The Importance of Planning
Having a plan for the year can be beneficial in many ways. It helps to focus your efforts, set goals, and measure your progress. Planning can also provide a sense of direction and purpose, and be extremely satisfying come the end of the year when you tick off achieved goals.
Important aspects of setting your annual goals are ensuring they are SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound), people are responsible for them, resources such as time, budget and staff are allocated, and the team involved in delivering the goals are involved in constructing what they are going to be. Buy-in is a huge motivating factor.
Sustainability Plan
While making a plan for the year is important in its own right, making a sustainability plan is even more important. This is because sustainability is about ensuring that our actions and practices have a positive impact on the long-term well-being of people, the planet and your business.
There are many different ways that a sustainability plan can benefit individuals, organizations, and communities. For example, it can help to conserve natural resources, reduce waste and pollution, and protect biodiversity. It can also help to promote social justice, improve public health, and create economic opportunities.
United Nations 17 SDGs
One key element of a sustainability plan is setting goals that reflect your commitment to sustainability. This can be done through aligning your goals with that broader sustainability principles, such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The seventeen SDGs provide a framework for achieving a more sustainable future and can be a useful tool for guiding your sustainability planning efforts. Most businesses will not select all seventeen SDGs in their plan but select those that are most pertinent and important to them.
Good for People, the Planet and Business
Finally, a sustainability plan should include a system for tracking and measuring progress towards your goals. This can help to ensure that you are making progress towards your goals and can make any necessary adjustments along the way. It can also help to demonstrate the impact of your actions to others, which can be important for building support and engagement.
In conclusion, making a plan for the year is important because it helps to focus your efforts, set goals, and measure your progress. Making a sustainability plan is even more important because it helps to ensure that our actions have a positive impact on the long-term well-being of people, the planet and your business.
Making a sustainability plan is an essential step towards building a more sustainable future. By taking the time to carefully consider the long-term impacts of our actions and making a plan to address them, we can contribute to a more equitable, healthy, and prosperous world for all.
How Play It Green Helps
Did you know subscribing to Play It Green can greatly assist your sustainability planning, actions and credentials?
Signing up to a Climate Positive Workforce would ensure all staff are educated on a weekly basis. Education on sustainability, industry best practice and how people and businesses can lower their carbon footprint. All to strengthen the culture within the organisation.
Subscribing to Play It Green, from as little as £5 per month, also ensures your business is supporting eleven of the seventeen United Nations Sustainability Development Goals. Funds from each subscription are used to plant trees and pass vital funds to your favourite good cause. Ensuring you make an ongoing environmental and social impact whilst being supported on your journey to net zero.
Every subscribing member has full access to our ‘Discover’ section, allowing businesses to download a host of net zero and marketing support. Template carbon footprint reduction plans, environmental policies, sustainability webpages, accreditation badges and much more.
