Sustainability has been a buzz word for a very long time and apleany businesses have redefined their model to include an acknowledgement of the “triple bottom line” — economic, social, and environmental impacts — in annual Corporate Responsibility Reports (CSR). This trend has helped to shift the conversation from, “What is sustainability?” to “How can we be more sustainable?”
It is generally understood that operating your business while taking into account your environmental impact is the responsible thing to do. However, despite this notion, many companies find themselves paying lip service to the concept of sustainability because they have to, but not because they have seen any financial benefit from becoming more sustainable.
We understand that it is vital for companies to remain profitable while reducing their environmental impact. A company cannot stay in business at the expense of being sustainable — but we have found that achieving greater sustainability can substantially boost your bottom line.
Enviro-Stewards is flipping the paradigm of what sustainability means for businesses. Our holistic approach to implementing sustainable practices helps to prevent the wasting of resources while increasing profits — it’s a new way to think about sustainability.
A New Way To Think About Sustainability
Typically, when businesses decide to undertake an environmental or sustainability audit, they spend a lot of time and money paying consultants to conduct a review process. Then, the business is left with a lengthy report on their shelf that recommends the implementation of expensive band-aid solutions.
The traditional method of consultancy and auditing is the old way of doing things and doesn’t result in long-term efficiencies or increased profits.
Holistic Sustainability Audits
At Enviro-Stewards, our approach is unlike that of most consultants. Instead of performing a traditional audit, focused on solving your end-state dilemma, we examine the root cause in order to develop innovative and sustainable solutions at their source.
While a traditional audit might show you how much money you could save by more efficiently destroying your food waste or offsetting your energy use, a holistic audit will show you how much you could save by not wasting resources or using energy in the first place.
A holistic sustainability audit will entail a systematic review of your entire facility and its operating processes, in order to accurately determine where there is waste. This will include a meeting with your team and an assessment of your facility’s baseline energy use, water consumption, and waste generation.
Next, this information is reviewed by engineers and scientists who devise a feasible implementation plan to prevent waste and conserve resources. After you approve the plan, Enviro-Stewards will help you with the implementation so that you can begin realizing your savings.
Shifting The Paradigm
Example:
The question Enviro-Stewards asks is: Why is this waste being produced in the first place?, and the follow-up question we want you to then ask yourself is: Why should we pay for resources that we then have to pay to destroy?
The answer is, you shouldn’t have to pay at all. You are essentially paying twice for something that isn’t even helping your business.
Example:
Your business spends $10,000 every year to pay an outside vendor to remove waste from your facility. You feel good about this vendor because they are disposing of the waste in an environmentally-responsible manner and it’s reportable in your annual CS report. However, you are still spending a significant amount of money on waste disposal, which is cutting into your profits.
Additionally, you may have invested $100,000 or more to purchase the ingredients lost in this waste stream, and invested water, energy, and production capacity in transforming the ingredients towards a saleable product before they were lost.
Therefore, by implementing the identified solutions from the holistic audit, you may save more than $100,000 every year by reducing, or eliminating, a waste that you thought was only costing you $10,000 per year.
Result: You can stop paying to throw something away and avoid the cost of the energy, ingredients, and other resources that went into producing it in the first place.
| When Enviro-Stewards conducted a root-cause analysis at Campbell Canada, we were able to determine significant areas of improvement. Our solutions identified practical and economically-attractive opportunities to avoid food waste and to increase product yield by 938 tonnes/yr with a product value of $706,000 — and a payback of less than six months. This project was selected by Clean50 as the Project-of-the-Year for 2018. |
Our experience has shown us that your business will struggle with ongoing resource and financial concerns if you only address the symptoms without mitigating the source of the problem.
Stop paying for wasted resources and boost your profits by addressing the root cause of the problem.
Real Solutions, Real Goals, Real Results
In 2016, the Centre for Sustainability and Excellence released a comprehensive study after reviewing over 400 sustainability-corporate responsibility reports disclosed by North American companies and determined:
“Companies with tangible and publicly disclosed sustainability goals are four to five times more likely to improve their financial, social and environmental performance compared to those who do not set goals.”
For example, Maple Leaf Foods’ bold environmental commitments (50% reductions by 2015) have already secured more than $2 million per year in additional profits. Moving from a band-aid approach to a goal-focused solution with long-term, positive impact is not only tangible, it is sustainable for real triple bottom line results.
Real Results
As of 2018, Enviro-Stewards’ projects are estimated to have saved facilities:
- $61,500,000 in revenue
- 64,300,000 kwh of electricity (equivalent to the annual output of 250 acres of solar panels)
- 46,100,000 m3 of natural gas (enough to heat 17,000 homes for one year)
- 8,400,000 m3 of water (equivalent to 4,000 km of tanker trucks bumper to bumper)
- 94,300 tonnes of greenhouse gas (equivalent to the annual emissions from 20,100 cars)
- 59,000 tonnes of waste (equivalent to the annual garbage from 76,150 people)
Enviro-Stewards is dedicated to the development of innovative solutions to achieve long-term resource and financial sustainability for businesses.
Connect with us for a free consultation regarding the magnitude of your potential savings. Let’s get your business on the path to long-term, sustainable, financial success.