Start 2023 by Committing to a Sustainability Action Plan

I know that we haven’t even celebrated the holidays yet, but it’s never too early to think about your New Year Resolutions.  So, while you are thinking of ideas, I’d like to offer up a new idea – make 2023 the year that you will embark on your sustainability pathway, starting with the development of a Sustainability Action Plan, or as I like to call it, an SAP.

What’s in this SAP, you say?  Well, let me guide you.

An SAP is a plan that addresses your organization’s desire to operate sustainably for a better future.  Since sustainability is the intersection of environmental, social, and economic concerns, the SAP will impact your organization from how it looks at its energy consumption to how it treats its employees to how it operates with greater efficiency. 

The first thing to remember when thinking about an SAP is that this is a lifelong journey that evolves over time.  Many New Year Resolutions fall apart by Valentine’s Day, and that would be the absolute worst thing to happen with your SAP.  So, if you embark on this journey, you must commit to it forever. 

It’s not as hard as you may think.  A successful SAP is an integral part of your business planning efforts from your annual strategy and budgeting processes, as well as your staff performance metrics.  Once you understand how the SAP integrates into your normal operations, the rest is about measuring results.

The standard SAP includes evaluating your operations across three domains that I’ll call environmental, social/workforce, and economics/operations. 

In the environmental domain, you’ll want to consider your carbon emissions position.  This is done by going through an assessment process to understand how much energy is being consumed and emissions being calculated. 

For the social domain, you’ll want to look at how workforce well-being will be integrated into the plan through various sustainability incentives like encouraging local volunteering, or donations to causes. 

But nothing runs if it doesn’t fit your economic business model.  That means keeping the SAP front and center as you develop your annual strategy and budgets.  Essentially, a carbon budget ought to be integrated into your financial budget.

An SAP is a lifelong journey, but it doesn’t have to be scary.  It can be an iterative process that helps you drive towards your ultimate goals.  And since every journey starts with a first step, I recommend starting that with a resolution this coming new year.   

Let’s see how many media tech companies are ready to make an SAP as part of their 2023 resolutions?