From Intention to Action - Friday in Five from Unibloom

July 12, 2024

Fresh off the back of the Unibloom team away day at a regenerative farm in Hertfordshire (that’s a few of us next to the sheep in the pic), welcome to our bi-weekly newsletter where we intend to inspire you with real life business action on climate, biodiversity, nature, circularity and social justice through the lens of driving business value.  Coming to you every other Friday, we want to celebrate the wins, draw attention to the challenges and occasionally even mythbust and we guarantee to do it in under five minutes.

Summary

• Over 3% carbon reduction from poultry feed enzyme
• SBTi sees 102% growth in target setting
• New analysis shows that credibility of net zero goals has declined
• Nordic businesses with strong emissions reporting show better stock market performance

What are we hearing this week - Supplier engagement continues to challenge teams we’re speaking to, and particularly from a data sharing perspective.  Developing supply chain solutions without this level of clarity and transparency makes it very difficult to innovate.  You need to get out of the spreadsheets and into collaboration!

What’s getting us excited this week - carbon efficiency in chicken feed

A new study has shown that incorporating a feed enzyme into broiler chicken’s diets can reduce their carbon footprint by up to 3.3%. Elanco’s hemicell XT enzyme breaks down performance-impacting compounds, or β-mannans, which results in a reduction in wasted energy and enhances intestinal integrity. In turn, this reduces feed costs and improves animal health and product sustainability.  Feed changes have the potential to drive significant change in the final carbon footprint of the product, with over 70% of the carbon footprint of poultry coming from feed.

Future Fit - Science Based Targets growth

SBTi has recently announced their 2023 monitoring report which looks at the growth in businesses making science based commitments.  Despite a seemingly widespread media narrative that businesses are stepping back from social and environmental commitments, SBTi has seen a 102% growth year on year, with the highest growth in Asia.  ‘Companies with validated science-based targets or commitments to set targets reached 39% penetration of global market cap in 2023’ This is a significant achievement for SBTi and also included a large growth in SMEs setting targets.  We are seeing more and more trade associations and member networks, for example, such as the Watch and Jewellery Initiative 2030 requiring members to set science based targets and this can only be a good thing to drive progress.

Credible action plans - Falling behind on net zero

On the other side of the coin from the positivity we have seen with the growth in SBTi target setting is a new 2024 ESG analyst survey from Fidelity International which shows that more and more companies are falling behind their efforts to achieve net zero by 2050. The survey finds that 43% of companies have credible net zero goals for 2050, in comparison to 57% from last year. The report highlights three unsurprising factors that will spur improvement in a company's environmental practices: regulation, government support, and shareholder action. The need for credible action plans has never been greater and as businesses move beyond the low hanging fruit they will need to engage a wider range of stakeholders and business units to deliver these robust plans.

Making the finances work - Emissions reporting and stock performance

A new report on CSRD readiness and stock performance in the Nordics has shown that ‘Companies with thorough emission reporting currently outperform in the stock market, yielding a 28% higher return over 12 months.’  Although the report doesn’t go as far as to suggest definitive reasons but does cite a NYU / Stern report that demonstrated that ‘sustainability initiatives drive better financial performance through improved risk management and innovation.’

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This is Unibloom's way to support you and your teams to look ahead, plan and prioritise the right actions towards your business and climate targets. We believe that we need a much more collaborative and data-driven approach to achieve the level of transformation all our businesses need to achieve to align with the science, and to grow up to 2030 and beyond.  If you have subjects or issues that you would like us to cover please do leave a comment below and / or get in touch with us in the link above

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