The Sustainability Scorecard: How to Implement and Profit from Unexpected Solutions

by Urvashi Bhatnagar, Paul Anastas

Overview

Using a rigorous, straightforward scorecard as a guide, this book shows business leaders and innovators how to create breakthrough sustainable products and processes that are good for the planet, human health, and profits.

Natural resource inputs to business operations are getting scarcer and more expensive, while climate-change-related economic shocks pose a risk to seamless operations and, more importantly, threaten business continuity. How can organizations integrate sustainable design in their overarching operations and align it with profitability and corporate strategy?

Based on Paul Anastas’s foundational Twelve Principles of Green Chemistry, the Sustainability Scorecard is the first scientifically rooted, data-driven methodology for creating inherently sustainable and profitable products and processes. By redesigning with sustainability as a key design element, firms open themselves to unexpected solutions, leapfrog innovations, and sources of value that simply don’t occur when sustainability is leveraged purely as a risk-avoidance and compliance measure.

Urvashi Bhatnagar and Anastas offer dozens of examples of how sustainable operations can yield benefits such as expanding market share, creating new service lines, and transforming supply-chain and sourcing models to drive the most consistent and highest long-term value. With this comprehensive framework, your firm will be able to identify truly innovative, inherently sustainable products as opposed to “less bad” products and processes that don’t provide the exponential value that only breakthrough products can.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781523093786
Publisher:	Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Publication date:	07/12/2022
Pages:	248
Sales rank:	1,085,839
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Urvashi Bhatnagar, DPT, MBA, is a healthcare executive and population-health and sustainability leader. She works with clients to advance health outcomes in underserved communities by addressing barriers to care, advancing health equity, and leveraging data-driven approaches to reduce the cost of life-altering high-quality care.

Paul Anastas, PhD, is the Teresa and H. John Heinz III Professor in the Practice of Chemistry for the Environment at Yale School of the Environment and director of the Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering at Yale. He is the recipient of the 2021 Volvo Environment Prize and formerly served as the assistant administrator for the US Environmental Protection Agency.

Table of Contents

Foreword Marc Tarpenning ix

Introduction: Doing Better Things Better 1

Chapter 1 Lies About Sustain Ability Courtesy of the Status Quo 26

Chapter 2 The Four Principles for Managing and Scaling Sustainability 38

Chapter 3 The Sustain Ability Scorecard 52

Chapter 4 Know Where You Are to Know Where You're Going 87

What's Your End Goal?

Chapter 5 How Sustainable Product Design Leads to Unexpected Solutions 114

Chapter 6 Unexpected Opportunities for Large Corporations 130

Chapter 7 Unexpected Opportunities for Innovators and Start-Ups 141

Chapter 8 Scaling a Green Organization 154

Conclusion: If It's Not Profitable, It's Not Sustainable 171

Example Scorecards 177

Notes 199

Recommended Reading 209

Acknowledgments 213

Index 219

About the Authors 233

Editorial Reviews

Our society faces many challenges, ranging from lack of access to healthcare to climate change and depletion of natural resources. The response from corporates should be strategies that are sustainable (and not a sustainability strategy that isn’t embedded in the company strategy), and this book should help managers develop such sustainable strategies.”
—Robert Metzke, Head of Sustainability, Royal Philips NV
 
 “There are increasing policy and market drivers for safer, more sustainable products, and the evidence is clear that these are growing faster in the marketplace than the incumbents. In The Sustainability Scorecard, Urvashi Bhatnagar and Paul Anastas team up to provide a simple and commonsense approach for firms to evaluate their journey toward sustainable products. Through a flexible yet holistic set of principles, design criteria, and KPIs that firms can readily understand and measure, they provide a framework for companies to identify and address hazards, repair externalities, and build toward ‘unexpected solutions’ that benefit both the planet and the bottom line. The book provides a tool kit and examples that can inspire both current and future business leaders.”
—Joel Tickner, ScD, Professor of Public Health, University of Massachusetts Lowell, and founder of Green Chemistry & Commerce Council
 
 “The Sustainability Scorecard is unique and amazingly useful. It has pulled the best from science, industry, and improvement methodology to show the moral imperative and the business case for a smarter, stronger future. Great insights and many clear pathways will help any reader not just learn but take action.”
—Jeff Thompson, MD, CEO Emeritus, Gundersen Health System
 
“They say what gets measured gets done. Urvi and Paul’s book pulls back the fog of vague words and concepts enveloping the practice of corporate sustainability and provides a practical framework to make meaningful progress. This book is essential reading for companies constructing a sustainability strategy and for those looking to improve performance.”
—Tim Mohin, Chief Sustainability Officer, Persefoni AI, and author of Changing Business from the Inside Out

 “ESG is a major area of focus for most corporations and their boards, with the E being recognized as an imperative as companies identify the role their products or services may be having in terms of negatively impacting the environment. The challenge, however, is that the work on sustainability is usually seen through the lens of risk management and the assumption that solutions will often be costly. The Sustainability Scorecard presents a strong case that sustainability and profitability can go hand in hand and that sustainably designed products can perform better than traditional ones and bring increased efficiency and quality resulting in profitability. The Sustainability Scorecard provides real-life examples utilizing the Four Principles of Managing and Scaling Sustainability to demonstrate that the future can be sustainable and profitable for companies and for the environment.”
—Joyce Roche, former corporate board member, Macy’s, Tupperware, and AT&T
 
“Paul Anastas and Urvashi Bhatnagar have created an essential handbook for companies that have graduated from the why and are ready for the how. The Sustainability Scorecard is chock-full of expert advice, analysis, and examples that are both relatable and inspiring. This is an essential guide for moving all companies, big and small, past being part of the problem—toward being part of the solution.”
—Christine Bader, author of The Evolution of a Corporate Idealist
 
“The Sustainability Scorecard challenges corporate leaders to check their assumptions about what’s possible when it comes to the perceived limits of sustainable business practices. Backed by science and a wealth of innovative examples, the scorecard offers small and large ventures a scalable pathway to revolutionary solutions to the global environmental crisis. It underscores that we can (and must) think systemically when we think about profit and the finite resources that impact our collective future.
—Laura Calandrella, author of Our Next Evolution

From the Publisher