Overview

Sustainability is good for business. This two-day class will provide you with the rationale, the methodology and real-life examples of how and why organizations have used sustainability to their strategic and operational advantage in the marketplace. Learn how sustainability not only improves your company’s triple bottom line – financial, social, and environmental – but how it improves your company’s image in the world, which can reap huge benefits. You will leave having developed a draft sustainability plan for a specific company process and return to work being able to lead company sustainability initiatives.

Course Information

This project funded in whole or part with funds from Employer Workforce Training Funds administered by the Oregon Department of Community Colleges and Workforce Development and Worksystems, Inc.

Prerequisites

Experience developing and implementing strategic business plans or business operations
No prior knowledge of sustainability concepts and issues required

Intended Audience

Senior management employees – including C-level and anyone in management
Business operations employees – includes policy-makers, entrepreneurs and business owners
Anyone in a professional setting who is responsible for the strategic direction of an organization

Course Outline

Why You Need This Course:
Sustainability is in the news and on decision-makers’ minds. Unfortunately most of the conversations are driven by outdated conventional wisdom that adopting sustainable practices come at a financial cost to companies that must be weighed against other intangible benefits.
This course reframes and updates the sustainability debate to show how your company can adopt sustainable practices for primarily bottom-line reasons. You will emerge from this two day course ready to influence and lead your company’s sustainability initiatives.

Training Objectives:

• Define a business-related definition of sustainability and how the 3E’s relate to it
• List impacts that have been attributed to climate change
• Describe how businesses can benefit from adopting sustainable practices in the workplace and what factors can influence adoption
• Develop a draft sustainability plan for a specific company process or work unit – to include opportunities, barriers and resource needs
• Define business value based on your customer and suppliers
• Complete a life-cycle diagram to introduce external impacts and opportunities
• List steps to introduce and implement the plans upon returning to work

Agenda:

• The Science Behind Sustainability
• Sustainability as a Part of Good Business Strategy
  • Adding sustainability to the innovation equation
  • SWOT Analysis
  • Developing Markets for Sustainable Products and Services
  • Integrating Sustainability into Your Brand
  • Addressing Climate Change in a Manner that Adds Business Value
  • Sustainability in the Balance Scorecard and Return on Investment (ROI)
• Sustainability as Good Management – using case studies for:
  • Creating a Value-focused Organization
  • Becoming an Employer of Choice
  • Engaging Stakeholders
• Sustainability and Operations
  • Introduction to Social and Environmental “Footprint”
  • Introduction to Life Cycle and Supply Chain Impacts
• Using sustainability as a tool for improving LEAN programs
  • Efficiency – the power of sustainability to reduce all types of waste (time, materials, water, energy, carbon)
  • Implementation planning
• Sustainability Efforts with Stakeholders and the Community
• Operationalizing Sustainability
• Practicum
  • Elements of a sustainability plan
  • Review participants’ selected product or service
  • Discuss sustainability principles and developing a “footprint”
  • Work through a series of exercises to create a basic sustainability plan
  • Develop Implementation plans with opportunities, barriers and resource needs
• Steps to follow after return to work to introduce and implement the plans

Instructor Bio

Phil Berry helps clients build economic value in their businesses through his company, Sustainable Product Works, LLC. He helps clients create this value through development and communication of meaningful innovations and reductions in the social and environmental impacts of products, services and supply chains.

From 1996 through 2007, Phil was Nike’s Director of Footwear Sustainability.

• In 2005, Phil was part of the team that developed Nike’s first product to be marketed as “more sustainable.” Nike’s “Considered Boot” earned the prestigious Gold IDEA award from Industrial Design Society of America.
• In 2006, Business Ethics Magazine named the environmental program Phil helped develop at Nike: “the best corporate environmental program in the U.S.”
• In 2007, Phil was chosen by Al Gore’s “Climate Project” as one of the 1,000 people globally to be personally trained by Al Gore to deliver his climate change presentation.

Prior to Nike, Phil worked for more than 17 years in a variety of roles managing environmental programs and issues:

• Consultant to business and government on issues of business efficiency and environmental impact in China, Thailand and India;
• Teaching resource efficient manufacturing to Oregon businesses for Oregon DEQ, the state environmental regulatory agency;
• Developing and implementing environmental programs for private sector employers in electronics, aerospace and chemical coatings.

Phil has a Bachelor of Science Degree in Social Science from Portland State University. He lives with his wife, Joanna, their youngest daughter and three dogs in the rural Willamette Valley south of Portland, Oregon. They have a grown son and a daughter attending the University of Washington in Seattle.