Every journey has a start point. And there’s nothing quite so important as taking that first step upon it. But before we do leave the Shire and embark on an adventure untold of sustainable development, it’ll be wise to gain a better understanding of the current state of your business operations.

The following five-step process – as laid out in the Products of Change Sustainability Framework – will help you frame just that.

STEP ONE – THE FOUNDATION

The first step for any business right at the start of its journey of sustainable development is to create its Green Team. To have the best shot at forming a comprehensive and equitable ESG strategy, you’re going to want to create that team with a cross-department representation.

This will help you start to:

• Transfer sustainable knowledge and gain visibility of current achievements and ambitions already achieved and set across the business.

• Build a set of short, mid, and long-term goals for the business and determine your responsibility within this.

“We’ve found it really beneficial to bring each different department of the business into the conversation as it provides a think tank allowing us to target what’s important to us as a company while encouraging sustainability to become a part of the company culture,” said Claire Bates, marketing manager at Danilo, an early adopter of sustainability in the licensed greetings sector and founding member of the Products of Change community.

STEP TWO – REVIEW

Once you have established the ambitions and sustainability metrics for your business, you can begin to review how you are working with your partnership base to align to them. Perhaps ask yourself: Do our current agreements promote unsustainable business practices which impact on the environment?

Two key questions at this point can start to make big differences to the combined strategy between you and your partner:

• Have you set clear expectations of your requirements and are they reflected in your partnership agreement? (Even if through third party certifications like FSC or BCI).

• If you audit your partners, have you requested visibility on the environmental as well as social impact? Do you, for instance, require SEDEX approval?

STEP THREE – DEEPEN YOUR KNOWLEDGE

OK, you’ve got so far, but it’s time to improve your knowledge on the hotspots within your business. This will give you the best idea on where to start. Understanding these hotspots will enable you to identify where you need to gain more knowledge.

Why don’t you think about:

• Where do you and the team/business need to gain additional knowledge or education to support your journey?

• Looking at your business, what product or service has the biggest impact on environmental measures?

• Finding the ‘quick wins’ to be had through easy to implement initiatives, particularly where it is evident those quick wins are likely to be consistent with all future plans.

• Identifying the key parts of your value chain which help you achieve the easy wins to drive positive impact.

And this last point is a salient one. To integrate sustainability into your business practice, you should make use of what you have in your arsenal first. Is it easy to switch to renewable energy across your operations? Can you influence partners to do the same?

Let’s have an EXAMPLE of Short, Mid, and Long Term plans here.

Short Term:

In the short term, you could ask some basic questions to get a basic understanding of the carbon impact of some of your higher-impact partners.

Mid Term:

Can you track Scope 1 and 2 (emissions from direct operations or operations you can directly or indirectly control – e.g. the electricity you purchase) before tackling Scope 3, where the majority of the environmental impact sits?

You should make use of the existing environmental impact protocols or assortment tools such as the Carbon Disclosure Project or Science-Based Targets initiative, to gain visibility and gain a transparent plan for improvement.

Long Term: 

Partner with globally-recognised methodologies to plan your improvement potentials and build measures for your full value chain in order to track and monitor the progress you want to achieve.

STEP FOUR – ENGAGEMENT

Right, it’s inevitable you will not immediately have answers available for all the impact areas you’re assessing right away, neither will you for all your products and materials or activities across all your partner, licensees, and suppliers.

Don’t let this be a barrier to your progress.

Simply begin with what you do have. Log any gaps in data, knowledge, capability, or reporting in a prioritised building plan. This will help you put that plan in order by which you seek to fill the gaps and identify the actions to do so

STEP 5 – TIMELINE FOR TRANSITION

We won’t be getting anywhere unless we put some deadlines in place, and with the ultimate deadline of 2030 looming, we’d best get ourselves into gear and layout a timeline for transitioning our businesses.

Using the Products of Change Industry Framework

The Products of Change Industry Framework has been billed as a “game-changing” resource developed by the industry for the industry offering a step-by-step guide to transitioning the $340bn global licensing industry towards a more sustainable and positive future.

“This framework will be a great resource for any company, no matter where they are on their sustainability journey,” said Danilo’s Claire Bates. “The creation of useful resources such as this will also help Products of Change continue its great work of educating and driving sustainable change.”

The Industry Framework is available to download here.

The Framework has been launched to be used in tandem with the educational content Products of Change provides through the Education portal as well as its library of content across On Demand video and podcasts. Products of Change members, make use of the resources available to you via the Members Hub and remember to share your progress with the POC community as you take on the journey of sustainable development.