Get actions committed & financed to resolve the action gap

Yesterday we spoke about carbon accounting, which solve 25 % of the sustainability transition. It's a great start, but with new regulations and pressure from investors, NGOs, customers and consumers organisations need to act. That's hard when you have 100's of choices and priorities and many competing against each other.

Solving the remaining 75% of sustainability challenges to operationalize sustainability across an organization involves adopting a comprehensive and integrated data-driven approach.

Here are key steps and strategies to address these broader sustainability issues:

1. Establish Clear Sustainability Goals: Define clear, measurable, and achievable sustainability goals that encompass environmental, social, and economic dimensions. Ensure that these goals align with your organization's mission and values. Make sure they are gathered in one place and everyone has access to the goals.
2. Engage Leadership and Stakeholders: Obtain buy-in from top leadership and engage stakeholders at all levels of the organization. Sustainability efforts require commitment and support from senior leadership to be successful. Translate complex data to easy visualised impact and translate the impact into business language - customer impact, consumer engagement or external stakeholder pressure.
3. Integrate Sustainability into Strategy: Embed sustainability into your organization's overall business strategy. This means considering sustainability at every level of decision-making, from product design to supply chain management to marketing and sales. Bring everyone together, and make them own the projects.
4. Assess and Prioritize Sustainability Risks and Opportunities: Conduct a comprehensive sustainability risk assessment to identify areas where your organization can make the most significant positive impact and where it is most vulnerable to sustainability-related risks.
5. Implement Sustainable Supply Chain Practices: Evaluate and improve the sustainability of your supply chain, including ethical sourcing, responsible procurement, waste reduction, and logistics optimization.
6. Focus on Circular Economy Practices: Embrace circular economy principles, which emphasize resource efficiency, product design for longevity, and the reduction of waste through practices like recycling and reusing.
7. Enhance Employee Engagement: Engage employees in sustainability initiatives, educate them about the organization's goals, and empower them to contribute to sustainability efforts through their work. Let everyone focus on their targets, but embed sustainability in their actions with data and  integration across.
8. Transparent Reporting and Communication: Publish regular actionable sustainability reports which show achievements and future gaps, that provide transparent information about your organization's performance across various sustainability indicators. Effective communication builds trust with stakeholders.
9. Invest in Innovation: Foster innovation that promotes sustainability. Encourage research and development efforts that lead to eco-friendly products, processes, and technologies. Bring in ideas of solutions which have a clear calculation on ROI to the business, could be longer then 2 years, but make a real business case and show the impact if not  investing  in new innovations, ie losing competitiveness, customers and consumer trust.
10. Compliance with Standards and Certifications: Comply with relevant sustainability standards and certifications, such as ISO 14001 (environmental management) or Fair Trade (ethical sourcing). These frameworks provide guidelines and benchmarks for sustainability performance. Here is social impact which can be translated into financials important and project your future actions on the cost of community if not acting.
11. Collaboration and Partnerships: Collaborate with industry peers, NGOs, government agencies, and other stakeholders to address common sustainability challenges collectively. Partnerships can lead to shared solutions and resources.
12. Measure and Monitor Progress: Continuously monitor, track and assess your sustainability performance using key performance indicators (KPIs) related to carbon emissions, waste reduction, social impact, etc. Regularly review progress and adjust strategies as needed.
13. Incentives and Recognition: Create incentives and recognition programs to reward employees and teams for their contributions to sustainability goals. Recognition can inspire further engagement.
14. Investor Relations: Engage with investors who prioritize sustainability and ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) factors. Many investors are increasingly considering sustainability performance when making investment decisions.
15. Adapt to Changing Regulations: Stay informed about evolving sustainability regulations and adapt your practices accordingly to ensure compliance and mitigate risks. The new CSRD  regulations are enforcing companies to operate differently, forward looking, integrated with financials and showing on granular level which project will help to reduce the impact. It's time to own the transition.
16. Continuous Improvement: Sustainability is an ongoing journey. Continuously seek opportunities for improvement, learn from successes and failures, and adapt to changing circumstances. That's easier when all transition elements are gathered in one platform.

Unibloom address those challenges and needs, by integrating actionable sustainability and financials into one predictive and collaborative platform across people, planet & profit. This help the sustainability team and cross-functional operations to allocate right resources and financial to make hit both sustainability and financial goals at higher speed.

By addressing these aspects and integrating sustainability across the entire organization, you can tackle the remaining 75% of sustainability challenges and create a more sustainable, responsible, and resilient business model. Decisions can be made with confidence and optimised across both business and impact to hit your science based 2030 targets.

Curios to learn more? anna.sandgren@unibloom.world