Maturity Blog 3: The Climate Miles Sustainability Maturity Model

Here at Climate Miles we are continually building innovations to help businesses realize their sustainability goals. In our last sustainability maturity post, we discussed the need for a new maturity model – a model that provides a more objective perspective of how developed a company’s sustainability practice is, and a benchmark to compare performance against other companies in the industry. In this blog, we’ll discuss how we built our new sustainability maturity framework to do this and how it differs from existing models. 

How was our model designed?

First we looked at existing sustainability maturity models, which paint a broad picture of the levels of sustainability maturity. We translated these more subjective maturity levels into a clear set of objective indicators, based on metrics from the Global Reporting Initiative G4 Guidelines, as well as the FTSE4Good ESG Ratings (Environmental, Social, Governance). We included indicators which a company is likely to report or not depending on their sustainability maturity level, such as quantitative data and long-term goals, which are indicators of high maturity.

We mapped each of these indicators to a list of the most relevant and consistently reported environmental metrics for each industry, from water use to product design. For each environmental metric, we can check off the maturity indicators a company has reported on, creating a matrix from which the final maturity score is calculated.

What it Measures

The framework essentially measures how comprehensive an individual company’s sustainability initiative and reporting practice is. We look at the company’s sustainability reports, policies, interventions, goals and progress which are available on the public domain and enter this data into our simple framework to calculate a rating. The framework does NOT capture specific sustainability performance, such as the amount of carbon emission reductions, waste output numbers, or how successful an intervention was. It only looks at the thoroughness of the reporting and policy: whether all important sustainability factors are covered, if meaningful quantitative data is presented, and if goals and progress are established, tracked and reported.

The result is reported in an elegant quadrant that represents a sector. The companies are mapped according to their sustainability performance rating, as well as the time period over which their sustainability-related information is made available on the public domain.

Climate Miles Industry Maturity Rating Analysis

Key Differences from Other Models

Most other models describe the different maturity levels somewhat subjectively, and rely on internal knowledge of a company to make an assessment. Therefore they are useful primarily for broad, internal analysis of a company. The primary advantage our model has is that it is based on clear yes/no type indicators, to allow for an objective, unbiased maturity rating of a company. We also base our model on information that is commonly reported in the public domain.

Benefits of Our Model

Using our model we are able to make a sustainability maturity assessment of practically any company in an industry, map the sectorial sustainability practices and trends, and identify the sustainability leaders and stragglers. Companies can use this information to benchmark themselves against competitors, or to understand trends in their clients’ industries in order to align their sustainability agenda with their clients’ goals.

The Limitation of our Model

While we did our best to ensure that our maturity model ratings are consistently accurate, they may not be perfectly representative of what a company is actually doing. Since we base our ratings only on public information, if a company does not report its practices accurately, their maturity rating will also be skewed.

Despite this limitation, we have found that the model provides good representation of overall trends, and is becoming increasingly accurate as companies adopt good reporting standards and communicate clearly and completely on their sustainability practices. It can also be used to measure the robustness of a company’s sustainability parameters and how consistently and how long a company has been reporting on sustainability.

How we are Using It

So far we’ve used the model to assess sustainability maturity of the major companies in 5 different industries (IT, textiles, fashion, hotels and aviation) and we are rapidly adding more to the list.

We have also integrated the framework into our U-Sustain sustainability management software, so that our clients using the software will automatically get an updated ranking as they enter data and generate reports and see how they compare to their peers and other players in the industry.

Get in touch with us if you’d like to know more about the Maturity Framework. We’ll be happy to conduct a free assessment and help you understand how to improve your company’s score and sustainability practices.

Maturity Model Blog 2: The Need for a More Objective Sustainability Maturity Rating

Re-Cap of the Maturity Model

In the first blog of this series, we introduced an array of different sustainability maturity models, all of which served the same purpose: providing a vision for integrating sustainability within a business. Using the models, internal stakeholders can loosely determine their company’s maturity level and get a clear idea of what else they can do to improve their sustainability practice.

The models we looked at are great at providing vision, but they are generally based on subjective, internal information. They offer no means by which to make an external assessment of other companies, so it is not possible to accurately benchmark one company’s performance against the industry average. The models can really only be used for internal benchmarking, and for very rough estimations of other companies’ maturity levels.

The Need for a New Maturity Model

In our work, especially with small and medium-sized companies with nascent sustainability practices, we realized that in addition to an internally-oriented maturity assessment, there is a compelling reason for these companies to access an easy-to-understand comparative maturity rating of other companies within their business environment. To accomplish this, they need a maturity model that can be used to make unbiased assessments of other companies.

Being able to compare with competitors and establish benchmarks is fundamental in motivating managers to adopt more sustainable business practices, and helps define their vision of sustainability success. We have found that small and medium-sized companies often do not have a good sense of the state of sustainability practice in their sector – either what their competitors are doing, or what the sustainability agenda of their current and potential clients are. This lack of perspective impedes their ability to take appropriate decision related to sustainability initiatives. 

 

The Challenge of Creating the New Model

We have been working on the development of a Sustainability Maturity Model that learns from the existing models and overcomes some of their limitations. The goal is to create a more objective, unbiased way to assess a company’s maturity level that is easy for a non-specialist to.

One difficulty in creating such a model is balancing access to the necessary and accurate information with the ability to scale up the model so we can assess more companies and sectors.

There is no debating the fact that the most accurate information about a company’s environmental sustainability efforts – its intent, successes and failures – are recorded with the company’s internal functionaries, and can be accessed only through direct contact with them. A detailed study, even for one company, would probably take considerable time and effort. Even so, it is possible that some of this information might be confidential and cannot be disclosed to an external agency. While a model that is based on such detailed, well-researched information is ideal, it is unlikely that in the near future a concerted effort can be launched to map the sustainability efforts of a significant number of companies on a pre-decided set of parameters. As such, we needed a model based on data that is available in the public domain. Such data is reported by the companies through their websites or sustainability reports. The drawback of this approach is that we cannot be absolutely sure that the data is not exaggerated or under-reported.

Our other challenge in developing the model was balancing thoroughness with ease of use. There are many caveats of sustainability practice which are indicators of a company’s sustainability maturity level, but including them all would make maturity assessment a painstakingly laborious process. Additionally, not all of the indicators would be consistently reported in the public domain.

Introducing the Climate Miles Maturity Framework

After much deliberation, we settled on a solution which met our needs without sacrificing accuracy or ease of use. We have used a simple, objective framework that draws from the most indicative parameters derived from the most popular sustainability reporting standards. Our next blog in this series will give you a sneak peak of how our model works, and the advantages it provides in guiding a company’s sustainability journey.

Maturity of the Sustainability Ecosystem in Hawaii

Written by Joe Kent

I have just returned from a one-week exploration of the sustainability ecosystem in Hawaii. I met with a range of stakeholders on my journey, from grass-roots workers to investors, all who exhibited a high level of enthusiasm for their work, and optimism for sustainable development in the state. I concluded my visit in Honolulu sharing the sentiment. It was encouraging for me to see so many people working towards creating a more sustainable state on many different fronts: sustainable agriculture, water and marine life conservation, education, renewable energy, and corporate sustainability. However, as I learned more about each of their individual efforts, the need for a more cohesive, synergized approach emerged.

My exploration took place in Honolulu and began with the July 15 HI Impact conference, which provided a platform for discussing the needs of the innovation ecosystem in Hawaii, and how it can be supported by Impact HUB, a global network of collaboration-driven co-working spaces and incubation labs which is launching in Honolulu this October. A poll at the beginning of the conference revealed that we were in the company of a mix of impact investors, entrepreneurs, consultants, and government representatives, all from whom Impact Hub enjoyed support.

Group discussion at HI Impact on "What does the Innovation Ecosystem in Hawaii need?" Collaboration, communication, exploration, and risk taking were common responses.

Although the forum was open to experts in any industry, 90% of the people were working to promote sustainability through their professional occupation or their lifestyle. To me that was another indicator that – in case anyone had any doubts – the issue of sustainability is at the forefront of concern in Hawaii. The market demands sustainable options. Entrepreneurs have identified this fact as a business proposition, and the government has adopted it as a platform to gain public approval.

Sustainability is starting to show up everywhere you look; there are more and more environmental bills being passed, eco hotels, energy efficient products, sustainable residential neighborhoods, and specialized sustainability consulting firms like Climate Miles. Even traditional businesses are starting to realize the value of adopting environmental sustainability as a competitive strategy. Since 2009, 74 businesses have voluntarily joined the State Energy Department’s Hawaii Green Business Program. Dozens more are a certified B-Corp or LEED certified.

Although there is undoubtedly momentum in the right direction, the sense I was left with is that each service provider, green tech expert, sustainability consultant, and green certification program is playing a compartmentalized role in the ecosystem, and cutting short the potential for deeper, self-sustaining impact. Sustainability consultants do a good job of mobilizing green tech solutions and certifications during the period of their contract, but are their clients any more empowered to take sustainability a step further on their own? Green business certifications are great for providing benchmarks and goodwill, but do businesses maintain those standards on a day-to-day basis?

Sometimes businesses do successfully implement a sustainability management system and make commitments to continuous improvement, but more often the progress stops until the next sustainability sales man comes along or it’s time to renew the green certification. One gentleman representing a B-Certified described the B-Corp certification process in the same way as Ron Poeil describes Showtime Rotisserie Grills: “Set it, and forget it!”

The most widely-adopted sustainability maturity frameworks, including our own at Climate Miles, describe a business’ sustainability maturity as on a spectrum. A less mature business is characterized by taking up isolated, desynchronized sustainability initiatives which are made without a long-term, strategic agenda. A fully mature business, on the opposite end of the spectrum, is committed to long-term goals and continuous evaluation and improvement which are reflected in their systems and management approach throughout the organization.

If the sustainability ecosystem in Hawaii is evaluated on a parallel framework, it would rank on the less mature end of the spectrum, which should be expected in this nascent stage. Each ecosystem player acts largely independently of one another, and are working towards independent goals. There is some collaboration taking place in the sector, and long-term goals have been vaguely defined by a few independent organizations, such as the Hawaii 2050 Task Force, but none have been convincing enough to take hold of and guide the ecosystem on one collaborative mission.

I look forward to being a part of this ecosystem as it works to define common interests and goals, begins sharing information and resources, and encourages the system to self-evaluate and make improvements and new targets. All of us, as stakeholders in the sustainability ecosystem, need to start discussing what we are learning, feeding on each other’s momentum, and collaborating on projects to create deeper, long-term impact. If we look at the combined capabilities of our individual organizations – the technology providers, consultants, educators, certifiers, farmers – and continually evaluate our performance and understanding of the market, we’ll start to realize our potential as a community and be able to set targets which reflect this. If we do this, we may find that the state’s current environmental goals are too low. We may also find gaps in our tools or knowledge, but we will be in a position to collaborate and fill them in quickly.

Impact HUB’s launch in Honolulu is symbolic of a more collaborative and inclusive ecosystem. The Sustainable Leader forum is another. As entrepreneurs, we need to make a commitment to use these platforms, to share, and to explore, with the ultimate goal of establishing a cohesive, synergized effort in making Hawaii a more sustainable state.

Green SME Summit – Collaborating across the Value Chain Featuring the launch of the do-it-yourself Software Tool – U-Sustain - GHG Accounting tool developed by Climate Miles under the aegis of the India GHG Program Mumbai on 16th July, 2014

WRI India, in association with TERI and CII has set-up the India GHG Program – a voluntary industry led partnership that aims to build institutional capabilities towards measurement and management of greenhouse gas emissions. By providing relevant trainings, tools, capacity building and facilitating best practices, peer interactions etc., the program aims to eventually promote profitable and competitive businesses in India. The India GHG Program is supported by the Pirojsha Godrej Foundation, Shakti Sustainable Energy Foundation, and, the German Federal Ministry for Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU).

The program partners, as well as its founding member  (26 of the largest corporates in India, across all industrial sectors) realize there are business benefits associated with management of greenhouse gas emissions, and these are not limited to large organizations alone. Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) form the core of the economy, and contribute not just to the supply chains of select large organizations, but to the overall GDP in a significant manner.  However, the challenges that SMEs face in terms of understanding the environmental impacts, benefits or opportunities are very unique and these are generally pertaining to dedicated capacity, resources and availability of tools/guidance etc.

The GreenSME Summit, with the India GHG Program, was aimed at convening various stakeholders and key influencers together to explore potential avenues of collaboration between large companies and SMEs across the value chain using GHG Accounting as a tool.  The Summit also saw the official launch of the do-it-yourself GHG Accounting Software tool developed under the aegis of the India GHG Program. 

Convened by the India GHG Program, the Green SME Summit included participation from leading businesses – YES Bank, Godrej and Boyce Manufacturing Ltd., KPIT Technologies, Mahindra & Mahindra, ACC Limited, Aditya Birla Group, JSW Group, Ford Motors, Bayer Group. The SME sector was represented by Matru Chemicals, Vijayesh Instruments, SA Glass, and, SimaPro India. 

The summit focused on outlining the opportunities, challenges and current developments for SMEs within large corporate value chains to reduce emissions and improve efficiency. The summit included discussion on how engagement among large enterprises, SMEs and vendors in the value chain can promote profitable and sustainable businesses in India.  Remarks by the Keynote Speaker Mr. Jamshyd Godrej, Chairman, Godrej & Boyce, emphasised the shared value across the supply chain and the importance of shifting the perspective from regarding Sustainability practice from a cost centre to a profit centre.

The online demo of Pilot Software developed by Climate Miles for GHG Emissions Inventory of SME’s was enthusiastically accepted by all present.

The press release by IGHGP can be found here: http://indiaghgp.org/content/press-release

posted by Jaya

Climate Miles tool for Greening Weddings & other Events

Last week, Climate Miles invited event planners from around India to join us on a discussion about Green Weddings & Events. Members in Bangalore were requested to come into the Climate Miles office while interested parties in other cities were asked to log into a GoogleHangout call.

Climate Miles has its strengths in resource footprinting and building tools to help make the former easier. Climate Miles had conducted a detailed GHG inventory of many events significantly the popular sporting event IPL in 2010 which equipped us to build such a tool and many others.

Tools such as :

Individual carbon footprint calculator - www.no2co2.in

Carbon Faqtors - India specific GHG factor database

Educational Portal - EcoSlate (presently under construction)

and now the U-Sustain Platform - a technology platform for Sustainability practices for SMEs , Corporates and policy-makers.

The past knowledge and experience gained is being translated into this platform. Clients can log on and enter their data to understand their personal/business impact on the environment and this information can be exported into a format ready for reporting. The U-Sustain Platform has a built in Green Vendors database for clients to choose their own vendors who offer sustainable products and services.

To know more about the U-Sustain platform, Get in touch with us at climatemiles@gmail.com or log on to the climate miles website.

Now, Climate Miles is exploring footprinting weddings and other such events. Interestingly enough,  Karnataka Govt plans to put a tax on big, lavish weddings. Although the reasons for this action may not be in sync with that of Climate Miles, it is still very encouraging.

Why build such a tool ? What does it do ? Who can use such as tool ?

This tool will allow informed and responsible individuals to track and measure the impact of their big day on the environment. It will also provide an option for offsetting the overall impact thereby ensuring the event leaves a minimal impact on the environment. 

Event and wedding planners can use this tool as a value-add to their existing services while also making additional revenue. They also get to feature on the U-Sustain Green Vendor database for promoting the concept.

Who all were invited to this event ?

All wedding and event planners in and around Bangalore and other cities in India.

Who all attended ?

a member of the marketing team from a top-end international wedding planner  

a young local ( based in Mysore and Bangalore) wedding planner (launched 2 yrs ago).

a transport provider for large-scale events - provided bus services for IPL this year. Also provides a basic report on carbon footprint to the client.

and other members from the sustainability consulting space.

What was discussed ?

1. Definition of a Green Wedding

2. Has a client ever approached you for a green wedding?

3.Need for such a service, are you equipped to provide such as service?  & how it benefits the planner. 

4. What all is tracked?

5. 2 case studies - wedding footprint & cost to offset.

6. How cm & event/wedding planner can collaborate

( main points discussed during the meeting is available on cm slideshare, the case studies are also available)

Chief outcomes:

Event planners seemed keen on taking it to the next step.

• Big international event planning team representative mentioned they could blog about the concept to promote the subject.
• A young upcoming wedding planner agrees that this could provide a unique USP edge over the competition.

Climate Miles partners across the country will be actively spreading the message and encouraging more individuals to use such a tool to measure and offset the impact of their weddings and other such events.

Future Planet - From Villages to Smart Communes

By Pramod Sidhagangaiah

Co-Authored by Mo Polamar

The popular discourse on climate change is that it is a result of human domination and human’s cruelty. But when you scratch the surface of this argument you get to a deeper, more psychological and genetic reality.

Survival establishes; Habit pattern forms.

Human beings, perhaps due to their intelligence, accepted the challenge of survival by Nature. Humans were not fighting for mere existence; they wanted to settle the score once and for all. It is tempting to bring in the human ‘ego’, but then it will lead to a realm that we are not dealing with in this presentation of thought.

Lets explore further the nature of the human. In the race to secure herself and her loved ones, she started to combat the forces of our ecosystem to eradicate hunger and diseases. Nature responded and forced her to improvise, resulting in the invention of tools. She continued to develop - art, sports, music, and literature. This eventually distanced her from the rest of the animal species.

The central and recurring theme in genetic science is survival and human learnt soon that in order to survive she must live in packs or large groups. Almost simultaneously, division of labor occurred. Human developed skills to produce food, clothing and shelter, and started living in groups or villages. They shared the resources and responsibility, which paved the way for concepts of equity and justice. Skills developed into technologies: knitting is skill and so handloom is technology. The groups got larger as a result of more and more people joining the commune from the forests and coupled with decrease in morality rate. Technology exploded to give rise to the Industrial revolution. The redundant luxury the industrial revolution created erased the primordial survival skills that were coded in our genetic makeup and the human lost touch with Nature.

Cities Form.

Meanwhile division of labor got further fragmented. Managing the expanding kaleidoscope of labor became more lucrative than the actual labor. Economy was the corner stone of this shift; economy replaced survival. Economic tools created by the intelligent few took control of survival skills of the majority of people; the mind defeated the body.

This centralised expansion of economy continues to homogenise our language, culture, existence and desire. This cauldron where the shape shifting of Nature occurs are called Cities.

Centralization is double edge sword; It helped us to survive and grow beyond all threats, but has now led to great inequality where now 2% of the world population consumes 60% of the world’s resources.

History repeats, habit pattern will re-establish:

The fight for survival has into an ugly fight against Nature that has turned the human against herself. Will Nature wreak revenge on humans? Will Nature have the last laugh?

We lean heavily on genetic makeup when we argue that humans will survive and survive well. The genetics within all of us will find an alternate living model, a model whose central theme again is survival. We say that our primary vehicle of preservation will be Smart Communes.

Smart Communes are similar to villages but they do not carry the prejudices that the word “village” evokes. Smart Communes do not advocate the Amish way of life (Amish are an American Protestant group with around 200,000 members descended from European Anabaptists who came to the USA more than two centuries ago to escape persecution. They are best known for their 19th century way of life that was portrayed in the 1985 Harrison Ford film Witness, in which violent crime clashed with their peaceful existence). Nor do they intend to industrialise villages. Instead, they make possible an organic process of decentralization. The evolving technologies like solar, windmill, biofuels and others as energy resources do not support centralisation models and enable people to live comfortably without relying on city-centric or centralized infrastructure. Smart Communes are really evolving, knowingly or unknowingly. More than 3 million households have started producing their own electricity with solar PV, says Eurelectric, while 133 “bio-villages” have emerged in Germany since 2000, generating more than 50 percent of their electricity and heat from bio-energy resources. Community-owned wind farms are also common in Denmark and other markets. Gradually people living anywhere in the geography are being enabled with energy to produce their own food, clothing, and other amenities needed for survival. People living in self sufficient communes/villages/hamlets, will eventually stop a trouser, a cigarette pack, pack of biscuit, a match stick to travel thousand of miles to reach its consumers.


Characteristics of Smart Communes:

At the danger of being termed reductionist the following are some of the changes that will inevitably occur when a smart village becomes a widely practiced reality.

1. Food: The Smart Commune model will stall the disastrous development called mono-cropping. Since communities do not need to export, and since they need diversified food inputs, they will move away from monocropping. This will also result in reduction of consumption of chemical fertilizer and preservation of water. It will safeguard the soil quality.

2. Transportation: Magnitude of logistics comes down, resulting in reduction of fossil fuel consumption; gradually trucks density will come down in state highways and national highways and finally in international goods exchange. This will result in lesser GHG emissions and slow down the process of global heating.

Smart Communes model discourages the culture of importing, be it exotic flowers, clothes and food. This really is a blessing in disguise. Ecosystems have evolved to be geography-specific; the barriers between various ecosystems are the ocean, desert, and mountains. These natural barriers serve to keeping geographies safe from invasive resources, be it living or non-living. The many decades of centralisation has damaged these barriers resulting in large-scale disturbance of the ecosystems. A very common example of this is the Lantana, a flower species brought to India from American tropics as an ornamental species, which is creating devastating effect on Indian flora.

As a broader discourse, the decentralised economy ushered in by these Smart Communes will mitigate at least some of the gross inequity of our current economic system.

Smart Communes are a certain occurrence in the near future. Will it happen in time to save majority of human race from perishing? We continue to speculate.

Sustainability Maturity Model Part I – Establishing a Need and a Survey of the Terrain

By Joe Kent and Jaya Chakravarty

The practice of environmental sustainability in businesses is an emerging discipline.  Driven by impending climate change and scarcity of vital resources, it has made its way into the lexicon of the modern business. We’ve seen a rapid adoption of sustainable business practices over the past 10 years, and leading companies, NGO’s, the government, and sustainability consultants have been helping shape new environmental standards for businesses to operate by. Until the standards, frameworks, tools and processes are established, there is room for vagueness, misinformation and misunderstandings. In the case of the sustainability practice, there is confusion around what a robust sustainability practice should look like. Most companies have not had the experience of conscious sustainable operations and cannot envision what they are missing, and they don’t know the difference between bad and good sustainability practice. As a result, we have seen companies struggle to advance their sustainability practices, while others are reluctant to begin any initiative at all.

In this scenario, the Sustainability Maturity Model, can help create a vision of what a robust sustainability practice looks like, and how sustainability should be integrated into a business model. The sustainability maturity model characterizes a continuum of sustainability maturity levels, from low maturity to high. Managers can benchmark their company’s performance against the model to see where they currently stand, and envision how they can progress further to achieve high maturity. It can be considered a roadmap to sustainability integration.

While many different frameworks exist, they generally follow the same basic format. Low maturity businesses are characterized by having none or just few isolated sustainability projects, whereas high maturity companies fully integrate sustainability into each aspect of their business strategy, from product design to energy sourcing. Usually the model will also characterize 2 – 3 intermediate levels as well. A comparison of the models published by PREST University of Manchester, FairRidge Group, and Terra Infirma, BAE Systems, and Industrial Research Institute illustrates this point nicely.

Maturity Model Comparison Chart

While being generally called Sustainability Maturity Model, most of these frameworks are focused on environmental sustainability (Once exception is the Industrial Research Institute's, which includes one small social element as well).  This is perhaps justified since the very critical scenarios of depleting and degrading natural resources, and a rapidly heating Earth has brought Environment centre-stage amongst the three pillars of sustainability.

Most of the frameworks are based on subjective data, so are useful primarily for internal analysis of a company and only loose comparisons to other companies. Only insiders will truly know how well sustainability has been integrated into the business model. Some organizations have attempted to make their models more objective to make more concrete comparisons between companies. The Industrial Research Institute, for example, has created an Excel-based survey which a manager can download and fill in. The survey then automatically maps their sustainability maturity in 14 different categories. They can e-mail the completed survey back to IRI and receive a copy of the overall results from their industry.

The model we created at Climate Miles learns from these existing models, but is based on more objective indicators and only information that is available in the public domain. This allows us to objectively rank a company’s maturity level without the need for internal information, and to make unbiased comparisons of the maturity level of many companies within a sector. We’ll explain our model more in upcoming blogs.