Editor Director of Sustainability, CCRcorp
Lawrence Heim has been practicing in the field of ESG management for 40 years. He began his career as a legal assistant in the Environmental Practice of Vinson & Elkins working for a partner who is nationally recognized and an adjunct professor of environmental law at the University of Texas Law School. He moved into technical environmental consulting with ENSR Consulting & Engineering at the height of environmental regulatory development, working across a range of disciplines. He was one of the firm’s leading environmental compliance and management systems auditors and helped create the company’s first national practice for environmental auditing. Among his professional highlights during this time are launching the company’s practices into Mexico and saving a major petroleum refinery $150 million in waste management costs associated with a new waste listing.
Lawrence became an in-house environmental audit manager with Georgia-Pacific, then a publicly traded Fortune 150 manufacturer. At Georgia-Pacific, he designed and implemented a comprehensive redesign of the company’s internal environmental audit and corrective action program which was later approved without modification by EPA and Department of Justice as part of a $120 million Clean Air Act settlement. He was also one of the company’s primary experts on waste management regulations. It was during this time he was granted a charter Certified Professional Environmental Auditor (CPEA) designation from the Board of Environmental Auditor Certifications during their inaugural year.
Lawrence joined Marsh USA and helped create the Global Environmental Risk Consulting Practice, shifting his focus from compliance to a broader vision of environmental impacts to business and risk management, working with clients to reduce their environmental risk profile by adapting traditional risk management processes and tools. At the same time, he continued to provide regulatory compliance support to clients and was Marsh USA’s primary environmental regulatory expert nationally.
As a partner at Elm Consulting Group, he continued providing international clients support on environmental, health and safety compliance and management systems. He founded subsidiary Elm Sustainability Partners and became an internationally recognized expert in conflict minerals, responsible minerals supply chain due diligence and associated audit programs/practices. He was the only non-financial auditor selected by the US Securities and Exchange Commission to participate as an expert panelist on the conflict minerals rule and provided guidance on non-financial auditing to US Departments of State and Commerce. Lawrence remains one of only a handful of auditors to have conducted Independent Private Sector Audits (IPSAs) of Conflict Minerals Reports submitted to the SEC under Dodd Frank Section 1502.
During his time at the Responsible Business Alliance/Responsible Minerals Initiative, he led an unprecedented period of due diligence standards development, including spearheading an expansion into ESG standards for responsible mineral supply chains.
Lawrence is the author of Killing Sustainability (2018, 2022) and is a former Board Member of ASSET, the anti-slavery organization founded by award-winning actress and former UN Goodwill Ambassador Julia Ormond.
Recent Posts by Lawrence Heim
Jul 10 2025 #assurance, #climate, #diversity, #environment, #equity, #esg, #human-rights, #investors, #social, #supply-chain The New Sustainability Reporting Trend: Not Reporting
Jul 10 2025 #climate, #compliance, #environment, #esg, #investors, #supply-chain New This Week on PracticalESG.com
Jul 9 2025 #climate, #compliance, #environment, #esg, #supply-chain Wind & Solar Tax Credits Axed by EO; CCUS Tax Credits Reduced by OBBB Act
Jul 9 2025 #climate, #environment, #esg, #investors, #supply-chain Coal-Based Scope 2 Emissions Set to Increase
Jul 8 2025 #compliance, #esg, #human-rights, #social, #supply-chain Financial Times: Chinese Trans-Shipments Through Viet Nam Try to Avoid US Tariffs
Jul 8 2025 #diversity, #equity, #esg, #investors, #social Companies Change DEI Talk in Proxy Statements
Jul 3 2025 #climate, #compliance, #environment, #esg, #investors, #supply-chain 2025 SEC Filings Show Major Change in Climate Language
Jul 3 2025 #climate, #environment, #esg, #investors, #supply-chain A (Big) Sign That Companies Can’t Rely on Every Supplier for Carbon Reductions
Jul 3 2025 #climate, #diversity, #environment, #esg, #human-rights, #investors, #social, #supply-chain New This Week on PracticalESG.com
Jul 2 2025 #climate, #diversity, #environment, #equity, #esg, #human-rights, #investors Institutional Investors See Engagement Better Than Divestment
Jul 2 2025 #assurance, #esg, #human-rights, #social, #supply-chain Case Study: Worker Voice IT Platform Offers Significant Improvement Over Social Auditing
Jul 1 2025 #climate, #environment, #esg, #investors, #supply-chain Morgan Stanley: 83% of Companies Can Measure ROI of Sustainability
Jul 1 2025 #compliance, #environment, #esg, #human-rights, #supply-chain Congratulations to Kumi on 10 Years!
Jun 26 2025 #climate, #compliance, #environment, #esg, #human-rights, #investors, #social, #supply-chain New This Week on PracticalESG.com
All Topics
- Assurance 335
- Climate 1368
- Compliance 1262
- Diversity 624
- Environment 1390
- Equity 601
- ESG 1909
- Guest Post 36
- Human Rights 631
- Investors 1160
- Social 849
- Supply Chain 990
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