NGWA Event and Education Recordings Archive

More and more organizations are working to make their operations environmentally, economically, and socially sustainable, but how effective are those efforts? S-CORE (Sustainability — Competency, Opportunity, Reporting & Evaluation) is a sustainability assessment tool that works equally well for businesses and not-for-profits to identify, evaluate, prioritize, and improve an organization’s sustainability practices and “corporate” sustainability culture.

S-CORE includes more than 100 practices and is organized by functional areas relevant to all organizations, making it easy to assign accountability and responsibility. Each practice describes three levels of sustainable activities so organizations can see where they are now and where they need to go long-term. These results feed into the organization’s sustainability planning process. While the benchmark data allows organizations to compare their efforts with others, the results are intended to inform internal decision-making rather than external reporting. This internal focus fosters organizational understanding and dialogue, and facilitates identifying and prioritizing opportunities to accelerate the journey forward.

In addition to the 10 functional areas common to all organizations, S-CORE has sector supplements to evaluate practices specific to certain industries, such as the ones for water utilities and wastewater utilities that will be highlighted in this presentation.

S-CORE is useful for organizations at all levels of sustainability implementation. Those just starting the sustainability journey can use S-CORE to begin the dialogue internally and prioritize next steps. Organizations already committed to sustainability can use S-CORE as a rapid assessment of how well sustainability is being integrated into their corporate culture and practices, as well as to benchmark themselves against other organizations. Sustainability leaders can use S-CORE to engage stakeholders as well as identify industry best practices and opportunities to collaborate to truly move sustainability forward.