Three Questions To Ask During Your First Sustainability Audit

Sustainability audit? Yup. We promise this won’t hurt. You’re about to deep dive into what your enterprise looks like in terms of consumption and waste. How do all of these areas impact not only your bottom line but your climate footprint as well? And to be quite honest, you’re feeling a little overwhelmed.

Getting started requires two things: information and motivation. The good news? You can check both boxes; you’ve begun gathering information and the momentum that fuels motivation. The bad news? There’s a ton of information to sift through and a huge list of priorities competing for your attention. The solution? Do something. Start here by answering three key questions.

Why are you concerned about sustainability?

Here we’re not addressing the future viability of your enterprise financially or otherwise.  We’ll restrict this probe to environmental sustainability.  To be sure, it will likely impact your bottom line.  

• Why now?
• In terms of the bread-and-butter of your mission and its operations, why is sustainability now a priority for you?
• And the Big Why: why does your “footprint” matter to you and others elbow-deep in your business?

Who cares?

Who is interested in helping you figure this out? Identify that person or cohort immediately and pull them inside your secret circle. They can help answer all the other questions alongside you and probably already have some ideas.

What aspects of sustainability and which operational and cost centers will you be looking at (first)?

Although this varies, you’ll be looking at

• your waste stream and how you manage it
• energy sourcing and usage
• day to day consumption
• even broader, long term impacts of – and choices made by – your enterprise including things like location, building infrastructure, even work-from-home policies

Take some time with these three basic questions before you assemble your team, hire a consultant, or make any critical decisions. Please copy and paste this article (we don’t mind) into an email blast to your management team. Or the entire staff. Or text them the link!

Hang out with us, and we’ll begin to fill in some of the blanks to these questions for you. We’re in touch with the growing continuum of ideas and solutions for sustainability. It’s kind of what we do.