Consulting

Who we are

Natural Capitalism Solutions (NCS) helps clients implement innovative yet pragmatic solutions to corporate sustainability challenges. Our approach is grounded in corporate reality, helping clients seize opportunities, increase profitability and create competitive advantage while responding to pressing global challenges.  

How we create change

Business may be the only institution big enough, resourceful enough and well enough managed to be able to respond effectively to current sustainability challenges. The good news is businesses are realizing that implementing genuine sustainability positions them for continued growth in tomorrow’s market. By partnering with the world’s leading companies, we are showing how to transition from business-as-usual to the greater profitability, lowered risk, enhanced brand value, and stronger competitive advantage that genuine sustainability can confer.

What we do

We are a small team with big goals. We magnify our impact by working with and educating other organizations and individuals that share our vision. Our services include:
Employee Engagement
NCS’ online training programs train and engage employees, driving profitably, enhancing innovation, and maximizing the return on sustainability.
 
Strategic Sustainability Planning
NCS works with clients to develop and execute strategic sustainability programs to gain long-term competitive advantage and enhance profitability.
Climate Advisory
NCS provides technical assurance and review of clients GHG footprints, helping them to report externally, while responding to the evolving science, politics and business risks of climate change.
 
Communicating & Reporting  
NCS develops effective and credible sustainability communications for clients and partners including GRI certified reports, annual reports, and stakeholder communications.
Sustainability Intelligence
NCS routinely creates and conducts customized research projects, providing independent, business-critical research to help clients stay ahead of the curve and advance sustainability on an array of topics.
More about NCS’ Services. click here.

Employee Engagement

Employees are an organization’s greatest asset, but when it comes to sustainability they are often left out. Our programs help clients strengthen their position as industry leaders by providing cost-effective and robust e-learning programs. At a time when Americans feel worse about their jobs than ever before, the coupling of sustainability training and employee engagement is a particularly effective way to enhance productivity, retain customers and motivate your workforce. 
Our programs help clients to integrate sustainability deeper into the company’s operations and culture, in order to help clients:  
Maximize return on sustainability initiatives by educating employees and aligning your organization around sustainability commitments.
Increase your revenue—arm your sales team with the sustainability knowledge they need to effectively sell your products and services.
Implement sustainability across geographic boundaries by delivering actionable training to your network of franchise or retail operations that cuts costs while increasing alignment with corporate goals.
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Employee Engagement Case Stories

In order to leverage their sustainability investments in the market, Eco-Products hired Natural Capitalism Solutions to develop a robust e-training program for their sales team. The e-training program provides sales staff with a foundational understanding of sustainability and the sustainable attributes of their products, in addition to practical training on how to communicate sustainability information to diverse customers.
By completing the NCS training, the Eco-Products sales team is better equipped to capitalize on the company’s sustainability investments, strengthening their sales pitch and increasing revenue.
NCS created an interactive e-learning platform to help salons in the Aveda network implement more efficient, sustainable, and environmentally conscious practices to lower overall costs and advance the Aveda mission. The e-learning platform showcases salon specific and cost effective sustainability measures, providing straightforward instructions and tools to make implementation as easy as possible.
Using the e-learning sustainable salon guide created by NCS, Aveda will be able to implement sustainability across a diverse network of operations, realizing a number of benefits including:

• Reducing costs and increasing productivity;

• Helping salon owners communicate sustainability efforts to employees and customers;
• Demonstrating the energy, monetary, and marketing benefits of increasing sustainability and efficiency; and
• Directly relating sustainability measures and their benefits to the Aveda salon experience.

Strategic Sustainability Planning Case Stories

Sustainable business practices are smart business practices. Many of the world’s leading companies have set out to reduce resource use and greenhouse gas emissions and have seen increased profitability as a result. But, maximizing business value from sustainability requires more than setting emission reduction targets and instituting a recycling program – it takes thoughtful strategy, innovative process design, and monetized performance metrics. Without careful planning, implementation, and measurement, your business will miss opportunities to gain long-term competitive advantage and enhance profitability.
Our services include:
Competitive Sustainability Assessment: Gain an understanding of how your company compares to competitors and peers on key sustainability issues, while gaining an in-depth understanding of emerging industry trends. 
Visioning: Establish and communicate a sustainability vision for your organization that aligns with your corporate mission, ensuring engagement of internal and external stakeholders.
Measurement and Monetization: Identify key sustainability indicators and develop processes to both measure and monetize performance.
Strategic Planning and Execution: Define sustainability goals based on key performance indicators. Develop mid and long-term strategies to achieve these goals across your value chain while maximizing return on investment. Design and execute innovative processes to implement sustainability across functional departments from marketing and sales to operations and accounting.
Communication Strategy: Engage employees and stakeholders in an authentic conversation around sustainability achievements and goals. Train employees, compile and publish sustainability reports, and develop innovative communication campaigns to connect with customers and external stakeholders.

Strategic Sustainability Planning

Diversey, Inc.
Diversey (now a part of Sealed Air)., a leader in commercial cleaning, sanitation, and hygiene goods and services, needed a more directed sustainability effort. NCS helped Diversey to develop long- term goals, and conducted a desktop audit, identifying key business opportunities across Diversey’s operations related to sustainability.
Natural Capitalism Solutions assisted Diversey in reducing operational costs throughout the value chain, increasing employee attraction and retention, enhancing brand value and market position, while differentiating Diversey from its competitors.
NCS presented the identified sustainability opportunities to the Executive Board, who then implemented the recommended strategies and policies. NCS’ worked enabled Diversey to infuse sustainability throughout the core of Diversey’s business practices. This drove corporate innovation, and validated the business case for building sustainability into Diversey’s operations.
CDW Corporation
The NCS team conducted a series of site visits across CDW’s U.S. operations, including data centers, warehouses, and office locations. The process allowed NCS to assess environmental management policies, practices, and company systems for strengths and weaknesses.  Throughout the process NCS coordinated with CDW’s market agency Ogilvy & Mather to effectively communicate results from the strategic sustainability assessment to external stakeholders.
NCS was able to identify and prioritize business opportunities and risks, highlighting key short-term operational savings and longer-term areas for consideration. Overall, the NCS team was able to identify over $750,000 in annual savings for the company through better water management and energy efficiency, easily paying for the cost of NCS’s services.