“Well this all sounds great, but how much is it going to cost, and what’s the ROI?”
Anyone who has worked in the world of business sustainability or ESG for long enough has likely been asked some version of this question by their boss. And it’s a legitimate topic of conversation. Fortunately, showing positive financial returns is often fairly straightforward.
From energy efficiency retrofits to waste reduction initiatives, sustainability improvements often pay for themselves through cost reduction alone. After all, ignoring waste and inefficiency are not exactly winning strategies when it comes to making money.
Yet focusing only on cost savings is a missed opportunity, because sustainability is ultimately about doing things differently, and better. And doing things differently, and better, is usually a great way to capture people's attention.
I was thinking about this recently when tPX Senior Strategist Niamh O’Mara and I pulled up at the campus of RTI International — an independent scientific research institute located in the Research Triangle Park, a research park that sits between Durham, Raleigh, and Chapel Hill in the Piedmont region of North Carolina. Pulling up to RTI International’s parking garage, one of the first things you see is a beautiful, shade-casting solar array canopy that covers half of the top deck of the garage.
“I absolutely love showing this to our guests,” beamed John Nichols — RTI’s Director of Capital Projects, Sustainability, and Innovation — when I asked him about it. And he handed me a piece of paper that reeled off an impressive range of stats about the installation, including:
As a renewable energy nerd, this list was enough to have me hooked. But what really struck me was how RTI International had intentionally leveraged the design of the installation to ensure maximum visibility, storytelling, and placemaking opportunities that provide benefits well beyond any financial returns, or emissions calculations on a spreadsheet.
For example, the bifacial solar panels used in the installation don’t just increase the amount of energy produced per panel, they also allow dappled sunlight through to the space beneath it, creating a visually appealing space and offering shade to 54 parking spaces, several of which are reserved for folks with limited mobility. As was proven by my own reaction pulling onto the campus, the panels also serve as an extremely visible billboard for RTI’s commitment to sustainability, innovation, and their mission of ‘improving the human condition.’
In fact, as John Nicholls explains, this was one the primary motivators behind placing the array where it is:
“We originally planned to install it on a building rooftop, but we realized that the array would not be visible to anything other than aerial drones. By identifying a highly visible, centralized location we wanted to plant a symbolic ‘flag in the ground’ that reinforces our commitment to sustainability.”
In reality, this “flag in the ground” has ended up having practical, as well as symbolic, value — transforming the top deck of a fairly standard North American parking garage into a pleasant and unique gathering space. Events hosted on the deck have included an official ribbon cutting where project team members took turns riding a scissor lift to sign the underside of the array. The positive messages left behind — including “To infinity and beyond!” and “Oh the places we’ll go” — are still very much visible, and reflect the kind of playful optimism the array was intended to inspire. The space also served as the location for a senior leadership retreat, held on a cool fall evening with string lights, outdoor fire pits, and culinary creations from RTI catering.
Of course, not every company or organization has the room or resources to install a 484-panel rooftop solar array. Every sustainability professional does, however, have the opportunity — and maybe even the obligation — to ask how we can leverage our investments in sustainability to not just save money and emissions, but to engage our audiences too.
For example, in addition to the flagship solar array, RTI International has created carefully crafted signage around their cafeteria composting program; installed prominent and brightly colored on-campus beehives with the queen in each colony named after a famous female scientist from RTI’s history; and planted abundant pollinator gardens stocked with native plantlife. The overall impression is not one-off token projects, but rather a built environment that reflects the values, interests, and strengths of the organization and its employees.
It doesn’t always have to be about the built environment. Another friend of thinkPARALLAX — 48forty Solutions — has also found interesting ways to leverage their sustainability story as North America’s leading manufacturer of recycled wooden pallets. Knowing that they repurpose almost everything that enters their plants — right down to the nails that hold their pallets together — 48forty has used unsalvageable scrap pallet wood to create unique holiday ornaments they give away to customers, and it actively encourages its employees to get creative with wood that would otherwise go to waste.
Additionally, in a nationwide first, the company is partnering with the veteran-owned technology company LOCOAL to host a pyrolysis unit at one of its Houston plants, which will turn waste wood into renewable energy and an organic soil amendment in an entirely closed-loop, near-zero emissions process. While this initiative will provide direct benefits in terms of revenue streams and waste reduction, the teams are also using it for community engagement — holding a community open day and block party to show off their new project.
I asked John Nicholls at RTI for advice on how sustainability teams can better embed the idea of stakeholder engagement into their efforts. He suggested it requires a bit of a mindset shift:
“As sustainability teams, we’re so used to thinking about the technical aspects of the project itself. But it can be helpful to step away and almost forget about that project for a while — and just think about the experiences of your stakeholders. Where do employees like to hang out? How do they absorb information or find out what is happening at work? What is most meaningful to them in terms of their workplace? And what do visitors see or experience when visiting your campus? Once you’ve answered those questions, you can revisit your projects and potentially find ways to boost their visibility and impact.”
Following up, John strongly recommended building relationships with marketing, sales, events, and communications teams. And he suggested looking for how your organization already uses its physical space for storytelling. At RTI, for example, the solar rooftop solar array, pollinator gardens, and beehives have become an integrated part of a visitors’ “story walk,” meaning the typical tour given to new employees, clients, or other guests. That means that, regardless of whether the theme of the visit is explicitly sustainability-focused, these features have become a tangible example of how RTI lives its commitment to science and progress.
A few other prompts that might help uncover opportunities:
We are sure we are just scratching the surface when it comes to storytelling or culture building opportunities. So what else is out there? We would love to hear from you about ESG efforts that go beyond the on-paper ROI and really think about how we can use sustainability to look at and interact with the world around us in different and more creative ways.