Most people hear "sustainability" and think only of the environment. That is one pillar. A sustainable business, or a sustainable event, has to stand on all three: environmental, social and economic. Take one away and it falls over.
Every pillar comes down to two verbs. Measure your impact: the waste, the energy, the miles, the wages, the cost. Mitigate it: reduce what you can, reuse what you can, replace what you can, and offset only what's left. Then measure again. You can't mitigate what you haven't measured, and a measurement you don't act on is just a report.
Pick one event, one building or one product line and count: pounds of waste, kilowatt-hours, truck trips, dollars. That's your baseline.
Reduce, reuse, replace, then offset what's left. Beat the baseline next time, and publish the number.
At Goodwill Industries of Central Florida, Robert's first step as Chief Sustainability Officer was a number: more than $750,000 a year spent on energy. The mitigation was Solar for Good, solar arrays whose savings went back into job training. Read the story.
Every company Robert has led has been built on these pillars. Every product, promotion and packaging change has to answer to them, and so does every event.
What we take, use and leave behind.
How people are treated.
Staying in business to keep doing good.
The economic pillar is the one most often missed. A company that does good while doing well can do far more good, for far longer. The first company into a new idea often fails to lead it; the ones that come after and improve on it become the leaders. Make changes at a pace you can afford. Standing on a soapbox until you are broke does not help anyone.
A simple example: when one partner handles floral, props and lighting for an event, or suppliers coordinate their deliveries, one or two trucks come off the road. Florida Fresh estimates that typically saves the client $1,200 to $2,400 and avoids 150 to 300 pounds of CO2. When the greenest choice is also the cheapest, sustainability stops being a debate and becomes a habit. See the case study.
"Complete sustainability is a destination to strive for every day, but I don't believe anyone can say he or she has reached 100% sustainable."Robert McLaughlin, Authority Magazine, 2021
Corporate clients, investors and convention planners now ask about ESG: environmental, social and governance. The first two match the pillars above. The economic pillar keeps the work going. Governance is the part that makes the rest credible.
Footprint, materials, sourcing, waste and transport.
Wages, safety, training and community.
Who decides, how claims are checked, and how openly results are reported.
Free training for Orlando event teams, built around these questions.
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SUSTAINABLE EVENTS. CHOICES THAT MATTER.