Alice Roberts
Presidio Graduate School
Susan Hopp
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REV® provides a unique sustainability education and training model called "Sustainability Circles®" that brings together local companies and organizations, inspiring rapid adoption of sustainable practices into their organizations. Through peer collaboration, participants are empowered to action to transform climate risks into economic, environmental, and social opportunities.
REV® provides sustainability education and training for businesses and communities that inspires actionable and results-oriented impacts – transforming sustainability and climate risks into economic, environmental, and social opportunities that improve the well being of life. REV's unique Sustainability Circle® program leverages a peer-learning model to scale sustainable impacts resulting in measurable, significant GHG emissions reductions. Through collaboration with industry peers and subject matter experts over a six-month period, organizations develop custom five-year Sustainability Action Plans. As Elliot Hoffman explained "we are destroying the myth that sustainability is a cost and proving that sustainability is a key strategy for the success of any organization."
Up to 10 local organizations participate in each Sustainability Circle. Led by a coaching team, participants meet one day a month for six months and learn from subject matter experts across energy management, renewable energy options, waste, water, lighting, and organizational behavior change. Within each session day, participants engage, learn, and collaborate based on a rich curriculum of latest best practices, exposure to innovative technologies and incentives and experiential exercises. Participants apply the learning to their organizations and using REV’s powerful tools and templates create initiatives with business case analysis that prove the “triple bottom line” business case. Initiatives include resource efficiency measures, converting to renewable energy, cutting water use, diverting waste to landfill, and more. REV Sustainability Circles not only focus on technologies like lighting and HVAC improvements; additionally, REV coaches help companies recognize and embrace the power of engaging employees and all ecosystem stakeholders. Engagement, behavior and culture change of organizations, stakeholders and communities is a vital component in addressing the core challenges and opportunities of our era. Discussing the peer model, Elliot lit up, "I learned from experience the power of community and collaboration. We human beings actually prefer being part of a tribe working together for common purpose."
Sustainability truly is a “team sport” and a smart business strategy. The resulting transformative five-year sustainability action plan is ready to implement with direct benefits to the organization – financially, environmentally, and socially. The Sustainability Circle process is a guided path under the tutelage of a coaching team using REV’s rich sustainability curriculum and tools. The Sustainability Action Plan becomes an organization’s roadmap for action to reduce energy use and make the cultural shift to address our climate change challenges.
REV’s clients include cities, municipalities, real estate and property management groups, high-tech and professional services companies, heath care, retail, wineries and breweries, schools, universities, and more. REV Sustainability Circles benefit both internal and external stakeholders. At REV, there is very high employee retention and recruitment rate. According to Elliot, employees see the company as a great place to work where values are shared across the company and all are empowered to help accelerate the movement to capture sustainable value. Sustainability Circles help REV’s external customers save money and resources, engage with employees and stakeholders and improve their company brand while providing product and marketing benefits.
REV’s innovative Sustainability Circles contribute to many of the UN’s “17 goals to transform our world.” REV’s sustainability education and training aligns directly with Goal 13-“Climate Action,” yet by their nature, these peer communities implement actions and initiatives that directly address Goals 9 (Industry, Innovation, Infrastructure), 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities), 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production), and 17 (Partnerships for the Goals) as well.
“This is a movement, changing the world through business” - Elliot Hoffman, CEO.
REV was founded based upon core beliefs that businesses flourish when they become positive and deep participating members of our communities and engage in and embed sustainable thinking and practices. REV founder, Elliot Hoffman is passionate about businesses and sustainability. As the Founder of "Just Desserts" bakery and cafes, Elliot has a long history of advocating for community businesses; he views businesses and products as a vehicle for social change. In the early eighties, Elliot implemented sustainable solutions that both reduced Just Desserts climate impact and reduced operational costs. He installed a solar thermal water heating system comprised of 24 large solar panels that generated enough hot water to meet the needs of the bakery’s pan washing operations. Inspired by his belief in the power of communities and driven by his passion for sustainable change, he developed REV, a sustainability educational and training company that brings together organizations to form peer communities that drive sustainable organizational change.
As an entrepreneurial venture, the REV team sees the big challenges of our time as major opportunities for positive change. With a life-long commitment to creating healthy communities, Elliot and many on the REV team understand the power of community and understand that long lasting deep change takes time, commitment and consistency. In Elliot's words: "The time for going it alone is over and we are called as a community of organizations and people to collaborate and cooperate in order to successfully reach the UN Development goals and to create the sustainable and flourishing world that is clearly within our reach. Will we be inspired to act cooperatively, to listen to each other, embrace our diversity as strengths and assets or continue down the tired road of fear and scarcity?"
Further expressing his passion for REV as part of a movement, Elliot continued, "We are facing enormous challenges and opportunities too deep and vast for any single company or community to go it alone. The reality of the headwinds blowing in from our nation's capital demands that all of us - individually, in our companies, communities, universities, houses of worship, our states, and regions - demonstrate that there is a growing movement of millions working together for a sustainable and flourishing future."
Since 2011, over 400 organizations in California and the Midwest have participated in Sustainability Circles with projected average annual savings of: $342,000 per organization, 1.4 million kWh of electricity, 1,017 tons of CO2-equiv, and 3.7 million gallons of water, per participating organization. REV’s impacts are on track to be one of the largest greenhouse gas reduction initiatives in California within five years. By 2021, in the aggregate, REV predicts customer savings to scale to $9 billion, 38,000 GW of electricity, 27,000,000 tons of CO2-equiv, and 296,000 acre-feet of water. Impacts not only include these resource savings, but the behavioral and cultural changes embedded in REV communities enables new thinking, awareness and spurs ongoing innovations.
REV is a core catalyst spreading sustainable action throughout California, the 6th largest economy in the world, with plans to scale nationally and globally. REV is a leading organization helping to create the new climate friendly economy of the world. REV’s Sustainability Circles have debunked the myth that sustainability is just a cause - sustainability is now a core business strategy for today and the future. The sustainable actions of organizations that have participated in Sustainability Circles have created a race to the top, where businesses that seek to embed sustainability into their DNA succeed and businesses that are late adopters find themselves at a competitive disadvantage.
"We designed REV with four core principles in mind: it had to be affordable, accessible, scalable, and highly impactful." said Elliot Hoffman.
Fast-forwarding 20 years from now, “REV has the opportunity to become one of the most prolific greenhouse gas reduction initiatives in the world by aggregating individual businesses’ sustainable impacts,” noted Elliot. Sustainable impacts from REV’s educational peer-learning model have a multiplier effect on both organizations and communities. In addition to increasing the bottom line, these impacts boost employee engagement and positively impact local communities through energy efficiencies, water conservation and waste diversion that all lead to significant GHG emission reductions. Sustainable solutions brought into the communities in which the organizations operate contribute to the overall economic health of our communities.
For REV, the way is clear, as Elliot summed it up, "We're devoted to scaling REV for the greatest impact in the shortest period of time benefiting the greatest number of people."
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