It’s simple to see how sustainability can apply to product-heavy companies. A mining company or direct-to-consumer start-up has a distinct environmental impact. But what about service-based companies and sustainability?

"Stakeholders" and “stakeholder engagement” are prominent sustainability buzzwords. Stakeholders usually get associated with large companies tromping about in remote areas, or companies that are on a mea culpa tour for doing something bad. But stakeholder engagement can be crucial in building a smaller business. Businesses can use stakeholder relationships to boost their sustainability practices, or just to strengthen their business.

How do you tell your sustainability story without releasing a sustainability report? Large companies use sustainability reports because they are required to publish annual reports. They can be useful PR and publicity tools for companies.  It can be hard to find the time or money for smaller companies to publish such grandiose reports. Reports can also seem outdated for smaller companies. 

Starting sustainability in your small business can often be the hardest part. Where should you begin? If you’ve decided to get going on sustainability, use these 5 steps to get you started on the right foot. The five steps are create a why, establish time limits, brainstorm, take the long view and outsource.

Sustainability is a grand idea and often involves a grand plan. The question remains- how do you do it? How do you enact sustainability in your business on a daily basis so that you can hit your goals and collect your data? The same way you get all of your other work done. Hint: your employees. Assign tasks, encourage feedback and sharing goals and results are all part of engaging employees in your small business.

Sustainability data is a big buzzword for a lot of businesses. For good reason! Having data is so important to your business for countless reasons. As they say, “You can’t manage what you don’t measure.” This applies to sustainability data. See Part 1 of this blog series for how to collect sustainability data. You now have collected sustainability data that includes units, dollars, and ideas. What can you do with this collected data? I hope you try a combination of the below suggestions. 

We’re all about data here at Green Buoy Consulting. Data is how we prove sustainability works and keep businesses in check. It’s how we show businesses the value of their efforts and show them the good they are doing. Think about sustainability data you hear, “10,000 cups kept from landfills!” “Energy Reduced by 11%!” These data points tell a specific story. A lot of the sustainability consulting work I do involves doing this for clients.