Sustainable Brands Launches First-Ever Roadmap Towards Greening Your Business

Sustainable Brands (SB) launched the first-ever tool designed to help mainstream brands move themselves towards sustainability Tuesday at the SB'18 conference in Vancouver running from June 4 to 7, according to an SB press release.

The SB Brand Transformation RoadmapSM is designed for companies in all sectors and with various leadership styles and allows them to set their own goals and move at their own pace.

"For the first time, we have a roadmap that demonstrates what happens holistically in each chapter of a company's sustainability journey," Vice President Environment, Social & Governance Strategy at Iron Mountain Kevin Hagen said in the press release. "It allows you to plot where your company is today and plan a faster path to the next phase while maximizing the benefits right where you are."

The roadmap is built around a five-by-five matrix of five characteristics of sustainable companies and five steps towards sustainability.

Those characteristics, as listed on the roadmap's information page, are:

1. Purpose Beyond Profit

2. System-wide Brand Influence

3. Regenerative Operations

4. Net Positive Products and Services

5. Transparent and Proactive Governance

SB CEO and founder KoAnn Vikoren Skrzyniarz said the roadmap had received positive feedback from Fortune 100 companies.

"We believe the SB Brand Transformation Roadmap has the potential to become an invaluable tool and the main portal that companies and individual brands will use to establish and build on their sustainability ambitions and strategies over time," Skrzyniarz said in the release.

SB was founded in 2006 with a mission "to inspire, engage and equip today's business and brand leaders to prosper for the near and long term by leading the way to a better future."

Its flagship conference, currently underway in Vancouver, is gathering more than 3,000 participants from more than 30 countries. Featured attendees include Google, Levis, Ford, 21st Century Fox and National Geographic.

In addition to launching the roadmap the conference also features more than 300 speakers and is organized around the theme of "Redesigning the Good Life."

A 2017 SB survey found that people are less concerned now with money, status and success and more interested in a simple, community-oriented life. Eighty-percent of people said they would be loyal to brands that reflected this value shift, but few could name brands that did, according to a featured conference article by Senior Vice President for Human Resources, Stewardship and Sustainability at Kohler, Co. Laura Kohler.

"Clearly, brands are not effectively connecting the dots for consumers," Kohler wrote.

Her article promoted the panel she will speak on—Harmonizing the Inside and Outside Messages: Turning Employees into Effective Ambassadors for Your Good Life Brand.

Her panel is another example of the conference's events geared to helping participants move in a sustainable direction and promote the shift.

"Position your brand for success by responding to shifting societal needs. Learn how to redesign product and service offerings and rethink business models for a changing economy," the conference website reads.