Sustainability Terminology: Business Management Tools

(upbeat music) <v ->The second group of terms are all related</v> to business management tools. If you are involved in business, you may have been asked to adopt one or more sustainability-related management tools. There are many different local and global ones, also depending on the industry you may be operating in. We mentioned some of the more common ones with a very short description, so that you know where to place them and how to find more information. ISO. ISO stands for the International Organization for Standardization - an independent non-profit that tries to create commonly accepted standards in many different fields, including sustainable development.

A very common one you may have seen used in corporate reporting is ISO 14064, 1,464, which is a greenhouse gas accounting standards and ISO 1,467, which is related to the carbon footprint of products. We will explain carbon footprint in the next group of terms. Green globe is a standard accepted in many countries for sustainable tourism, covering standards for companies, their employees, the local community, and the environment. B-corporation, or mostly called B-Corp is a management tool as well as a reporting tool. When a business is certified as a B-Corp, they will have to be operating in a way that is balancing standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose.

There are currently, and this is May, 2021, just under 4,000 certified B-Corporations across 74 countries and 150 industries, so pretty well-known. The Science Based Targets initiative (SBTI), provides a scientifically backed framework for companies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Targets are considered science-based if they are in line with what the latest climate science deems necessary to meet the goals of the Paris agreement, pursuing efforts to limit warming of the globe to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial efforts. The Future Fit Business Benchmark is a holistic performance tool leading to a future fit society. We will discuss this separately in a few minutes. (upbeat music)