Corporate Sustainability Advisors
  • Home
  • About
    • Meet Us
  • Approach & Services
    • Services
  • Media: Social & Other
    • Newsroom
  • Blog
  • Contact Us

sustainability
​trend spotting


Take Action on Climate Change | 5 Things a Small Business Owner Can Do

6/6/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture
With so many climate change stories in the news these days, what's an owner of a medium-size or small business to do? There's a lot of talk about what governments and large, global companies are doing to climate-ready their businesses, but fewer tips for smaller businesses.

Owners of smaller businesses face similar risks (and may also have opportunities) from climate-related impacts:
  • physical hazards such as increased temperatures, storm events or sea level rise; 
  • regulatory changes such as voluntary or mandatory CO2 emissions reporting or green building standards; and
  • market changes including energy and other resource cost increases, new provisions to "green" your lease terms, or shifts in workforce and consumer valuation of sustainability practices.
While the scale of these risks is certainly smaller in terms of overall costs/revenue/GDP, the relative risk to each business can be significant,  even making the difference between thriving or going under.  
Here are 5 things any business owner or leader can do to take action on climate change and make their business more resilient. 

  1. Know your climate impacts: How much energy do you use to run your business?​ How much do you pay for your energy? How climate-intensive are your other business purchases and operations?
  2. Assess your climate risks: How might climate-related physical, regulatory or market changes impact your supply chain, employees, sales, delivery and other business operations?
  3. Make a plan to reduce the impacts and mitigate the risks: Tackle the low-hanging fruit first before moving onto the bigger challenges. Increase energy efficiency, integrate more climate-friendly supplies and process improvements, and explore using  cleaner energy sources.
  4. Measure your climate emissions reductions and cost savings: Be sure to measure both the environmental reductions and associated costs and savings. Allocate some of the costs savings for longer-term investments to make your business more sustainable and climate adaptive.
  5. Communicate with your employees, customers, investors, vendors and community about #1-4. It's important to talk with all your key stakeholders about what you're doing (and why) to make your business more resilient. 
####
Thank you for reading this blog post. Here at Corporate Sustainability Advisors LLC blog and on LinkedIn, I regularly write about organizational, community, and personal sustainability. If you would like to read my future posts then please subscribe via the adjacent link. Also, feel free to connect via Twitter and Facebook.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    Hi. I'm Colleen, Corporate Sustainability Advisor's founder and owner.  Blogging about corporate sustainability trends, benefits, and best practices.

    Archives

    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016

    Categories

    All
    Alliant 2
    America Recycles Day
    April
    B Corp
    Benefit Corporation
    Board Of Directors
    Buildings
    Business Strategy
    Carbon
    CFO
    Charitable
    Chief Financial Officers
    Clean Energy
    Clean Tech
    Climate
    Corporate Governance
    Corporate Responsibility
    Corporate Sustainability
    CSR
    Disclosure
    Donations
    Earth
    Earth Day
    Earth Month
    Economically Disadvantaged Women Owned Small Business
    Economically Disadvantaged Women-Owned Small Business
    E-Cycling
    EDWOSB
    Energy
    Energy Efficiency
    Energy Management
    Energy Star
    Environmental
    EO 13693
    EPA
    ESG
    E-Stewards
    E-Waste
    FAR
    Federal Contracting
    Federal Government
    Financial
    Financial Reporting
    FSB
    GHG
    Government Contracting
    Green Drinks
    Greenhouse Gas
    GSA
    GWAC
    Homes
    Investors
    LIVE
    Municipal
    Oregon
    Philanthropy
    R2
    Recycle
    Recycling
    Regulation
    Risk Management
    SBA
    SEC
    Shareholders
    Small Business
    Smart Growth
    Social Responsibility
    Startup
    Supply Chain
    Sustainability
    Sustainable Farming
    Sustainable Wines
    Taxes
    Waste
    Waste Management
    Women Owned Small Business
    Women-Owned Small Business
    WOSB

    RSS Feed

      Want More Sustainability Trend Spotting?

    Subscribe to Blog
© 2016 CORPORATE SUSTAINABILITY ADVISORS, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
  • Home
  • About
    • Meet Us
  • Approach & Services
    • Services
  • Media: Social & Other
    • Newsroom
  • Blog
  • Contact Us