Western New York Sustainable Business Roundtable

Sbr offered 10 educational, centered around the 2023 educational calendar semester themes: climate change, health and wellness, food equity, and energy, as well as networking events, and a Sustainable Business summit. The events attracted roughly 614 attendees in total. Our annual marque event, the Sustainable Business summit, was hosted at the wayland brewing company and attracted close to 180 attendees representing 75 businesses in wny. It also engaged 18 speakers, and showcased 14 local vendors with an emphasis on small mwbes. We also unveiled a New line of programming called small Roundtable discussions. These events will be offered only to member businesses and will create small, engaging, discussion-based events led by a subject matter expert allowing members to share best practices and learn from each other. We conducted a pilot event in the spring and ran our first official Roundtable discussion in august, focusing on reducing the company's electric carbon footprint.

This past year sbr was awarded a grant from the New York state pollution prevention institute to create programming specifically on integrating circular economy components into micro and small businesses. This grant also focuses on minority and women owned businesses (mwbe). We have partnered with a Business accelerator program who works predominantly with these types of businesses to reach a large, consistent audience for this programming. We have also begun our subcontractor with the nyserda clean energy program. This program has created hubs across New York state to assist with the just and equitable transition to clean energy. We work with many local community organizations to achieve this mission, with sbr focusing again on educating micro, small, and mwbes. This funding has allowed us to expand and bring on a part-time communications and engagement coordinator, who greatly enhances sbr's capacity and amplification of our message.

The Sustainable Business Roundtable's recognition program is a continuous improvement program structured to help businesses reach achievable sustainability targets. Built within the framework of bronze, silver, gold and platinum levels, the application both guides and recognizes sbr member businesses as they implement and maintain systems of Sustainable Business practices. The recognition program's requirements encourage companies to implement a comprehensive sustainability plan. This includes systematic benchmarking, identification of further environmental efficiency opportunities, and quantification of results when improvements are put into place. The 2023 recognition program received and scored a total of 14 applications resulting in three companies and one individual recognized in specific categories: most innovative sustainability project, community impact award and board of directors choice award. Additionally, in the past year alone, we saw 95% of our members, who submitted their annual metrics, achieve a bronze level or higher sustainability metric award.