For AXIS adding value to our clients' organizations is
our primary mission.
Here are some highlights of our work in the last year.
We helped Sustainable Idaho put on a first-class Sustainability in the Inland Northwest conference on sustainability in Boise. Here's what Jerry Brady of the Post Register had to say about the event: "What a magnificent job you all did! I don't remember ever being at a conference where everyone had such high praise. I'll be interested to see the summary of the evaluations but I'll bet they were sky high." They were. We cannot take full credit for this accolade as Katie Sewell and Helen Rigg were really the workhorses that pulled this off. Over 300 people attended.
We were invited to join the Zero Waste Alliance. Darcy's first project through them was to lead a sustainability assessment for the City of Corvallis. This included using AXIS's new proprietary assessment tool called SCORE (Sustainability Competency & Opportunity Rating & Evaluation). This tool is organized by function (purchasing, HR, top management, facilities, etc.) so it is easy to administer and also to assign accountability for improvement.
Marsha worked with GreenBlue (Bill McDonough's non-profit) to help them facilitate their packaging coalition, a group of major manufacturers who hope to implement McDonough's concept of intelligent materials pooling as well as their Design for the Environment Green Formulation Initiative that is creating a database of environmentally preferable cleaning chemicals.
Marsha is also part of a team that designed and is now implementing a Leadership Institute for the City of Portland. This year long program will train 24 initial participants in leadership and self-mastery.
Marsha continues to consult with the Department of Human Services delivering training in their Management Training Program as well as providing coaching to individual managers and teams.
In addition to our work with clients, we make a point
of adding value in our communities,
often "adopting" a non-profit to which we provide no- or low-cost
services.
Darcy and Marsha wrote The Business Guide to Sustainability (Earthscan, 2006) which is intended to do for all organizations what LEED did for the green building industry: make it easy for the lay person to make more sustainable actions. The book is organized by sector (services, government, manufacturing) and then by common organizational function (senior management, finance/accounting, marketing/PR, human resources, facilities, purchasing, etc.). Each chapter explains sustainability from the point of view of that function or sector: what do you need to know about sustainability, what are people like you doing regarding sustainability. It also includes SCORE, a self-assessment to judge how well you are doing and to identify actions you could take.
Along with Lauren Heine of GreenBlue, Marsha co-authored a chapter in the forth coming engineering text Sustainability Science and Engineering: Defining Principles. The chapter describes processes for engaging multi-stakeholders in designing sustainable solutions.
Marsha and Darcy continued to provide pro bono assistance to organizations not able to afford consulting support. In 2005, we invested 186.5 hours in this type of work (Jan-Nov), the majority of which was related to the Oregon Natural Step Network's coaching program and the Oregon Sustainability Board. Specific examples are listed below.
Darcy continued to support the Oregon Sustainability Board by attending, and in some cases, facilitating their meetings. The Board sunsetted but is reportedly going to be recreated by a new executive order.
Darcy began working with the Oregon Episcopal School which has integrated sustainability into their curriculum. She taught some classes and also helped the teachers hook up with other resources.
Darcy and Marsha participated in the Oregon Natural Step Network's coaching service, supporting the transition of the following organizations to sustainable practices:
Subscriptions to our most popular free e-list, the AXIS Advisory, increased by 30%. This year, the articles focused on such issues as Darcy's trip to South Africa, emerging pollutants, and small business innovations in sustainability. Past issues are available on our website. [To get these automatically, send an email to AXIS-Advisory-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. To get off this list, send an email to AXIS-Advisory-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com]
We also continued our newsflash service (9 issues), a summary of interesting articles and books. Subscriptions here increased by 36%. Unfortunately, when the Multnomah County Library stopped sending out books on hold while they upgraded their computer system, this service experienced a long hiatus. It should pick up again soon. If you have books you'd like us to review, send your suggestions to darcy@axisperformance.com. [To join, send an email to AXIS-newsflash-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. To get off this list, send an email to AXIS-newsflash-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com]
We also continued moderating the NW-Sustainability listserve to summarize events and other announcements associated with organizational sustainability in the Pacific Northwest. This listserve has not attracted enough subscriptions to make it worth the continued effort. Also the need for the list seems to have diminished somewhat in that the dizzying array of events have become more organized and predictable. We plan to keep the list but only use it occasionally to announce events we're involved in or send out other announcements we're confident subscribers would want to know about. In 2006, subscribers can expect many fewer emails.
Though as a consulting service we have low environmental
impact,
we still feel a responsibility to being good earth stewards.
Our biggest environmental impact is associated with greenhouse gases and transportation. We continued tracking the percentage of trips where we used alternative transportation (mass transit, biking or walking; we do not include car pooling although many of our personal auto trips involve sharing rides.) We continue to be able to use alternative transportation methods for over 50% of our business trips. Unfortunately, we did see a slippage from the year before, a result of where our current clients are located.
Year
% trips by alternative transportation
2001
34%
2002
43%
2003
63%
2004
63%
Again this year, AXIS will be climate neutral. We purchased carbon credits to offset all of our 5 tons of greenhouse gases this year through The Climate Trust, a local organization.
As owner/operators we naturally set business goals for
our own development.
Revenues were up significantly this year, reversing a slippage in 2004.
Darcy was nominated to participate in the Prince of Wales sustainability program but the program was postponed because His Royal Highness had a change in plans. She hopes to participate in 2006.
Darcy had also hoped to sign up for the LionHeart leadership program put on by the Oregon Natural Step Network but had to cancel due to a family crisis.
Product Stewardship is best understood as product take-back, although the end-of-life issues are only one component. Through our affiliation with the Zero Waste Alliance, we have formed a product stewardship subgroup of consultants who have a passion for transforming industries rather than just individual organizations. Collectively, we've worked on product stewardship projects involving packaging, cleaning products, baby products, and electronics. We are working to develop projects related to emerging pollutants, chemicals that are finding their way into our rivers and our bodies from pharmaceuticals, personal care products and other consumer products.
We were invited to teach at least one class in the sustainability workshop series. We are also planning to explore with the University of Oregon the prospects of creating an online class for sustainability coordinators. These people are often lone voices in their organizations and could benefit from a support network as well as consulting advice and facilitated processes.
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
Darcy has signed up for a trip to the Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge so that she can come back and share her observations and insights about the raging disputes about drilling there with others.
In partnership with Sustainable Northwest, we will continue to develop this program of study tours for groups that want to learn about sustainability efforts in the Northwest. When we set up this program, there had been a steady stream of visitors coming to the Northwest for this purpose. For a variety of reasons, this market may have shrunk. A group from Ghana, for example, has had trouble getting visas, a post-9/11 problem for many. It is not our intent to build this into a major business but instead to have the service available to those who need it. We have developed customizable tours on such topics as renewable energy, green building, sustainable agriculture and forestry, sustainable industries, urban design and transportation. Please feel free to refer propective visitors to this program at the Sustainable Northwest website (www.sustainablenorthwest.org). If you occasionally get requests from visitors to set up meetings and site visits and don't have the time to help them, let us send you a brochure on our services.