“What gets measured gets improved.”
Peter Drucker

Measuring the current situation provides a baseline understanding of where things stand right now. It is critical to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of your current strategy and identify opportunities that you might leverage and potential threats or risks you should mitigate.

The impact assessment can be conducted on many stakeholders, such as your clients, your collaborators, your suppliers, and other communities impacted by or impacting your activities; and, of course, the environment. We find the standards established by B lab and their B impact assessment to be a comprehensive tool to measure your current impact and define focus areas for improvements.

Specifically for the environmental impact, we strongly recommend completing a carbon footprint assessment to identify the major sources of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, particularly carbon dioxide (CO2), within your direct and indirect operations (scope 1, 2 and 3). The assessment includes the 15 categories designed by the GHG Protocol – the World-leading global standardized frameworks to measure and manage GHG emissions.

This helps in pinpointing specific areas where efforts can be focused to reduce emissions effectively and contribute to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to well-below 2°C above pre-industrial levels.

The impact assessment provides the baseline to set realistic and achievable objectives and will ease the process for the groundwork required for a potential Certification.