Sostainability Success Stories
Sustainability Success Story is an integral component of the Communication pillar of our SPARC service delivery framework. SOStainability deploys bespoke sustainability services focusing on Strategy, Policy, Action plans, Reporting, and Communication. This helps propel our mission to help stakeholders embrace sustainability intrinsically and achieve the intricate balance between nature, humanity, and society.
What It Means...
Sustainability Success Story is a communications solution designed to recognise and benchmark progressive sustainability efforts that advance the reputation and brand quotient of organisations. It is a green and ethical corporate marketing initiative to recognise both incremental and exponential gains in sustainability.
Why It Matters...
The environmental consciousness and credentials of organisations have become integral in reputation management and brand marketing. Given growing consumer demands for environmentally conscious products and services, and increasing employee preference for sustainability-inclined employers, organisations have become intentional in seeking validation and certifications. While this trend may drive some organisations to greenwash, it can also prevent those with decent credentials from telling their success stories.
Benchmarking sustainability progress on certifications and awards can be constraining for some businesses, especially MSMEs that lack the appetite and/or resources to pursue validation. Because every little step matters, the sustainability success story solution caters to all types of entities, products, and services, whether for-profit or non-profit.
The Context and Scope
Sustainability Success Story is designed to recognise progress across multiple layers of organisational operations and/or product life cycle:
- Organisational business model: Recognising success stories through the lens of businesses that model sustainability into the core of their being, products, and operations
- Product value chain: Product value chain: Recognising success stories at the product level - from extraction to disposal
- Business supply chain: Recognising success stories through the lens of stakeholder impact (employees, suppliers, vendors, communities, etc)
- Circularity: Focusing on the circularity of products in terms of carbon emission reduction
- Net zero and decarbonisation targets: Recognising success stories from the perspective of measurable progsress on net zero
The Methodology and Agency of Storytelling...
As a communications product, Sustainability Success Story activates the agency of storytelling as a powerful tool to advance sustainability adoption and progression. The methodology is to spotlight and celebrate organisations that are making small, steady, and big steps in their sustainability journey. This model is undergirded by Mike Rosenberg's work on Strategy and Sustainability, which lays out a practical framework and guide for discussing progress in the sustainability maturity journey of companies. Accordingly, the Sustainability Success Story solution will be implemented along the following signature recognition categories:
- BEGINNER - Recognises organisations just becoming aware of and consciously seeking sustainability adoption into business practices and minimum regulatory compliance.
- EARLY ADOPTER - Recognising incipient stages of sustainability practice
- STEADY AND READY - Recognising organisations that meet industry standards on sustainability
- EFFICIENCY - Recognises organisations that meet internal and external stakeholder expectations on sustainability to create clear sustainability pathways and plans endorsed and monitored by senior leadership. Sustainability integrated into operations to drive efficiency (e.g, circularity, etc).
- LEADERSHIP - Recognising organisations whose corporate philosophy goes beyond economic motivations, embracing the triple bottom line (profit, people, and planet), signposting innovation, and not shy to communicate successes.
- ENABLER - Recognising organisations that provide platforms, products, and services that spur others in adopting and progressing on their sustainability practices
Media Amplification and Partnerships
To drive impact and increased value, SOStainability deploys its periodic podcast to spotlight organisations that have been recognised as sustainability success stories. It also partners with top-rate PR agencies and media organisations at the local, regional, national, and international levels to amplify recognised success stories. Beneficiaries will therefore benefit from public relations and media reportage, including interviews and special spotlights arranged with media partners on print, broadcast, and digital channels. This is intended to boost the brand reputation of recognised organisations.
Governance and Oversight
The implementation of the initiative by SOStainability will be reinforced by governance oversight provided by independent sustainability experts constituted into the following:
- Local Area Advisory Board (LAAB): To oversee the efforts within a municipal jurisdiction
- Regional Area Advisory Board (RAAB): To oversee the efforts within a collection of multiple municipal jurisdictions
- National Advisory Board (NAB): To oversee the efforts within a country-wide framework
- Global Advisory Board (GAB): To oversee the efforts at a global level.