Tag Archives: ROI
CA Technologies’ Hyderabad, India office uses a worm farm to compost food waste from its cafeteria. While reviewing the composting data, one employee asked “Why is there so much food waste in the first place?”
A small group of local employees decided to address the issue. They put up a white board in the cafeteria, measured how much food waste was collected for vermicomposting each day, and then posted the results on the white board: Today we threw away ___ grams of food, enough to feed ___ hungry people. Within three weeks, food waste decreased seventy-five percent.
“That is the power of data in context,” Cynthia Curtis, VP and Chief Sustainability Officer at CA Technologies, said as she finished sharing this story.
She’s right. Data alone doesn’t move mountains; only by framing data to make it relevant, meaningful, and actionable can it drive significant change. That was one of three themes… More
We moved into new, bigger office space on December 23. In an old bank building in downtown Stamford, our new space is open and light and, thanks to some serious cajoling on my part, has low-VOC carpet and paint.
After receiving the equivalent of a shrug in response to my initial request for low-VOC carpet and paint, I began, over the course of several conversations, extolling the virtues of sustainable building. I rattled off some ballpark cost-reduction/payback percentages and facts on tenant health and productivity for green buildings. Then I relayed a comment by Manuel Patino, Director of Strategic Planning at JP Morgan Chase, during a panel I had recently moderated, that went something like this: companies that don’t build to LEED standards better plan to hold those buildings for a very long time, because there will be no market for them. Having finally piqued his… More
Social media can be a powerful tool to help companies better understand stakeholder interests, needs, and concerns—and thus to drive shifts in business practice which create lasting economic, environmental and social value.
Social media effectively pulls back the curtain of traditional sustainability communications to reveal not only what has been or is being accomplished, but who is involved in the process, how programs are implemented and ultimately why sustainability decisions are made in the first place.
The powerful effects of social media stem from a few defining characteristics:
Credibility—Social media communities are built on a common understanding that contributions are authentic, personal perspectives without veiled motivation.
Relevance—Tools to search, sort, rank, and feed enable users and marketers to access content and follow people that are of personal interest and… More
