employee.

Like Rostand, we at Process Street believe everybody has a right to know how green the products and services they purchase are. In this article, we provide information that will give you back this right where greenwash blots it out.

Paint strippers at the ready, it’s time to peel away the dross. Click on the relevant subheaders below to jump to that section. Alternatively, scroll down to read all we have to say.

• Greenwashing: Greenwashing definition
• Sustainability templates to help you create a more sustainable business
• Environmentalism: Fashion or passion?
• Greenwashing: A troubling evolution in the corporate world
• Greenwashing examples
• Greenwashing: You have to spot it to stop it
• Greenwash: Green companies and how you can be one

Let’s jump right to it!
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2018 saw the U.S. economy grow by 4.1%, well ahead of the trend.

Following this, U.S. President Donald Trump stated:

“These numbers are very, very sustainable. This isn’t a one-time shot.” – Donald Trump, Is the economy really as great as Trump says?

What did Trump mean when he said that this number was “very sustainable” – and was it?

In 2019, and as predicted by economists, the U.S. growth rate slowed down and returned to 2.1%.

Unsustained high growth rates are very common. It seems that the magic 2% has a gravitational pull, hauling back growth rates that increase over it. Is this 2% what economic sustainability looks like?

In this article, we at Process Street explore what is meant by economic sustainability. We look at the benefits economic sustainability can bring on a global level and at a business level. We suggest ways you can become economically sustainable in your business today.

Read through the sections below:

• What is economic sustainability?
• Is economic sustainability merely a myth?
• Solving the economic sustainability problem
• Why economic sustainability is important for your business
• How to be economically sustainable in your business with Process Street
• Reconnect with your wild side – reduce your ecological footprint and become economically sustainable

Shall we get started?

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You’re cooking for corporate success, but how do you know when it’s time to add a little sustainability into the mix?

Sustainability is the key ingredient, like the spice in your curry, or the sugar in your cake, that brings long-term economic prosperity.

So before you fire up on all cylinders, consider this: companies that adopted environmental, social and governance policies in the 1990s have long since outperformed those that didn’t today.

If you have read some of Process Street‘s previous articles, such as How You Can Create a Sustainable Business for Long-Term Business Succes, you will learn that there is a strong, unbreakable tie between our environment, society, and the economy. It is with this undeniable relationship, that GRI Standards reporting came about.

GRI Standards will help you produce a sustainability report, and by doing so, you are taking a huge leap towards securing business sustainability and cooking up long-term corporate success.

In this article, I will explain why GRI Standards reporting is important, what GRI Standards are, and how you can implement GRI Standards for the production of your sustainability report today. You are provided with free and ready to use templates for implementation of the three universal GRI Standards reports.

• GRI Standards 101: Foundation 2016 Checklist Template
• GRI Standards 102: General Disclosures 2016 Checklist Template
• GRI Standards 103: Management Approach 2016 Checklist Template

Ready to become a GRI Standards expert and start implementing GRI Standards into your business today?

Let’s read on!

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