Join SPRG – the business sustainability group for professionals

Virginie Coulloudon

Executive Director | Your Public Value, Berlin on how Public Value is emerging as a driving force in corporate purpose across Europe and beyond. 

Emma Burlow

Director & Head of Circular Economy | Resource Futures, Bristol on the challenges of developing the Circular Economy and practical examples of the approach in action.

Rosisin Reynolds

Managing Director | Ivydale Coaching, Singapore on Moral Hazard in the Time of Coronavirus -  why mitigating the impact of the pandemic in developing countries should be a priority.

Jono Ayton

Senior Sustainable Development Manager | Willmott Dixon, UK on Willmott Dixon’s ambitious new sustainability strategy - 'Now or Never' - focusing on driving fundamental business transformation in the context of sustainability challenges.

Carbon Tunnel vision? keeping an eye on ALL that’s important | 20th April 2023

Carbon and Net Zero seem to dominate current sustainability / ESG discourse. But of course, while carbon is vitally important, we also need to ensure that other critical issues are not ignored and that unintended consequences in other areas are avoided or minimised.

Sustainability/ESG can be complex, and that complexity can represent an obstacle to progress. So people try and simplify.

In previous years we’ve seen sustainability simplified to just ‘environment’, then to maybe it’s just the SDGs – are we now seeing the same with carbon?

Global heating and climate change represent a major global threat to lives, livelihoods and prosperity. And now, perhaps perilously late, there are signs of wider public and government acceptance and engagement, even if action still lacks the urgency required. The March 20th IPCC report is clear and stark with its message.

Focus on carbon management and reduction is now widespread, featuring in legislation and organisational policies. If you want to sell to the public sector or large businesses, you now need a coherent position on carbon and associated targets – at least at the planning and early commitment stages.

However, we must not lose sight of ALL the issues important for your company. Carbon may not be material to your company – other than as an expectation. Other risks and dependencies might be as or more important to your ability to operate and thrive as a company.

In this meeting we explored ‘Carbon Tunnel Vision’ and asked:

• Does a focus on carbon-related activity and requirements dominate your approach or efforts?
• Is carbon a significant impact from your company?
• What else is important?

Sustainable transition - waiting for the underpants gnomes - are your plans plausible? | 9th March 2023

Climate, nature, water, food, energy, toxics and other challenges are driving the need for sustainable transition.

Increased awareness and urgency mean that companies are talking more than ever before about their sustainability ambitions – whether prompted by investors, regulators, customers or the desire to be seen to be doing good.

Net Zero ambitions are the most common – but plans for a whole range of changes needed for sustainability can be found. Many require complex and/or dramatic changes in the way we produce, manufacture and move goods.

In this session we asked:

• How plausible or credible are plans?
• To what extent is it realistic to rely on things that are unproven or yet to be built/scaled-up? (underpants gnomes)
• Given uncertainties, what are the elements of best practice?

What are the obstacles to sustainability in your business? | 9th February 2023

Being an effective sustainability professional is rarely straightforward. It can often feel like a daunting task, just when you’ve fixed one thing another obstacle pops up.

Typical obstacles can include finding answers to technical issues, but more often relate to people and/or organisational issues. Behavioural, mindset or ‘political’ challenges are more complex and less likely to be fixed quickly or neatly.

In this meeting we:

• Discovered some of the key obstacles we’ve seen sustainability professionals face in turning their plans into practice,
• Shared how and why different obstacles arise, and;
• Explored solutions and tactics for achieving successful sustainability results.

Sustainable business challenges | 12th January 2022

What really needs our attention in 2023?

In the last couple of years, we’ve seen dramatic changes that both drive and challenge companies’ sustainability – and yet further headwinds are emerging.

In this session, we looked at what might be the most significant trends and challenges for the New Year, including:

• Global risks
• Inflationary pressures, cost of living and the implications for sustainability
• Energy pricing and security
• Geopolitical pressures and how this might affect supply chains
• Regulatory trends and what’s emerging
• Climate and nature – the need for greater disclosure and action

Adventures in Greenwashing | 8th December 2022

Greenwashing – the practice of making claims about the environmental characteristics or performance of a product, process or institution - without legitimate proof - is on the rise.

It’s also a topic that is on the agenda of regulators in the UK and around the world, with some sectors, such as fashion, becoming specifically scrutinised by the UK Competition & Markets Authority (CMA).

But just what is greenwash? How can we spot it and what should bear in mind to make sure we avoid it?

Sustainable Communication | 10th November 2022

Communicating sustainability/ESG is an essential part of best practice – but it’s not always done well.

In fact, it’s often characterised by poor, incomplete or misleading messages, and we’re all familiar with some of the worst excesses taking the form of greenwashing.

In this session, we explored some of the main issues in producing sustainability communications for engagement and disclosure.

Sustainable Value Creation | 13th October 2022

Terrafiniti’s Joss Tantram and Dominic Tantram led this SPRG session to explore best practices for sustainable value creation for businesses. Joined by sustainability professionals from diverse organisations across the UK, Europe and US participants explored:

• How sustainability relates to the major dimensions of business value
• How other companies understand and communicate this relationship
• Personal experience of where organisations have found value.

We’ve distilled the key topics and take-outs for creating sustainable business value into a concise summary which you can download here:

Summary | Sustainable Value Creation

Net Zero | 8th September 2022

In this meeting we looked for greater insight into companies’ Net Zero approaches, the challenges encountered, obstacles that need to be overcome and opportunities that arise.

We were delighted to welcome two guest speakers who talked about their experiences and shared what they’ve learned.

Christopher Thomas will provided a US perspective drawing upon his work with Oxy, outline Gates Corporation’s programmes and talked about transitions within the energy industry.

Jono Ayton talked about his work in the construction industry with Willmott Dixon, and how Net Zero is an integral part of their new strategy.

Sustainable Business Culture | 14th July 2022

As Peter Drucker once famously noted “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”.

Drucker perfectly illustrates the challenge that many of us interested in evolving business performance must wrestle with. Change happens not just because we have a plan, but because there is also fertile ground to support and drive that plan.

If you want to do things differently then you have to concentrate not just on the what of sustainable business, but on the why and how. The concept of business culture is often misunderstood and hard to describe. It can be easily dismissed as difficult to define and even more difficult to change. But if business culture can be strong enough to eat your strategy, then there is little point in spending time and effort on developing a new direction if you don’t pay equal, if not greater, attention to culture.

Net Zero | 9th June 2022

Rising to the challenge of climate change is the single greatest task facing society and business this century.

Increasingly urgent warnings from the IPCC underline the importance of rapid and dramatic action.

As the agenda receives greater attention, we increasingly see businesses talking about Net-Zero carbon. The more meaningful responses include public declarations about their intentions and clear and transparent targets.

But the landscape is unclear. Net Zero is confusing and complicated, terms are not well defined and there are few standards.

Sustainability and Competitive Strategy | 12th May 2022

Increasing requirements to disclose sustainability performance, together a greater focus upon greenwashing, mean that alignment between core business, market positioning and sustainability can no longer be avoided.

Putting sustainability at the heart of your company’s commercial proposition is an essential part of developing and embedding sustainability and creating long-term value.

Doughnut Economics and Enterprise Design | 14th April 2022

Doughnut Economics aims to set a new compass for human prosperity, but what does it mean for business?

A thriving economy needs businesses that have regenerative and distributive practices and impacts in the world. To achieve this, Doughnut Economics Action Lab is focusing on ways to promote ideas of enterprise design that can unlock and enable these practices, support leadership in their commitment to sustainability and secure the businesses purpose over the long-term. This session will provide an overview of Doughnut Economics and explore ways businesses can reflect on their own design in line with the ideas of Doughnut Economics, including through their purpose, how they're networked and governed, and crucially how they are owned and financed.

Priorities and Goals for 2022 | 9th December 2021

At this time of year, it’s common to take stock and think of what you want to achieve in the coming year.

But while it’s traditional to make often vague and unsupported personal resolutions we know that SPRG members take a super professional approach at work and that clear goals are a vital part of sustainability best practice. What does that mean for you in 2022?

What are your major sustainability barriers? | 11th November 2021 

Typical barriers include finding answers to technical issues (perhaps how do I calculate Scope 3 emissions or select lower risk suppliers) but more often relate to people and/or organisational issues – and behavioural / mindset-related challenges are more complex and less likely to be fixed quickly or neatly. What does that mean for you in 2022?

Can standards deliver a sustainable world? | 14th October 2021 

Standards are a key tool in sustainability management – but just how effective are they for delivering the change we need?

Standards are developed for two main reasons: 1. To follow established or emerging practice - because something is already happening, and it is considered mainstream enough to be codified into standard practice; 2. To lead and drive change - because something is not happening that people think ought to happen and therefore a standard is developed to encourage it. But just how effective are standards in driving the change we need, and can a standard ever be an effective proxy for trust? Will it be consensus-based standards that drive change, or individual leadership and innovation which is always, ultimately going to change the world?

Minimum consensus - do we have to agree about everything to get stuff done? | 9th September 2021

Humans appear hard-wired to disagree with each other.

We have evolved to look for differences, to spot people not from our ‘tribes’ or those whose appearance, behaviours or opinions are different to what we know and think we can trust.

In addition, finding points of disagreement can often be a way of demonstrating our insight and expertise, polishing our own egos at the expense of constructive change.

But how useful is this when we need coordination and shared focus to tackle the big, complex challenges of sustainability?

In this session, we explored how to identify just how little we might need to agree on in order to get stuff done.

Is 2021 the year that materiality comes of age?| 13th May 2021

Materiality is the key difference between a weak sustainability strategy/approach, and one based on logic and planning. But is 2021 the year that materiality takes a front seat?

Maybe, but probably not – because while the concept is simple, it’s so often misunderstood.

Blackrock Chairman, Larry Fink, has been pushing the need for directional change for several years now, but so far it’s failed to bridge the yawning gap between intention and company performance.

So what’s the problem?

For most companies, materiality tends to reside in the realm of reporting, rather than in demonstrating how their strategies address material issues. Yet investors are incredibly interested in material issues, in order to identify the current limits on enterprise value creation caused by impacts upon:

• Stakeholders
• The environment
• Society

Ethics - What’s the moral dimension of your business case? | 15th April 2021

There’s an ethical vacuum within the sustainability landscape primed for businesses to occupy. With this in mind, is it time to look a little deeper at the moral aspects behind your activities? We’ve seen corporate sustainability evolve and mature over the past two decades. Where there was once just a loose focus on ‘doing the right thing’, we’ve now moved towards a more concrete business case, with activities that relate to measurable, instrumental aspects, such as reduced waste, efficiencies, added value, reduced risks and financial out-performance.

But what about ethics? - of course sustainability has always had a strong ethical dimension at heart, including legacy, equity and equality – but we’re still facing an environmental crisis, along with a crisis in trust towards businesses.

Sustainability and business value | 11th March 2021

It’s 2021 are people still looking at the business case for sustainability?

There is no single business case. But there will be one for every business. It’s a key component for moving forward in some form, whether it’s explicitly formalised or takes the form of persuading key decision-makers to engage with the agenda.

Sustainability is an increasingly explicit element of how people judge and define their relationships towards companies, notably through perceptions of risk. In many sectors it’s also clear that more sustainable companies are financially outperforming others.

You might not need a formal business case, but you need clarity on how sustainability contributes to business value to align action and strengthen strategy.

Towards 9 Billion | 28th January 2021

There’s a recognition that a great transition is needed. But what ideas do we need to make it happen?

The seeds of hope and of rejuvenation lie all around us.

Terrafiniti’s Towards 9 Billion is a positive vision for a sustainable future, a future based upon abundance, vitality and balanced economic relationships.

• What if we could welcome rather than fear the arrival of the coming billions of inhabitants to this planet?
• What opportunities would this provide for markets, businesses and citizens?
• What would be the central elements of transformation and how might we build a system that works for all?

Common Good and Profit: Public Value Principles for Sustainable Business | 14th January 2021

After nine months of dialogue and co-creation with 124 European experts in sustainability and good governance, the Berlin-based NGO Your Public Value has launched nine Public Value Principles© for Sustainable Business.

This initiative is an attempt to shape consensus around agreed principles -not KPIs or standards! - to define modern accountability and place sustainability at the core of business strategies. Virginie and Maria will present these principles before we open for a discussion on sustainability and modern governance.

Who chooses sustainability? | 10th December 2020

Ben Jeffery | Refresco Beverages UK Sustainability is about doing things differently or doing very different things. And that means making choices, often different choices to those made in the past. But who should be making them?

Where should the buck stop and how do we deliver sustainable outcomes? Drawing upon his experience working on the front line in different companies, Ben talked about the role of consumer freedom, choices and environmental impact.

Strategy Development | 26th November 2020

Jono Ayton | Willmott Dixon, UK Jono talked us through Willmott Dixon’s ambitious new sustainability strategy - 'Now or Never' - focusing on driving fundamental business transformation in the context of sustainability challenges.

Next Big Risks? | 12th November 2020

What are the next big risks with sustainability aspects?

In this session we looked at how we assess what's important and explored:

• What risks are on your mind?
• Is there a gap between perception & ‘reality’?
• How much ‘data’ are needed to drive risk assessments?

Riding the Tiger | 22nd October 2020

Those of us who have been working in sustainability for longer than we may wish to dwell upon will be familiar with operating against the tide. Sustainability was a minority activity without broad popular support.

This is now very much changed and now supports arguments relating to market values and building a commercial business case. As sustainability practitioners how do we navigate these turbulent waters, how do we ride the tiger of public sentiment – and what if we need to get off?

Sustainability Myths | 8th October 2020

Every industry has its myths. Sometimes these are harmless, but more often they can undermine understanding and slow progress...

To what extent do they hold back efforts in sustainability?