30 Best Companies of the Year 2024
Business Fortune
The biggest obstacle to a sustainable future has been overcome. Business leaders now support sustainability and recognize its connection to future growth. In the past, corporations opposed environmental reform, but now innovation is driving change and creating economic opportunities. This includes agricultural technologies for sustainable development and electric vehicles.
Eco-friendly supply chains, green technologies, and other sustainable business practices are vital aspects of sustainability and economic development. They play a crucial role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and decreasing dependence on fossil fuels at both the individual and community levels. These sustainable practices, when adopted by corporations and governments, have a ripple effect that positively impacts the environment. As a result, they contribute to an improved quality of life for all.
EcoScapes Sustainability Solutions is committed to leading the way towards a greener future in response to the global push for sustainability. The company aims to create high-quality environmental sustainability solutions for built environments and businesses. They offer a variety of sustainability focused services such as sustainability consulting, architectural design, manufacturing process and materials management, business strategic planning, marketing, education, sustainability reporting, and being a licensed assurance provider for AA1000AS, carbon footprinting, and carbon emissions calculations.
In conversation with Lisa A. Wynne, the President and CEO of EcoScapes Sustainability Solutions
What was the motivation behind starting EcoScapes Sustainability Solutions?
EcoScapes Sustainability Solutions was started because there was a need in the consumer environment industry. This industry covers a wide range of products, including store interiors, permanent displays, point-of-purchase, and temporary displays. The industry needed someone who understood their industry, architecture, and sustainability. Having worked in architecture and in consumer environments, both with my work centered around sustainability, creating EcoScapes was the next leap. It allowed me to serve as an advisor or as an independent third party for data verification.
Can you tell us about your services in brief?
I provide a series of services that break down into the following:
1. Company emissions calculations: EcoScapes™ Solve – This calculator helps companies track their emissions easily without knowledge of sustainability. It will soon encompass Scope 3 emissions. It aims to stay ahead of California Statute 253’s requirements.
2. Product emissions calculations: EcoScapes™ Elementz – In development: Calculate emissions for complex goods like retail displays with multiple materials from various sources.
3. Strategic sustainability planning and implementation – I help customers establish and execute their sustainability plans after analyzing their baseline data.
4. Independent third party verification of data: EcoScapes™ Verified – I’m a licensed assurance provider through AA1000AS. I can verify sustainability data/reports across various aspects like quality, responsiveness, materiality, impact, inclusivity, and suggest areas for improvement.
5. Design – I advise on improving display design sustainability, focusing on reducing carbon footprints at various stages. I work on sustainable residential architectural design, including new construction and renovations.
6. Education – Sustainability is a new way of thinking. Every aspect of my work involves education. That’s grown to include speaking engagements, webinars, and publications.
EcoScapes emphasizes “Building a Sustainable Future around the World.” Can you elaborate on how this philosophy shapes your approach to sustainability consulting and architectural design?
I look at everything from a cyclical perspective: everything we build has an impact on the environment and the people using the spaces and products we create. When we take something from the earth, it will somehow eventually find its way back there. What will its impact be? How will that affect future generations and how they live? The earth has millions of ecosystems, but they all impact each other eventually. Hence, global.
Along the same lines, I do work all around the world, especially as more sustainability related legislation is developed and implemented.
Custom solutions are a key part of EcoScapes’ promise. Can you share a success story where a customized sustainability solution had a significant impact on a client?
Sure. I had a customer trying to decide where to manufacture displays, and one of the criteria was the carbon footprint of transport. I developed a program that would let us calculate the emissions of displays transported across two different continents and distributed all over the world. We could move the displays from one calculation to another until a preferred manufacturing location was determined. Sustainability is only one of the factors that goes into determining manufacturing location, but I was able to answer that piece of the puzzle.
As a licensed assurance provider for AA1000AS, how do you ensure the reliability and transparency of the sustainability data you verify?
The AA1000AS has predefined methodologies for ensuring data reliability and transparency. I do several things: I randomize my data requests as a percentage of the total so that a company doesn’t know what data I will verify until I ask for it. Some companies request a higher percentage of data checks than others, and that can also impact the level of assurance I can provide. Whether or not I visit and audit a customer in person also helps determine the level of assurance.
How do you balance responding to immediate client needs with long-term sustainability goals, especially in industries with high environmental impact?
That’s a tough one. The customer’s immediate needs come first, of course. They have customer deadlines, legislative deadlines, and their own initiatives that I help them meet. I’m constantly working to build and evolve programs, but sometimes it’s only a few hours a week, especially on weeks when I do audits. Then, it’s all about working efficiently: I lean on my employees and firmly believe in increasing their level of education so that they can assist me in more technical work. I have potential employees sitting on the wings in the event of sudden growth. I’m also learning to use AI’s versatility to my benefit.
What does the future hold for your company and its customers? Are exciting things on the way?
Definitely exciting! We are experiencing a cultural shift towards sustainability, thanks to the younger generations, like we haven’t seen before. Gen Alpha not only considers sustainability when they make a purchase; they are also convincing their parents to do the same. And everyone is willing to pay a little more for it. There’s a lot of change on the horizon with emerging legislation, the SEC’s Climate Disclosure Rule, and an increased focus on carbon emissions from operations and products. It’s impacting every customer I work with, and, thanks to California Statute 253, it will soon impact the average small business if they are a part of a larger company’s supply chain. My goal is to be able to help them meet their obligations to their larger customers without breaking the bank.
Meet the President and CEO
Lisa A. Wynne, President and CEO of EcoScapes Sustainability Solutions, offers a refreshing perspective on sustainability. Unlike some hard-core environmentalists, Lisa approaches sustainability from a business standpoint, leveraging her expertise in this field. Lisa’s unique belief is that sustainability should be practical for your organization, rather than pursued just for the sake of it.
Lisa supports the triple bottom line philosophy, which focuses on the environment, economy, and society. She acknowledges that sustainability does come at a cost, but advises against mindlessly allocating a sustainability budget to initiatives that don’t bring tangible benefits to your organization. For instance, purchasing solar panels for a leased building rarely proves advantageous.
Lisa’s passion lies in unraveling the strategic puzzle that sustainability poses to her clients. With her guidance, your organization can move towards sustainable practices that make sense and deliver long-term success.