Streamlined life cycle analysis? This macro-enabled spreadsheet is more than just a pretty face

It’s one thing to decide which of the gazillion definitions of sustainability makes sense to you as a way of thinking about the world, the future and everything. From the triple bottom line to communities thriving within environmental limits, there are x number of ways to understand what sustainability is all about.

But even if you’ve got your head around the bigger picture, it’s quite another thing to boil it down into something that makes sense on a daily basis for the nitty gritty of running of a business. And without being able to make that connection, it can be pretty tough to work out where you’re at, where you need to get to, and how to start moving in the right direction.

Luckily, Forum has a surprisingly nifty tool up its sleeve that allows you to make that crucial connection. The SLCA tool (or streamlined life cycle analysis) is a practical and rather elegant way of bridging the gap between the (often huge) bigger picture of sustainability, and the everyday reality of how you make and sell your products.

Essentially our SLCA tool is an über-geeky spreadsheet containing a series of yes/no/don’t know questions. Filling in the answers for a chosen product gives you a rapid evaluation of where it sits, on a scale of good to bad (or “don’t know”), across different stages of its lifecycle, from getting raw materials together, through production/processing, to “end of life”. At the “quick and dirty” end of the lifecycle analysis spectrum, the tool gives you enough information to start making sensible, useful decisions, without getting bogged down in paralysing details; and because it’s based on a consistently applied set of robust “sustainability principles”, it also helps people from across an organisation understand and agree on how sustainability comes to life, or not, through the product in question – making improvements seem both doable, and like a good idea.

A couple of weeks ago we spent a day with organic baby-food makers Ella’s Kitchen, letting the team loose with the SLCA tool on one of their top selling fruit puree pouches. It was fantastic to see people from across the business, from marketing to operations, discuss, debate, and agree on how to answer the SLCA questions, and more importantly, what the implications were for that product, and for the business. But rather than hear it from me, here’s what Alison Lindley, Head of Giving Stuff Back, has to say about the workshop:

“Issues surrounding sustainability are key to us as a business, but it’s not always easy to know where to concentrate our efforts. So when the Forum mentioned their SLCA we jumped at the chance to have them run a workshop for us. It has been an invaluable experience to have people from our marketing, sales, operations and NPD [new product development] teams, and even our MD, spend the day together exploring the journey our products take from peel to pouch and then to baby’s tummy. It’s given us a really useful tool we can build into our NPD processes; something we can share with retailers; a useful methodology for sourcing raw materials and setting standards for our suppliers; as well as providing innovative ideas for promoting our brand. The perfect starting point for developing our sustainability strategy.”

The SLCA is just one of the practical tools we make available to Forum Network members, to help you get your head around what sustainability means for your business.  For more information about Network membership, click here or get in touch and we’ll have a chat!