“Companies need to think about how a changing climate affects things such as heating and cooling needs, water availability, and emergency preparedness for catastrophic weather,” write Marshall Chase and Ryan Schuchard of BSR, a global corporate responsibility consultant, for GreenBiz.com. That single statement speaks to several areas in the Baldrige Criteria:

• 1.1a3: How senior leaders create a sustainable organization
• 1.2c1: How you consider the well-being of environmental systems to which your organization does or may contribute
• 2.1a1: How your strategic planning process identifies potential blind spots
• 2.1a2: How strategic planning addresses early indications of shifts in technology, markets, products, and customer preferences
• 2.1a2: How strategic planning addresses long-term organizational sustainability
• 6.1c: How you ensure work system and workplace preparedness for disasters or emergencies including prevention and continuity of operations

Chase and Schuchard touch on several areas that climate change will—indeed, already is—affecting, including:

• Engaging your organization’s entire value chain in identifying and addressing risks and opportunities
• Focusing on your supply chain, which often has a carbon footprint equal to or greater than that of your organization. “BSR has worked closely with food-processing companies and retailers whose supply chain emissions are more than three times larger than those represented by their own facilities and purchased energy.”
• Considering the impact when customers use your products. Automobiles are the obvious example, but other companies, such as Levi Strauss and Co., are encouraging consumers to be more energy efficient.
• Monitoring changes both in the climate and related regulation that may bring new competitors into your industry, as it has done in the energy field with windmills and solar panels, or raise barriers to entering other industries.

As the authors conclude, “it’s clear that climate change is one of the largest and most persistent sustainability megatrends of this generation.” Responding to related questions in the Baldrige Criteria can help an organization assess the impact of this trend on its operations and develop plans to address it.

Help grow our community:

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...