SB+CO

CSRD dominated the sustainability agenda through 2024. Stemming from conversations with sustainability leaders on their experiences of the regulation, we've continued to call for a more pragmatic, measured approach. With the European Commission now asking for ideas on what should change, our co-founder Nigel Salter sat down with Bobbie Mellor, Global Head of Sustainability and Transparency at Vodafone, to discuss her ideas on what should change. Bobbie outlines three big ideas and three technical proposals on how to evolve the regulation while not losing the ambitions and objectives of the regulation. Snippet from the interview included below, but click through to Nigel's feed or to our webpage to watch in full - both links below.

As we close the office for the Christmas holidays, we're mindful of those struggling to afford even the basic necessities such as a warm jumper and shoes for their children this Christmas. Earlier this month SB+CO spent a day helping out at Little Village, a London-based charity redistributing children's clothing, equipment and essentials to people living in poverty. We were blown away by the generosity of donations, but also reminded that there are so many more people in need of help. If you have children's clothes or equipment you no longer need, particularly for 3 to 6 year olds - or would like to support a wonderful charity - we really encourage you to donate to Little Village.   Wishing you all a very happy holidays, and looking forward to working with you in 2025. The SB+CO team. 🎄

In this week's #FridayFix... 🎁 For our final Friday Fix of 2024 we're doing our Christmas wrapping up, with a look back at the thought leadership we've published this year. It's been an exciting year for sustainability progress, and we have high hopes for more of the same in 2025. 👇 Find the links to read more in the comments. In the new year we'll be relaunching and reinvigorating our Friday Fix with a new look, but for now... happy holidays from all of us at SB+CO, and see you in 2025!

As a consultancy, the best part of the job at SB+CO is the variety of our work – from developing sustainability strategies to advising on emerging regulations and from connecting commercial and sustainability strategies through to technical decarbonisation work. This often culminates in a final piece – telling our clients' stories to the outside world in a compelling and transparent way.    Our new showreel captures a handful of the projects, clients and teams that we've loved working with through 2024 - with many thanks to the clients included who allowed us to celebrate their progress in this way. Take a look at how we are helping clients to navigate the all change era. #sustainabilitycommunications #esgcomms

In this week's #FridayFix... 🌾 After a huge BBC investigation last week revealed links to Chinese forced labour in UK tomato products – see slide #2 – we're honing in on a selection of food-related stories which emphasise the real need for a global food system overhaul. 👇 Find the links to read more in the comments.

2024 has seen a shift in the role of sustainability practitioners. There has been more focus on regulatory compliance, displacing focus on how the business should integrate sustainability. And this has led to increased focus on data quality replacing action on deliver initiatives. All this can feel quite demotivating. 😔 To this end - CSR Europe has just published a paper on the evolving role of sustainability leaders. It’s worth reading - 3 thoughts it provoked for me below: 📝 Sustainability practitioners should be translators. Much sustainability subject matter has been developed by genuine experts, relying on highly technical jargon. The prime role therefore should be to simplify these theoretical concepts into practical relevance for the business. 🤔 Question who really is the right team to manage compliance. Regulations like #CSRD and #CSDDD do require expert insight to setup, but sustainability teams are often not going to be the best qualified people to lead implementation and ongoing management. ⚠️ Focus in on how to de-risk the business. Sustainability teams can best help the business by helping evaluate an ever growing set of ESG risks (just as they did with #TCFD). With #climatetransitionplans coming soon, this should be the space sustainability practitioners play in. Report linked below (which builds on SB+CO’s research from earlier this year). Nigel Salter | Nick Wyver | Phoebe Whittome | Kate Jones | Stefan Crets | Noterdaeme Jan

In this week's #FridayFix... 🥤 We're putting a spotlight on all things plastic, following the disappointing outcome of the UN Global Plastics Treaty talks last week in Busan, South Korea. 👇 Find the links to read more in the comments. See you next week!

In this week's #FridayFix... 🌟 COP29 concluded last Sunday after a long slog of last-minute negotiations over the new climate finance deal. It's been a real rollercoaster of a fortnight with many reasons to despair, but this week we're highlighting some examples of positive change to have come out of the conference. 👇 Find the links to read more in the comments.

A new(ish) International Organization of Securities Commissions - IOSCO report (link in comments 👇 ) assessed the global transition planning landscape and found that businesses are struggling with the lack of consistency across transition planning frameworks / standards - shock ⁉️ (Which is why we called for EFRAG to align their transition planning guidance with Transition Plan Taskforce (TPT)...)   The report does include some helpful stuff including summaries of various frameworks and regulations that have slightly different transition planning disclosures requirements - looking at you CSRD and ISSB (screenshots 👇 ).   The fact that there's misalignment across frameworks/standards is not new news. TPT and EFRAG are saying they're working on aligning, and there are some published mapping docs from TPT to help businesses who are looking now. 🙏   But interestingly this summer, International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) said it will spend two years streamlining transition planning disclosure frameworks/standards using the TPT framework as the basis. In the meantime the focus of ISSB will be on requiring companies to disclose "decision-useful" information about plans companies have - rather than requiring them to engage in transition planning- and then ramp up requirements over time.   On the basis that having different requirements in different jurisdictions is incredibly inconvenient (understatement), consolidation and streamlining sounds great 👍 . But it remains to be seen what the output from ISSB will look like - I hope for everyone's sake that it doesn't result in a new framework for sustainability teams to follow.

In this week's #FridayFix... 🌍 Week two at #COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan has been another intense one, with time rapidly running out to conclude negotiations and condemnation of the drafted new collective climate goal. The conference is due to conclude today, so we've pulled out our six top stories from the past week. 👇 Find the links to read more in the comments.