Compliance with environmental regulations is not just a cost of doing business, but a business opportunity. This is the view of Luke Jacobs, the CEO and co-founder of Encamp, a software company that helps businesses track and manage ESG reporting needs. In this episode of the ESG Report, Jacobs explains how his company is creating a unified data layer that could revolutionize environmental reporting and ESG compliance in the next decade. Luke Jacobs is the co-founder and CEO of Encamp, a software platform that helps companies maintain compliance with environmental regulations. With over a decade of experience in environmental compliance, Luke has a deep understanding of the challenges faced by businesses when it comes to regulatory compliance. Luke is committed to building a unified data layer that makes it easy for organizations to collect, aggregate and report on environmental data to regulatory bodies, with a long-term vision to expand Encamp's reach to international jurisdictions. Under his leadership, Encamp is creating opportunities for businesses to turn regulatory compliance into a business advantage. Key insights and takeaways: Environmental compliance is a complex issue with federal, state, and local regulations adding layers of nuance. Encamp's software platform helps users track regulated facilities and compliance tasks, streamlining the compliance process. By automating compliance data tracking and reporting, environmental teams can free up time to focus on sustainability goals and emerging regulations. The data collected by EHS professionals can be a valuable asset for broader ESG reporting and analysis. EHS professionals play a key role in any ESG solution and have the opportunity to increase the value they can drive into broader business initiatives. ESG provides a holistic approach to business efficiency by looking at a company in a more comprehensive and data-driven way. Tier 2 reporting is a set of regulations that mandates organizations holding hazardous materials over reporting quantities to collect, aggregate, and report data about their material inventories each year. It is filed by hundreds of thousands of facilities in the US each year and is used by first responders in emergency disaster response scenarios. The end-to-end waste reporting system helps companies understand the waste they are producing across their entire organization at any given moment. It also enables companies to comply with regulations more easily and quickly, increase business efficiency, and align with sustainability goals. Compliance with environmental regulations can be turned into a business opportunity, as it allows companies to increase efficiency and seize more market opportunities without being slowed down by antiquated processes. In the next five to ten years, Encamp aims to build a unified data layer that sits between regulated organizations and regulatory bodies to make it easy to have a unified data model of environmental data. The company will also explore ways to tackle the reporting problem within ESG as ESG regulations continue to emerge and solidify. KEY QUOTES: "I do think part of this is actually turning what is viewed as a cost of doing business right now, which is maintaining compliance with your environmental regulations and using systems and technology to actually unlock efficiencies in that, so that you're not only able to comply with all those regulations more easily and more quickly, you can actually serve the business more effectively as well." - Luke Jacobs "An emerging value driver in businesses that EHS teams are actually tapping into, is the data they're working with is often actually some of the most useful data." - Luke Jacobs "Our end-to-end system more or less helps companies understand at each site in real-time what waste they are producing at that location." - Luke Jacobs Resources Luke Jacobs at LinkedIn | Twitter | Email Encamp