During Climate Week, it can be easy to assume that the conversation belongs to scientists, policymakers, and founders building carbon-capture systems or next-generation batteries. But climate and sustainability is relevant to founders far outside those that describe themselves as “climate tech.”
Every business depends on materials, energy, transportation, technology, and people. Every business is also exposed, in some way, to rising costs, supply-chain disruptions, extreme weather, changing regulations, and evolving customer expectations. Thinking about climate is therefore not only about doing the right thing, but building a company that is leaner, more resilient, and better prepared for the future.
In short, it's good business.
For early-stage founders, this does not mean creating lengthy sustainability reports. Instead, it can begin with asking questions when you're at decision points for setting up the systems on which your company will run and scale. Could using less packaging lower both waste and shipping costs? Could relying on a single supplier make the company vulnerable to disruption? Could a product that lasts longer earn greater customer trust? Could addressing an environmental problem open up a new market or funding stream?
The following five-step audit is designed to help NYU founders begin that process. We've designed this audit to make it relevant to a wide range of industries, from software platforms, to consumer products, creative businesses, nonprofits, restaurants, and deep-tech ventures.
1. Map what your business depends on
Start by tracing what it takes to deliver your product or service. Consider the materials you purchase, the energy you use, the technology and data infrastructure you rely on, how products and people travel, and where your most important suppliers are located.
You do not need perfect emissions data to identify vulnerabilities. The immediate goal is to understand where your business could be exposed. If one material becomes more expensive, one supplier experiences a disruption, or one shipping route becomes unreliable, what happens to your ability to serve customers?
For a product company, this might mean examining ingredients, packaging, manufacturing, and shipping. For a software company, it could mean looking at data storage energy needs, hardware suppliers, or the physical operations of key customers. For an events business, it may include venues, travel, food, and disposable materials.
Ask yourself: Which three inputs are most essential to delivering your product or service, and where are you overly dependent on a single material, vendor, location, or process? For each vital input, list out what would happen if it was not there. If you need to switch materials or suppliers, we encourage you to make those back-up relationships before you need them.
2. Find where waste is costing you money
Waste is not only an environmental problem; it is often evidence of an inefficient business. Excess packaging must be purchased, stored, and shipped. Unsold inventory ties up cash. Energy waste increases overhead. Products that are frequently returned consume staff time and transportation costs.
Look for places where the business is paying for something the customer does not value. A smaller package, lighter shipment, or reusable component may reduce environmental impact while improving margins. Better inventory management can reduce both waste and working capital. A more efficient process can save energy while also saving employee time.
Especially for an early-stage company, these small decisions can become part of the business model before inefficient habits become expensive to change.
The key is to avoid treating sustainability as an expensive addition. Some of the best climate-conscious decisions remove costs or complexity from the business rather than adding them.
Ask yourself: What are you buying, using, producing, or shipping that does not meaningfully improve the customer experience?
3. Look ahead at what could change around you
The climate may not change your product directly, but it can change the environment in which your company operates.
Governments, large companies, universities, investors, insurers, landlords, and other institutions are increasingly making decisions around energy use, emissions, sourcing, waste, transportation, and climate risk. Those decisions can eventually affect smaller companies through new requirements, higher costs, purchasing standards, or incentives.
Think a few years ahead. What happens if your largest potential customer begins asking vendors for sustainability information? If your city changes rules around packaging or waste? If insurance becomes more expensive for certain locations? If energy prices change? If a corporate customer establishes emissions targets that extend to its suppliers?
You do not need to predict exactly which policy or standard will emerge. Instead, identify changes that could make your current way of operating more expensive or difficult.
For an early-stage company, anticipating these shifts can be easier than reacting to them later. You are still making decisions about suppliers, materials, locations, technology, and business models. Building with tomorrow's constraints in mind can prevent expensive changes down the road.
Ask yourself: What climate-related rule, cost, incentive, or industry expectation could materially affect your business in the next five years—and what decision would you make differently today if you knew that change was coming?
4. Listen for the climate problems your customers aren't calling climate problems
Your customers may never tell you they have a “climate problem.” They may tell you that electricity costs are rising, deliveries are less reliable, insurance is more expensive, materials are harder to source, or they face new requirements around packaging or waste.
Listen carefully. Climate change is already influencing costs, operations, and everyday decisions, even when customers do not connect those changes to climate.
Rather than asking whether customers value sustainability, ask what has become more expensive, unreliable, difficult, or important. Their answers may reveal opportunities for a cheaper material, more durable product, better logistics, lower energy use, or a service that helps them adapt.
The opportunity is not to convince customers to care about climate. It is to recognize when climate is already changing what they care about.
Ask your customers: What has become more expensive, unreliable, difficult, or important in how you operate or make purchasing decisions—and why?
5. Look for your climate advantage
Climate change does not only create risks and costs. It also creates second-order opportunities: new needs, markets, and competitive advantages that emerge as the world adapts.
When energy gets more expensive, efficiency becomes more valuable. When supply chains become less reliable, flexible sourcing becomes an advantage. When customers face new requirements around waste or emissions, companies that make those requirements easier to meet become more useful.
Think beyond the immediate impact of climate change to what happens next. How will people and businesses respond? What will they need more of? What will become more expensive, difficult, or valuable? Your company might have an advantage if you start preparing for that future today.
Ask yourself: What second-order opportunities could emerge as the world adapts to climate change, and what could you start doing today to give our company an edge in that future?
Climate thinking is company-building
The point of this audit is not to turn every startup into a climate startup, but to help every founder build with a clearer understanding of the world their company operates in.
Climate thinking can reveal unnecessary costs, fragile supply chains, operational risks, changing customer priorities, and entirely new opportunities. It can make a company more responsible—but also more durable and competitive.
This Climate Week, start small. Map one dependency. Find one source of waste. Prepare for one disruption. Ask customers one new question. Then run one experiment.
The result may be a smaller environmental footprint.
It may also be a stronger business.
