FEATURE AN END TO GREENWASHING
How can marrying the power of data and passion help to deliver on environmental, social and corporate governance, asks Samsic.
Companies across all sectors talk about being ‘green' and ‘sustainable’ but with the requirements of day-to- day operations taking priority, it can become all too easy for this to become no more than lip service and for truly sustainable activity to be pushed to the back of the queue.
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a widely used term and most company websites will contain references to policies and practices in this area. More recently, however, environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) has started to take over, implying an approach to business which goes beyond just sustainability, however this may be defined.
Many, including business leaders and environmental experts, still use these terms interchangeably. This is logical to a point, as both share the same goal of improving a company's business practices in order to boost profits and win favour from investors, customers, regulators, and other stakeholders.
But there are marked differences in the two beyond that.
Andrew Bryan, Safety, Health, Environmental and Quality Director, leads on ESG for Samsic UK. He said: “CSR and ESG share many similarities, but there is a key distinction. CSR is quite vague, and can mean different things to different companies – and even to different individuals within those companies.
“ESG, however, is specific and measurable, providing a specific set of criteria in each of the three areas of environmental, social and governance against which companies can measure and report. It is also worth remembering that CSR tends to be more limited to sustainability issues and does not always extend into the areas of social and governance. In short, ESG encompasses any area that can contribute towards a company's overall performance and profitability.”
With ESG, the environmental dimension is, unsurprisingly, the one most closely related to ‘traditional’ views of sustainability, with a focus on improving the environmental performance of a company. It includes areas such as carbon emissions, optimising resource efficiency, minimising waste, and ensuring compliance with environmental regulations, as well as climate risk management.
The social dimension concerns a company’s impact on its employees, customers, and the wider community, and covers areas such as workplace safety, employee engagement, diversity and inclusion, customer satisfaction, and even data and privacy.
Governance, meanwhile, hones in on business leadership and structure: the salaries of senior managers, whether shareholders get to vote on prominent issues, and even how a company conducts audits and prevents bribery and corruption.
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ESG also puts a heavy emphasis on risk management, with a need to monitor and mitigate risks across all three areas.
“It is clear to see that ESG transcends solely a vague statement or commitment and requires best practice, a clear plan and strategy and ethical business behaviours in all aspects of operations,” said Andrew.
“And in an age where businesses are able to generate huge amounts of data, that data needs to be harnessed to give a clear idea of current performance, identify areas for improvements, and then reveal what level of improvement has been achieved.”
“One example is carbon neutrality. Things like tree- planting to offset carbon emissions can just be smoke and mirrors. It allows a company to claim that it is carbon neutral even if its operations are actually very inefficient or unsustainable.
“The key with ESG is actually to find ways to minimise the emissions in the first place so they don’t need to be offset.”
Samsic UK’s aim is for all of its offices to be carbon neutral by the end of 2023, but the company’s environmental ambitions extend well beyond that. It is seeking to be truly carbon neutral across all areas of its operations by 2030, including the properties it looks after, and this requires a detailed approach across all areas of operations, which is not just limited to the company’s own buildings.
Andrew said: “Our ESG approach involves everyone we work with – customers, suppliers and so on. Many of them already have their own policies in place in areas such as waste recycling, and our aim is to help them achieve their goals too.”
The company’s detailed and strategic approach in this area has been piloted by subsidiary company JPC by Samsic at a serviced office, 566 Chiswick Park in London, with immense success.
An overall project to reduce emissions emanating from operations covered three principal areas: natural resource consumption, such as gas and fuels used by fleet vehicles in transport to and from site; heating, water, and electricity; and employee commuting, supply chain, mileage and travel claims.
The analysis was highly detailed. For each piece of machinery and equipment, from laptops to vacuum cleaners, the team calculated how much electricity was required to power each unit in KWH then established how many hours per month it was in use. A further calculation was made for water used over the same period for any heating, jet washing or drying equipment – indeed anything that required water to operate and function.
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