Sustainability Professionals Can’t Up-Skill Everyone (Successfully)

Sustainability professionals can’t up-skill everyone (successfully).

Many sustainability professionals that I’ve spoken with have highlighted a common challenge: limited time to upskill a broad set of stakeholders. I look at this problem through 3 lenses:

• What communities do I need to upskill?
• To what extent do I need to upskill them?
• What is the most effective way to do so?

I cut this across 3 groups (yes I know, always in 3s) in order of chronology (if not priority):

1. Executive Leadership (2-day bootcamp + half day primers)

Focus on the business value and how sustainability will play out in different areas of the business.

Use the bootcamp to get buy-in and support. Host regular primers to keep them current on industry trends, innovations, and progress.

2. Functional Teams (tailored sessions)

Tailor training to individual teams such as B2B Sales (negotiating around sustainability variables) and B2C Marketing (what to say, what not to say) to maximise their impact.

3. Company- Wide Education (annual half-day)

Build awareness with annual half-day sessions (and/or quarterly updates) to keep everyone aligned with your sustainability goals and strategy.

For bonus points - all of the above is a lot easier if you work it into existing training programs and professional development journeys.

Saif Hameed, CEO of Altruistiq

Events

• Women in Sustainability Garden Mixer, Maximising and Managing Sustainability Budgets August 22nd, London. Register interest.
• Webinar: How to Create a Useful Product Carbon Footprint, 20th August, 3-3.45 pm (BST), Online. Register interest.
• State of Sustainability F&B Summit, 10th October, Register interest.

Industry Insight: Never (ever) lead with “save the planet” when pitching to the board.

Never (ever) lead with “save the planet” when pitching to the board.

Instead, talk about the business value that you are going to create.

A recent example that I really enjoyed was the collaboration between Waitrose & Partners and Tony's Chocolonely Open Chain.

Waitrose committed to sourcing 9 of their own-brand chocolate bars via Tony’s Open Chain ethical principles (e.g., 100% deforestation-free, reduced child slavery).

Waitrose passed the price increase onto the consumer. While this meant a slight price bump from ￡2 to ￡2.20, sales averaged a 34% increase in the first 6 weeks!

This is a great example of how improved sustainable practices can drive business value.

These are the sorts of stories you want to be bringing to the board. Not tales of tipping points and melting ice caps.

Ask an Expert

Question: Should companies phase out plastic (packaging) or not, e.g., for wrapping larger products? What is the most sustainable packaging, is there any guidance?

Answer: "Phasing out plastic is not necessary, feasible or possible"

To answer the first part of your question:

Plastic packaging serves many important uses by virtue of being flexible, lightweight, cheap, and sanitary. We think it’s not necessary, feasible or possible to phase it out as such.

Instead, we recommend a reduce/reuse/recycle prioritisation. Following this logic, companies should first explore any opportunities:

• to reduce the amount of packaging used including light-weighting or removing redundant packaging layers, like polyethylene wrapping
• reuse models that can get more value out of less packaging (this may even mean shifting to more durable forms of plastic)
• to maximise the amount of recycled content being used in place of virgin raw material and also the probability that packaging will actually be recycled after use

Secondly,?the award for the "most sustainable packaging materials" depends on context. In particular: which sustainability metrics are being considered, and how many uses are being accounted for.

For example, on a single-use basis and considering only Greenhouse Gas emissions, it’s likely that plastic < fibre < metal < glass.

However, this will be complicated by several factors, including:

a) performance: e.g., it may take more fibre packaging vs plastic to achieve the same protection

b) lifecycle: e.g., glass and metal can be reused much more than most fibre or plastic

c) impact metrics: glass is inert whereas both fibres can release methane and plastic can be carcinogenic in a natural environment.

We’d recommend taking each packaging trade-off on a case-by-case basis.

Answered by Saif Hameed, Piers Cooper and Dan Enzer

Recommended reading:?Sustainable Packaging Trade-offs with Mondelēz. A conversation between Saif Hameed and Patrick Shewell, Global Director of Packaging from Mondelēz. Released: Thursday 11th July on the State of Sustainability Podcast.

Next week: How and when to communicate Environmental Product Declarations

Policy Pulse: Manage and Streamline CSRD

A quick recap on CSRD:

If you didn’t know already, The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) is the EU’s landmark law to make ESG reporting more consistent.

This requires large, listed businesses of a certain size (e.g., €40 million in net turnover, €20 million in assets, and 500+ employees) to make annual sustainability reports in line with ESRS.

Note (this confused me too), CRSD is the law that states who reports, and ESRS are the standards that tell companies how and what to report.

ESRS requires companies to disclose how they measure and manage their sustainability impacts, risks and opportunities across twelve standard ESG areas (including biodiversity and the circular economy).

?The interesting bit ? is that ESRS is subject to double materiality, requiring companies to look at both impact and financial materiality.

The ESRS gives companies more reporting requirements, but at a level that gives deeper consideration to people and planet. They overlap with ISSB standards, but are broader in every sense:

• More issues to report due to double materiality: double materiality means that companies have to report on high-impact risks and opportunities that could be financially immaterial and require sustainability impacts and dependencies as issues to report on.
• Broader themes for disclosure with the 12 ESRS standards covering all aspects of ESG: including new environmental themes going beyond ISSB including biodiversity and the circular economy.
• A wider set of stakeholders to engage including investors, customers, employees, suppliers etc: covers anyone impacted by or interested in their value chain. This wider set is to be consulted as part of the materiality assessment for finding issues to report on.

What does this all mean?

The key takeaway for CSRD is that it is massive in both scope and ambition and is effectively world-leading in that regard.

The scope and ambition of CSRD gives several key lessons:

1. Any high-ambition company will follow this as the global maximal standard - the combination of double materiality and wide ESG scope means that the threshold for reporting under CSRD includes everything that a company would need to report on for ISSB or GRI. This means an ambitious company can achieve alignment with all standards by just meeting CSRD requirements.
2. Deep stakeholder engagement is baked into assessment and reporting - the impact materiality assessment requires companies to engage with several stakeholder groups as a way to uncover material issues. This should be genuine engagement, based on free, prior, and informed consent. The engagement also forms a key part of the Social ESRS reporting, with the processes and issues uncovered comprising some disclosures. This makes the CSRD a far more consultative reporting standard than ISSB.

Who should own the CSRD reporting process?

We’re seeing 3 ownership archetypes:

• Finance team: CSRD is seen as a familiar financial audit territory. The liability for the business is seen to be serious enough for the finance team to take control.
• ESG team: ESG owns the whole data gathering and reporting process, including interfacing across the organisation, running calculations, and filling out third-party forms.
• Distributed ownership: Finance might handle the submission, while data collation and strategy are distributed to other teams across the organisation.

The best archetype ultimately depends on your company's size, risk tolerance, and existing ESG capabilities.

Many companies with well-established financial reporting processes might lean towards the Finance-led approach.

Those with environmental complexity (physical goods and services) may find the distributed model the best as they can benefit from strong expertise in other functions.

Listen to the full podcast episode here: Manage and Streamline CSRD Reporting

Other News

• ???Head of SBTI steps down (edie):?The head of the Science Based Targets initiative, Luiz Amaral, who came “under fire for a controversial decision to loosen guidelines around carbon offsets”, will step down at the end of July, citing personal reasons. Susan Jenny Ehr will fill in as the interim chief executive.
• ???Expected fertiliser price surge (Bloomberg?). China is imposing restrictions on?fertiliser exports, especially urea and phosphates, risking a global price surge for essential crop nutrients. Chinese Government is protecting it’s domestic grain market as extreme weather conditions increasingly challenge crop production and farmers.
• ???EUDR delay (Reuters): Last week, the European People’s Party called for the EUDR law to be delayed and scaled back. Their spokesperson, Peter Liese described it as a “bureaucratic monster”. The law requiring companies trading beef, coffee, palm oil and other products on the EU market to prove their supply chains do not contribute to deforestation is due to take effect this year. The US also recently asked the EU to postpone the law.
• ?? Labour’s landslide victory (Business Green). Labour wins a sizeable majority in the latest UK election. This news is the green light at the end of a rather dark tunnel defined by Sunak’s endless climate u-turning. Labour’s green plans include a decarbonised power system by 2030, ending new oil and gas licences and a foreign policy “reset” based on international climate diplomacy.

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