Sustainability Roadmap for Startups - Green Plus

12
Long Term, Advanced Practices
NOTE: This section includes “bonus” practices – practices that are more advanced or resource intensive. Some may be
entirely within reach today, depending on your startup.
PERFORMANCE
Plan & Document
‣ Prepare for various risk scenarios and plan for the future. Develop a risk management and succession
plan.
‣ Develop a written marketing plan for communicating sustainability practices externally.
‣ Get organized. Put all sustainability-related documents, policies, procedures and the like in a binder or
digital repository. Having everything in one place helps pass on institutional knowledge.
Manage Sustainability
‣ Announce or incorporate sustainability achievements into press releases and annual reports.
‣ Create a publicly-available sustainability report summarizing your organization’s sustainability
performance across the topic areas your stakeholders care about most. Try to contextualize the
information to your industry and local conditions as much as possible and include not just successes, but
areas in which you hope to improve.
‣ If you’ve followed the guidelines put forth by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) to develop your
sustainability report, submit the sustainability report to be GRI-checked.
‣ Account for sustainability. Calculate the total carbon footprint of your operations.
‣ Disclose your carbon footprint to the Carbon Disclosure Project.
‣ Perform a life cycle analysis for one or more of your organization’s manufactured products.
‣ Put in place an environmental management system (EMS). Include in the system:
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a policy statement documenting the organization's commitment to the environment
an assessment of the environmental impact of the organization’s business activities
stated objectives and targets for environmental aspects of the organization’s operations
programming designed, with allocated resources, to achieve these targets
periodic compliance and auditing to evaluate environmental programs conducted
‣ Seek ISO 14001 Certification for your EMS.
‣ Formalize your commitment to being a sustainable organization. Seek B Corporation Certification,
writing your commitment to stakeholders into your Articles of Incorporation to ensure that even if there
is a leadership change, stakeholders and sustainability will remain central.