This slide presentation was presented by Chris Yalonis at the Sustainable Enterprise Conference in California in May, 2012. It contains best practices in measuring sustainable performance in small-medium businesses.

1. Sustainability Performance Metrics:
Measuring what Matters for SME’s
Presentation to Sustainable Enterprise Conference
Chris Yalonis, Managing Partner, Sustainametrics
415-309-0331

2. Content
• About Sustainametrics
• Why measure sustainability performance?
• Design: alignment with business ops and goals
• Most critical measures
• Best practices
• Reporting

3. About Sustainametrics
• Sustainability intelligence and consulting firm helping
SME’s, colleges and government entities green their
operations and products/services.
• Our Core Competencies
– Sustainability plan development
– Green Certification
– LCA, product design, voice of the Green
customer
– Materials, Water and Waste Management
– Energy and Greenhouse Gas Management
– Training and workshops, green team facilitation
• 150 years of experience in sustainability, energy,
lean manufacturing, eco-branding, LEED
certifications, environmental engineering
• Can act as outsourced Sust. Director but with
deeper experience, team resources, network
connections

4. • Sustainability
plan and
program set-up
for Green Seal

5. • San Francisco
Scavenger: LEED
Silver certification
application and
execution
assistance

6. Clorox Greenworks
• Market research,
product formula tests,
market tests with
1000 household
online community

7. Columbia College
• Strategic
Sustainability Plan
development and
Stakeholder
education/
engagement.

8. City of Napa
• Sustainability
Plan for City
Govt Ops and
Community

9. Why Sustainability Intelligence?
• Just like business intelligence has become a critical
management tool, sustainability intelligence is evolving as a
foundation that integrates the triple bottom line and
provides insight in making better system level decisions
• Sustainability practice leaders are drowning in information,
starved for knowledge
• Battle for human and financial resources requires ROI,
quantitative justification
• Self control and empowered individuals, teams,
communities require that they know:
– What is expected
– What resources are available
– How they are doing against expectations

10. The role of metrics in strategic
planning and execution
– Metrics should be a
reflection of goals and
strategic plan
– Requires a baseline
and feasible targets,
resources
– Must install a
sustainability
operating system
(SOS)
• SMART goals
• Action plan
• Owner/governance
• Funding
• Schedule
• Rewards/incentives
• Reporting

11. What makes a a SMART Metric?

12. Common Economic Practices/Indicators
• Economic
– Planning
• Business Plan
• Succession Plan
• Marketing Plan
• Strategic Plan
– Performance
• Investing in Capital
• Growing Profits
• Positive Cash Flow
– Practices
• Employee Professional Development
• Standard Accounting Principles

13. Environmental Practices/Indicators
• Environmental
– Watts (Energy)
• Review Gas and Electric Bill for the purpose of reducing
consumption
• Adopt written goals about reducing energy consumption
– Water
• Review monthly bills for the purpose of conservation
• Install new or retro fit appliances
– Waste
• Measure production
• Purchase/sell products with reduced packaging
• Reuse items and recycle as much as you can
– Wheels (Transportation)
• Incentives/Reduce barriers for use of alternate modes of
transportation
• Explore telecommuting/online meetings/teleconferencing

14. Social/Community Practices/Indicators
• Social Responsibility
– Family Friendly Policies
• Paid or unpaid leave for birth/adoption of a child
• Paid or unpaid leave for care of a dependant
• Provide a group health plan for employee participation
– Civic Participation/Corporate Responsibility
• Make cash or in-kind contributions to local non-profits
• Match Employee contributions to local organizations
• Internship opportunities for local youth
– Volunteerism
• Give employees time off to volunteer in schools or with agencies
• 100% of senior management serve on the board of a local non-
profit.

15. Examples of functional areas and metrics:
Energy/climate GHG-climate neutrality, watts/therms/sq ft. or unit or employee
Energy efficiency, GHG/$, use calculators from EPA or cleanair-
coolplanet.org for energy bill-co2 conversion ratios
Materials % of purchases from sustainable sources
Processes % of employees paid market based living wage/benefits
LEED qualified building/remodels
Products/services % of sales from sustainable/green products/services
Customer satisfaction ratings of LOHAS/Green product customers, impact
of sustainable features and company behavior/reputation
Waste Diversion rates, reduction of absolute waste levels/unit or employee
Partners/supply chain % of suppliers who meet defined sustainable index thresholds
Community Profits/time donated
Local sourcing as percentage of total procurement

16. 5 W’s X 5 P’s (5 Work Plans model)
Simple frame to review company’s sustainable practices
Watts Waste Water Wheels Wellness
Products
Process
For each cell, assess
For each cell, assess
People what is working and
what is working and
not, design SMART
not, design SMART
Purchasing goals/metrics, report
goals/metrics, report
Plant
(buildings)

17. 3 Key boundaries of Footprint Measures

18. Company GHG Emissions

19. Product Impact Tools

20. LCA and “Hot Spots”

21. Best Practices in Using Metrics
• Ensure a balanced scorecard in your metrics-cover range of performance
measures-soft and hard
• Use the right scale and units (ie. CO2 /square ft)
• Get ownership in use and maintenance of ongoing updates and reports
• Keep the number of metrics to 5-7, a manageable amount to keep
attention
• Combine metrics that are leading (energy conservation and efficiency
measures) and lagging (energy use)
• Draft your reporting in advance and map data gathering to it
• Align reporting to your industry reporting protocols and green
certifications (LEED, GRI, Green Seal, STAR)
• Publish Web based dashboards to make them memorable to employees
and stakeholders

22. Keep Reporting Concise and Memorable

23. Align metrics with attaining/retaining
Certifications/Eco-Labels most
important to your customers

24. Measure ROI + SOI
Savings on Investment Return on Investment
Outcomes based on savings to the Outcomes based on financial benefit on
budget the bottom line
Focus on eliminating waste and Focus on systems approach and long-
improving processes term growth
Measurement by cost savings Measurement by statistical analysis
Diminishing returns Potential increasing returns

25. Use Dashboards (Credit 360 example)
- Software for Carbon
management vs
sustainability intelligence
-ISSP report on reporting
software
- Favorites for SMB’s-
Credit 360, IReuse

26. iReuse Performance Tracking

27. Take-aways
• Start small, at the level you can maintain the
effort
• Go through all the steps of planning and design:
Assess, set goals and accompanying SMART
metrics
• Assign owners of reports and update data
• Measure Cost Savings and ROI
• Report out key 5-7 KPI’s with dashboards

28. Thank you!
• chris.yalonis@communiquepartners.com
• 415-309-0331

29. Reference materials
• Sustainability Planning, Darcy Hitchcock and Marsha Willard, Pages 65-79
• Ecological Intelligence, Daniel Goleman
• ISSP 2010 Directory of Sustainability Planning & Reporting Tools, LCA tools
– http://www.sustainabilityprofessionals.org/resources/general-resource
• Standards
– http://www.greenbiz.com/print/43386