Between our responsibilities as sustainability professionals and a growing set of topics to learn about, impacts to track and regulations to meet, it’s hard to know where to focus to do the most good. To help distinguish between signal and noise, I take the following approach.
Many years ago, a C-Suite executive turned to my team during a proposal review
and said, “I wake up every morning and start by doing the things needed to keep
me from getting fired. Will this work keep you from getting fired?” It was my
project; and the honest answer was, probably not. While this wasn’t exactly
inspirational, his point was clear: Start with what you need to do; and then,
move to the shiny objects.
As sustainability professionals, we are overextended and under-resourced.
Between our current responsibilities and a growing set of topics to learn about
(ex:
microplastics),
impacts to track
(biodiversity)
and regulations to meet
(CSRD),
it’s hard to know where to focus to do the most good.
To help distinguish between signal and noise, I take the following approach.
The future of corporate sustainability reporting is known
Let’s start with the good news: The broad strokes of future climate-related
disclosures are public.
Aligning Value Management and Regenerative Practices
Join us as Regenovate co-founders Chris Grantham and Adam Lusby lead an interactive workshop on how to rethink value in the context of regenerative innovation by linking value to the dividends and resilience that come to an organization from enhancing system health — Thurs, May 9, at Brand-Led Culture Change.
The best place to see where disclosures are headed is to go a step above any
specific regulation and look to a global institution that seeks to set and
harmonize global regulatory standards. For financial accounting, this is the
International Financial Reporting Standards Foundation
(IFRS), the group behind
the IFRS Accounting standards, which “have become the de facto global
language of financial statements — trusted by investors worldwide and required
for use by more than 140
jurisdictions.”
At COP26 in
Glasgow
in 2021, IFRS announced that it was establishing an International
Sustainability Standards Board, which put out its first set of recommendations
in March 2022. One of the more easily overlooked documents was a
comparison
of the IFRS Climate-related Disclosures Exposure Draft and the
recommendations that the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures
(TCFD) released across corporate Governance, Strategy, Risk Management, and
Metrics and Targets back in 2017. While there are a few changes (such as Scope
3
emissions
disclosures going from recommended for most to mandatory for all), what strikes
me is the similarity between the documents.
I won’t detail the recommendations in that comparative chart here; though I
encourage everyone to print it out and have it as a reference material on your
desk — because it’s reasonable to expect all of the disclosures summarized in
that comparative chart will be requirements for your brand within 10 years. None
of us know exactly when, in what order, or how brands will meet these
requirements; but we can assume this: Building a foundation that prepares your
company to report on these climate-related issues is a good idea.
The question is how to prioritize this mountain of work.
Start with carbon, but think about infrastructure
When building your program, it’s critical to start with the most critical priority with an eye towards what comes next. For corporate sustainability, that means carbon emissions. In the coming years, additional social and
environmental impacts will be of equal reporting importance around the globe.
While this may seem overwhelming, the good news is that the three components of
a strong carbon-reporting program^2^ are applicable to additional impacts. They
are:
-
Measure — have a set of tools to effectively measure corporate
emissions, automating steps where possible.
-
Report — disclosing a corporate emissions inventory in a manner that
meets regulatory requirements and corporate goals.
-
Reduce — define, implement and track progress of programs designed to
reduce impacts.
At
Worldly,
we believe that the backbone of this infrastructure for brands and retailers
will be an ability to engage with, collect primary data from, and
collaborate with supply chain partners. Because the majority of impacts for
consumer brands and retailers are found in their supply
chains,
we expect regulatory disclosures to require an increasing amount of primary
data from supply chains over time.
When building factory data collection and scope 3 carbon-reporting
capabilities at Worldly, we’re focused on both solving a current problem for
our customers and creating the infrastructure to enable them to respond to
their next set of measurement, reporting and reduction needs.
Putting it all together
When building out your corporate emissions-reporting infrastructure, look
for ways to lay the foundation for the next set of sustainability-related
impacts you want to focus on. This approach can prevent you from getting
fired (always a good thing) and prepare your team to go after the next
impact that may look like a shiny object to an executive, but you know will
be a need-to-have within the next three years. In this way, you can develop
a “yes, and” strategy that solves your current needs while positioning you
and your team for future success.
^2^ This is essentially what life cycle assessment (LCA) does. While many people focus on the greenhouse gas emissions output of an LCA, the popular ReCiPe method of LCA includes 18 midpoint and 3 endpoint indicators that quantify damage to human health, the ecosystem and resource availability.
Published Jun 20, 2023 8am EDT / 5am PDT / 1pm BST / 2pm CEST
Sr. Director of Product Innovation
JR is the Senior Director of Product Innovation at Worldly; the author of Bright Spots, a weekly newsletter focused on positive news from the climate space and how you can be part of the change we need; and a technical advisor to the Tom Ford Plastic Innovation Prize. He lives in Seattle with his wife, three kids, and a very silly dog.
Sponsored Content
/ This article is sponsored by
Worldly.
This article, produced in cooperation with the Sustainable Brands editorial team, has been paid for by one of our sponsors.