In this new episode, we interview Ida Schillaci, Senior Sustainability Advisor, who takes us into a world that only appears to be made of numbers, regulations and certifications.
In this interview, I realised that behind an abbreviation or an acronym there isn’t only a regulation, a standard, or a certification.
I realised that those slightly unfriendly letters and numbers which shift the collective imagination of sustainability from a world of trees and people to a world of data are there to protect and give value to the goodness of an action carried out for the community, for the environment, and for the company.
Ida Schillaci helped me understand this. She has spent most of her career in auditing, working for one of the largest large-scale retail groups and for major retail brands, before becoming a consultant who designs, monitors and supervises sustainability projects.
ML: Welcome to Redpoint_Real People, Ida!
Let’s start with our usual game! What is the world, for you… in three words?
IS: I’ll start with “complex” and “evolved”. Complex precisely because it is evolved: technologically, scientifically and humanly. And then, “interconnected”, because every time you face the world, you have to look at it from multiple points of view. Otherwise, you risk making the wrong choices or at least choices that are right only for one part, but not for the whole.
ML: How would you describe yourself professionally to someone who doesn’t know you? What does Ida do – who is she?
IS: I am, in my own way, a complex person too. I’ve always dealt with environmental topics, ever since I was a child. I was the little activist who went to clean up parks. I chose studies that would take me in that direction: I graduated as an environmental engineer.
In my professional life, I started as an auditor within a certification body, carrying out assessments according to ISO 9001, ISO 14001, and the old OHSAS 18001, which has now become ISO 45001. These are the three key standards covering quality, environment, and occupational health and safety.
ML: If you had to describe your work as an auditor?
IS: An auditor is someone working for an independent organisation who visits a company’s sites, reviews reporting and process documentation and, depending on the standard quality, environment or occupational health and safety at the end of the audit days writes a report noting everything that is compliant and everything that did not go well: “non-conformities” or “recommendations and opportunities for improvement”.
I did this job for fifteen years, until I had the opportunity to join a company in what is called the HSE department Health, Safety and Environment and there I worked directly on sustainability, with a strong background in all relevant regulations at both Italian and European level.
ML: So, with your background, you’re able to bring to the ground not only a company’s needs and requirements, but also the sustainability dreams you are presented with.
IS: You used the right word: “dreams”. Sustainability, many years ago, had something dreamlike about it… at the beginning we were all dreamers: we dreamed of improving our world, from both an environmental and a social perspective. Today it is very different. The approach to sustainability has changed enormously. Unfortunately.
ML: From dreamers to…?
IS: …to reporters. Sustainability today is numbers. Regulations force you to report, in a very strict way. That’s what the CSRD requires. It requires extremely dense documents, where there is little room for the dreamer for the person who truly wants to change the world.
In an economic system, we must always remember that a company must generate profit. But there is always that margin, that window, to say: “I make profit, but with an ethical business and possibly by telling the story of it.”
I have been able to achieve many things when I was given the opportunity to do so. And with budgets that were not even particularly high.
ML: Can you give us an example?
IS: I’ll share a social example. Laura Bocchi, a councillor in the Municipality of Verona, sent me a request for collaboration on a project she cared deeply about, and we-along with many other businesses, from hairdressers to the airport responded to the call.
The councillor is the mother of a child on the autism spectrum, and she explained the daily difficulties a family faces: from getting a haircut, to grocery shopping, to eating out at a restaurant. She introduced us to a head physician from Verona’s hospital and explained what we could do, in small but meaningful ways, to respond to needs that are both very special and very common at the same time.
I worked on this project for a large-scale retail store. The project was carried out entirely at zero cost. Not only zero cost we actually saved money.
ML: Tell us more!
IS: The first thing we were asked to do was to dim the lights in the store, to reduce light intensity during certain time slots. We did this, in that specific store, three days a week, across three daily time windows: a morning slot, a lunchtime slot, and an evening slot.
We thought: people on the autism spectrum and their families may be working people. So we identified time windows that would allow access on weekdays when footfall would not be intense.
Why didn’t we do it all day, and only on certain days? Because otherwise we would have created problems for visually impaired customers.
This shows that everything has to be balanced. The world is complex, and if you consider one need, you risk forgetting another. And so on.
ML: You said you saved money… how?
IS: By dimming the lights, we saved one third of that store’s energy consumption.
And we created the possibility to welcome people by offering them a calm and safe space.
The only investment we made was training store staff. Everyone, in every role and function. Specific training to ensure that people with special needs could rely on staff who knew how to manage both interaction and a potential crisis moment during the in-store experience.
By doing so, we made that store “autism-friendly” and we adhered to the Verona protocol I mentioned, which had established the foundations for this operational approach.
ML: It seems that in this sustainability approach there is a creative, ingenious side.
IS: Yes, this experience was creative, but also very complex. For example, in terms of “occupational safety”, the store must maintain a minimum level of lighting for workers. Analyses were carried out to ensure we did not go below certain lux levels.
This shows that, within a company, if a sustainability project does not involve all departments technical, health and safety, store management, sales management, commercial management, and so on any dream will fail.
This is why sustainability lives in a complex and interconnected world. We carried out a social project, and yet it impacted the entire store and every department.
We studied. We didn’t stop there: we created information kits, so that customers with these needs, entering the supermarket, could move from one department to another without fear and with more ease… one thing led to another, and we really let ourselves explore possibilities!
ML: And you also enjoyed it.
IS: Exactly. For me, this is the role of someone working in sustainability. It’s not collecting numbers. Sustainability professionals must have that creative spark to understand the needs of the territory they operate in.
So: if I am a company, I impact outward-towards the territory but I must also understand that the outside impacts me. As a company, I am part of a community, with all the environmental and social interconnections that shape my reality. And from this I build my governance.
ML: When you encountered the construction world in your work, what did you focus on?
IS: For a period I worked on the renovation of a store that was changing from one brand to another. Everything changed: the product category changed, needs changed. We had a raw space and, with the team, we evaluated lower-impact choices, from systems to furnishings.
Let’s think about something simple like the long-standing issue in shopping centres: “door open or door closed”. It’s true that an always-open door invites people in more, but regardless of the season it leads to enormous energy consumption for heating and cooling.
Or another example: the refrigerated display cases in large-scale retail. If the doors are open or absent the refrigeration unit must operate at a much lower temperature, because much of the cold disperses into the environment. With the risk of freezing the last product at the back and exposing the front product to a higher temperature than it should be.
Beyond sustainability, the interconnected issue here is product quality and safety.
ML: Certifications, protocols, regulations… how can one find their way?
IS: There are countless regulations, and they have existed for a very long time. So, as a company, you are required to make certain choices.
Law 10 is a set of regulations concerning the containment of energy consumption in buildings and the promotion of rational energy use, with particular attention to renewable sources.
Think about it: it dates back to 1991. It’s certainly not new!
Those who design buildings know this law very well, because it is one of the foundations of construction.
Then there are a series of protocols, such as LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method), and the Italian Protocol ITACA (Istituto per l’innovazione e trasparenza degli appalti e la compatibilità ambientale – National Association of Regions and Autonomous Provinces).
These arise from the desire to create something voluntary that adds additional elements. Law 10 is mandatory. The protocols I mentioned, instead, provide a series of indicators certifiable to achieve a certain level of excellence.
ML: Among the protocols you listed, only one is Italian.
IS: Even though it is Italian, Protocol ITACA is the least used perhaps because LEED and BREEAM, being international, are easier for foreign investors to understand when they aim to obtain certifications.
And these certifications become business drivers when investors want a guarantee of sustainability, which generates prestige and value for the property.
ML: Where can we still choose to be sustainable, with a more dreamer-like approach rather than a data analyst mindset?
IS: In the construction world, there is a financial aspect because all new works especially large projects are subject to the Taxonomy.
So how can one choose to become even more sustainable, after having done everything mandatory?
I always give the example of a Benetton store in Florence, where, to set up the store from furnishings to materials they used waste materials from textile processing, aligning a recycling approach within their production line with their identity.
Over time, other important brands, such as Yamamay in Siena and Venice, have also started creating retail spaces with greater attention.
There is always a way to remain a dreamer.
ML: What is still difficult to understand about certifications?
IS: Certification is an excellent way to communicate sustainability because it is a guarantee provided by a third, independent body that has verified and signed off-taking responsibility for the fact that what was measured meets the criteria.
These certification bodies are guardians against the dangers of green/pink/rainbow/etc.-washing.
What not everyone knows is that the certification body is not self-referential: it is itself monitored by another national control body, Accredia (Italy’s national accreditation body), which audits all certification bodies by sampling their practices.
ML: How can sustainability communication be an asset for sustainability itself? And what steps still need to be taken?
IS: Communication is fundamental, but we must not forget to do it not only externally, but internally as well. It is important to communicate to colleagues and employees what is being done.
Imagine how unpleasant it is for employees to discover sustainability initiatives on LinkedIn! It’s like bypassing them, not taking them into consideration.
Communication has a “magical power”: it engages people. It supports them, shows what the company is doing for the community. And every worker doesn’t live only inside the company, but also outside.
So knowing that your company is committed and doing things and that, if you want, you can also bring suggestions, help, support, ideas, initiatives… is truly something magical.
ML: When you talk about internal communication, do you mean only employees, or also networks?
IS: The first people who speak externally are colleagues and employees, who are fully the company’s ambassadors.
After that, it is crucial to speak with the immediate outside: customers, investors, and suppliers who with different points of view can themselves be engaged in sustainability projects.
For example, having active sustainability projects communicates to investors that the company is solid otherwise it would shift investments elsewhere.
Another example: if communicated properly, sustainability action gives suppliers a clear idea of why the company starts asking them so many questions. What all companies do is send many questionnaires to suppliers, and very often the supplier experiences this as a cost in time and energy.
That’s why it’s important to engage them in the process, explain what fundamental steps are being implemented.
Right now, for example, the topic of human rights and workers’ rights also in relation to health and safety is extremely hot: all companies are sending more and more questionnaires to suppliers to verify how they manage not only the impacts of their construction sites, but also the people working there.
That’s why external communication is important too, because if a sustainability action is carried out well, communicating it is only a competitive advantage.
Of course, you must be strong in what you do and have full control of all the nuances that exist in an evolving, complex and interconnected world!