The first step in your journey is to stop and see where you are.

Sustineo will conduct a thorough energy audit that will give you a clear and precise view of the impact you are having now, today. We’ll examine your utility bills, the goods and services that you buy and the things you sell to see where your biggest impacts are.

Then, when we show you where your energy and cost saving opportunities lie, you can take effective action.

If you’d like to address your carbon emissions, we’ll help there too. We offer tailored carbon services that include carbon footprint, real time emissions, a strategy for reducing emissions, disclosure, carbon offsetting or insetting – anything really.

Or, if you’ve been thinking of getting stuck into the circular economy, you might want to do a life-cycle assessment (LCA), produce third-party verified environmental labels to better market your products (known as Environmental Product Declarations or EPDs), or train your staff to do this in-house.

The second step is all about doing. Our energy audit will give you a list of ideas to save energy, whereas a carbon footprint or life cycle assessment only take it as far as the impact calculation. If you want ideas, ask and Sustineo will include a roadmap to reducing your emissions or an eco-design review of your product.

If your focus is on energy, we can help with implementing the performance standard for energy, ISO 50001 energy management systems. This is a framework for your business to continuously improve in energy use. It’s a good standard in that it is performance based.

You might also consider integrating ISO 50001 with other management system standards, and Sustineo has assisted organisations blending ISO 50001 in with ISO 140001 environmental management systems and ISO 20121 event sustainability management systems for example.

Whatever way you choose to optimise your environmental or social footprint, make sure that you can measure the positive impact or savings. There’s no point wasting an opportunity to engage your staff and even less point in paying lip service to corporate social responsibility with no substance behind it.

We are making a mess of our planet. Fact. But we can change the direction we’re going in if we start by recognising where we are, honestly, and then carefully planning how we go forward. The third and final step on your journey is about going beyond the call of duty and making good things happen for society and the living world. It’s about setting an example for all to follow. It’s about restoring faith and hope in your brand and in our future.

One of the most practical things you can do right now is to purchase carbon offsets. Sustineo will help you here, with advice, planning and taking part in suitable global or local offsetting initiatives, or even carbon insetting where the projects are actually embedded within your business’s supply chain.

If you’d like to learn a little more about moving towards a generative business model, we recommend reading Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics (2017).