3 different approaches to Sustainability Audits
Every once in awhile, I revisit and explore the world of Sustainability Audits and resource mapping on this blog as it is such a foundational principle to understanding what I do.
Sustainability Audits help businesses map out their impact, achievements and areas for improvement in a wide range of areas. These include social, environmental, administrative and financial. Exactly what a Sustainability Audit covers is not set in stone. In fact, most of the leading Sustainability Audits have different categories, questions and evidence that they consider.
In this post I will briefly look at 3 influential approaches to Sustainability Audits and the different categories they break their assessments down into.
3BL divides their bottom line into, not surprisingly, 3 areas: profit, planet and people. This approach was developed by John Elkington in 1994 as part of his own consultancy practice. You can go here to read an article by John reflecting on 3BL and its influence as we’ll a success where he thinks companies need to invest and focus on going forwards.
In that article he emphasises, “TBL wasn’t designed to be just an accounting tool. It was supposed to provoke deeper thinking about capitalism and its future, but many early adopters understood the concept as a balancing act, adopting a trade-off mentality.” His concern now is that businesses who use it really consider their impact, rather than using a tool like this to ensure they can tell themselves they are doing everything they need to and do not have to change their thinking about their impact or the energy any further.
Diagram illustrating the 3BL approach
They divide their questionnaire into 4 areas. In the image below you can see the clip art they use to indicate: governance, workers, community and the environment. Each of these areas has sub-headings as well.
1. Governance
-Accountability
-Transparency
2. Workers
-Compensation, benefits and training
-Worker Ownership
-Work Environment
3. Community
-Community Products and Services
-Community Practices
-Suppliers and Distributors
-Local
-Diversity
-Job Creation
-Civic Engagement and Giving
4. Environment
-Environmental Products and Services
-Environmental Practices
-Land, Office, Plant
-Energy, Water, Materials
-Emissions, Water, Waste
-Suppliers and Transportation
The benefit of this approach is that it is so prescribed (in focus and even the possible answers you can give), that you can do the baseline assessment in a couple hours. This does not mean that you will get certification, but it does help businesses undergo a comprehensive Sustainability Audit as quickly and painlessly as possible.
Since all the questions and topics are set, it may not relate to your company on every level. Many find that something like this is a good beginning but not necessarily a tool they continue using when they are more advanced for in-depth development unless they have decided to invest in the full certification process. Critics - especially on behalf of small and developing nation businesses - say that the level of fees make this more suitable for big business. Indeed, many large companies who have clearly committed to sustainability as part of their brand, are certified such as Patagonia. To find out more about their approach and explore their free resources - they have some excellent best practice guides available to download on topics such as “Creating a Supplier Survey” - go here.
The Circles of Sustainability approach divides their Sustainability into 4 areas: Politics, Culture, Ecology and Economics. Each of these have important and clearly defined sub-headings as well.
Economics: relates to resource use and management
-Production and resourcing
-Exchange and transfer
-Accounting and regulation
-Consumption and use
-Labour and welfare
-Technology and infrastructure
-Wealth and distribution
Politics: relates to social power and its: organisation, authorisation, legitimation and regulation.
-Organization and governance
-Law and justice
-Communication and critique
-Representation and negotiation
-Security and accord
-Dialogue and reconciliation
-Ethics and accountability
Circles of Sustainability - Sustainability Audit represented visually instead of with words, Melbourne, 2012 by GerogeIV from the citiesprogramme.org, Creative Commons license
Culture: relates to the “conversations” that produce meaning whether these are material products, relationships or other types of interactions such as advertising or actual dialogue
-Identity and engagement
-Creativity and recreation
-Memory and projection
-Belief and ideas
-Gender and generations
-Enquiry and learning
-Wellbeing and health
Ecology: relates to the interaction between humans and their environment (including both nature and buildings)
-Materials and energy
-Water and air
-Flora and fauna
-Habitat and settlements
-Built-form and transport
-Embodiment and sustenance
-Emission and waste
While this approach has been highly influential, it has a strong theoretical basis and is rooted in particular ways of seeing and understanding. For this reason, it takes a fair amount of reading and understanding before implementing it successfully. There are a number of online tools which explain its context and assumptions at a more in-depth level. However, for most businesses starting out, simply understanding their different categories and noticing how they represent their findings visually is usually enough as a starting point.
The benefits for engaging with this specific approach, is that it has been designed to be flexible and adaptable to a wide range of cities and businesses. It is a complex approach - they call it simple complexity - which is sophisticated and helps not only change your practice but also your ways of knowing and engaging with the world. The issues it solves is that, as opposed to the 3BL approach, it does not see “other” areas outside of the financial as optional to consider or unrelated and slightly tangential.
This is the type of approach you use when you want to truly change your practice and ways of knowing and understanding what you do and how it impacts others. More than the other approaches mentioned here, it allows the user to define how and what they consider and at what depth. They also refrain from making you a “convert” and needing to conform to the categorisations and pre-conceived concerns like the other 2 do while also acknowledging how inter-connected life and these categories always are.
Sustainability Audits help businesses map out their impact, achievements and areas for improvement in a wide range of areas. These include social, environmental, administrative and financial. Exactly what a Sustainability Audit covers is not set in stone. In fact, most of the leading Sustainability Audits have different categories, questions and evidence that they consider.
In this post I will briefly look at 3 influential approaches to Sustainability Audits and the different categories they break their assessments down into.
1. Triple Bottom Line (also called 3BL or TBL)
This approach is perhaps the most straightforward. It arose from the idea that “the bottom line” or true way that businesses cost their products and assess profit needs to take social and environmental factors into account. Therefore, if a factory is making “cheap” products but poisoning the environment as well as their employees, the product cannot be understood as cheap with 3BL accounting.3BL divides their bottom line into, not surprisingly, 3 areas: profit, planet and people. This approach was developed by John Elkington in 1994 as part of his own consultancy practice. You can go here to read an article by John reflecting on 3BL and its influence as we’ll a success where he thinks companies need to invest and focus on going forwards.
In that article he emphasises, “TBL wasn’t designed to be just an accounting tool. It was supposed to provoke deeper thinking about capitalism and its future, but many early adopters understood the concept as a balancing act, adopting a trade-off mentality.” His concern now is that businesses who use it really consider their impact, rather than using a tool like this to ensure they can tell themselves they are doing everything they need to and do not have to change their thinking about their impact or the energy any further.
Diagram illustrating the 3BL approach
2. B Corp Certification
B Corp certification is what you receive after undergoing a Sustainability Audit based on the B Lab organisation comprehensive questionnaire. Each question is multiple choice and easy enough to complete. You are only required to have supporting evidence for your claims if you want to be certified (over 3/4 of those who complete this Audit do not). If you receive a certain score (many companies use their questionnaire to structure their Audit with no expectation necessarily of achieving certification on the first try due to this scoring system) and pay their annual fee, then you can become certified.They divide their questionnaire into 4 areas. In the image below you can see the clip art they use to indicate: governance, workers, community and the environment. Each of these areas has sub-headings as well.
1. Governance
-Accountability
-Transparency
2. Workers
-Compensation, benefits and training
-Worker Ownership
-Work Environment
3. Community
-Community Products and Services
-Community Practices
-Suppliers and Distributors
-Local
-Diversity
-Job Creation
-Civic Engagement and Giving
4. Environment
-Environmental Products and Services
-Environmental Practices
-Land, Office, Plant
-Energy, Water, Materials
-Emissions, Water, Waste
-Suppliers and Transportation
The benefit of this approach is that it is so prescribed (in focus and even the possible answers you can give), that you can do the baseline assessment in a couple hours. This does not mean that you will get certification, but it does help businesses undergo a comprehensive Sustainability Audit as quickly and painlessly as possible.
Since all the questions and topics are set, it may not relate to your company on every level. Many find that something like this is a good beginning but not necessarily a tool they continue using when they are more advanced for in-depth development unless they have decided to invest in the full certification process. Critics - especially on behalf of small and developing nation businesses - say that the level of fees make this more suitable for big business. Indeed, many large companies who have clearly committed to sustainability as part of their brand, are certified such as Patagonia. To find out more about their approach and explore their free resources - they have some excellent best practice guides available to download on topics such as “Creating a Supplier Survey” - go here.
3. Circles of Sustainability
Circles of Sustainability is used by large international organisations such as the United Nations and World Vision. It was developed due to a 2008 UN paper exploring on accounting for sustainability. This arose from a dissatisfaction with accounting that usually prioritised and focused on finance for determining costs and profitability. It also expanded the definition of sustainability and areas covered to include a range of other factors more formally than 3BL initially set out.The Circles of Sustainability approach divides their Sustainability into 4 areas: Politics, Culture, Ecology and Economics. Each of these have important and clearly defined sub-headings as well.
Economics: relates to resource use and management
-Production and resourcing
-Exchange and transfer
-Accounting and regulation
-Consumption and use
-Labour and welfare
-Technology and infrastructure
-Wealth and distribution
Politics: relates to social power and its: organisation, authorisation, legitimation and regulation.
-Organization and governance
-Law and justice
-Communication and critique
-Representation and negotiation
-Security and accord
-Dialogue and reconciliation
-Ethics and accountability
Culture: relates to the “conversations” that produce meaning whether these are material products, relationships or other types of interactions such as advertising or actual dialogue
-Identity and engagement
-Creativity and recreation
-Memory and projection
-Belief and ideas
-Gender and generations
-Enquiry and learning
-Wellbeing and health
Ecology: relates to the interaction between humans and their environment (including both nature and buildings)
-Materials and energy
-Water and air
-Flora and fauna
-Habitat and settlements
-Built-form and transport
-Embodiment and sustenance
-Emission and waste
While this approach has been highly influential, it has a strong theoretical basis and is rooted in particular ways of seeing and understanding. For this reason, it takes a fair amount of reading and understanding before implementing it successfully. There are a number of online tools which explain its context and assumptions at a more in-depth level. However, for most businesses starting out, simply understanding their different categories and noticing how they represent their findings visually is usually enough as a starting point.
The benefits for engaging with this specific approach, is that it has been designed to be flexible and adaptable to a wide range of cities and businesses. It is a complex approach - they call it simple complexity - which is sophisticated and helps not only change your practice but also your ways of knowing and engaging with the world. The issues it solves is that, as opposed to the 3BL approach, it does not see “other” areas outside of the financial as optional to consider or unrelated and slightly tangential.
This is the type of approach you use when you want to truly change your practice and ways of knowing and understanding what you do and how it impacts others. More than the other approaches mentioned here, it allows the user to define how and what they consider and at what depth. They also refrain from making you a “convert” and needing to conform to the categorisations and pre-conceived concerns like the other 2 do while also acknowledging how inter-connected life and these categories always are.
