What is sustainability ambition?

Understanding and defining ambition is a crucial element of sustainability strategy and management. Sustainability ambition relates to areas and aspects where the company has a degree of choice to decide what, where and how it acts.

Simply, sustainability ambition is a description of where an organisation will focus its effort on sustainability, what it is seeking to achieve and how fast it is planning to achieve it. Therefore, understanding and defining ambition is a crucial element of both sustainability strategy and consequently, effective sustainability communications.

A strong and clearly defined sustainability ambition serves as a cornerstone for how an organisation shapes purpose, strategy, and operational activities in pursuit of long-term sustainable transformation and value creation. It should include clear descriptions of desired outcomes, the ‘destination’, together with a planned timeframe. A well-articulated sustainability ambition typically includes a vision for long-term direction of travel and intended outcomes. While it may be far in the future, the ambition should include and describe tangible objectives and outcomes while also setting the pace and milestones necessary for progress. This clarity not only guides strategic planning but also provides reference points for managing and disclosing progress and performance.

What are the core features of good sustainability ambition?

Developing and defining sustainability ambition encompasses several key critical dimensions.

Strategic Direction

A robust sustainability ambition integrates all material environmental, social, and governance (ESG) considerations into the organisation’s overarching vision and business model. A key aspect of understanding ambition is that it should be active rather than reactive. Rather than responding passively to regulatory requirements or external pressures, the company should proactively set targeted goals that reflect its unique context, competitive landscape, and long-term aspirations. This approach ensures sustainability is embedded in decision-making at every level, aligning leadership and departmental objectives with broader corporate priorities. It also supports a directed and active response that you have greater control over.

Scope and Focus

Setting a sustainability ambition requires a nuanced understanding of which aspects and issues are most material to the company’s success and its stakeholders’ expectations. Typically, this should be based upon a rigorous materiality assessment to identify priority issues (such as climate change adaptation & targets, data privacy, use of AI, resource efficiency, supply chain ethics, diversity and inclusion, or responsible governance). By focusing efforts on these core themes, the company can concentrate resources on initiatives that yield the greatest impact, while also remaining responsive to fundamental dependencies and vulnerabilities, emerging risks and opportunities. While a material focus should always provide the foundations, exploring and defining sustainability ambition should also include other aspects that help drive and meet the company’s wider commercial and values-based objectives.

Operational Foundation

Capturing and describing ambition provides ‘what’ the organisation wants to achieve, together with an indication of ‘how fast’. It also provides the crucial bridge for translating intentions into action. Best practice in sustainability management necessitates setting clear, measurable objectives that cascade through the organisation. This in turn, facilitates the development of long-term targets and key performance indicators (KPIs) which can help empower teams to innovate, and helps ensure the allocation of resources aligns with strategic priorities. Understanding what your priorities are differs from business to business; perhaps you’re interested in communicating sustainability for solicitors and law firms so your firm can demonstrate long-term goals over a reasonable timeframe. This can be hard to action if you don’t have a reliable partner like Terrafiniti to help you.

Cultural Alignment

The process of developing a clearly defined sustainability ambition can help to embed sustainable thinking into the fabric of organisational culture. This can help move sustainability from mere sets of policies or targets to a more powerful and widely understood narrative for sustainability – what matters for the company and its stakeholders, and what areas of action will be progressed. Used appropriately, this can provide the basis for stimulating everyday behaviours, decision-making, and leadership practices. It can help leaders champion sustainability as a driver of innovation, effective risk management, and long-term growth because ambition helps people take control of sustainability as a value creator rather than viewing it as either too overwhelming to grasp or as merely a compliance issue. Such a cultural shift strengthens internal engagement and nurtures a collective commitment.

Stakeholder Communication

Articulating a compelling sustainability ambition enables transparent and consistent communication with investors, partners, customers, and regulators. With a foundation in materiality, ambition provides both substance and a powerful narrative that can/should be unique to your organisation.

By openly sharing progress, challenges, and future ambitions, organisations build trust and credibility, differentiate themselves in the marketplace, and invite constructive dialogue with external stakeholders. This transparency also helps to mitigate reputational risks and assures stakeholders that the company’s actions are both authentic and effective.

Grounded in action

While developing clarity on future ambitions and communicating these clearly is both valuable and important, it should represent a step on the route to action. Communicating lofty intent in the absence of concrete plans, planned actions and explicit commitments is typically seen as greenwashing. Therefore, developing ambition should be seen as a step within wider sustainability strategy development and transformation planning processes

In conclusion

Ultimately, understanding and defining sustainability ambition is the essential core of best practice in sustainability strategy. It helps transform thinking about sustainability from a compliance issue into a source of strategic differentiation and resilience. It helps companies make informed and conscious choices about their impact, act with accountability, and create lasting value for both society and business.

By Dominic Tantram Terrafiniti

Sustainability professionals are perhaps used to working in challenging circumstances, but currently, we seem to be working within a growing paradox. We are seeing accelerations in external global challenges such as climate change, ecological breakdown and growing social inequality, while simultaneously corporate commitment and actions on sustainability might seem to be softening as a result of economic and political shifts.

This article considers some of the main challenges to business sustainability/ESG and examines their implications.

The main challenges threatening sustainability/ESG

While pursuing business sustainability/ESG has perhaps never been straightforward, some of the obstacles are changing. Old challenges are reappearing and new ones are gaining prominence. What are we seeing?

• Intentional pushback – where a focus on and investment in more sustainable business practices are being seen as a political hot potato, evidence of ‘dangerous’ progressive values or just simply a distraction from ‘the business of business is business’.
• Economic challenges – when economies are struggling and there’s greater uncertainty, businesses naturally seek to retrench, cut costs, or postpone investments. In such circumstances, organisations without a clear understanding of the centrality of sustainability for their future success can see sustainability and ESG as unnecessary costs or dispensable activities.
• Regulatory scale-back and reversals– as seen currently with the EU’s Omnibus proposals, delays to deforestation regulations and the reorientation of the SEC’s approach to climate change (which might be categorised as shifting from grudging acceptance to active rejection).

For sustainability professionals, this move from an agenda that previously moved forward to apparent backward steps can be crushingly disappointing. If you entered the profession during a growth period for sustainability, where the agenda was widely accepted and the investments and engagement were more readily available, retrenchment can easily feel like failure.

But, since its inception, corporate sustainability has often felt precarious, vulnerable and uncertain. At every economic downturn over the past (at least 30 years), sustainability has been seen as dispensable at best, or disposable at worst.

The challenges for the meaningful acceptance of the sustainability agenda have never really changed. Many organisations still don’t understand, or haven’t recognised, that, just like any other set of strategic issues capable of affecting their business’s performance and future success, sustainability is not about nice-to-have fripperies, but need-to-have fundamentals.

Within the social networks of sustainability professionals, it’s not hard to find people who are disheartened by recent challenges to the agenda, by a lack of priority from senior management, buy-in from leadership or concern about policy pushback and outright dismantling of the agenda.

However, it is worth recognising that such pushbacks are not new, not unique and may not persist. Change, is after all, unchanging.

What isn’t changing, however, is the urgency that requires companies to respond to fundamental sustainability trends, which are not subject to political whim, ideological sophistry or shifting sentiments. The climate doesn’t care about politics, planetary resources don’t suddenly become more plentiful just because we might wish they were, and foundational ecological functions won’t cease to break down if we ignore that they underpin all economic activity.

Remembering and reinforcing the strategic imperative for sustainability, that no organisation can hope to survive over the long term by ignoring strategic factors that will shape that survival, is perhaps more important for sustainability professionals than ever.

Sustainability is still a priority for business

In our client conversations, we continue to see rising pressure from stakeholders. Investors, customers, staff, and NGOs are demanding clear policies and strong performance. They expect action on climate and carbon, sustainable supply chains, and the identification and management of material issues. These expectations are growing and show no signs of slowing down.

They are consistently asked what sustainability means for their business, what they focus on, what their ambition and objectives are and how they are performing in managing and delivering impact reductions.

Some of the biggest pressures that they are experiencing are from customers, especially for those companies in B2B supply chains selling to big brands with their own sustainability programmes and high ambitions. This pressure is especially mounting for sales and marketing teams, where the consistency and scale of the questions they are asked about sustainability is growing.

This personal experience is backed up by wider research showing that sustainability remains a significant priority and challenge for businesses that are aware of and seeking to manage their environmental and social risks and opportunities.

One recent example is the Bain & Company report ‘The Visionary CEO’s Guide to Sustainability 2025’. Bain’s research found that there are shifts in how leading companies talk about sustainability, moving from linking it to purpose and the moral imperative for their organisations, to a clearer and more consistent focus on the role that sustainability has for their resilience and financial performance.

“Today’s CEOs have moved from moral value to business value, aligning sustainability with core business risks and operational realities such as costs, customers, commercial motions, and capital investments…. The ‘quiet CEO’ speaks less about sustainability, but when they do, they frame it as a concrete lever of business value.” (p 5. The Visionary CEO’s Guide to Sustainability 2025).

Returning to and reinforcing strategy

To make sustainability a core priority amid growing challenges, practitioners must clearly understand, and communicate, why it matters. That clarity starts with returning to and reinforcing strategy.

The need for effective strategic analysis

All organisations, to varying degrees, undertake and execute strategic analysis regularly. They use analysis and tools to assess the factors, drivers and trends that present sources of strategic risk and opportunity, ensuring that they understand how their markets will change, how their access to the resources they depend upon may be affected by global trends and what factors and innovations may shape the future of their sectors.

However, what they don’t all do, or do effectively, is adequately integrate and assess the potential implications of sustainability issues into such analyses.

There are several reasons why sustainability is poorly addressed in traditional strategic planning. First, it’s hard to link complex global trends to specific business impacts. Second, many companies lack the knowledge and skills needed to understand sustainability deeply. Third, most environmental and social issues are not properly priced, even though they pose real risks and opportunities. These issues often exist as externalities, outside standard financial analysis.

Environmental and social externalities are costs or benefits which are not reflected in market prices. Historically, economic systems have assumed natural resources to be abundant and free, leading to the exclusion of critical environmental and social impacts from financial metrics. These unpriced externalities – such as pollution, resource depletion, and labour conditions – are real and material, yet they are rarely adequately accounted for in corporate risk assessments, operating costs, or valuations.

Effective strategic analysis can go a long way to overcome these challenges, as it allows an organisation to identify, assess and understand not only what issues will affect long-term success, but also how they may do so.

Three steps for undertaking effective strategic analysis

While the long-term need for sustainable business practices is widely recognised, many organisations still struggle to build a compelling short- to medium-term business case. To overcome this challenge, companies should adopt a structured, forward-looking approach that embeds sustainability into core strategic planning.

Step 1 – Relating big picture trends to your operating and competitive context

The first step is to assess relevant trends. Businesses should evaluate how macro-level sustainability drivers such as climate change, resource scarcity, demographic shifts, technological disruption, regulatory changes, and evolving ethical standards might influence customer expectations, societal norms, and industry dynamics over the next 5, 10 and even 20 years.

Step 2 – Assessing the implications for your organisation

Organisations should analyse the strategic implications of these trends. This involves assessing their potential impact on operational costs, risk exposure, brand reputation and corporate values, alignment with customer demand, and regulatory compliance. Understanding these dimensions helps identify both vulnerabilities and opportunities.

Step 3 – Sustainability stress testing

Finally, companies must evaluate the long-term resilience of their current business models. This means considering whether ‘business as usual’ is likely to remain viable into the future, or whether strategic transformation is necessary to ensure resilience, relevance, and competitive advantage in a rapidly changing world.

Where is your business case? Sustainability and value

Practitioners and the organisations that they work with need a clear view of the strategic issues and challenges that they face, and their potential implications for current and future resilience.

But it is just as important, perhaps now more than ever, to have a clear business case for sustainability.

This is because sustainability is increasingly under scrutiny, with professionals increasingly asked to justify themselves. When economic, financial and political pressure may be driving companies to think twice about what they prioritise and what they spend, sustainability can sometimes be seen as a cost, or a nice to have that may or may not be part of core business.

Sustainability experts must show how improved performance boosts profit, market access, and revenue. Yet they can often struggle to link their work to financial metrics, strategy, or value creation.

We have written extensively on seeing sustainability through a value creation rather than cost management lens, and also on sustainability and financial outperformance, but in simple terms sustainability relates to business value across four key dimensions:

1. Revenue

Sustainability is increasingly a condition of sale, with customers demanding detailed strategies, targets, and evidence of performance – especially on issues like carbon reduction, deforestation-related resources and circular economy innovation. It also drives growth by enhancing product innovation, sales, and margins, with leading customers and investors seeking granular insights into sustainability-linked financial performance.

2. Costs

Efficiency in resource use directly improves profitability. Optimising input costs strengthens the relationship between expenditure and revenue generation.

3. Intangibles

Sustainability contributes to intangible value such as brand equity, leadership credibility, and stakeholder trust. Sustainability and ESG performance can influence access to capital, investor confidence, and customer loyalty, with governance seen as a key indicator of strategic maturity.

4. Risk

Sustainability can give rise to or be subject to critical risks such as supply chain disruption, regulatory shifts, climate impacts, and reputational threats.

Effective risk functions must integrate these factors to ensure resilience and informed decision-making. We are increasingly working with clients to integrate the results of their double materiality assessments into their Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) processes, so that sustainability risks are not seen or managed separately, but are considered as core to risk management and mitigation.

Sustainability will affect each organisation differently across the four dimensions of value. For some, the greatest impact may be on intangible value, for others on revenue, market position, or costs. However, in all cases, sustainability has the power to shape both risks and opportunities.

For a fuller overview of sustainability and business value, see our article on Sustainable value creation.

Conclusion

If your sustainability efforts are driven only by regulations and external policies, your strategy and business case will likely be weak or need serious improvement.

None of the threats or trends demanding meaningful responses and significant change in business practices have gone away. Corporate sustainability is still an existential requirement for most businesses, and developing effective strategic analysis, assessment and options is the essential foundation of corporate sustainability.

The long-term business case for sustainability is clear. There is no profit on a dying planet or in collapsing societies and markets. Sustainability professionals must help their organisations understand this. Companies cannot afford to ignore, sideline, or underinvest in sustainability. It directly affects performance, market access, and profitability, now and in the future.

By Joss Tantram Terrafiniti

Terrafiniti, with our associate Lois Guthrie, is very pleased to have had the chance to support WBCSD’s Corporate Performance & Accountability (CP&A) programme to research, develop and write a new report, ‘Managing uncertainty in sustainability disclosure’, which was published in July 2025.

The publication provides analysis, guidance and examples of leading practice to support companies in navigating complex and challenging areas in sustainability disclosure – how they can explore and communicate the uncertainties they face and how they can disclose sustainability related financial effects.

The report combines our experience and insight together with exploration and discussion with a number of WBCSD’s members, disclosure standard setters, accountancy bodies, and investment experts.

It analyses and distils disclosure requirements, challenges and themes to provide guidance for companies to address uncertainties in preparing and disclosing sustainability information according to the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) and the IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards (IFRS S1 and S2).

The types of uncertainty that organisations face

Sustainability performance increasingly influences a company’s financial outcomes. Investors and stakeholders seek clear, credible links between sustainability and financial data to guide decisions. Yet, due to its evolving nature, sustainability reporting is riddled with uncertainty – especially when trying to quantify financial impact.

As a relatively new discipline, quantifying and communicating the impact of sustainability performance on a business and its current and prospective financial results can be challenging and hampered by uncertainties.

These categories of uncertainty can include:

Decision uncertainty

This refers to the challenges that companies face in determining whether and how to assess and disclose sustainability issues. It includes uncertainty about whether a particular issue exists or is relevant to the business, how to judge its significance, and how to reconcile differing and potentially varied expectations from stakeholders, investors, and sectorally focussed approaches (i.e. where peer practice or rating agencies’ questionnaires establish a norm of certain disclosures for certain industries). It also encompasses ambiguity in interpreting disclosure standards – such as whether to report quantitative figures or qualitative insights – and how to handle advanced sustainability practices that go beyond compliance requirements, especially in relation to directors’ legal duties.

Output uncertainty

Output uncertainty arises when companies have gathered sustainability data but are unsure how best to present it. This includes difficulties in measurement due to limited data, unclear, emerging or contested methodologies, concerns about whether the information will be credible or useful to stakeholders, and confusion over how to tailor disclosures for different audiences. These factors can lead to reluctance to provide more comprehensive information, particularly if there is fear of misinterpretation or of accusations of greenwashing.

Process uncertainty

This arises when there are uncertainties concerning practical and operational aspects of sustainability reporting. It relates to whether companies have the necessary systems, resources, and internal structures to consistently collect, manage, and allow assurance of sustainability data and information. This includes decisions about which teams to involve, what budgets to allocate, and how to ensure reliable data management and verification practices.

Managing uncertainty in sustainability disclosure

Given the varied and multi-dimensional nature of the uncertainties which companies face there are a number of ways that these uncertainties could potentially be navigated and categorised. In order to aid practical action, the report provides a simplified structure to group and bundle uncertainty topics into a manageable number of overarching themes to support companies in navigating the complexity of uncertainty and provide guidance for their disclosure approaches.

Therefore, the report is structured around tackling four strategic themes:

• Integrating and connecting requirements: covering the alignment of sustainability and financial reporting cycles, processes, and outputs. It also addresses adapting risk management, governance, investment decision-making, and finance to support sustainability disclosure.
• Evaluating what (and how much) to disclose: focussing on the materiality assessment process, the use of judgment for materiality and significance, and the challenges of navigating different materiality perspectives.
• Making assumptions: discussing the use of assumptions in sustainability disclosure, the characteristics of credible assumptions, and the disclosure of assumptions.
• Measurements and estimates: exploring the information that should be disclosed about metrics, the characteristics required to provide the required context, minimise uncertainty, and maximise utility. It also includes information on different approaches to estimation when data is unavailable or unreliable, especially across the value chain.

Conclusion

The breadth, depth, and complexity of the uncertainties companies encounter in sustainability management and disclosure – particularly within a rapidly evolving economic, environmental, and social landscape – cannot be comprehensively addressed by a single publication. However, the report aims to support companies in identifying and taking steps that they can control to reduce or manage their uncertainties in sustainability management and disclosure to contribute to enhancing transparency and integrated, strategic decision-making. As sustainability continues to shape financial performance and stakeholder expectations, the ability to disclose with transparency, rigour, and relevance becomes not just a regulatory obligation but a strategic imperative. This report offers a practical steps and guidance for managing uncertainty and fostering more coherent, credible, and decision-useful sustainability disclosures. In doing so, it supports companies to move beyond compliance—toward leadership in sustainability accountability and disclosure.

By Joss Tantram Terrafiniti

In June 2025 the UK Government released consultation drafts of its first two Sustainability Reporting Standards—UK SRS S1 and UK SRS S2—as part of its ambition to become a global leader in sustainable finance.

The proposed standards are not a whole new or radically different approach to sustainability disclosure. They are based closely on the International Sustainability Standards Board’s (ISSB) IFRS S1 and S2, with proposed UK-specific amendments.

This article presents a quick overview of the UK’s proposed approach and how they differ from the existing IFRS standards.

What is the background to the UK’s SRS consultation?

The draft SRS standards have been released in consultation form as the UK Government looks to assess whether and how the ISSB Standards should be used in the UK, and ultimately, to decide whether to endorse them.

While the UK Government has suggested some small amendments to the ISSB Standards to develop the draft UK SRS, their intention is to generate as little divergence as possible to ensure the comparability of international approaches to company reporting  and the disclosure of sustainability information.

The consultation is open until 17 September 2025, and the government is inviting feedback from stakeholders.

How do the UK standards differ from IFRS standards?

The short answer is that they don’t differ very much. The UK Sustainability Reporting Standards (UK SRS) are closely aligned with the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) frameworks—IFRS S1 and S2.

However, they include a few UK-specific modifications to reflect domestic priorities and regulatory context. The key differences are:

• Transition relief adjustments – the UK SRS removes the ISSB’s one-year transition relief for delayed sustainability reporting, requiring companies to report in sync with financial disclosures from the outset.
• Extended climate-first approach – the UK extends the optional ‘climate-first’ transition relief to two years, giving companies more time to phase in broader sustainability disclosures.
• Classification flexibility – unlike the ISSB, which mandates the use of the Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS), the UK SRS allows companies to use alternative classification systems.
• SASB references: – the UK softens the language around referencing SASB materials—from ‘shall refer to’ in ISSB to ‘may refer to’ in UK SRS.
• Carbon Credit and Scope 3 Emissions – the UK SRS introduces flexibility in how carbon credits are treated and allows companies to delay Scope 3 emissions reporting until the second year.

The scope of the SRS – what companies might need to use them?

At the time of writing, it appears that the UK Government is considering whether to require only listed companies to use the SRS, and for this requirement to be reflected by the UK FCA (Financial Conduct Authority) listing rules.

The government is also exploring the possibility of expanding the reach of the Standards by amending the Companies Act 2006. This would introduce sustainability disclosure obligations for economically significant entities that currently fall outside the Financial Conduct Authority’s regulatory scope, requiring them to report in line with the UK SRS.

Economically significant entities are those which operate in the finance, manufacturing, energy or retail sectors or they are large publicly or privately owned businesses.

Briefly, what are the SRS Standards?

Draft UK SRS S1 Standard

The Draft UK SRS S1 Standard focuses on general requirements for sustainability-related financial disclosures. It’s based on the ISSB’s IFRS S1 but includes UK-specific amendments to tailor the framework for domestic use.

In summary, the standard requires:

• 1) That companies provide clear, consistent, and comparable sustainability-related information that is connected to their financial reporting.
• 2) That entities need to disclose a core set of information, as follows:

• Governance – the systems, controls, and oversight mechanisms the entity applies to monitor and manage sustainability-related risks and opportunities.
• Strategy – how the entity plans for and responds to those risks and opportunities as part of its broader business strategy.
• Risk management – the methods used to identify, evaluate, prioritise, and track sustainability-related risks and opportunities.
• Metrics and targets – the entity’s performance on these matters, including progress toward any goals it has set or is legally obliged to achieve.

• Materiality is a critical lens that companies must use to drive their disclosure – to disclose material sustainability-related risks and opportunities over the short, medium, and long term. As with the ISSB standards though, a narrower scope of how a matter should be considered as material is used by both SRS and ISSB standards than the EU ESRS standards.

• The SRS considers that matters will be material if they have impacts or implications from an enterprise value perspective. Therefore, matters are considered to be material if omitting, misstating or obscuring information on them could reasonably be expected to influence decisions that primary users of general-purpose financial reports (predominantly investors and financial analysts) make on the basis of those reports.

Draft UK SRS S2 Standard

The Draft UK SRS S2 Standard outlines the UK’s proposed requirements for climate-related financial disclosures, adapting the ISSB’s IFRS S2 to the UK context. It is intended to ensure that companies disclose clear, consistent, and decision-useful information about climate-related risks and opportunities that could affect enterprise value.

Structure & Content

The standard is built around four core pillars (aligned with TCFD):

Governance – how an entity governs climate-related risks and opportunities by providing information on:

• Oversight by Governance Bodies – the structures, committees and individuals responsible for the management of climate impacts and performance intentions, How they incorporate climate risks into strategy, major decisions, and risk management and how they set and monitor climate-related targets, including links to executive compensation.
• Management’s role – who at management level is responsible and how their role is overseen and the internal controls and procedures in place for managing climate risks, and how these integrate with broader business functions.

Strategy – disclosure of how an entity’s strategy addresses climate-related risks and opportunities, including:

• Material Climate Risks and Opportunities – which might be reasonably expected to impact the entity’s future prospects.
• Impact on Business Model and Value Chain – current and anticipated effects on operations and relationships.

• Strategic and Decision-Making Implications – including details of the entity’s transition plan for addressing climate-related challenges.
• Financial Effects – how climate factors influence the entity’s financial position, performance, and cash flow now and over time (short, medium, long term), and how they’re reflected in financial planning.
• Climate Resilience – an assessment of how robust the entity’s strategy and business model are in the face of climate-related developments and uncertainties.

Risk Management – provide information and detail on how an entity manages climate-related risks and opportunities, and how these practices fit within its broader risk framework, including:

• Risk Processes – how climate-related risks are identified, assessed, prioritised and monitored.
• Opportunity identification and management – the methods used to identify, evaluate, prioritise, and monitor climate-related opportunities, including details on whether and how climate scenario analysis informs this process.
• Integration – how climate-related risk and opportunity processes are embedded into the entity’s overall risk management system.

Metrics & Targets – disclosure of GHG emissions (Scopes 1, 2, and 3), carbon credits, and climate targets, disclosing:

• Greenhouse gas emissions – Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions, following the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol unless otherwise required.
• Risk and opportunity metrics – which quantify exposure to transition and physical risks.
  Alignment with climate-related opportunities.
• Capital expenditure, internal carbon pricing, and links to executive remuneration on climate matters.
• Industry-based metrics – additional metrics which are derived from agreed or standardised business models or sectors.

What are the implications of the SRS and what happens next?

Whilst the UK SRS are focused specifically upon the UK context, their content and approach will be familiar to companies that are either currently wrestling with or have successfully navigated the IFRS’ ISSB General and Climate-related disclosure standards.

This means that complying with the UK SRS (if they are issued) shouldn’t be a significant added burden to companies already (or planning to) report using existing IFRS standards, though they of course do differ in certain key respects from the EU’s ESRS.

The main additional implication, however, would be if the UK Government decides to expand the scope of companies required to disclose against the UK SRS beyond listed companies to privately held or otherwise significant businesses and organisations.

Finally, the UK SRS are out for consultation, it is currently unclear whether the Government will proceed to make them a requirement. This will depend not only on the nature, extent and type of consultation responses it receives, but also perhaps the wider context of global political sentiment, which is drifting away from additional requirements on business, and noticeably cooling on action aimed to address the escalating climate emergency.

Time will tell – but if you want to have your say (and if you can face it), read the consultation drafts and respond to the UK Government consultation!

By Joss Tantram Terrafiniti

Communicating responsibly and avoiding the risk of greenwashing can be difficult. But often it isn’t that complicated, it just requires the right level of awareness, consistency and rigour in your communications. Failing to manage that can mean snatching defeat from the jaws of victory – turning a potentially positive sustainability feature into a negative news story.

As someone both keen on coffee (surely an improvement to every morning?) and also a fierce critic of greenwashing, two recent rulings by the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) caught my interest.

In rulings published 30 April 2025, two coffee brands both fell foul of the ASA’s guidelines.

What happened?

The two companies had very similar claims banned for very similar reasons.

They both post online, paid-for ads about their products, and both (in the eyes of the ASA) failed to provide sufficient clarity about their claims, leading to a risk that they would mislead consumers. Both companies had their ads banned.

The claims and the issues

Dualit – “Dualit Coffee Bags – Compostable Coffee Bags” and further text stating: “Discover Dualit’s compostable coffee bags – café-quality ground coffee in a bag”.

The ASA challenged whether the claim “compostable coffee bags” was misleading.

Lavazza – “Lavazza … New Eco Caps”. Further text stating “Lavazza A Modo Mio Eco Caps: the coffee shop taste in compostable capsules for your home. Good as usual, feels even better! The taste of Lavazza Coffee in a Compostable Capsule […] Your Espresso at Home”.

The ASA found that the claims “compostable capsules” and “compostable coffee bags” were misleading.

In both cases the ASA stated that the ads gave the impression that the bags/capsules could be composted at home, when in fact they could only be composted in an industrial setting.

In reply to the rulings, both Dualit and Lavazza stated that their products were certified to the European Standard EN13432, indicating that they were designed to break down in an industrial composter and that in neither case were the ads intended to be interpreted as a claim relating to home composting.

Is disposal the whole story though?

No, it’s not.

For green claims, it’s critical to look at the whole life cycle of a product or service. In the cases of the coffee companies, their claims related specifically to disposal. That’s because single-use coffee capsules provide user convenience (compared to other coffee preparation formats) at the expense of additional single-use packaging – which has become the focus of criticism as being wasteful and polluting. One tactic for reducing some of the environmental impact of the packaging is to deal with the disposal-related impacts.

However, the problem illustrated here shows that a focus purely only disposability can still give rise to greenwashing challenges.

If consumers are confused by messaging and put products that are only suitable for commercial composting in their home composting, they are unlikely to reach the temperature and humidity required for them to break down sufficiently. This can lead to partially broken-down residues, which in some cases may also be toxic.

While many households collect compostables for composting by councils and municipalities, this is by no means universal, and some local authorities explicitly state that they cannot process such materials. In those situations, they request that compostable plastics are placed in a waste bin – thereby negating environmental benefits of possible compostability.

If a consumer places compostable plastic (i.e. PLA [polylactic acid]) as used in Dualit’s coffee bags in their domestic recycling collection, this can contaminate the recycling stream. Therefore, putting your used products in the right place is important and context-specific. In this scenario a simple marketing message might be found to be misleading.

What can we learn from these rulings?

These rulings, for the main part, simply reconfirm existing guidance relating to green claims. But they also tell us something about focus and intent for the ASA ,and provide some wider lessons.

• The ASA considers the ‘average consumer’s expectation’ when making its assessments (and the CMA similarly). In these two cases it determined that a claim of compostable might reasonably be assumed to mean at home for a consumer product used in a domestic setting. Both coffee companies disputed this.
• These cases reinforce the ongoing requirement for advertisers to consider what a typical consumer will understand – and to ensure that their ads are clear and accurate given this level of understanding. This represents a higher bar than arguing that ‘strictly speaking it’s accurate’.
• In the Dualit case, the ASA noted that the ad used 132 characters in an ad format that allowed 270 characters – leaving “sufficient space within the ad format to correctly inform about the nature of the product and how it should be disposed”. This can be construed as a dig at the frequently used defence (from other brands) that ad formats do not provide sufficient space to fully describe or substantiate claims.
• The ASA considered that need for industrial composting was a ‘material’ consideration and that therefore claims relating to composting required further qualification.
• Care is required when a manufacturer is developing solutions (in this case single-use product disposal) ahead of the universal availability of supporting infrastructure. This shouldn’t restrain innovation, but does requires a more nuanced challenge for marketeers in their communication of product features.
• In both cases, the claims were, interpreted narrowly, accurate. However, they were both found to have been insufficiently clear that specific conditions/circumstances were relevant – i.e. that compostability was only achievable in industrial facilities, not at home.
• In both cases the products were certified to a recognised European Standard (EN13432). This will have cost both companies money and effort to achieve (and maintain). This could provide a provable benefit – but in these cases the communications were deemed to have failed in that.
• The ASA was clear, consumer-facing product claims on compostability must either provide evidence that they are compostable at home or alternatively, must provide clairy on the disposal process.
• This situation was entirely predictable and avoidable. Green claims guidance stresses that claims should be clear and easily understandable with any relevant conditions or caveats explicit. In recent years north American coffee giant Keurig received large fines for a similar situation – claiming coffee pods were recyclable when often local facilities did not exist, meaning that for the consumer the products were only recyclable in principle but not in practice.

Navigating simple messaging in a complex world

Genuine sustainability/environmental impact reductions, particularly in single use consumer products, can be difficult to achieve. The coffee companies have no control over the facilities provided by local authorities and little control over consumer awareness and understanding of issues. However, they do have control over their communications and a responsibility to ensure that they can understood accurately. In these cases, the ad bans could have been avoided by following ASA and CMA guidance on green claims. Claims should be clear, accurate and substantiated. Here the ads failed the first two hurdles, and the two brands will have both taken a reputational hit.

By Dominic Tantram Terrafiniti

This article delves into why responsible communication is crucial for corporate entities focused on environmental sustainability, how it fosters trust, and how businesses can effectively implement it.

Deploying Responsible Communication in Your Business

Responsible communication in the context of environmental CSR is about what is said, but more how actions align with words. For any message to be effective, it must be backed by genuine efforts towards environmental sustainability. Businesses that communicate responsibly do more than inform; they educate and engage their audiences, strengthening reputational standing and fostering meaningful stakeholder relationships regardless of sector. Such an approach also elevates internal engagement, motivating employees to actively contribute to the company’s sustainability goals. CSR will help businesses anticipate stakeholder expectations and make employees aware of their goals, which contributes to higher engagement amongst staff and encourages active participation and idea-sharing.

Why is Responsible Communication Important?

Consumer trust is increasingly fragile and easily eroded these days, and as such, the stakes for responsible communication are high – missteps can lead to significant reputational damage and threaten long-term viability. By aligning the best sustainability communications with genuine actions, businesses can navigate the complexities of public perception, fostering trust rather than scepticism. Avoiding misleading claims and maintaining transparency, particularly on sensitive environmental topics, is essential to sustaining credibility.

Responsible communication isn’t just about avoiding misleading claims, however; companies must proactively ensure that their communication is transparent and accountable. This approach is essential in maintaining trust, particularly when addressing sensitive topics such as environmental impact and sustainability. Our own consultancy services are focused on helping businesses navigate their own ESG and sustainability effectively, which is why so many senior managers and company leaders in forward-thinking organisations contact us for our sustainability communication services to develop or accelerate their own sustainability performance and accreditations.

How to Communicate Responsibly

Greenwashing represents a significant risk to responsible communication, as it involves presenting misleading or exaggerated claims about a company’s environmental practices. This deceptive approach not only undermines trust but also erodes the credibility of genuine sustainability efforts. For businesses committed to responsible communication, it is crucial to avoid greenwashing services they provide by ensuring that all environmental claims are accurate, verifiable, and supported by tangible actions. Transparent communication, grounded in reality, is essential to maintain integrity and foster lasting trust with stakeholders.

If you run a business or firm, you may be doing everything right in terms of targeting your sustainability goals, but if you lack the ability to communicate how you’re doing it, your backers may lose confidence. This extends to businesses of all types: if you have a retail complex, you will need to communicate your steps to sustainability through the packaging you throw away and the gas used to import stock; sustainability for law firms may take the form of understanding what is expected of you from clients and stakeholders regarding your material priorities. Every business needs to be thinking about these ideas in their sustainability strategy, although it can be difficult to know where to start. Terrafiniti can help.

In today’s corporate landscape, responsible communication is indispensable, particularly for those committed to environmental sustainability. By ensuring that their words reflect their actions, and by seeking expert guidance to navigate these complexities, businesses can lead by example, making a positive impact on society while securing long-term success.

By Max Shukla Terrafiniti

Sustainability training services help to build your staff’s awareness and understanding of sustainability or CSR (corporate social responsibility) and gives them the ability to incorporate sustainable practices into the running of your business. This foundational knowledge is essential for building a workforce that is not only aware of sustainability issues but also motivated to address them. Skill development enhances operational efficiency, reduces environmental impact, and can lead to cost savings. Employees trained in sustainability are better prepared to identify opportunities for improvement and innovation and contribute to a more resilient and forward-thinking organisation.

As regards leadership development, training on sustainability provides management with the insight to create valuable strategies needed to drive sustainable innovation and make informed, strategic decisions. Leaders who understand sustainability can guide their organisations towards practices that not only reduce impacts but are also economically viable and socially beneficial.

How do you create a sustainability training program?

At Terrafiniti we understand that the key to creating the best strategy for employee sustainability training is to capitalise on the strengths of your team and utilise their creativity to design creative solutions that work. Participatory training engages staff and equips them to identify emerging risks and innovate company products and services.

But we will always start with exploring your business objectives and understanding how and where training can contribute to unlocking obstacles and achieving your aims.

Elements of our sustainability training

Our sustainability training encompasses a comprehensive range of topics, including the fundamentals of sustainability and ESG training for companies, building dynamic sustainable teams, leadership masterclasses, and tailored training solutions.

Because training interventions are only part of what’s needed to embed sustainability and meet emerging challenges, we also offer mentoring to support ongoing sustainability efforts, guidance on maintaining momentum in sustainability integration, and strategies to avoid greenwashing.

Incorporating sustainability principles and practices into business operations is crucial to reduce risks, meet changing customer expectations and pursue long-term value.

Corporate sustainability training equips staff with vital knowledge and skills to implement these practices effectively, which in turn leads to better operational efficiency, innovation, and possible cost-savings. This also prepares leaders to strategically drive sustainable initiatives and ensure long-term environmental and economic benefits.

Terrafiniti’s training is tailored to your unique business requirements. Investing in developing skills, knowledge and capabilities will help establish you as a front-runner in your industry and showcase your commitment to pursuing sustainable practices and achieving your sustainability goals and increasingly these are indiviable with core business goals.

By Max Shukla Terrafiniti

‘He who sups with the devil should have a long spoon’

Proverb

Reputation is widely regarded as one of the most valuable assets of an organisation and sustainability can also be an important contributor to both reputation and several dimensions of business value.

This article explores the different dimensions of reputational risk, considers how it can be affected and how you can protect it.

What is reputation risk?

Reputational risk is the possibility of damage to business value if stakeholders think behaviour, actions or performance have fallen short of expectations.

Change in perception of company reputation can follow different kinds of events or drivers, such as poor performance of a product or service, negative outcomes and impacts from operations or a lapse in legal or ethical behaviour/association with unethical practices.

Reputation is driven by a combination and congruence (or incongruence) between what companies do – their actions and real impacts – and what they are saying. Failures in procedures are typically viewed less harshly than intentional acts by a company or its staff.

The topic has been brought into sharp focus in recent years as some environmental activists seek to pursue their objectives through strategic litigation (particularly in climate change related litigation) or by condemning organisations through their associations with other organisations and activities which are considered to be unethical or significantly unsustainable.

The business of business is business?

When businesses took little responsibility for their actions beyond the legality of an activity or transaction, perhaps times were simpler.

However, the activities and impacts of business raise a complex range of ethical questions. While there are many areas of common ground and consensus, ethics are inherently value-based, qualitative and the subject of varied opinion and perspective – what might be considered legal and legitimate activity or behaviour by one person may be seen as unacceptable and exploitative to another.

So, in today’s complicated business landscape, how do you navigate the possible hazards and make sensible decisions?

Who are the stakeholders – who cares?

Damage to reputation can affect both short and longer-term financial performance, but which are the stakeholder groups whose actions and perspectives can affect reputation?

Key stakeholder groupings can be:

• Existing and prospective customers.
• Partners and suppliers and how they engage.
• Employees and prospective employees.
• Investors, analysts and ESG rating agencies.
• Suppliers and vendors.

What are the risks?

Damage to reputation can impact revenue, market value or brand.

Such damage stems principally from a loss of trust and confidence in the organisation and/or a weakening in expectation or belief around the ability of the organisation to deliver on financial and non-financial goals in the future.

Events that result in reputational damage tend to give rise to losses that are far larger than the initial direct cost of the event. The table below categorises and outlines some of these risks.

Taking this into account, what are the most dynamic or growing risks?

In terms of prominence (this may of course not translate to greatest impact) there is currently a large, noisy and vociferous debate around association risk – risks from being associated with behaviour/brands considered unethical. This causes confusion and uncertainty around who companies should or should not engage with.

Business activism

In recent months this has been brought into sharp focus in the creative industries with increasingly vocal activism focussed on the role of creatives in advertising and marketing in supporting and facilitating companies contributing to the climate crisis – specifically oil and gas companies.

The Clean Creatives initiative’s members have pledged to ‘cut ties with fossil fuels’. What does that include? You can see Clean Creatives’ list here: https://nofossilfuelmoney.org/company-list/

The Clean Creatives pledge commits agencies, creatives, and strategists to refuse any future contracts with fossil fuel companies, trade associations, or front groups. The entities covered by this pledge include:

• Companies whose primary business is the extraction, processing, transportation, or sale of oil, gas, or coal
• Utilities and Electric Cooperatives that meet one or more of the following criteria:
  • Generate 50% or more of their electricity from fossil fuels
  • Generate 50% or more of their revenue from business in fossil fuels
  • Play an active role in funding new fossil fuel infrastructure
• Trade associations or other industry-funded nonprofit groups representing the interests of these companies, utilities, or cooperatives
• Any new entity meant to advance the message or goals of the above companies or groups, while obscuring or hiding their financial contributions.

How does this play out in practice?

To take a current example, it’s been widely reported that Havas has won the account from Shell for global B2C strategic media buying, allegedly worth $27M.

This decision has been widely criticised, particularly by groups including Clean Creatives and Comms Declares.

Red Havas, a subsidiary, has allegedly lost a contract from the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative because of this move.

Additionally, four Havas subsidiaries are currently B-Corp certified (London, New York, Lemz and Immerse). Campaigners are using that lever to question Havas’ membership of B-Corp and apparently have requested a review by B-Lab as part of its complaints procedure.

However, it’s more complicated still, the Havas owned Tripkt agency is itself a member of Clean Creatives.

So, Havas has a communication challenge on its hands, but this is not unique. All the major global agencies have similar relationships and have also been criticised. So what are the wider implications in play?

The extension of identity politics

Superficially Clean Creatives’ objectives are clear. They don’t want to support oil & gas and are building a wider movement to limit (or if wildly successful block) access to advertising and marketing services.

Many people can get behind that aim.

The challenge is that the world is far more complicated than this. We are all (explicitly or implicitly) dependent upon oil – whether we want to be or not. Many people, me included, want society weaned off this dangerous (but very useful if you ignore the side effects) product as fast as possible. There are strong arguments that the oil majors are dragging their heels and delaying an inevitable transition to a low carbon economy.

But how do you develop principles on where to engage and where to avoid engagement when the world is so complicated?

I researched some sentiment on LinkedIn while writing this article. One commentator suggested that as individuals we should stop buying oil-based products – petrol, plastics, pharmaceuticals. That’s not easy, fossil fuels and derived products are fundamentally woven into society and our economy, so disassociation is currently largely impossible, especially if you include other essentials that are currently dependent upon fossil resources – like food.

What is perhaps new here is the greater concentration on guilt by association.

This means that the debate is further polarised, leading to pass/fail binary decision-making. This might support the idea of ideological purity, but it advances the pretence that there are unequivocally ‘good’ choices rather than merely ‘better’ ones available in the world. Surely this thinking is simply just establishing new heresies?

Association risks – who to engage with?

If you are a company wrestling with these issues, how do you decide who to engage with and who to sell your services to?

This superficially simple question masks some complex and rather challenging questions. When you add a dash of tribalism, entrenched positions and deeply held beliefs to the mix, you get a landscape that’s fraught with uncertainty and risk.

In today’s activist society expectations have changed dramatically, but their origins have been there for a long time. As I grew up there were boycotts of South African goods in protest against apartheid, further back still (contrary to what my children believe, that is possible), in 1791 there was a boycott in England of sugar produced by slaves following the failure of parliament to abolish slavery. This apparently reduced sugar sales by over 30%.

In the intervening time, sensitivities have changed further, decades of encouragement for people to act as consumers rather than citizens and the rise of social media technology mean there is a hugely complex landscape, littered with potential hazards.

Exclusionary approaches

Perhaps you can start by not working with companies that are ‘bad’?

Exclusionary approaches have been widely used in ethical, SRI (Socially Responsible Investing) and ESG investments. The approach is used to exclude companies/organisations involved in highly controversial activities. Generally accepted international principles/standards are often used to describe responsible conduct, for example the UN Global Compact (UNGC), International Labor Organization (ILO) standards and United Nations Guiding Principles (UNGPs).

Typically, excluded activities involve:

Arms – manufacture/marketing of civilian firearms, cluster munitions, landmines, nuclear and biochemical weapons

Labour – involvement in forced or child labour

Human Rights – involvement, directly, via their supply chain or in complicity with third parties, in human rights violations

Gambling – significant involvement without harm reduction

Alcohol – significant involvement without harm reduction

Product testing on animals – without demonstrable social/medical benefits

Environment – significant contribution to environmental problems and poor management of risks

Tobacco – manufacture of products.

Product versus behaviour

Looking at the list above there are some activities and products that can trigger exclusion, and others reside in a ‘grey’ area where they might be accepted under some circumstances. For example, tobacco is routinely on blacklists. But there are nuances here. If we look at Robeco’s criteria (https://www.robeco.com/files/docm/docu-exclusion-policy.pdf) we can see that their exclusion criteria are tiered to reflect a consideration of levels of involvement with tobacco:

Tobacco production ≥ 0%

Tobacco revenues from retail ≥ 10%

Tobacco revenues from related products/services ≥ 50%

What does this mean? If you’re a manufacturer then you are excluded, if your retail operation includes some tobacco sales then you will only be excluded above certain threshold levels.

Thresholds

Because the real world is complicated and messy, thresholds can provide a useful and pragmatic way to deal with the balance between relatively minor and significant involvement. Clean Creatives use a 50% threshold for energy generation from fossil sources and SRI investment criteria often use thresholds to allow some minor involvement in activities that are excluded if they represent a significant part of overall business.

This challenge is one of degree – is a relatively small involvement in something negative allowable, and if so at what level do you set the threshold?

Inclusive Approaches

Perhaps you can simply work with companies that are ‘good’?

Positive screening or inclusionary approaches make use of ethical and other ESG (Environmental Social and Governance) criteria. These criteria are often unclear and difficult to quantify, but they form the basis of considerable effort to generate data in the investment / ESG world. They can include looking at carbon or material use intensity, screening business practice against accepted norms, community or impact investing aspects and looking for outperformance in sustainability-related measures.

Inclusive approaches can be a useful part of the toolkit, but they don’t really help you deal with the more difficult, less clear-cut and ambiguous cases.

Reputational Risk – what do you need to get right?

If we recognise the challenges of overly binary thinking, how do we step back from the noise and identify what’s important and where the critical decision factors lie?

Engagement with the world’s most damaging companies is vital – otherwise, how are we going to achieve change?

So when, and how, is engagement valid or useful?

If we look at B Corp’s principles, they tend to take a risk-based approach rather than a rigid exclusionary one. Therefore, they are looking for business to:

comprehensively identify and measure the impacts of their business and improve upon them over time.

And

avoid, manage, and/or effectively respond to specific potential negative impacts associated with specific industries or practices, as well as existing or emergent concerns from their stakeholders.

Companies in high-impact or controversial industries must pass an Eligibility Review. B Lab provides several examples of determinations of these reviews for guidance. Taking the example of fossil fuels:

“Fossil Fuels & Energy Companies (2020)

Fossil fuel and energy companies are disproportionately responsible for greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change. Companies involved in the production and sale of fossil fuels, including those that generate or sell energy derived from fossil fuels, are eligible for B Corp Certification if they are not engaged in specific prohibited practices regarding extraction, lobbying, and financial incentives; have successfully transitioned their energy portfolio to be at least 50% carbon free; and have committed to make progress towards transitioning to a fully carbon-free portfolio within specified timeframes.”

So, in a nutshell, it’s possible to be a B Corp member if you run your business well, avoid some of the most damaging aspects and make a genuine commitment to reducing impact over time (note there’s a threshold here too).

Reputation risks – what needs to be got right?

To manage reputational risks well, organisations require clarity on their strategy, policy, governance, and execution (performance improvement).

Reputational Risk – Key Considerations

Risk-aware strategy and policies

Most larger companies have well-established risk management functions. However, in our experience, they too often focus on traditional/mainstream business risks. While initiatives like TCFD are driving awareness of climate risk, other sustainability-related risk aspects are not always well understood, analysed, or articulated.

Clear governance processes

Top management and the board must be aware of existing and potential reputational risks and ensure that they are adequately reflected in wider governance processes and assessments.

Behaviour intention gap

The gap between stated intentions and actions is important at two levels. At a personal level staff representing the organisation need to follow company policies and processes. This is also important at a company level, where corporate commitments must also be met. In either case, trust can be eroded if there is a gap between intention and behaviour.

Establishing and socialising reputation risk tolerance

This can aid clarity on the actions to take as it is easy to fall into a trap of attempting to avoid all risk. However, it can be very difficult to set a threshold. Some organisations use public trust as an indicator. While this can be useful it is also difficult to accurately assess, and public trust can be erratic and volatile.

Understand stakeholder perceptions and expectations.

An important part of the landscape is understanding where an event or decision may trigger an adverse stakeholder response.

This of course is far from straightforward, but certain aspects are known sensitivities or trigger points. The organisation needs to understand (bringing risk tolerance into play) when its actions may trigger a response – and how important (or otherwise) this response would be.

Many actions can affect public/stakeholder perceptions, but those more closely related to core business activities – or values – are perhaps the most important to consider.

Navigating risk by association

In engagements, assessing association risk requires clarity on what’s involved. While there are many norms, there’s also lots of generalised and sometimes confused thinking.

One important and overriding point is that there are no simple solutions. We are operating in a largely qualitative zone, a messy, complicated, and ambiguous ethical morass. This should be acknowledged.

It is important to achieve clarity on what you are doing and why – on your own terms.

Reputational Risk – Risk-Based Engagement Approach

A sequential, risk-based approach can be useful.

Filter 01 – Exclusion

This step involves identifying types of companies, products or behaviours that you would never engage with.

It might be absolute, or you may set thresholds below which some relatively minor involvement in the activity may be accepted. This list may be short or long for you, and it needs periodic review as it may change over time – especially regarding events related to behaviour.

Filter 02 –Intention and Approach

This filter assesses the organisation’s apparent intention and ability to change, to reduce negative impacts and maximise positive ones.

In this group, engagement is possible if tests are satisfied. This mirrors the approach of B Corp and various ESG investment criteria.

The challenge in these ‘grey’ areas is how do you make a meaningful (and perhaps defendable) assessment?

My contention is the following aspects are important:

Intentionality

What is the stated purpose and intention of the company?

If it has difficult, high impact or controversial activities or characteristics is there evidence that it’s committed to change?

Mechanisms

Change requires intentions, mechanisms, plans and processes. What’s in place, have commitments been meaningfully resourced and tied into management, governance, and performance reward processes?

Measurement

What measurements, targets and indicators are in place? Is there adequate transparency in current and planned disclosure? Public commitments are an important part of this.

Filter 03 – Engagement.

In this step you will assess the specific nature of your engagement.

What is it that you will be doing for the client or partner company?

If it’s in a high-risk category these criteria have relatively greater importance. So, for example if the company’s performance is already good or it has sound plans to improve then a shallow intervention that’s simply promotional might be acceptable. If a company is higher risk, then the engagement may need to be more fundamental in order to meet your tests.

Intervention

Is the work/engagement under consideration something that will help drive positive (in sustainability terms) change in the customer’s core business?

This might be working on core business strategy, developing transition plans or driving efficiencies. Can you make a valid case that your work is helping change the nature of material risks in the organisation you are working for?

Review and Disengagement

Is there the ability to review the relationship and exit if conditions or tests are not met?

Constructive engagement in a complex world

Confidence has long been a critical component of business and maintaining a good reputation has been persistently valuable. While this has perhaps remained a constant, arguably for centuries, the factors relevant and important to business reputation have increased and widened over time.

Changing technology means it has never been easier to share news or opinion and a ‘bad news’ story can spread almost instantly.

But what’s changed most is perhaps attitudes to different actions and behaviours. The rise of consumer activism coupled with aspects of cancel culture make for a heady mix. One that’s difficult to get 100% right.

Clear policies, based upon sound and coherent ethics, good governance and consistent execution will all help contribute to significant risk reduction.

But there remain substantial challenges when the position of your company, or one it wants to do business with, is ambiguous or negative.

If your business is in marketing or advertising, the purpose of the communication is to orient people positively towards a company and help drive sales. In this case the relationship will be inherently tied to and judged by the direction of the associated company and its purpose.

There’s little space to argue for constructive engagement with the businesses that you work with if the basis of your engagement is not actually about creating and driving meaningful change.

If that’s the case you will be judged, fairly or otherwise, on the basis of past and current performance – and the baggage attached to that.

Can we help you?

We’ve worked with companies in the UK, Europe and
beyond to avoid greenwashing by developing responsible engagement and communications approaches, content and copy. Ranging from strategic corporate reporting and disclosure to brand guidelines or in-store packs, we can help you develop content that’s clear, accurate and substantiated.

Book a chat with one of our partners to explore how we might help you – there’s no obligation!

Schedule a free 30-minute consultation

By Dominic Tantram Terrafiniti

But we’ve also heard increasing warnings from scientists about the future harms of alcohol and in the light of the landmark deal agreed at the recent COP (Committee of the Publicans – held down the Dog and Duck), to transition away from a dependence upon alcohol, it’s very clear that we must reduce our alcohol use (as per the recent agreement use reduction is preferred over consumption reduction) – and set a reduction pathway towards Net Zero Alcohol.

Zero Alcohol Future?

An absolute zero-alcohol future is not realistic – especially in some high-alcohol (hard to abate) households – but it is possible to imagine a net-zero/low-alcohol future based upon partnership and collaboration.

So, we’re pleased to announce our household target for Net Zero Alcohol by 2050 (Net Zero Alcohol). This is sufficiently far in the future to be tolerable and realistic – but crucially also includes the upcoming Christmas celebrations – so rest assured they’re safely covered.

To ensure a smooth transition it’s essential not to squander any good opportunities for a booze up, so our calculations do predict an overall growth in consumption by 2050. However, we’re confident our strategy will deliver, when considered in an appropriately wide context, a significant lowering in alcohol intensity over this period – even if overall consumption increases for decades.

The truth about consumption?

Scientists will have you believe that decreasing overall alcohol consumption is fundamental to a Net Zero Alcohol future. But we believe that it is overall alcohol intensity which is the true measure of success, especially as we aspire to a projected increase in overall drinking activity in the run-up to this Christmas, to 2050 – and to be honest beyond.

USE OF STANDARDS

We are committed to the use of standards, so all alcohol consumption footprints will be accounted for using the Household Alcohol Protocol Lowering Ethanol Safely System (HAPLESS) – developed by the Global Wine Alliance, World Beer Council, and World Wide Fund for Liquor.

STANDARD UNITS

Not to be confused with ‘Units of Alcohol’ which were developed by so-called experts and which we believe have largely been accepted as a hoax, the HAPLESS Protocol recognises that different types of alcohol can force inebriation so the standard unit for accounting purposes is EtOHe (Ethanol equivalents). This has the twin added benefits of looking suitably technical/scientific and being hard to understand.

UNDERSTANDING ALCOHOL CONSUMPTION SCOPES

Scope 1 – alcohol opened and consumed directly in the household.

Scope 2 – alcohol accessed or consumed indirectly in the household – i.e., brought round by friends, consumed via food, or accidentally.

Scope 3 – alcohol/drinks originating outside the household – i.e., pub, parties, events, etc. (Includes fugitive consumption too).

Strategic framework to realise our vision

Our Net Zero Alcohol goal will not be easy to reach but we believe it can be achieved if you all try hard enough – so we have developed a high ambition scenario (see figure below).

We have a clear strategic goal (in our household at least) and multiple solution pathways to achieving it through:

• Inter-Household Leadership
• Delivery in Partnership
• Maximisation of Opportunities.

To deliver our goal we have identified a strategic framework which will flexibly deploy multiple policy solutions, as appropriate, to realise our vision. So why not pour a glass of your favourite tipple, sit down, and take a read.

Zero Alcohol Drinks

Focusing on low and zero-alcohol drinks, while it’s currently unclear whether we actually like drinking them, we’ll rapidly (after Christmas or perhaps the next one) conduct a review of options and feasibility for these technologies.

Systems Efficiencies & Transition

We realise consumption takes place within the context of a wider system – so we have factored in the actions of others to help us deliver our targets. Our calculations suggest that if we count the alcohol not consumed by the children, the baby and the cat – significant savings can be made. Multiplied by the next (combined) 29 years before they collectively reach 18, we’re also confidently assuming that we can influence them to not consume any alcohol in the future.

After all, it’s our party and we can drink if we want to – but the kids are developing and need to embrace their new Net Zero Alcohol future. Frankly (and hard decisions must be made) they just need to suck it up (or not…).

Our innovations initiative has also innovated!

This means we’re going to drink everything through a straw (where feasible) as studies have shown this can significantly increase the efficiency of consumption. Given sustainability concerns over single-use plastics we’re going to prioritise using green straws – although pragmatically other colours can be used ‘in transition’.

Our strategy prioritises the use of green straws to increase consumption efficiency and reduce local T&D (Transport & Distribution) losses.

Removals & Teetotal Credits (TM)

Against the background of projected increased consumption, permanent removals from the system are also necessary. We want to go beyond offsets so have taken the opportunity to include in our calculations the alcohol not drunk by our new teetotal neighbours. Assuming they continue to live next door for 26 years this will make a considerable contribution to our shared Net Zero Alcohol future, especially if they have a large family and all manage to stay on the wagon.

But there is an opportunity to go even further. We believe that there are great opportunities in the ‘Teetotal Credits’ market – for us to create Certified Teetotal Credits^TM (CTCs), based upon signed commitments for lifelong abstinence from individuals and wider communities.

This is not a new idea; abstinence pledges have a long and extremely successful history of guaranteeing the lifelong avoidance of alcohol. We plan to take this success to the next level through the creation of a market for Certified Teetotal Credits, providing much-needed capacity within the global system to balance entirely necessary/unavoidable alcohol consumption with the need for a Net Zero Alcohol future as well as essential capital for investments.

Abatement outside household

We’re proud of this initiative. We predict that the future outstanding success of the dry January Programme 2026-2050 means we can project reduced average totalised consumption in our neighbourhood by 189%! This achievement is reflected in our target planning.

Our strategic backstop – Genie in a Lamp

The pillars of our strategy are solid, and will definitely (probably), maybe deliver our ambitious goal. But just in case we stray from our target for a Net Zero Alcohol future, we will deploy our secret weapon, a Genie In A Lamp (GIAL).

Genies in lamps are a technology with a documented history of granting impossible and implausible wishes.

We also believe that they are scalable too, as genies are ALL powerful.

Our R&D intends to ensure that we have access to GIAL by searching all likely caves for hidden treasure hoards that may contain dusty lamps in need of a polish.

Once we have GIAL in-house, we will implement immediate genie activation and initiate the proven 3 wishes mode. The first two wishes will be specifically tailored to fill any gaps in the deployment of our strategic Net Zero Alcohol policies. However, the final wish is clear, we will wish that we didn’t have to do this in the first place.

Conclusion

We will use our high-ambition scenario to set an in-household EtOHe consumption reduction trajectory for our house from 2025 to 2050. We believe that setting an in-house trajectory provides clear messaging on the need for progress from the street, as well as clarity on the capacity required to meet Net Zero Alcohol – though we do recognise that at times double vision may occur.

We are confident that others will come on board to embrace this bright new future – cheers!

NOTES

1. While we have had Scope 1 and 2 domestic reduction targets for several years, we have realised this is not enough. Challenges have included getting all stakeholders on board (i.e., spouses and significant others) and the complexities of dealing with Scope 3 consumption.
2. Territorial versus absolute consumption – The Net Zero Alcohol Strategy ignores omits alcohol imports from other locations and territories. These may be significant – but once we’ve had a few we’re not really that bothered to be honest.
3. As consumption is very complex to calculate and attribute, we follow the HAPLESS Protocol methodology (see above) and therefore targets are based upon volume consumed using the economic (spend data) method – but don’t worry if you didn’t get a receipt…
4. Alcohol is supplied in metric SI units but often consumed in imperial pints. To ensure comparability of data, all volumes are converted to pints. In the case of wine (bottle not case – keep up) as 750ml falls between 1 and 2 full pints, this is typically rounded down to 1 pint.
5. T&D losses – transmission and distribution losses are to be included in Scope 2 calculations where possible or forgotten about if consumption intensity is too high.

FOOTNOTES

* Satire alert.

This is of course satirical and should not be taken seriously under any circumstances **.

** No, really.

*** Any resemblance to actual strategies, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

SERIOUS NOTES

Alcohol is of course enjoyed by many but can also be very damaging to health and wellbeing at the personal and wider social level. Our intention is to satirise attitudes to fossil fuel addiction and wish-based Net Zero Strategies, and not in any way to downplay the very real harm to individuals and society that alcohol consumption can give rise to.

By Dominic Tantram Terrafiniti

The Virgin Atlantic Boeing 787 from London to New York is reportedly using two types of SAF (Sustainable Air Fuel).

88% is based upon waste fats.

12% from US corn waste.

SAF offers an ostensibly attractive path for decarbonisation for the airline industry – the lifecycle greenhouse emissions can be up to 70% lower than conventional fossil-based fuels.

Does SAF offer a flight path to sustainability?

While this in many ways represents a significant breakthrough (SAF is currently perhaps 0.1% of global aviation fuel use) there are major challenges ahead.

The UK Government’s Jet Zero Strategy places a significant reliance upon SAF as a viable route to decarbonisation – and one that might broadly support business as usual in the sector.

However, SAF, whilst having a reduced impact on climate, is not carbon-free and currently, there are insufficient feedstocks to meet anticipated production demands.

In February 2023, the Royal Society published a report (Net zero aviation fuels: resource requirements and environmental impacts) which warned that there is no feasible sustainable alternative that would support flying at current levels.

The report is worth a read, to summarise (hugely) it suggested that for the main SAF types, the following challenges exist:

• Biofuels (from crops and waste) – Energy crops would require 50% of the UK’s agricultural land. In addition, there can be competition for waste feedstocks.
• Hydrogen – Producing enough green hydrogen would need 2.4 – 3.4 times the UK’s annual renewable electricity capacity.
• Ammonia – Producing enough green ammonia would need 2.5 – 3.9 times the UK’s annual renewable electricity capacity.
• Synthetic fuels – if produced with renewable energy would need 5 – 8 times the UK’s annual renewable electricity capacity.

There remains huge uncertainty over the viability of Jet Zero targets and whether today’s achievements mark the early steps towards less damaging flying or an interesting footnote for a flight path with an unsustainable destination.

By Dominic Tantram Terrafiniti