4-Step Guide to Building a Successful Corporate Sustainability Program

4 Steps to achieving your Corporate Sustainability Goals 

Corporate sustainability is a critical aspect of modern business that has become increasingly important in recent years. With growing concerns over the environment, companies are finding new ways to reduce their carbon footprint and minimize the impact they have on the environment. In this 4-step guide, we will show you how to implement a successful corporate sustainability program, including calculating your carbon footprint, building a credible plan and tracking progress.

1. Set a Target for reduced Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions

Setting emissions reduction targets is a crucial step in communicating your organization's commitment to sustainability, climate change, and ESG performance. These targets serve as clear and measurable goals that help align your company's sustainability strategy with operational efforts to reduce its environmental impact.

The process of setting an emissions target involves establishing a baseline year and developing a trajectory to reduce emissions over time to reach the target year's goal. It's essential to follow established carbon accounting and sustainability measurement standards while tracking and calculating carbon equivalents (CO2-e) and accounting for reductions.

2. Calculate your Corporate Carbon Footprint

The corporate carbon footprint encompasses all the direct and indirect emissions produced by the organization. To calculate this, it's necessary to comprehensively record and analyze the company's emissions within well-defined system boundaries. This involves calculating emissions based on available data such as consumption figures (e.g., annual electricity consumption, annual fleet mileage) and assigning them to various organizational units (e.g., headquarters, production sites, external service providers),processes, products, and services. By doing so, companies can get a clearpicture of their environmental impact and identify areas where emissions can be reduced.

The foundation for carbon footprint calculations is the international ISO 14064 standard, while the three scopes of the GHG Protocol are used to make distinctions between different emissions sources:

3. Build and Execute on a Credible Transition Plan

Once you set your target and understand your baseline, the nextstep is to create a credible transition plan, which is a strategic, time-bound action plan of the initiatives and activities required to meet the publicly announced target.

This should include an assessment of all areas for improvement identified by key staff and include a ranking process based on impact to goals.

Be willing to transform every part of the business-operations, supply chains, talent, IT, and beyond. Things to consider in the process are:

• Effectively communicate the anticipated level of engagement to stakeholders
• Build a strong governance process that creates accountability and clear ownership of initiatives
• Manage risks that may include both physical and reputational and how those risks might affect the business overall

4. Report on Progress

Once you've defined your credible plan, the next step is reporting on the progress towards the original goal. By effectively reporting on initiative progress , organizations can demonstrate their commitment to sustainability, engage with stakeholders, and drive continuous improvement towards their carbon reduction goal. In order to do this effectively, companies must regularly gather and analyze data on the initiatives, present the data in a clear and concise manner that highlights both successes and areas for improvement, and continuously review and improve the ESG reporting processes to ensure accuracy, transparency, and relevance.

Amplify supports organizations across all steps of their sustainability journey, driving market confidence and strong industry ratings. For case studies of how we have helped companies in your industry, please contact sales@amplify-now.com.