- Deane Belfield, ECO2Sys
How sustainable is my business - really? In the face of difficult times, many Australian businesses are beginning to ask themselves this question. Others are beginning to realise that through reduced risk and increased opportunity and innovation, embracing sustainable business practices can bring enhanced competitive advantage and long term stability, as well as many other benefits.
Unfortunately, these practices to date are still only reaching a fraction of their potential, having been implemented in an ad-hoc and non-strategic fashion, centred predominantly on operational efficiency measures. Guiding resources, while useful, have generally been equally uncoordinated and unable to offer comprehensive support across the scale and diversity of industry’s requirements.
In response to a rapidly growing market need and based on 12 months of global R&D, the unique 5 Star Sustainable Business Rating System is a breakthrough world first in integrative, whole of supply chain, sustainability performance management. Its new generation, holistic framework is grounded in universal principles, designed to identify and support business excellence from small and medium scale enterprises, to large corporations and government agencies.
Key features include:
• An inclusive, predictable and repeatable approach to generating a sustainability and carbon baseline, for both physical and intangible elements of an organisation’s activities.
• Tools to understand and apply what this baseline represents in terms of risk and opportunity for ongoing improvement.
• Benchmarking of operations with industry peers.
• A basis for integrated sustainability performance monitoring, reporting and certification.
• Alignment with relevant national and international standards and complimentary programs including ISO14000, GRI, DJSI, EEO, EREP and WasteWise.
• Links to support networks including Government services, associations, other businesses and NGO resources.
Successfully market tested and supported by Australian State and New Zealand governments and companies, the 5 Star methodology is based on demonstration of performance across 7 core categories, each with their own set of distinct weighted elements. Application of this program helps identify performance gaps and prioritise actions that will significantly reduce company exposure and impact, increase value and progress toward achieving a position of global best practice sustainability leadership.
BIO:
Deane Belfield is co-founder and Partner of Business Shaper. He is also a Director and facilitator of the Be the Change Symposiums here in Australia, where over 3,000 people across Australia have experienced this profound environmental sustainability transformational experience. Previously Deane worked with a number of blue-chip global companies for many years before setting up PricewaterhouseCoopers’ climate change practice. He has led many projects across Asia- Pacific related to business and process improvement, operational and resource efficiency, sustainability, strategy, performance ratings systems, environmental systems, climate change, greenhouse gas emission reduction and energy efficiency.
Deane is the incoming chair of the National Board for the Society for Sustainability and Environmental Engineers and a member of the Pachamama Alliance global leadership team.
Whilst passionate about transformational change and his facilitation role within both the corporate and community sectors, Deane combines this with his specialty in integrating of carbon management and sustainability into core businesses and all stages of the supply chain - recognising that the catalyst is allowing people to first ‘be the change they want to see in the world’.