Sustainable Strategy and Corporate Social Responsibility

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Is there a business case for your sustainability initiatives?

Leverage sustainability to enhance your value proposition and business value

Sustainability and corporate social responsibility have moved beyond "feel good" activities to pressing business imperatives. Here are some of the sustainability-related issues that keep CEOs up at night:

• Regulatory uncertainty: Should you wait to see how all the different cap-and-trade regulations will shake out all over the world, or should you start managing carbon now?
• Stock price: Could a low showing on sustainability rankings like Newsweek Green Rankings and the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes hold down your equity value or tarnish your brand?
• Market share: Should you strive to be a sustainability leader like GE, Toyota or BP? Or is compliance good enough?
• Supply-chain demands: Could you lose big contracts from retailers like Walmart or Tesco if you can't compete on greenhouse gas emissions?
• Access to capital: With more than 60 of the world's largest banks utilizing environmental guidelines like the Equator Principles, could you find it harder to get funding in the future?

With more questions than answers, it's hard to figure out the best way to steer your company.

That's why FirstCarbon does not urge CEOs to just jump on the bandwagon, knock out a sustainability report and publish your carbon footprint – even if that is what other companies in your space are doing.

We take a good, hard look at your true business drivers:

• What does sustainability mean to you? Someone else's definition may misalign your business.
• Your view of sustainability determines your unique value proposition. This is your stake in the ground about how corporate social responsibility creates value and mitigates risk.
• Your sustainability value proposition determines your strategy. Your goals and the programs you implement to achieve them are grounded in the true nature of your business.
• Your implementation plan focuses on the most important steps. Instead of spending 1,500 man-hours on a sustainability report, you might be better served changing the formulation of your top product or replacing aging equipment. We help you identify your top priorities.

Get a sustainable-strategy consultation.

Reduce energy consumption and other costs with the right sustainable strategy

As any CFO will tell you, reducing greenhouse gas emissions can save you money due to its direct relationship to energy spending. But how do you evaluate the cost-benefit implications?

• How long will it take to see return on investment for capital improvements?
• Can you buy greener products from local suppliers without raising costs?
• Should you invest in projects that produce carbon credits?
• What's the potential cost of doing nothing on the sustainability front?

Get a consultation on sustainability costs vs. benefits.

Increase market share with green products and green marketing

It's no secret that corporate social responsibility increasingly drives brand perception:

• Do your customers want green products made of recycled materials or that use less electricity?
• Do you need to provide sustainability metrics to your customers and gather data from your suppliers?
• What can you gain by publicizing your company's sustainability story?

Get a consultation on green-marketing strategy or learn more about our life-cycle assessment consulting practice.

Anticipate legal issues and litigation risks around sustainability

The legal risks of an inadequate response to sustainability are starting to pile up:

• Could victims of natural disasters sue you for causing climate change?
• Have insurance companies refused to provide Directors and Officers Liability Insurance because you don't have corporate-social-responsibility programs in place?
• Is your sales team putting your company at risk for breach of contract by promising customers that your products are "sustainable," when in fact, they're not?
• Could activist shareholder groups expose you to a proxy fight or other actions?

Get a consultation on the legal implications of sustainability.

Get companywide buy-in on your sustainability plan

Many companies have recently created positions like chief sustainability officer or vice president of sustainability. Newly minted sustainability executives tend to fall into one of two categories:

• Company veterans that rose through the environmental ranks. They are masters of technical and regulatory issues, but are often new to the "business" side of the business.
• Recipients of graduate or doctoral environmental degrees. They  have the management savvy, but may have less hands-on experience in dealing with issues on the factory floor.

In both cases, the sustainability executive may not be completely prepared to craft a corporatewide strategy and may not be able to sell the plan equally well to C-level executives and environmental staff.

Get a consultation on how to get buy-in on your sustainable strategy.