Filed Under News

Congratulations to the Landmark Group of Builders!

Neil McCallum — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 10:00:55 -0500

Congratulations to the Landmark Group of Builders for winning the Award for Corporate Environmental Excellence at the 11th annual GLOBE-Net Awards for Environmental Excellence! To read more about how The Natural Step has helped Landmark embed sustainability into every aspect of the company please visit www.naturalstep.ca/landmark-group-of-builders.

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GLOBE Foundation Presents Canadian Environmental Leaders With Prestigious Globe Awards

VANCOUVER, B.C.- Following an exciting day and inspiring presentation by Paul Hawken, famed environmentalist and renowned author, the GLOBE Foundation has announced today the winners of the 11th annual GLOBE Awards for Environmental Excellence during the An Inspired Future Closing Luncheon at the Sheraton Centre Toronto.

The awards are presented annually to Canadian companies that excel in sustainable business practices and progressive development in technology and services.

This year saw winners in six award categories: Corporate Environmental Excellence, Excellence in Emerging Technology, Technology Innovation & Application, Excellence in Urban Sustainability, Best Green Consumer Product, and the Next Gen Entrepreneur Award.

The Award for Corporate Environmental Excellence was presented to the Landmark Group. Landmark's vision is "to be a major North American housing solutions provider recognized for sustainability and for leading a revolution to industrialize home construction".

For 35 years the Landmark Group has grown to be one of Alberta's largest builders and developers having crafted over 11,000 homes. Landmark's legacy began with an entrepreneurial commitment to build better homes for families at the best price possible.

The industry has evolved dramatically in three decades, and Landmark Group of Builders has often been at the forefront of its most significant innovations. Finalists in this category included Teknion and PepsiCo Foods Canada.

Read more...http://bit.ly/12pRmxQ

Source: GOLBE-Net

TNS Canada: taking systems change to the next level

Scott Perret — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 07:18:06 -0400

Here is a snapshot update of some of the work that's been going on in The Natural Step Canada office lately. It was originally posted as part of the Spring 2013 Stepping Stones Newsletter.

“How can we accelerate the shift towards sustainability and beyond, with much greater impact?” This is the question The Natural Step Canada has been asking itself for the past year. Its exciting answer is a blend of old and new strategies. While continuing to offer deeply impactful and highly customized advisory services for individual organizations (like the development of “sustainability filters” to help teams at an engineering firm apply a sustainability lens to their design work), The Natural Step Canada is also stepping firmly into the arena of change making at higher and higher levels of the social, business and economic systems in which we all operate. Today, they are doing this by working with others to define what sustainable business would look like, impacting young leaders, and hosting conversations and capacity-building for collaboration—the primary skill required for influencing complex systems.

What Would a Sustainable Business Look Like if We Saw One?

In collaboration with a number of partners including B Lab, the MaRS Centre for Impact Investing, Green Living Enterprises, Corporate Knights, Interface, and Bob Willard, The Natural Step Canada is working on a project called “Toward a Gold Standard for Sustainable Business.”

The intention is to create a systemic intervention that helps reorient the way organizations consider their business performance—relative to the desired future state of sustainability, rather than relative to past “unsustainable” performance. Said another way, the true leaders in the sustainable business movement are driving innovation by articulating a sustainable vision for their businesses and monitoring performance relative to that vision—i.e., “how much closer to sustainability are we getting through our innovations and performance improvements?”

The long-term benefit of this approach is to help create more successful businesses, as well as clarity in the marketplace that allows observers to differentiate between businesses that meet rigorous social, environmental, accountability, and transparency standards and those that do not.

The recent emergence of the B Corp movement has created an opportunity to address this issue in a way that wasn’t possible before. We are therefore pleased to report TNS Canada is working with B Lab (the curator of the B Corp movement) to this end.

With this project unfolding over the course of 2013, The Natural Step aims to achieve three outcomes:

A revised B Impact Assessment (the rating system for B Corps) that is reflective of the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development
An increased number of business leaders and other stakeholders voicing support for a new “Gold Standard for Sustainable Businesses.”
Emergence of new collaborative initiatives to advance a “Gold Standard for Sustainable Business.”

A Canadian team is undertaking the first step right now – a review of the B Impact Assessment through the lens of the FSSD. The second phase of the project will involve a series of consultations with a range of stakeholders to test our assumptions and raise awareness about the issues. The third phase will be to convene groups involved in the ranking and rating of sustainable business to share the lessons learned through the collaboration with B Lab and to explore the appetite for broader collaboration toward a Gold Standard for Sustainable Business.

For more information contact Chad Park: cpark(at)naturalstep.ca

Accelerate: Collaborating for Sustainability Conference

Change-makers throughout society are increasingly calling for greater collaboration to solve complex challenges, especially around sustainability issues. But there is precious little expertise in how to convene diverse groups and steward multi-stakeholder change processes. In response, The Natural Step Canada will host “Accelerate: Collaborating for Sustainability”, a two-day national conference in Guelph, Ontario, June 10 and 11, 2013, to convene sustainability practitioners and kindred spirits to learn on the “bleeding edge” together, share successes, and seed potential collaborative initiatives.

The conference will convene over 200 leaders and decision makers from large and small businesses, corporations, higher education, government, non-profits, social enterprises, social venture capital firms, and more in exploring how we can effectively collaborate to create a sustainable future. Click on the conference link to see the amazing line up of speakers and to register.

Booting Up Young Change Makers

To help empower young sustainability leaders, The Natural Step in Canada is running IMPACT Sustainability Champions Training for the second year now, in partnership with The Co-operators. IMPACT Champions is a national action program that provides training, networking and coaching to young change agents in cities across Canada who are keen to develop sustainability projects on their campuses and communities. Students participate in two intense days of sustainability training and are mentored by experts and leaders in the community for the duration of their projects. To date The Natural Step has trained over 200 young leaders in Vancouver, Edmonton, Ottawa, Guelph, Toronto and Montreal. Students have launched hundreds of tangible sustainability projects in their communities.

For more information contact Josh Snider: jsnider(at)naturalstep.ca

Creating Sustainability Lens Tools at ISL Engineering and Land Services

The Natural Step in Canada has been working closely with ISL Engineering and Land Services for several years. ISL is a full-service consulting engineering firm based in Edmonton, Alberta Canada with nine offices around western Canada. ISL has a comprehensive sustainability strategy co-developed by staff and company leaders, the development of which was led by The Natural Step. The strategy is underpinned by the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development (FSSD) and is guided by six strategic sustainability goals.

One of these goals is around the provision of sustainable design solutions. To help meet this goal, The Natural Step has been collaborating with ISL engineers and designers to develop the tools (“sustainability filters”) and training that will enable them to assess the sustainability performance of various design options for a given project type to ensure that a robust and defensible sustainability perspective informs design choices. It is intended that yearly review of filter output will reveal patterns of practice and highlight opportunities for innovation, in support of ISL’s brand promise, Inspiring Sustainable Thinking.

To learn more about how The Natural Step creates tools to help teams apply a sustainability lens to their work, click here, or contact Sarah Brooks: sbrooks(at)naturalstep.ca.

'Status quo' no longer sustainable says activist (The Oakville Beaver | Oakville, ON)

Franco Varriano — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 14:56:47 -0400

Dominik Kurek, reporter for The Oakville Beaver, attended Dr. Karl-Henrik Robèrt's talk at Sheridan College on Monday October 18, 2010. Thank you to Dominik Kurek and The Oakville Beaver for this article.

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The path to global sustainability is like a funnel, said Dr. Karl-Henrik Robèrt, founder of The Natural Step. That is because the deeper down the path of destruction we go, the narrower the funnel will become where it is more difficult for us to save the planet and eventually it will become impossible.

Robèrt was speaking before a gathering of more than 200 people at Sheridan College and many more watching live via web streaming Monday afternoon. Though he’s educated in medicine, he’s become a global leader on the issue of sustainability. The event was also Sheridan’s sustainability initiative kick off.

Despite the funnel continuously narrowing, there is still time to act. However the path to sustainability is a global issue that is best approached by everyone, he said.

Robèrt said everyone must be on board in working towards a sustainable future. He likened the issue to that of a medical team treating a cancer patient. He said the person — in his example a woman — needs a pathologist to provide an exact diagnosis, a radiologist to administer a treatment, a nurse, a surgeon, a physiotherapist and a social worker to mobilize a support group.

“Not one of those professional groups can cure her alone. We need each other,” he said.

He said it is the same thing with the imaginary funnel and that everyone needs to be involved.

He said even gas companies, which are seen as pollution causers, must be on board, because it is they who have the structure to deliver energy, clean or otherwise. Also he mentioned that by excluding certain groups, one is making enemies of them. “We are threatening each other by saying what you do is bad, what you do is good,” he said.

He calls sustainability a dynamic challenge meaning that things are getting worse and worse and the status quo cannot continue.

He added the farther down the funnel we go, the more expensive it will become to repair the damage done. Robèrt said everyone will be affected, including economically from the poor to the rich.

The longer we wait to act, the greater the costs will become for us to survive, he said.

He said the world is losing forests and eco systems that are keeping us alive.

“Everyone is aware of it, so why don’t we act more viciously, do something about this threatening funnel?”

In order to get out of the funnel, he said a strategy must be created. Robèrt provided his Natural Step organization’s strategy as an example, but said there are others as well that are effective.

It is an ABCD strategy that can be done by something such as an organization.

“A” refers to awareness and visioning, which identifies sustainability in an organization’s whole-system and envisions what sustainability will look like.

“B” is for baseline mapping, which examines the organization’s activities that go against sustainability principles.

“C” stands for creative solutions, which is the brainstorming of potential solutions to the issues identified during the baseline mapping process.

And lastly “D” is for decide on priorities, during which process the organization will prioritize the list from the above process that it can act on.

Robèrt said it doesn’t matter what course of action groups or organizations take towards sustainability as long as they follow the robust principles outlines in the strategy. For example, he said places with lots of sun can benefit from solar photovoltaic technologies more and windy places can benefit more from wind turbine technologies.

Robèrt said educational institutions, such as Sheridan College, must be humble in their beginnings towards sustainable efforts. He said when a college or university does something pro-active towards sustainability, it will gain reputation, not the other way around. Once the reputation grows, the partners will come on board and the money with them, which will lead to further advancements, resulting in greater reputation and the cycle will go on.

Robèrt said a school must educate its students so they continue those principles when they graduate. He said sustainability can be included in existing programs, without changing the curriculum, but by introducing those sustainability principles into the teaching method.

Robèrt has worked with international corporations such as Ikea and McDonald’s to help them pioneer sustainable solutions. He won the Green Cross Award for international leadership and the Blue Planet Prize, which is considered as the Nobel Prize of ecological sustainability.

Sheridan is currently working on a sustainability strategic plan that will involve various initiatives around the many pockets of the institution.

Canada

2011 Environmental Employer of the Year Awards - Application Deadline Extended to November 26, 2010

Franco Varriano — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 08:19:03 -0500

In March of 2010, The Natural Step Canada was awarded the 2010 Environmental Employer of the Year, for Small to Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs).

The applications for the 2011 award have now been extended to November 26, 2010. Please click here to submit your application.

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The Natural Step Canada is a non-profit organization with over a decade of experience helping individuals, businesses and communities understand and make progress toward sustainability.

"This award is a tribute to the work we have undertaken to ensure our human resource (HR) policies are in line with our organization's core sustainability values," says Kelly Hawke Baxter, Executive Director of The Natural Step Canada. "We are committed to walking the talk by striving to be a role model organization when it comes not only to our environmental policies, but also to our social sustainability."

The Natural Step Canada has grown exponentially in the past 5 years. To keep pace with ever-increasing demand for their sustainability training, coaching, and advisory services, the organization has had to increase the size of its team and ensure that their HR practices evolve hand-in-hand-a challenge the organization has embraced.

"Our goal is to foster a healthy work environment that allows employees to achieve a positive work-life balance," Baxter says. "We strive to have an atmosphere of respect and open collaboration, creating the conditions wherein every employee feels valued, empowered, and part of a team."

ECO Canada's annual Environmental Employer of the Year Awards recognizes organizations and businesses in the environment industry for their commitment and dedication to HR excellence. Winning organizations are selected based on the feedback of employees, making it a unique and highly informative evaluation.

"We want to encourage a high standard of human resource practices in an industry that continues to expand and have high expectations of both companies and employees, " Grant Trump, President and CEO of ECO Canada.

Apply Today! Contact Carmela Escabillas at 403-476-8704 or awards@eco.ca for more information.

Canada

2011 Top 100 Thought Leaders: Dr. Karl-Henrik Robèrt

Neil McCallum — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 10:37:23 -0400

The Natural Step is excited to announce that Dr. Karl-Henrik Robèrt was named in the top 100 thought leaders in Europe and the Mddle East by Trust Across America. Dr. Karl-Henrik Robèrt is one of Sweden’s foremost cancer scientists and the founder of The Natural Step. He is a frequent speaker and author on sustainability and provides ongoing guidance and direction for the organization.

Trust Across America aims to identify and showcase the most trustworthy individuals and organizations in order to contribute to a sense of optimism, as trust is an inherent element of optimism that buoys any economy. For the complete list of the top 100 thought leaders visit Trust Across America.

4 Foundations for Design Excellence

Franco Varriano — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 10:00:54 -0500

Thank you to Sarah Kear and Ecokinesis.

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I have to admit a bias. . . by my definition, design must create some sort of sustainable value, or else it falls short of excellence.

As Dr. Karl-Henrik Robert, founder of The Natural Step, pointed out at the CBSR 8th Annual Summit, Collaborating for Sustainable Change, whatever system we look at in this world, whether economic, social or environmental, we cannot deny that there is a dynamic deterioration happening. There aren’t more trees being planted than being cut down, there aren’t more things being upcycled from garbage than garbage being created, there aren’t more people making a living wage than people making less than $2 a day. We live in a world of chronic un-sustainability.

I see it as a designer’s duty to help rectify this. I’m talking about designers in a very broad sense — designers of communities, policies, infrastructure, cities and organizations, just as much as designers of buildings, interiors, and consumer goods. Why? Like Promethius from Greek mythology, who gave humankind fire and wily intelligence, but also unleashed human troubles (courtesy of Pandora), designers are responsible for giving humankind innovative new things, technology and ways of organizing. It’s a wonderful talent, but we need to mitigate our Pandora-effect as much as possible!

So, where to start? What an overwhelming question! Initial thoughts are enough to make most take the status quo route. Robert identified the sources of our inaction as either “getting lost in the leaves”, i.e. drowning in information and one-off solutions, or “drill holes” i.e. we go deeper and deeper into our specialized areas of practice that we don’t connect with others over the commonalities in our shared problem.

We need “cooperation across value chains”, but to do that we first need to have a common language based in scientific rigour. The Natural Step proposes that their four System Principles for Sustainability provide a strong foundation that can withstand any debate, and therefore be a springboard for cross-sector conversations and better design.

An action can be deemed sustainable if it is:

Not causing a systematic increase in substances extracted from the earth, such as oil or metals
Not causing a systematic increase in concentrations produced by humans, such as plastics, polyester, toxic chemicals, or waste products of all kinds
Not causing the systematic physical damage of the natural environment, such as deforestation or loss of biodiversity, and
Not undermining the ability of humans to meet their basic needs for clean water, sufficient food and clothing, safe housing, education etc.

Meeting these conditions is a tall order for sure, but at least they give us a simple, indisputable starting point! System Principles + Creativity + Action = Innovative design

In my final post, I’ll explore The Value of a Common Language some more.

This is part II of III reflections on Collaborating for Sustainable Change, the 8th annual CBSR Summit, and Smart Shift, hosted by Durham Sustain Ability in the last half of October 2010.

Canada

4 Reasons It’s Time to Raise the Standards Bar for Companies

Neil McCallum — Tue, 03 May 2011 11:00:19 -0400

Thank you to Bob Willard—a Member of The Natural Step Canada’s Board of Directors and a true giant among sustainability thought leaders—for this inspiring and thought provoking piece. Please read his latest blog below and visit his web site, Sustainability Advantage, to learn more. Indeed, Bob, let’s raise the bar!

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How would we recognize a sustainable enterprise if we saw one? That question has been nagging at me for years. When we celebrate companies ranked as being the most sustainable (see my April 5, 2011, blog: 5 Lists of the Most Sustainable Companies), are they really just the best of a bad lot? When a company is certified as making significant progress towards its aspirational sustainability-related goals (see my April 19 blog: 5 Reasons ULE 880 is a Bellwether Sustainability Standard), are those goals setting the bar high enough?Are we ready for a more rigorous assessment of where Mother Earth would position a company on its journey toward being a truly sustainable enterprise? I think so, for four reasons.

First, we have the criteria. The Natural Step (TNS) has helped us enormously. Its founder, Dr. Karl-Henrik Robèrt orchestrated a consensus among scientists on the four conditions that are necessary for a sustainable society. As a by-product of the TNS effort, scientists defined what organizations must do to help achieve and maintain that society. That is, they have defined sustainable enterprises as ones which meet the four high-level, strategic conditions in the adjacent slide.

The four principles are wonderfully succinct. They say that a sustainable company is one that cleans up its act, neutralizes its environmental and social impacts, and leaves the world the way it found it, or better. It achieves net zero energy, net zero waste, net zero water, net zero pollution, net zero materials—net zero everything. At least. And it steps up to the gnarly issue of economic and social justice to ensure more equitable attainment of a high quality of life for its stakeholders. The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) has a helpful Vision 2050 set of documents that graphically describes paths to this future state.

Second, we have a great standard on which to build. A new principle-based standard could be modeled on the emerging ULE 880 standard. We just need to replace companies’ aspirational goals relative to 2005 with more absolute goals relative to the four systems conditions for a sustainable enterprise. Any time-based goals would reflect what scientists in that goal’s area of expertise say we need to achieve by the specified date. Another candidate for the base would be the certification criteria for B Corps (see my February 8, 2011 blog, A Better Business Model: B Corporations).

Third, a more rigorous, principle-based standard addresses multiple needs:

We need to encourage innovative breakthrough thinking by helping companies realize how far they have to go to be sustainable enterprises. Stretch goals energize creative thinking.
We need to set the bar high and avoid lulling companies into thinking that they are already doing enough, or that there is no urgency to do more.
We need to applaud leading companies who aspire to being truly sustainable enterprises, while acknowledging how much more needs to be done.
We need to spark transformational approaches to being good companies, not incremental approaches toward being less bad.
We need a gold standard for truly sustainable companies. It would make greenwashing claims even more embarrassing, and level the playing field.

Fourth, the world is ready for this kind of standard. Influential companies like Wal-Mart, P&G, and Caterpillar have declared zero-waste goals. California has introduced legislation that requires all new commercial buildings to be zero-net-energy (ZNE) by 2030, and new residential buildings to be ZNE by 2020. InterfaceFLOR is on track to climb “Mount Sustainability” by 2020. Leading companies are ready.

Why are we hesitant to create this standard? Maybe it’s because companies in high-impact sectors would be discouraged or traumatized when they see how far they still have to go on their sustainability journeys. Maybe they will think it is unfair to use a standard that reveals how today’s business model prevents some companies in some sectors from ever being truly sustainable. Maybe it’s because some companies would ridicule the standard as being idealistic and out of touch with their myopic reality, versus Mother Earth’s.

By setting Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAGs), we unleash the creativity and innovation of impassioned sustainability champions to help us achieve the necessary quantum leaps. We may need new technologies, new business models, and new corporate purposes. Visions are inspiring and energizing. When President Kennedy announced his famous vision in 1961, he had no idea how the U.S. could land a man on the moon within 10 years and return him safely to earth. But he had faith in the ingenuity of the best and brightest people to do the impossible. They did it. So can we, if set our sights high enough.

Canada

A New strategic direction for The Natural Step

Kelly Hawke Baxter — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 11:28:50 -0500

Over the past few years The Natural Step International (TNSI) has been undergoing an extensive organizational transition, in order to trade in its license model for a more open and inclusive membership structure, and to reinvent itself and its role in the world for greater impact.

That transition period is now complete and The Natural Step International has relaunched as a new international secretariat, based in London England, with a bold new strategic plan with a new purpose and core strategies, and a new secretariat team. At the centre of all our efforts is a mission to accelerate collective impact for change towards a thriving, vibrant society that operates within nature’s limits.

Our new strategic priorities fall into two main clusters:

Looking Outward:

Launching a campaign to diffuse the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development (FSSD) and to enable a new community of practice.

This is central to our core purpose, and something TNS International has never done. We will clarify that the FSSD (often referred to as The Natural Step Framework) is, and always has been, firmly in the public domain. We will work to widely disseminate it, as well as related educational tools, materials, case studies, and other resources to leaders, change agents and decision-makers in all corners of the world.

Our ultimate goal is to support practitioners so that they can be successful change agents, and to engage the “sustainability curious” to learn more.

Our first step towards clarifying that the FSSD is in the public domain is to formally decouple it from the Natural Step brand, referring to it by its academic name, the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development (or ideally a new name, to be determined).

Our diffusion campaign will also include a new FFSD website, the development of new tools, and the co-creation, in partnership with other like-minded organizations and individuals, of a new global learning community of sustainability leaders and practitioners around the application of the FSSD.

Looking Inward:

Creating a healthy and robust Natural Step global network capable of achieving its mission.

We will continue to build the strength of the TNS network to achieve its mission in the world by clarifying and strengthening the TNS brand, and establishing a communications and marketing strategy to promote the brand, as well as TNS programs and services.

We will also create a growth, accreditation and training strategy for TNS offices and associates and increase the number of TNS offices and associates in the world, aiming to have a strong presence on all continents.

We will foster a strong TNS global team and encourage knowledge sharing, innovation and collaboration within an international structure that works.

We will strive to create a new viable business model for TNSI, our global secretariat, to secure reliable revenue streams, to establish strong, independent governance, clear decision-making structures and to strengthen the resilience and capacity of the local offices.

A new team

In order to carry out the new mandate of TNSI, we have put together a new team.

Isabella Oriani is our just-hired Secretariat Director. Isabella will take responsibility for stewarding the inward-looking part of the mission. That is, her primary focus will be on operationalizing the new strategic direction of The Natural Step International and mobilizing our global network of Natural Step offices and associates to achieve collective impact in pursuit of our shared mission.

Scott Perret, our new Director of FSSD Diffusion and Network Relations, is taking responsibility for the outward-looking part of the mission. He is working to establish and implement a strategy to broadly disseminate the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development and to work creatively with partners to co-establish and enable a thriving learning community of FSSD practitioners and like-minded change agents.

April Knudsen is our new TNSI Coordinator. She will serve as the main point of contact for TNS members as well as the broader international community. She will be responsible for coordinating TNS member activities and events, delivering communications and marketing efforts, coordinating training and expansion efforts, and responding to requests about getting involved with The Natural Step network.

All of us at The Natural Step want to thank Peter Price-Thomas, our outgoing CEO, for his tireless two years of service in helping us to complete our rather complicated transition to get our new structure, governance and strategic plan in place. We are grateful for his strategic guidance, patience, determination, and his good humour.

How to get involved

If you have been waiting to hear from us, please get in touch. While we don’t quite yet have our systems in place to take you through what the “joining TNS” process will look like, we are getting very close, and we’d love to put you on our contact list so we can share this information with you as soon as it’s available. You can reach April Knudsen at april.knudsen(at)thenaturalstep.org.

A video by Dr. Karl-Henrik Robèrt – The Big Picture and the Role of Business

Josefin Nyström — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 10:04:21 -0500

In this video, created in cooperation with our friends at DeLaval, Dr. Karl-Henrik Robèrt, Founder of The Natural Step, touches upon the challenges we as humanity face today and the role businesses can play. To enable seeing the big picture of the sustainability challenge and turning this into opportunities. He gives examples and methods of how this journey is possible and encourages all to start designing the future by identifying boundary conditions for a sustainable future.

The Big Picture and the Role of Business With Dr. Karl-Henrik Robèrt: long version	The Big Picture and the Role of Business With Dr. Karl-Henrik Robèrt: short version

Accelerating Change at The Natural Step International

Peter Price-Thomas — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 10:13:33 -0500

‘So what’s been going on at The Natural Step International (TNSI)?’ is a question that is likely on your lips. A great deal, I am pleased to report. As we outlined in the last Stepping Stones we were in the process of transitioning to a more inclusive networked organization. This has not been without its challenges and has taken rather longer than we initially anticipated (hence the sizable gap between issues of Stepping Stones) but as I write today, I am pleased to say that we’ve completed the transition: - we have created a new organization, have a new team and strategy in place, and are actively focused on accelerating change towards sustainability.

So, just what have we done?

Officially de-coupled the Framework from the TNS brand – We have stopped referring to the Framework as the Natural Step Framework. Rather referring to it by its generic name, the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development (or FSSD for short). Enabling us to clearly differentiate between the content and the organization and firmly putting the thinking in the public domain.

De-merged TNSI and DNS - We have decoupled TNS International from TNS in Stockholm. TNSI is a new international non-profit organization incorporated in London, England, that is in the process of securing charitable status.

Become more independent - We have changed the governance – disbanding the TNS Council (which consisted of executive directors from country offices), and replacing it with a Board of Directors. We are expanding the board to increase non-TNS membership, including MSLS alumni as well as independent individuals. This structure is not only good for the organization, it is also eminently more fundable.

Created more ways to engage - We have replaced our license agreement with a membership agreement that has new categories for associates and strategic partners. It will no longer be necessary to become a full country office in order to become a member of The Natural Step. Membership will be more flexible, diverse, and not based on exclusive territories.

Developed a New Strategic Direction - We have written an entirely new strategic plan with a new purpose and three core strategies:

Being a catalyst for open-sourcing and widely disseminating the FSSD as well as all related educational tools, materials, case studies, and other resources as widely as possible.
Being an enabling partner and catalyst in the launch of a new global learning community of sustainability leaders and practitioners around the application of the FSSD, in partnership with other like-minded organizations.
Strengthening the profile, capacity and reach of The Natural Step internationally to build leadership capacity and prototype and test innovative systems-changing solutions for a sustainable world.

These strategies are already being put into practice, and Scott Perret and Kelly Baxter will go into them in more detail in following articles.

Enabled New Offices – Switzerland and the Netherlands are now fully-fledged TNS offices. Finland and Israel are about to start the process of becoming TNS offices, and Spain is well on its way, with 3-5 others likely to follow shortly afterwards. New strategic partnerships are also being discussed, including a number of interesting possibilities in the Far East. If you are interested in partnering with the new TNSI in some way please contact April.Knudsen@thenaturalstep.org.

I would like to publically recognize and thank the members of the Founder’s Club and Dow for their financial support that made this transition and re-launch possible. Without them, we would have only achieved a fraction of the accomplishments listed above.

Finally, I just wanted to let you know that, having delivered what I was brought in to achieve, I am stepping down as CEO. The last two years have not been without their challenges, but it has been an enormous honour and pleasure to work with such a great group of people. It is also a joy to handover the organization with it pointed in the right direction, to an extremely talented new team who I know will succeed.

Peter Price-Thomas,
CEO, The Natural Step International

Axiom News: Natural Step Bootcamp Trains MBA Students to be Sustainability Leaders

Josh Snider — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 15:43:22 -0400

30 MBA Students from across Canada convene for 5-day experiential learning

On the fourth day of a five-day Sustainability Leadership bootcamp hosted by The Natural Step Canada, some of the 30 MBA students attending were asking for more homework and longer days.

According to The Natural Step principal adviser Pong Leung, this is one example of how the organization that helps companies embed sustainability into their operations was able to achieve its goal of engaging a critical stakeholder group — future leaders of tomorrow.

“The passion and the energy of the students I think were really amazing,” says Pong, adding it was one of the reasons The Natural Step wanted to engage business students who are already interested in sustainability practices.

Held in Calgary, the first-ever Sustainability Leadership Bootcamp took place Feb. 22-26 and saw business students from across the country convene to learn from The Natural Step about how to become sustainability champions in their future workplaces.

The bootcamp used a teaching approach called dialogue education, which recognizes people learn best when they’re engaged in the material they are trying to understand. Students were both participants and educators, learning through dialogue, visuals, touch and group work.

“We find it very powerful to honour the knowledge in the room,” says Pong, adding the learning approach also gets away from traditional PowerPoints.

Students would learn theory and then be asked to apply the knowledge to real-world challenges.

The event was sponsored by three of Canada’s largest energy companies Suncor, Cenovus and ENMAX, who participated by sharing the sustainability challenges they were grappling with.

For Ashley Hilkewich, who is an MBA Student at Schulich School of Business, the opportunity to sit down with a company’s leaders to co-create sustainability action plans was valuable.

“We’re all finishing up MBAs so sometimes it can get really academic and this was a really practical look at how you take these concepts about sustainable and responsible business and actually put them into practice,” says Ashley.

“It’s not very often you get to sit down with the VP and see how they are trying to tackle (a sustainability challenge).”

Ashley says the experience helped prepare her to view sustainability as a long dialogue as opposed to something she can jump into and change right away.

“It’s really more about being a change agent more so than anything and we we’re given a lot of good insights and training on how to start those conversations and make that happen,” she says.

Bob Willard, a board member at The Natural Step Canada and author of Sustainability Champions, presented on the final day of the bootcamp. Bob, who was named a leading thinker on corporate responsibility by The Globe and Mail, shared what can derail sustainability initiatives, as well as tools to gain organizational buy-in.

For Houston Peschl, who is an operations manager at DIRTT Environmental Solutions, hearing Bob’s experience was “phenomenal” and taught him new approaches he can use in his work.

While DIRTT is already a progressive organization, Houston says its clients, which include Facebook, Google and Bank of America, are demanding increasingly high-levels of sustainability and proof of the practices.

“Bob’s ability to start moving some of these processes was very valuable and he presented it in a very simple non-complex format,” says Houston, adding business must embrace its role in leading sustainability.

"Business has to be a leader in this, and businesses that don’t are going to go the way of the dodo bird."

The Natural Step plans to run future Sustainability Leadership bootcamps in Toronto and Montreal later this year.

Written by Camille Jensen for Axiom News.

Canada

Backcasting to the Future Podcast by Steppin' Off the Edge

Stephanie Mindorff — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 13:36:41 -0500

Recently, The Natural Step Canada’s Karen Miller sat down with Jamie of Steppin’ off the Edge to record a podcast on sustainability.

To listen to the podcast in full, please click here.

Jamie wanted to understand more about the areas of environmentalism and sustainability, so he took the opportunity to step off the edge with Karen Miller, Junior Advisor for The Natural Step Canada. The podcast explored some critical philosophies like backcasting, cradle-to-cradle design, and what types of questions to ask yourself when making decisions–either as an individual or part of an organization–in order to approach living a truly sustainable existence.

As Jamie writes, “the other show highlights include how to embed sustainability into corporate culture, build momentum for change, avoid getting greenwashed, and understand the economic engines of society operate through the lens of sustainability. I close out the episode with some examples of backcasting in action, including Zeitgeist: Moving Forward. While some have rightly suggested this thought provoking piece of media has a few glaring issues, it is still something I feel everyone should watch.”

To listen to the podcast, please click here. You can also download the podcast from iTunes by searching for: Steppin off the edge.

The Natural Step Canada would like to thank Jamie for putting together a great podcast.

Canada

Being there is everything

Simon Harvey — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 14:29:19 -0400

The kiwi may be a flightless and endangered species of bird – so thank goodness for the silver wings of Air New Zealand.

Sitting on the plane from Vancouver back to Auckland has finally allowed some time to reflect on my whistle-stop and highly enjoyable trip to the Land Of The Red Maple Leaf. The busy TNS Canada team in Ottawa extended a very warm welcome to their kiwi visitor, for which I am so grateful. Despite the numerous Skype calls and telephone meetings over recent times, one quickly realises the intimate benefit of meeting in person. It was a real pleasure to meet the TNS Canada team, and to be received so warmly.

The conversations over 3 days were many, and fruitful. From talking about the New Zealand network of associates model, and our use of Otago Polytechnic’s graduate qualifications based on the FSSD; to learning about Sarah Brooks’ exciting work with Pratt & Whitney Aerospace, and John Purkis’ work with local communities. I learnt a lot and feel inspired to progress our work with businesses to draw on TNS Canada’s focus on transition strategies and innovation. I’m sure we’ll be able to learn from the exciting projects that the Canadian team are delivering so successfully.

I was particularly cheered by Sarah Brooks’ comments that business clients were approaching TNS Canada rather than the traditional business and management consultancies because the constraints of the strategic sustainability framework were able to re-inspire and focus companies that had “forgotten how to innovate”. I see that as presenting a strong business case to engage more kiwi companies.

After such a positive experience meeting the Canadian team, it’s frustrating that no-one from TNSNZ is able to attend the Eindhoven event in person. But we’ll certainly be making efforts to have a presence in one form or another. It seems to me that the TNS global network is on the verge of re-emerging. It’s time to bring ourselves together, learn from one another, and share what is working well. I have no doubt that Eindhoven is going to be a great opportunity to build some lasting relationships and bring the TNS network close together.

These are exciting times. I’m encouraged by the possibilities of closer collaboration and sharing knowledge.

Thank you Chad Park and TNS Canada for such a warm welcome. I wish you and your team every success and shall look forward to hearing your new stories of success.

Bob Willard on the Movement Toward Sustainable Capital Markets

Neil McCallum — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 11:20:09 -0400

The Natural Step is collaborating with many different actors working to embed sustainability into the heart of the capital markets (lending and investing), and into the heart of what it means to be a successful business. Working masterfully behind the scenes at the center of all these efforts is author, thought leader and Natural Step board member Bob Willard. His latest article 2015 Will Bring “Sweeping Changes” to Capital Markets tells us in simple, clear language how close we are to sweeping change toward sustainability in the capital markets, and why.

Building with Bricks - The Co-operators recognized for leadership in sustainability

Marieke — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 15:52:39 -0400

Congratulations to our corporate partners, The Co-operators, who have just been ranked number two among the 50 Best Corporate Citizens in Canada by Corporate Knights!

This is the result of several years of hard work on the sustainability front, led by Barb Turley-McIntyre, Director of Corporate Citizenship.

The Co-operators has been working with The Natural Step since 2006 and has made great leaps towards sustainability ever since. They want to act as a catalyst for a sustainable society and one of their efforts towards this goal is the Impact conference, bringing together youth from across the country to talk about sustainability.

Click on the video below to hear The Co-operators CEO Kathy Bardswick talk about their sustainability accomplishments and challenges.

Source: Corporate Knights

Canada

Business News Network Interview with Dr. Karl-Henrik Robèrt

Franco Varriano — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 09:47:54 -0400

Dr. Karl-Henrik Robert, the founder of The Natural Step and an international thought leader on sustainable development, joins BNN to talk about the sustainability imperative and the opportunities it presents for companies.

Thank you to Martin Baccardax and the Business News Network (BNN) for filming the interview. Watch the entire interview by clicking here.

About Dr. Karl-Henrik Robèrt

A doctor and oncologist by training, Dr. Robèrt founded The Natural Step in 1989 to promote a unifying framework for social and ecological sustainability based on a scientific consensus. An Ashoka Fellow and winner of many prestigious awards, he has made a global impact in promoting and implementing sustainability.

Dr. Robèrt is also a co-founder of Real Change, a movement The Natural Step is a partner in that is uniting businesses, communities, academics, and other leaders around the world in creating, refining, and implementing sustainability solutions.

The author of several books and dozens of scientific articles, Dr. Robèrt is a world-class speaker, teacher, scientist, social entrepreneur, and leading thinker on the root causes of the global sustainability challenges we face today. Read his biography here.

Canada

CanadianUnderwriter.ca: The Co-Operators launches sustainability toolkit

Neil McCallum — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 09:37:32 -0500

The Co-operators has launched a toolkit offering guidance for leading more environmentally sustainable lives.

Sustainability at Home: Decision making help for your everyday choices was released in partnership with The Natural Step Canada.

The toolkit presents Canadians with practical tips and ideas on how to "green" their homes on a room-by-room basis. It is designed as a guide for all sizes of home, and includes sustainability advice on everything from grocery shopping to landscaping to disposing of medication.

"By using the new Sustainability at Home toolkit, Canadian homeowners and tenants can make strategic decisions to advance sustainability in their homes, save money and create a healthier living space for their families," said Kelly Hawke Baxter, executive director of The Natural Step Canada.

Available in French and English, the toolkit is a free resource available for download at www.cooperators.ca or www.thenaturalstep.org.

Source: CanadianUnderwriter.ca

Canada

Canmore adopts Towards Zero Waste events policy :: The Canmore Leader

Marieke — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 08:55:14 -0400

The town of Canmore is continuing on the road to sustainability after adopting The Natural Step Framework in 2008. Canmore was the second Canadian community to implement The Natural Step’s community-wide engagement program. Read more about their journey in the case study here.

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By Hamish Maclean, The Canmore Leader. August 18, 2010.

Special events in Canmore will be moving towards zero waste.

Stemming from an Environmental Assessment and Review Committee suggestion in October 2009, council approved a Towards Zero Waste Event Policy Tuesday.

Special events in Canmore will now be asked to divert 70 per cent of "waste" from the landfill.

However, Andreas Comeau the Town's manager of public works, pointed out in council chambers that many events in town are already exceeding the bar that council has now set.

"When you look at the numbers people aren't just shooting for 70 per cent, they're doing the best they can." Comeau said. He noted that many events in Canmore are already meeting or exceeding the policy.

He pointed to some of the success had by special events prior to the formal adoption of the policy.

The Canmore Folk Music Festival began a towards zero waste initiative before the Town's policy was created, diverting 81 per cent of waste from the landfill in 2008 and 86 per cent in 2009.

But Comeau said that the policy would be useful in "rolling out" the Town's adopted The Natural Step program to the community.

Special events — those that engage the public, make use of at least one Town department, or relies on the use or rental of Town facilities — will now be required to, when applying for an event, create a unique waste management plan to be approved by public works. Further event planners will also be required to complete a final waste management report, and the success of their waste management (or their lack of success) could affect future approvals of their event.

The Bow Valley Waste Management Commission's Peter Duck told council that he has been working closely with special events already to assist the events in reducing their load to the landfill. And noted that while currently there is no fee for the waste management commission's involvement at this time, the larger events have been advised that a cost recovery program could be implemented in the future.

Comeau told council that the implementation of a towards zero waste policy ought to be considered a good example of civic leadership — administration believes that there are at this point no other similar policies in other areas.

He also said that while not all events currently meet or exceed the bar established in the policy of diverting 70 per cent of the event's potential waste, all events move forward.

He pointed to the Town's Canada Day celebrations. In 2009, the Canada Day event saw 32 per cent of waste recovered as recycled material, while the 2010 Canada Day event saw 68 per cent of the waste diverted from the landfill.

Source: The Canmore Leader

Canada

Canmore sustainability video on YouTube: Rocky Mountain Outlook

Jennifer Reid — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 10:14:31 -0400

The Town of Canmore’s training video for new staff to introduce them to the concepts of sustainability and the Natural Step program is available on YouTube. The 20-minute long video, which shows how the municipality has taken steps to increase its
sustainability, is available for anyone to check out on the Natural Step’s YouTube channel. Sally Caudill, environmental care coordinator for the Town, said last week the Natural Step orientation video is shown to all new employees after they are taken for a tour of the community and treated to a coffee in a stainless steel re-useable mug.

The video uses real examples of how the Town of Canmore is implementing sustainability throughout the community. In addition to the orientation video, the municipality has established a sustainability committee that meets monthly with representatives form all departments across the corporation. Caudill said the committee, which was established in May 2008, functions as a sounding board for sustainability issues and ideas and reviews corporate initiatives for sustainability. Annually, it also updates the Natural Step master plan and links it to the municipal budget. In addition to the YouTube video, the committee has put up the current exhibit in the Civic Centre, recommended discontinuing selling bottled water at the Rec Centre, presents an annual staff award and
is currently working on the Environmental Sustainability Action Plan.

Caudill said the committee also conducts Natual Step analyses of initiatives or issues like plastic bags, Canmore becoming a Fair Trade Community, the Towards Zero Waste initiative, community gardens and the Cougar Creek commuter trail. She said one of the hurdles for the committee is trying to create a corporate structure where a Natural Step analysis happens before a project instead of after. “We are looking for ways to interject that analysis at the beginning of a process,” she said. In the future, the committee will also look to establish concrete high level goals around sustainability for the corporation, with indicators to measure whether or not those goals are being achieved.

Caudill said looking at projects proposed by the corporation through the lens of the Natural Step involves
asking three strategic questions to achieve its goals. The first question looks at whether the action proposed moves in the right direction with respect to Natural Step sustainability objectives. The second question looks at whether it provides a stepping stone
for future moves toward sustainability objectives and the third asks if it proves a good return on investment. The Natural Step was developed in 1989 by Dr. Karl-Henrik Robèrt, a Swedish oncologist who linked a rise in leukaemia among children to increased toxins stemming from human production processes.

The organization promotes a system of production in which all products taken from the earth are put back at an ecologically acceptable rate, while ensuring the life cycle of a product comes full-circle to help reduce the amount of waste created.
The YouTube video is available at http://www.youtube.com/user/naturalsteponline#p/u/0/_yIivQATgIw

Article Author: Tanya Foubert

Source: Rocky Mountain Outlook

Canada

Cawthron Institute programme embeds sustainability using TNS framework

Simon Harvey — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 06:32:04 -0400

Starting in April, Cawthron - a high quality science and reasearch institute in Nelson, NZ - will be running a programme to embed sustainability throughout the operations of the organisation. Sustainability has been important to Cawthron since it started addressing specific issues such as recycling, composting and energy saving in 2006.

More recently Cawthron began to actively monitor its environmental impact and set targets to reduce it. However, as Ian Challenger (Sustainable Business Analyst for Cawthron) explains, "there is often a gap between engaging staff in the process and actually embedding sustainability into the core of an organisation so it becomes something that gets done without thinking. This new programme has been designed with this outcome very much in mind."

Using the TNS methodologies and tools, Cawthron is hosting a series of workshops across the organisation to explore and understand core sustainability principles; and then to develop a vision of Cawthron as a sustainable organisation. "The TNS methodology was chosen because it is an easy process for people to understand. A simple process will help ensure that sustainability becomes as central to an organisation as health and safety", explains Ian Challenger.

Initially there will be three workshops run between April and June 2010 but further events are planned for the new financial year so all staff will eventually take part in a workshop. It is also planned to write the project up so other organisations can learn from the positives and negatives of Cawthron's experience.

For further details, contact Ian Challenger at Cawthron Institute.

New Zealand

CBSR and The Natural Step Canada Partner

Anouk Bertner — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 12:04:10 -0400

Advancing Business Sustainability through Collaboration:
CBSR and The Natural Step Canada Partner

Toronto, Vancouver & Ottawa, ON – August 5, 2009: Canadian Business for Social Responsibility (CBSR) and The Natural Step Canada announce a new collaboration to further the strategic impact of both organizations. The groups both promote responsible business practices, which encompass social, environmental and economic considerations. This collaboration will leverage their shared strengths with the goal of assisting, in particular, firms moving towards the leading edge of the CSR performance continuum.

The Natural Step Canada is part of a global not-for-profit organization that works to promote real change toward a sustainable world. Since 1989, they have worked with thousands of corporations, municipalities, academic institutions and not-for-profit organizations who have proven that moving strategically toward sustainability leads to innovation, new opportunities, reduced costs, and dramatically reduced ecological and social impacts.

Canadian Business for Social Responsibility (CBSR) is a network of over 100 leading Canadian companies focused on environmental, social and economic solutions that lead to better business and a better world. Founded in 1995, CBSR is a national non-profit learning and consulting organization and the globally recognized source for corporate social responsibility (CSR) in Canada.

“The mission of CBSR is to support truly transformational change in Canadian companies, and working with The Natural Step will increase our capacity to advance that mission. The Natural Step brings an innovative sustainability viewpoint, process and tools that will complement our work with member companies. We are excited about the opportunity to provide The Natural Steps’ proven approach and solutions to firms that are ready to move to the next step in their sustainability journey,” said Barb Steele, Director of Membership, CBSR.

“We have long admired CBSR’s work and appreciate the opportunity to collaborate with them. The mission of The Natural Step is to build the capacity of leaders and change agents in Canadian businesses and communities to lead their organizations toward more sustainable outcomes,” said John Purkis, Director of Learning Programs and Advisory Services for The Natural Step Canada. “Although the challenges we face are complex, companies who successfully navigate towards a sustainable future will reap the benefits of capturing new market share and taking a leadership position. We believe that together The Natural Step and CBSR can combine our years of experience and proven approaches to create a model for sustainable enterprise in the 21st century using sustainability as the driver for innovation and value creation,” Purkis said.

As one of the first activities of the new partnership, CBSR and The Natural Step will be delivering a workshop at the 7th CBSR Summit on Corporate Social Responsibility. The workshop will be held November 4th at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel. For more information, visit http://tinyurl.com/kug8r8.

- 30 -

To learn more about the partnership contact:

The Natural Step Canada
613-748-3001
info@naturalstep.ca
www.thenaturalstep.org/canada

Robyn Hall
Communications Manager
Canadian Business for Social Responsibility
416-703-7435 x232
robyn@cbsr.ca
www.cbsr.ca

Canada

CEW Eco Beauty Award

Richard Blume — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 18:24:25 -0400

Eco Beauty Award

sponsored by Givaudan

The Natural Step is pleased to be providing the assessment criteria for Cosmetic Executive Women's Eco Beauty Award. Sponsored by Givaudan, the award is a new initiative intended to reward products that demonstrate best practice and progress toward sustainability.

We are excited to work with CEW on the shortlisting of entries and assessing the submissions through the lens of The Natural Step Framework.

>About CEW Beauty Awards

Rationale for the Criteria

The criteria for the Award are a direct translation of The Natural Step system conditions, which offer a credible, science-based definition of sustainability, acting as basic principles to guide actions toward the goal of a sustainable society.

Applicants are asked to demonstrate life cycle thinking and to take account of the full scope of sustainability - i.e. how does the product perform against the four sustainability principles over its lifecycle?

Using sustainability principles helps to deal with trade-offs and make strategic choices. Progress in one area of sustainability needs to be checked to ensure that it does not just transfer the problem elsewhere. For example, replacing an ingredient from a crude oil feedstock with a bio-sourced alternative may seem like a smart move. However, unless the bio-sourced alternative is sustainably sourced it merely substitutes one sustainability issue (principle 1) with another (principle 3).

News

February 2011 - CEW Announces Finalists for Eco Beauty Award
October 2010 - CEW Announces Call for 2011 Beauty Award

Resources for the Beauty Industry

Leading the change: new industry sustainability course
Take the next step toward sustainability with The Natural Step’s award winning one-hour sustainability e-learning program, by clicking here.
Learn more about The Natural Step system conditions, Framework and its application, by clicking here.
To learn how The Natural Step supports businesses with corporate sustainability and to read case studies please click here.
Tool: Sustainability Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA)
Tool: Probe for Sustainable Business - Best Practice Benchmarking

Chris Jarvis of 3BL Media interviews Dr. Karl-Henrik Robèrt, Founder at The Natural Step

Franco Varriano — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 10:08:34 -0400

On October 21st, 2010, 3BL Media caught up with Dr. Karl-Henrik Robèrt, Founder at The Natural Step while attending the Canadian Business for Social Responsibility (CBSR) conference, "Collaborating for Sustainable Change" in Toronto.

Thank you to Chris Jarvis from 3BL Media and Realized Worth for filming the interview. Watch the full video here.

About Dr. Karl-Henrik Robèrt

Canada

City of Charlottetown: Charlottetown’s Sustainability Coordinator speaks on EcoCity World Summit Panel

Neil McCallum — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 12:27:25 -0400

In the build up to the EcoCity World Summit in Montreal (August 22-26) Laura MacPherson, Charlottetown’s Sustainability Coordinator, will speak in a panel session tomorrow (Aug 23.) MacPherson will be discussing the steps the City has taken in recent months to foster and cultivate a culture of sustainability in City operations.

MacPherson worked with a team of sustainability leaders from across the country to create a resource for municipalities. This group was led by The Natural Step Canada, John Purkis, Senior Manager of Sustainable Communities and Dr. Stephanie Bertels, of Simon Fraser University, author of Embedding Sustainability Into Organizational Culture.

The research team sought input from the City’s Sustainability Coordinator and was able to leverage Charlottetown’s applied experiences in the field, including relevant examples, case studies and language from our community.

Charlottetown participated with other municipalities in order to help create a municipal tool kit called ‘Embedding Sustainability into the Corporate Culture of Municipal Government.’ The new report will be on display at this week’s EcoCity World Summit in Montreal and then will be disseminated broadly in Canadian municipalities.

"The City of Charlottetown was delighted by the invitation to participate in this learning opportunity," MacPherson said.

"The opportunity to explore and share our own practices of embedding sustainability into our organizational culture couldn’t have come at a better time.

"That we are able to join another dozen organizations and municipalities in this same process and to be able to see such a deliberate and collaborative outcome is exciting for us and will help us decide our next steps."

The EcoCity World Summit will host over 1,000 participants from 75 countries. For more information or updates on the City’s ICSP please visit our website: http://www.city.charlottetown.pe.ca/susNewsAndReleases.php

Update on Charlottetown ICSP

Our Sustainability Plan is supported by an ICSP Standing Committee, as well as a multi-department Steering Committee & an internal working group made up of 16 individuals (CAO, Directors and Managers.

In the past 8 months Charlottetown has hosted; five Workshops for senior staff (full day & half day workshops) three Lunch and Learn sessions for all staff, five elearning sessions for our Sustainability 101 course: 50 staff and an orientation and briefing with Council.

Charlottetown’s other ongoing sustainability initiatives include; Creating a more official corporate education and training program for city staff. Beginning to align the goals and actions of the Sustainability Plan with policy and new initiatives; Energy Audits (RFP will be sent out this fall) Regional Active Transportation Plan in partnership with the Town of Cornwall, Town of Stratford & the province.

Canada

City Shifters - How on earth should we begin greening our metropolises?

Anouk Bertner — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 10:23:05 -0400

How on earth should we begin greening our metropolises?
By asking the right questions, says The Natural Step.

Dave Cieslewicz, the Mayor of Madison, state capital of Wisconsin, US, has a favourite ‘nuts and bolts’ story about sustainability. We could start by asking the right questions.

“We have this huge converted factory, where we store all our 240 buses overnight,” he explains. “There’s a small part of the building where we fuel them up – and, for the comfort of our employees, we’d been keeping that warm.”

What the council hadn’t registered was that they were unnecessarily heating the bus storage area as well. So in 2007 they bought a door – which cost $70,000, but would pay for
itself, through energy savings, in two years.

Like many green solutions, the Madison bus garage door seems so obvious – but, according to Cieslewicz, it didn’t come about by chance. “It was such a simple answer,” he says. “But you don’t get the right answers unless you ask the right questions.”

What got Madison asking those questions in the first place was its engagement with The Natural Step (TNS) in a radical ‘change process’ to guide it towards the goal of ‘sustainability’ – and help it become one of the first Eco-Municipalities in North America.

TNS’s ‘municipal sustainability planning’ is different from your average city-level strategic plan, explains John Purkis of TNS Canada, in that it doesn’t only involve municipal officials. > download the article below to learn more.

This feature was written by Green Futures - a partntner of The Natural Step. Sign up for free online updates from Green Futures.

Green Futures is the leading source of information, opinion and debate on progress towards sustainable development. It is published online and in print for senior decision makers in business, the public sector, environmental organisations and the media. In Green Futures, positive visions of a low-carbon, opportunity-rich future sit alongside a practical 'can-do' approach that is grounded in today's business reality.

Climate and Insurance, The Co-operators

Anouk Bertner — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 12:59:50 -0500

climateandinsurance.org took five minutes to interview Barbara Turley-McIntyre, Director, Sustainability and Corporate Citizenship, The Co-operators Group Limited and Mark Feeney, Vice President, Personal Lines and Packaged Commercial, The Co-operators General Insurance and HB/Coseco Insurance about their work on sustainability at The Co-operators.

Barbara and Mark describe The Co-operators' journey to sustainability, the imputus for their organization's actions and some of the benefits: "Every part of our organization – distribution, claims, facilities management, corporate donations, and government relations – is working sustainability into their strategic plans for 2009 and beyond. Many of these are focused on the environment, but they also involve ways that we can contribute to enhancing the economic and social well-being of our communities and our planet."

Click here to read the interview.

Canada

Community Sustainability Planning

Anouk Bertner — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 01:06:07 -0400

by Kelly Hawke Baxter and Mike Purcell

Sustainability is the greatest challenge of our time. Human activity is now putting such a strain on social and ecological systems that the ability to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted. Sustainable literally means lasting, or standing the test of time. Sustainability means making sure that we live within the ability of the planet to support us so that future generations have the same opportunities as we do.

Communities are on the front-line of the sustainability challenge. It’s where the impacts of poor air and water quality,
climate change and diminishing natural resources are felt. It’s where people live, work and play. It’s where quality of life and health improves or declines. It’s where social fabric, art and culture are created and nurtured.

“Sustainability is good business for municipal government,” says Ken Melamed, Mayor of Whistler, BC. “Applied to growth and development today, it will help protect tomorrow’s generations to manage financial impacts of climate change, health risks, environmental remediation, infrastructure replacement, energy security and food security,” he says.

So how do we continue to make economic, social and cultural progress without continuing to undermine the systems upon which our quality of life depends? How do municipal leaders plan for the future in a way that stands the test of time?

These are tough questions for municipal leaders to grapple with, and yet they are impossible to ignore. One way that communities are tackling these challenging questions is through the development of community sustainability plans.

Canada

Congratulations to The Co-operators Group Ltd. on Being Named Most Sustainable Co-op in the World by Corporate Knights Magazine!

Neil McCallum — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 14:40:00 -0400

The Natural Step would like to congratulate our close partner and client, The Co-operators Group Ltd., on being named the most sustainable co-op in the world by Corporate Knights Magazine. This is a well-earned and well-deserved accolade. The Natural Step Canada has provided our Sustainable Business services to The Co-operators since 2006, we co-produced a national Sustainability at Home Toolkit, and we are partners in delivering the IMPACT! Sustainability Champions Training program for young leaders across Canada. Learn more about our work with The Co-operators and their sustainability journey here.

***

Today Corporate Knights, the company for clean capitalism, unveiled the preeminent list on sustainability performance at large co-operative businesses, the 2013 Most Sustainable Co-ops Ranking. The research team analyzed data on environmental, social and governance factors for the 35 largest co-operatives throughout the G7, which span a range of industry groups from insurance to food and staples retailing.

The top performing company in the ranking is Canada’s The Co-operators Group, the Guelph-based insurance provider owned by 45 members that include credit union centrals and co-ops.

Some of the factors that helped The Co-operators earn the top spot are employee turnover remaining quite low, along with a portion of executive compensation being tied to improvements in sustainability performance. The organization continues to maintain significant percentages of women in executive management and in the boardroom.

For a complete list of the top 10 most sustainable co-ops including information on the ranking system used please visit www.corporateknights.com.

Source: Corporate Knights

Corporate Knights – Waterlution Special Water Issue

Anouk Bertner — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 21:57:41 -0400

Upstream, Downstream CSR This article focuses on the argument that "we solve one problem, yet create or turn a blind eye to others." October 2004, Chad Park and Jamie MacDonald

Canada

Corporate Knights: Environmental Smorgasbord

Anouk Bertner — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 15:46:04 -0400

Sweden’s policies: a menu for Canada’s low-carbon diet?
by Melissa Shin

Corporate Knights explores Sweden's solutions for a changing world and compares their policies, actions and attitudes to those currently found in Canada. Shin interviewed Natural Step Founder, Karl-Henrik Robert while in Stockholm.

Canada