SSC Green Audit

SSC GREEN AUDIT:
Assessing Your Business

An Overview

The Basics

The SSC Green Audit is a methodology
developed by Strategic Sustainability
Consulting. It is specifically designed
for organizations that have made a
commitment to going green, but who
need help in taking practical steps
towards that goal.
Each SSC Green Audit includes:
 An Employee Survey
 An Office/Building Survey
 Carbon Footprint Analysis
 Onsite Visits
 Final Green Audit Report

www.sustainabilityconsulting.com
Copyright © 2012, Strategic Sustainability Consulting. All rights reserved.

The Surveys
(and a preview of what you would receive)

The Surveys

Employee Survey
 Gauges employee awareness
and attitudes towards green
issues
 Gathers employee-level data for
the carbon footprint
 Deployed via email, takes each
employee about 10 minutes to
complete

Let’s check out a few example
questions and results of what
you would receive …

The Surveys

How do employees view themselves and the company?

I consider myself an environmentally
conscious person.

I make environmentally conscious decisions at
Strongly Agree
work.
Agree

Neutral
I consider my company to be an
environmentally-friendly organization. Disagree

Strongly Disagree
Given all of our other priorities, I think it is
worthwhile for my company to investigate
ways to be more environmentally responsible.

0 10 20 30 40 50 60


The Surveys


The Surveys

Where should we focus our efforts?

Energy Use

Information Technology

Waste/Recycling

Paper Use

Employee Awareness/Communications

Customer Awareness/Communications

Air Travel

Commuting

Kitchen Supplies/Food

0.00% 10.00% 20.00% 30.00% 40.00% 50.00% 60.00% 70.00% 80.00% 90.00% 100.00%


The Surveys

Office/Building Survey
 Collects data on your
operations, i.e. office
space, utilities, and IT
equipment
 We have national averages for
when data is unavailable
 Used to calculate your carbon
footprint
 Takes about 2 hours per facility

Let’s check out a few example
questions and results of what
you would receive … www.sustainabilityconsulting.com

The Surveys

A portion of what your office survey may look like:
Your Address/Location 123 Green
Street, Sacramento, CA
How many full-time employees work in your office? 15

How would you describe your building? Concrete and Steel

In what year was your office built? April 2007
How many square feet does your organization occupy? 6112 Square Feet

What is the square feet of impervious space that your company 15 Parking Spaces
uses? (You can count the parking spaces if you aren't sure here!)

Over the last 12 months, what has the average monthly electricity 3343 KwH
usage of your facility been?
How much of this is from clean, renewable sources? None

Over the 12 months, what has the average monthly natural gas 1480 Therms
usage been?

Analyzing Your Carbon Footprint


 Uses information from
employee survey and
office/building survey
 Calculates your
organization’s annual
carbon footprint in total
tons, and tons-per-
employee
 Identifies key carbon
drivers, such as utilities, air
travel, and employee
commuting



What your carbon footprint analysis graphs may look like:
If you have multiple offices, we’ll
Total Carbon compare their relative impacts:
596.4 tons per year 100%
Car commuting
90%
Car commuting Local Business Travel 80%
70% Local Business
Air travel Utilities Travel
60%
Waste Paper 50% Air travel
40%
Other 30%
5% Utilities
8% 14% 20%
7% 10%
8%
0% Waste

Buenos Aires, AR
London, UK

San Francisco

Corporate
Manhattan, NY
White Plains, NY
19%
Paper
39%
Other


Onsite Visits

 “Understanding Sustainability”
morning workshop for all
employees
 Facility walk-through to look
at office set-up and interview
key personnel
 “Results and
Recommendations” afternoon
sessions with key executives
to review results of employee
survey, carbon footprint, and
key recommendations


The Final Report and Action Plan


Then comes the best part … we can benchmark your
performance against your peers and categories (number of
employees, etc.) Your standings might look something like this:

Carbon tons per employee annually
9
8
7
6
5
4
3 You have a larger –than-average
2 carbon footprint, here is where
1 you rank
0 2 4 6 8 10 12



Next, we would analyze
Other
why exactly you have a
larger –than-average Paper

carbon footprint in a
Waste
separate graph. As it
turns out, you have high Utilities

utilities and high air
travel, compared to most
Air travel

of your peers. In Local Business

addition, your employee Travel

commuting is
Car commuting

substantial. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9



Now that we know your impacts
And where employees are enthusiastic,
We’ll make our recommendations.



Our recommendations are tailored to each client
that we work with, but commonly include issue
areas such as:
 Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy
 Eco-Purchasing and Supply Chain Check out some of
 Green Building and Retrofitting our resources to
 Waste and Recycling prevent these issues
 Commuting/Public Transit/Alternatives from arising in the
first place:
 Employee Awareness and Education
Click here to browse
 Customer Outreach and Communication
 Marketing and Transparency



Depending on the scope of your SSC Green Audit, your final
report may be:
 A simple collection of our
audit findings and
recommendations:
 Details of the employee
survey
 Analysis of your carbon
footprint
 Tailored recommendations
for going green along with
resources to get you started



Depending on the scope of your SSC Green Audit, your final
report may be:
 A complete plan to kick-

start your green initiative:
 Everything you get with a
simple audit plus:
 Detailed guidelines for
each of our
recommendations
 A month-by-month
action plan for the first
180 days of your green
initiative

Find out more about obtaining your very own green
audit on the SSC Website.

Still have questions? Contact us

SSC Green Audit

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