10 tips for successful sustainability communication

We’ve collected our tips and strategies for you to succeed in communicating your company's sustainability journey with a positive tone that inspires and engages your followers.

1. Choose a climate project that goes hand in hand with your company vision

Sinking seaweed or investing in biochar: which project is right for your brand? Every carbon removal project opens up a conversation about what your company is passionate about. It’s easier to communicate sustainability when a project is close to the heart. At Removement, we tailor a portfolio for your company's carbon removal, which means you control which projects you want to invest in. If your company is connected to agriculture or food, the Future of Food project will be right up your ally, supporting farmers in the transition to regenerative agriculture. You can get involved in and learn more about a handful of specific projects. We’ll give you the tools to lift these projects in your social feed.

In our portfolio simulator you can see which projects are the best fit for your company >>

2. Transparent communication is king

Your customers want to see an openness in how your company invests in sustainability. At Removement, we help companies communicate in a transparent, open and credible way about how they invest in carbon removal.

In our ledger, all purchases and sales of CO2 capture are made visible so that every purchase you make is completely transparent.

3. Customers want to hear about your sustainability reporting

We want to help you communicate exactly how much you emit, what your goals and steps are to reduce these emissions and how you invest in capturing the remaining emissions through carbon dioxide capture.

Through Removal, we give you the tools to calculate your emissions via our emissions calculator >>

4. Communicate sustainability with a positive tone

We believe that the best way to inspire and engage with your sustainability work is to proudly tell about your progress towards net zero and how you invest sustainably in carbon credits.

There is a large imbalance in the information that we see and read. What we read and take in is overwhelmingly negative, which gives us a feeling of hopelessness, a sense that everything is going wrong in the world. In addition, humans suffer from negativity bias, which means that we absorb negative information to a much greater degree than positive. When most of the information we consume about the climate is negative, this bias is strengthened. According to Vattenfall , 80% of the global reporting is negative, either in fact or feeling. We are also much better at sharing negative news about the climate on social medias, which further exacerbates the imbalance of information. This leads to feelings of hopelessness in the individual and a reduced tendency to want to act.

Psychoanalysts claim that extreme anxiety leads us to unconsciously deny the problem or pretend it doesn't exist or that it's someone else's responsibility. We need to read and absorb both negative and positive information about the climate to achieve a balance of climate anxiety and hope for the future. This is the state that makes us want to act.

When people see companies, governments and individuals taking action on the climate, it encourages more action. We are inspired by reading about corporate investments to reduce the impact on the climate or political development to strengthen the frameworks that guide development.

5. Tell us about the journey you’re on

Communicate about the journey towards the goal. It is best to be open and honest in your sustainable communication by telling us where you are now and what milestones you want to achieve to reach net zero.

6. Dare to tell open up about where you fall short

Nobody is perfect. We are all on a journey towards the net zero vision, but you may not be there yet. In order to reach net zero emissions, we believe that a company must reduce emissions by at least 85% compared to a defined base year, for example for Sweden as a country set to 1990. The remaining part, a maximum of 15%, can then be invested in carbon dioxide capture. What is your remaining 15% and why is it not possible to reduce these emissions? Dare to face criticism and talk about the work you have left to do.

7. Communicate sustainability without greenwashing

Claiming that a flight or a piece of meat is good for the environment just because it is climate compensated is the wrong way to look at the climate crisis. Eating a piece of red meat doesn't help our carbon emissions, no matter how much we compensate for the behavior. Therefore, we urge you to do a thorough job of calculating your emissions, reach as low of emissions as possible and at the same time remove carbon dioxide from the air.

8. Know the climate lingo

ICC Sweden has developed new guidelines to explain how companies communicate their sustainability projects correctly. According to Dagens industri , words such as climate compensation, climate positive, climate neutral and CO2 negative must not be used without actually qualifying what is meant by the term.

Are you unsure about climate terms? Here we explain commonly used climate words and expressions for you

9. Don't just talk numbers, talk about the entire climate impact of the project you choose

We like to show numbers to boast how great we are, but when it comes to climate, a carbon removal project can provide so much more than just numbers on a certificate. Every carbon removal project we support first goes through a detailed process to arrive at a scientifically proven quantification of stored CO2 and the duration of its storage, but it is important to remember that the natural cycle of the earth is not a simple mathematical equation. For example, if you invest in regenerative agriculture, the project affects carbon storage as well as the farmers' resilience to climate change, the nutritional content of the food grown on that land, the water absorption capacity of the soil, the welfare of grazing animals and biodiversity.

10. Open up for two-way communication

Dare to open up for discussion. By asking questions, showing honesty, transparency and openness, you show that you are receptive to two-way communication with your target groups about what your sustainability work looks like. And who knows, your customers might have answers, thoughts and ideas that can help you become even more sustainable!

Do you want to get started with sustainability communication?

Removement gives you tools to communicate the projects you choose to support through a social media kit, ready-to-publish articles and a press release.

Contact us at Removement and we'll help you out!