Sustainability Success Story

What this means

Sustainability Success Story is a special product offering by CheckCarbonFact designed to bridge the gap between uncelebrated sustainability efforts and deliberate greenwashing tactics. It is essentially a crowdsourced safeguard against greenwashing as well as a sustainability communications solution.

Climate change: the way it is…and shouldn’t be communicated

The way and manner in which climate change is often communicated has substantially triggered anxiety, resistance and even disinformation. With hysterical doomsday scenarios splashed on screens, the pressure to be climatically correct is palpable—whether on individuals, businesses, governments, non-governmental organisations, or inter-governmental entities. On the other hand, growing consumer demands for environmentally conscious products and services and the increasing trend of employee preference for sustainably inclined employers are driving some brands and businesses to greenwash—wittingly or unwittingly.

A consequence is the increasing demand for certifications, accreditations and awards that trumpet sustainability credentials and positive climate action. Various frameworks and schemes have been created to satisfy this demand and, willy-nilly, boost sales and marketing initiatives as well as meet investor expectations. To be sure, there is nothing wrong with these as long as they make credible and plausible contributions to sustainability and climate action. But when they widen the gaps and increase the inadequacies and vulnerabilities of small businesses and glitz-shy large-scale enterprises, then something must be done to address these counter-productive outcomes.

It’s okay to be small…but not to be excluded  

Benchmarking sustainability progress and success on certifications, awards, and showcases alone only exacerbates the challenges faced by businesses, especially SMEs that do not have the need or wherewithal to achieve such feats and even LSEs that choose to be cautious amidst the noise out there. Sustainability communication should be able to account for this set of entities, products, and services—be they for-profit or non-profit.

Steps and stages of the story…

Motivated by the need to activate the agency of story-telling as a powerful tool to advance sustainability, CheckCarbonFact has designed the Sustainability Success Story model as a crowdsourced safeguard against greenwashing and communication solution to spotlight and celebrate organisations that are making small, steady, and big steps in their sustainability journey. This solution is in fulfilment of our social accountability mandate. It is undergirded by Mike Rosenberg’s work on Strategy and Sustainability, which lays out a practical framework and guide for discussing progress in the sustainability maturity journey of companies. We have conceptualised the success stream of the sustainability journey into a quartet of four signature recognition nodes identified as Basic, Bronze, Silver, and Gold. These recognition nodes not only coincide with the four stages of the sustainability maturity journey but, more importantly, acknowledge and celebrate every effort and conscious contribution made to sustainability by entities of all shapes and sizes, whether private or public or for-profit or non-profit. And because these recognitions are crowdsourced and endorsed by respected sustainability institutions, they serve as watertight safeguards against greenwashing.

Spotted and Scripted…

Our methodology is simple. Because we believe that every step in the sustainability journey matters and recognise that celebration should not be headlined certifications only, we have designed a two-step process to attaining the sustainability success story.

The first step is that deserving sustainability endeavours are SPOTTED with a short mention on our website and social media. This automatically enrols them for the second step, during which a board of global sustainability experts conducts a detailed interrogation of relevant credentials. Successful validation of the credentials at this stage means the brand, product or entity is conferred with the relevant badge and, accordingly, SCRIPTED as a sustainability success story for the world to celebrate.

The validation by the board is to ensure professionalism, impartiality, transparency and credibility of the final process.

For more information and how to get Spotted and Scripted, please email info@checkcarbonfact.com and include ‘spotted and scripted’ as the subject line.