Sustainability Management
Recently we have experienced a significant global focus on sustainable business with many industries voluntarily altering their business directions to align with these new customer expectations. Transitioning requires organisations to look deeper into their operations, their supply chains and even their design and development activities to realise opportunities for sustainable practices. Trident Environment can guide your transition across the following areas:
- Corporate sustainability advisory
- Supply chain sustainability
- Sustainability strategy and policy
Corporate Sustainability Advisory
Promotion of an organisation’s commitment to sustainability is achieved through the use of industry-specific and independent rating schemes that aim to summarise the sustainability performance of an organisation.
Trident is experienced with sustainability rating schemes for the infrastructure industry (ISCA, GRI G4 and Green Port) and can very easily adopt other rating schemes that are suitable to your industry and business needs. Trident are also able to assist you in the development of sustainability management systems including policies, plans and life-cycle assessments.
Corporate sustainability is the business function that is concerned with company-wide and high-level sustainability initiatives, policy creation and implementation, monitoring/ measurement and reporting to top management and external stakeholders.
Sustainability is the general term for efforts to improve or minimise the impacts of an organisation’s products, services or commodities at every stage of their life cycle. The areas of focus are: social benefit, environmental protection and financial profitability (called the triple bottom line). Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a concept within just one of these three areas. CSR describes social initiatives or programs implemented by organisations to produce a social benefit to people or communities that are external but related to that organisation and its products/ services/ commodities.
Supply Chain Sustainability
Much of the recent global focus on sustainability has also included scrutiny of our supply chain systems and their contribution to an organisation’s efforts in sustainable business. Organisations now must consider their suppliers’ environmental footprint as part of their own and take responsibility in reducing both.
Trident Environment is able to assist your organisation in determining, offsetting and mitigating the sustainability impacts of your complex supply chain. Trident can also assist your organisation to implement AS ISO 20400:2018 Sustainable Procurement.
An organisation’s supply chain is often an overlooked business aspect that is responsible for a significant proportion of the end-product’s social, environmental and financial impacts. Investigating these impacts informs the organisation about how and where to change their interaction with the supply chain in order to pursue sustainable business.
Some example concepts to improve a supply chain’s sustainability are:
- supplementing some proportion of infeed raw materials with suitable, non-polluting replacements that are inert or unwanted outputs of other industrial processes (or even waste products that may or may not need processing)
- educating or otherwise supporting suppliers with relevant knowledge that helps them secure their livelihoods or streamline their production
- stipulating sustainable initiatives or similar requirements in new contracts that are executed with providers
- changing to providers who are compatible with your company’s sustainability initiatives
- using waste materials from third-party industrial processes that are suitable
- economising packaging for bulk shipments of products or backloading
- redesigning packaging or using recycled materials in new packaging designs
- exploring efficiencies in transporting products or raw materials from point to point
- exploring efficiencies in the application of labour, upskilling workers or creating opportunities for previously unemployed people
Sustainability Strategy & Policy
Having a professionally developed sustainability policy and strategy will assist your organisation to comprehensively compete with competitors who are busy adopting sustainable practices also. Trident Environment can develop a well thought out sustainability strategy that will ensure your entire organisation makes the change with responsible guidance and control.
Trident Environment can assist you to implement the defined level of sustainability you require for your organisation’s needs from basic Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives and bolt-on sustainability programs to embedded sustainability or even net-positive business models. Please enquire below so we may discuss your particular requirements.
An organisation’s sustainability policy is a formal statement from its top management that publicly communicates the commitment to transition into a modern, considerate corporate citizen by adopting the principles of sustainability. This formal statement is taken as a prime directive for all employees, contractors, suppliers and distributors who wish to work with that organisation.
The main function of the sustainability policy is to set the direction for all business departments to adopt the principles of sustainability per the wishes of top management. The business departments can examine and improve the social, environmental and financial impacts of every stage in that organisation’s product life-cycle. This means implementing meaningful changes in the way the organisation sources, makes, packages, moves and sells goods, commodities or even services in their markets. Additionally, the sustainability policy forms the key organisational guidance for the management systems built upon it.
A sustainable business strategy is a management document that explains the how the organisation will reach a state where they have fully implemented targeted change and have transitioned into an organisation which practices sustainable business exclusively. To implement this strategy, the organisation must understand and critique the impacts from how its products, commodities and services are made, packaged, supplied, used and disposed. From this analysis, an organisation can then implement purposeful targeted change in these areas.
We are Ready to Help You
For more information on how Trident may assist you with this service offering, please send us an online enquiry and we will respond within one business day.