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John Spizzirri recently interviewed Zbig Skiba, president of Skiba Consulting, Ltd., in Glencoe, Ill., for the CSBA’s Featured Member Profile.
What is your definition of sustainability and how does it apply to a business culture?
The definition of sustainability, for me, is doing business now in a fashion that is going to minimize the negative impact on future generations.
Realistically, from a business standpoint, the first thing a business should look at in terms of being sustainable, especially in this economy, is staying alive. Whatever environmental things they want to do, whatever social things they want to do, they need to look at what makes sense financially.
Fortunately, there is a strong connection between doing good and doing well. A lot of the activities that companies can implement will decrease the impact on the environment, decrease the use of resources and save the company money.
Define your company
Skiba Consulting focuses on small- to mid-sized companies, companies that don’t have people internally who can think about sustainability in a strategic way. We go in and help them look at business sustainability issues from a strategic perspective. We take a top down view to see where the major impacts are internally, as well as what the impacts are on their suppliers or consumers. So it’s a holistic approach across all three areas of the triple bottom line (financial, environmental, social).
Basically, we work with companies that want to do the right thing, want to respond to the pressures exerted by their customers or that just want to cut costs. We help identify measures that improve environmental and social performance, while improving everyday operations. If these measures are incorporated as planned, a business should see an increase in its financial bottom line.
Luckily, in small and mid-sized companies, you have people who know the business inside and out and they’re more accessible. So if you get the right three of four people in the room, you know everything about the company. So it’s possible to do this and do it fairly quickly.
How did you get started in sustainable strategic planning?
I’ve been interested in the environment for years and years. I’m a hiker from way back when, so I’ve been looking for ways to get into the environmental arena. I’m a former board member of the Chicago Chapter of the National Association of Environmental Management, and more recently I’ve been a business coach and facilitator with The Alternative Board. I organize business owners into peer groups that share challenges and opportunities in their businesses and personal lives. One of the things I’ve been doing with my members is strategic planning.
As I was reading a book on environmental issues (Green to Gold, Daniel C. Esty and Andrew S. Winston), it occurred to me that I could apply the strategic planning process I was using to sustainability issues in companies. I was already helping companies focus on the key things that they should be doing as businesses.
I thought, you know, what’s different in terms of sustainability? So it was a blending of my entrepreneurship background, my love for the environment and the analytical skill set garnered from my engineering degree and MBA that led me along this path.
This may sound trite, but one of my key motivators in doing any of this, is that old adage, ‘Leave the world a better place than you found it.’ So I feel I have the opportunity to do that through my work with The Alternative Board as well as with the sustainable business consulting.
How is a company’s perception of developing a sustainable business environment different from the actual changes made?
People often think that doing sustainability is inconsistent with the bottom line. A lot of people see this as a ‘do good’ thing instead of a major opportunity.
I don’t think you can expect a company to just charge in and say, ‘Ooh, aah, sustainability. We’re going to look at everything and implement all sorts of changes because it’s the right thing to do.’
It has to be done in steps. In the first step, focus on things that impact the bottom line quickly, like energy and waste. And I think that once they see the financial benefit of it in the first year, more people within the organization will get on board and they will begin to implement greater change.
I think with smaller companies, privately-owned companies, your name is on the door and you want to do right. And I think they’re finding that you can do the right thing and still make money.
What are some of the more common changes a company will make socially?
I think that should start from within an organization. Look at the things you can do that will have a positive impact on employees. That can range from reducing excessive noise in the plant to developing better ergonomics, cutting down on repetitive stress—anything over and above what OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) requires.
Once your own house is clean, then you begin to broaden out. Take a look at the products or services you deliver. Is there any harm to the environment during the production or implementation of those products or services? In your community, it might be noise pollution or emissions that are counterproductive to the people living in the area.
The social aspect goes hand-in-hand with doing good business. If you’ve got a plant and you want to expand it, you probably want to be a good member of the community. You don’t want the people living in your vicinity to say ‘No, absolutely not,’ because you didn’t take care of issues that were easily remedied.
Can you provide an example of how a sustainable business plan helped a client?
I just finished a sustainability project with Recycle Technologies, an antifreeze recycler. Although it’s already a green business, we still found ways to further enhance its environmental status.
One thing we discovered was a life cycle assessment for what they’re doing. We did some analysis on how much energy they used and compared it to a life cycle assessment for virgin antifreeze. It turns out that Recycle Technologies generates only one-fifth of the greenhouse gases that the production of virgin antifreeze does.
That’s a huge marketing story for them. We hadn’t anticipated this outcome. We went into it thinking, ‘Well, we’ll find ways to be more green and put a blurb about it on the Web page.’ So this was a bonus and it absolutely shows the potential for other companies looking to move in the same direction.
In the next 18 months, we’re also looking to cut water usage by 50 percent—one of their biggest waste areas—reduce energy use by 20 percent, gas use by 10 percent and greenhouse gas emissions by 15 percent per gallon of antifreeze produced. So it’s about implementing positive environmental changes – not just marketing.
What are some simple steps all businesses can take right now on the path toward achieving a successful triple bottom line? (Or, at least toward becoming that much more sustainable than they were yesterday?)
There are four different approaches that companies or employees can take in terms of becoming more sustainable. One is to just start doing stuff—recycle your water bottles or provide a water cooler, print on two sides of each piece of paper—easy tactical ideas.
The next level up would be project-oriented ideas aimed toward one particular outcome. For example, it becomes obvious that company X is using way too much electricity in one of its plants, so they build a team around reducing electrical use.
Another approach is to work toward ISO 14000 certification to assure that processes and procedures within a company are environmentally sound and that everything is documented.
And the final approach, the one that I take, is a holistic, top down strategic view at all of the environmental and social impacts of what you’re doing. Then you start to work on those changes that will have the largest impact at the lowest cost.
In the library of my Web site http://www.skibaconsulting.com, I have posted 180 actions that companies can take now to become more sustainable. It’s organized by what the impact is and the area that it’s in, whether it’s building oriented or operations, whether it’s air pollution or water pollution.
We also composed a list of over 100 Web sites that we’ve personally checked out to be some of the premier Web sites for information on business sustainability.
John Spizzirri is a freelance writer and editor in Chicago. He has written on a variety of environmental issues, from greenhouse gases and brownfields to elephant sanctuaries and spider conservation. John can be reached at editor@chicagospeaks.com.
