Sustainable development must be the common thread and a strong guiding principle of all companies. Creating a company or a business based on design thinking also means creating it for future, a long enough future. But how can a company measure sustainability? Which aspects does it cover and how can these be made tangible?

These well-known and established concepts of the ‘footprint’ and ‘handprint’ must be firstly understood. Handprint helps provide an objective assessment of who is doing well and footprint who is doing bad. An organizational footprint is essentially the impact of pollution released and resources consumed over the entire supply chain and life cycle of the corporate’s product. The concept gathering momentum in the United States of ‘handprint’ suggests a basic equation of offsetting positives against negatives. Simply, overall, if you leave the Earth a better place than you found it or not. An independently verified handprint score would help transparency.

Corporate around the world could developed some kind of own Corporate Sustainability Handprint (CSH) to enable projects and offices locally and abroad to do their work sustainably with a sharp focus on the future. Regular CSH reports can measure each one ecological footprint as well as handprint, i.e., the positive contribution made. The handprint illustrates the four sustainability dimensions: economic capability, ecological balance, political participation and social responsibility. And in details, these four points can be subdivided into many and many critical fields of actions, upon which specific measures are based. Definitely, it’s all about reducing the footprint for enlarging the handprint.

It is desirable to share periodic reports of every company that have declared themselves in the country’s registers. For other informal enterprises, a solution will have to be found to control and check them.

In order to enlarge their handprint, some countries try to procure more local equipment and materials or refit electronic devices in their offices, for example. Other measures include corporate health management such as opportunities to engage in sport, advice on nutrition and workplace design, or avoiding waste in everyday work and recycling. In total, countries should commit to specific improvement goals in order to improve their sustainability performance. In this way, corporate sustainability is firmly anchored in daily business and their social responsibility as well.

Thank you.

Written by Richard Adayi.

Ressources

CSR Handprint and Footprint, SHP Safety and Health Practitioner