Our Services
We provide end-to-end sustainability programming, making it easier to embed sustainability into everything you do.
Design for Sustainability
Design for Sustainability (DfS) is an embedded program that delivers more sustainable products and processes. Over 80% of an organization’s environmental and health impacts are built in at the design stage; we apply a blend of data-driven, life cycle thinking methods to identify “hot spots” that deserve attention. TrueNorth employs facilitated, creative brainstorming techniques to uncover a series of possible actions and provides guidance on the magnitude of foreseeable impact with regards to environmental and human health. We help organizations balance the Triple Bottom Line.
Life Cycle Assessment
A life cycle inventory and assessment (LCI/A) leverages credible process and material data to express the sustainability impacts of your product or process through every stage of its life cycle- from supplier operations through end of life. LCI/A is the standard of support for more sustainable design decisions internally and market claims externally, including serving as the base data for Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs). Our team has broad and deep experience conducting and critically reviewing LCAs for industrial processes and consumer goods, including those with complex global supply chains.
Product Transparency
Consumers are demanding transparency into environmental and human health impacts. From Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) to material health disclosures such as Declare labels, Health Product Declarations, and manufacturer inventories compliant with LEED V4, we can help with your transparency needs. Our experience specifically focuses on creating transparency at scale to optimize resources and reduce costs so you can focus on designing more sustainable products, rather than creating disclosures. We also help with other aspects such as Product Category Rule (PCR) development.
Enterprise Sustainability Strategy
In order to be relevant, a sustainability strategy must be embedded in business success & incorporate the triple bottom line with metrics that support key results. Our experience with integration of outcome-based metrics for carbon, water, material health, and material efficiency (waste) helps connect individual project results to business and enterprise metrics and goals. This approach reinforces accountability with clear lines to outcomes valued by the business and customers alike. We ensure alignment with industry initiatives such as Science Based Targets, CEO water mandate, and the Chemical Footprinting Project.
Carbon Management
We provide innovative management of carbon emissions across your organization with a focus on Scope 3 Greenhouse Gas (GHG) inventory using the GHG Protocol accounting standards. The inventory can be linked to an existing database that your organization owns such as procurement or financial data, for ease of maintenance and accountability. Customized hotspot analysis and reporting tools create a pathway for you to establish science-based targets. The analysis helps to develop a best-in-class climate action plan to drive emissions reductions across operations and complex global supply chains.
Water Stewardship
Water stewardship goes far beyond water footprinting to understand and minimize your true impact on the local watershed. Whether you’re just beginning to consider how to minimize your impact and risks or if you’ve been on this journey for a while, we can help you implement best in class water stewardship practices. Our water services include company-wide strategy and metrics, screening for highest impact locations, site specific and location recommendations for impact reduction, business and environmental risk evaluation, project specific water impact comparisons, and more.
Supplier Sustainability
When implementing Design for Sustainability, choosing the right suppliers can make a significant difference on your overall impact. We can help you design questions and develop supplier surveys to assess the environmental and human health impact differences between suppliers to support your selection process. This gives a better understanding of where your suppliers are on their sustainability journey. Ultimately, supplier sustainability should be built into your purchasing program and embedded into tools such as supplier scorecards. We can provide guidance, expertise, and tools to support this piece of your program needs.
Excel Sustainability Tools
Our key quantitative tool is the Sustainability Impact Measurement (SIM) where you can quickly analyze the sustainability position from a lifecycle perspective of 2+ designs by using common inputs such as material quantities and types. This provides data credibility to product design decision-making utilizing a sustainability lens that is simple & straightforward. We create and build in customized data sets that are relevant to your business and products. Also, if you have an idea for a decision-making tool or know the outcome you would like but don’t know how to get there, we can help!
Sustainability Culture & Training
The engine for any sustainability program is its people. Identifying and engaging early adopters is key to building the potential within the organization. We know that getting started with culture development is hard. Following a proven sequence of simple steps, we help to lift off and build momentum. Every organization is unique and TrueNorth applies a Human-Centered approach to kick-start a sustainability culture that fits local needs, grows with your program, leverages passions, and provides professional growth that is personally rewarding in a way that ensures success.
When sustainability is part of how business is done, customers feel good about purchase decisions, and employee engagement increases.
The triple bottom line is enhanced as hot spots are identified, aligning with cost, environmental and human health improvements giving customers more for their money, and for the business, better margins.