Commitment to Sustainable Practices
As a professional services firm, whose role is to understand social trends and public opinion, The Strategic Counsel understands the importance of adopting sound environmental practices designed to reduce the generation of GHG’s and reduce waste. A commitment to the reduction of the firm’s carbon footprint has been built into the way our company operates. Our commitment to the environment has driven us to make sustainability part of our standard, everyday operating procedures.
We have reduced our impact on the environment in a number of ways:
Teleworking: Given the nature of our work, both firm’s consultants can work from anywhere. Moreover, most of our internal and external communications is via email, video, and telephone. We actively encourage our employees to work from home. Prior to the pandemic, over 70% of TSC’s employees worked at least three days a week from home. Through the pandemic, this has increased to the extent that 90% of the staff now work full-time from their home offices.
Using Internet collaboration tools as a mode of communications: Recognizing that our staff, suppliers and clients are geographically dispersed in the GTA and other parts of Ontario and Canada, we actively use tools such as Zoom/Teams/Skype to host meetings. This has dramatically decreased the use of private and public transportation. During the pandemic, we pivoted to conduct virtual focus groups, eliminating travel of participants and moderators. We expect to continue this approach in the future.
Electronic reporting: To the extent that is possible, TSC has moved to a paperless model – all TSC reports are prepared and delivered in a digital format, unless clients require hard copy versions. We use no printed promotional or marketing materials, and rely instead on email, social media and telephone communications.
Commitment to public transit: We are committed to the use of public transit. Our main office in Toronto at the intersection of Yonge St. and St Clair was chosen for its close proximity to transit. This is reinforced by keeping a readily accessible supply of transit tokens/tickets in the office to encourage the use of transit instead of taxis to visit clients and suppliers. Furthermore, we have made an explicit decision not to include any company car subsidy as a part of compensation packages.
Environmentally-friendly tools: All TSC’s printers and copiers are Energy Star compliant, and retired computer equipment is given to an organization that reFURBISHES, reCYCLES, and reDISTRIBUTES usable equipment to organizations across Canada and ensures safe disposal of unusable equipment.
Office Management: During 2021, TSC moved to a newer office location that allowed for more energy efficient space utilization. While the TSC team continues to grow, the partners determined that the new model of operations during the pandemic allowed for effective team integration while reducing travel time and the environmental impact of the firm.
Waste Management: As part of our commitment to waste management, we have a complete office recycling program. Only recycled paper is used for major proposals and reports that must be printed. As well, sensitive paper materials are shredded using a company that recycles waste materials. Reports and proposals are printed in double-sided format whenever possible. Glasses and cutlery are provided in our offices in order to discourage the use of disposable products.
Electricity Consumption: In the TSC main office, at the close of each day, all office lights are turned off in an effort to conserve energy.
Climate Change
As outlined in the section above, we have taken a number of steps to reduce the carbon footprint of TSC on the environment – encouraging employees to tele-commute, establishing office hoteling practices, reducing the use of paper, installing automatic systems to turn off lights, encouraging use of public transit, installing environmentally compliant equipment and undertaking aggressive recycling.
Policy Governance
The partners of The Strategic Counsel annually review the Environment and Sustainability Policy and monitor performance of the firm against best practices for comparable peer professional service firms. Effort has been dedicated to adopt iterative improvements to ensure that the firm formalizes practices that lead to measurable reductions in the usage of paper, electricity and private automobiles in the conduct of operations.
Practices that have been adopted over the past three years have become a pattern of behavior in the firm and have had a tangible impact in moving operations towards a more sustainable and environmentally sound business model.