Are you looking for better progress towards sustainability? Consider a business partnership

After decades of trying to become self-sustainable, many businesses find it impossible to get by by operating independently. They can grow in meaningful ways by partnering with other industry players. Although it is possible to make incremental moves in areas that your business controls and directly influences, your organization will soon face challenges that it cannot solve on its own. A sustainable supply chain? Does it close the loop on your products? Mobilizing consumers through sustainability attributes? All these aspirations and more can only be realized through business cooperation.

Fortunately, a new guide has been published CanadaS MARS discovery circuit, North AmericaThe largest urban innovation hub, its mission is to help innovators create a better world. With funding from the Government of Canada, MRS created a guide for businesses that recognize the importance of collaborating with industry partners – even peers and competitors – to accelerate sustainable solutions. “Business-led ESG collaboration: How to lead business” is a roadmap for businesses looking to start or join initiatives to create sustainability solutions and overcome sustainability gaps. (Note: The guide was co-written by the author of this article.)

Specifically, it includes nearly 100 global ESG collaborations that businesses can join in their sector to find collaborations. and features 12 case studies for inspiring successful collaborations.

What is business-led ESG collaboration?

The Directive defines business-led ESG collaboration as a group of businesses within an industry or across the industry’s value chain who voluntarily address social and environmental risks and their impacts. Together they create a sustainable path for their sect. They share risks, responsibilities, resources, and benefits, and adhere to a common process for decision-making.

Research for the guide showed that common areas of focus for business collaboration include:

ESG cooperatives pursue various strategies to enhance the ESG performance of their members. For example, they are:

• Improve the industry’s social and/or environmental practices.

• Advance innovation in product development and product value chain

• Change the way the industry operates to be more aligned with planetary boundaries and a more equitable flourishing society.

How can your business benefit?

Businesses have much to gain from partnering with others in the industry to pursue shared ESG goals and overcome barriers together. Check the list below to make your case for cooperation internal.

• Scale of Use: With economies of scale, businesses can leverage their wider influence to achieve successful, more impactful and sustainable ESG outcomes.

• Pool Resources: When businesses can’t afford to tackle an issue on their own, they can pool and pool their resources to tackle it together.

• Access to properties Industry collaboration allows businesses to access each other’s networks, capabilities, technologies, physical assets and knowledge.

• Share risks. By working together, businesses can share the risk of new approaches with their peers.

• Form Levels: Business collaboration can create or influence industry ESG standards.

• Increase efficiency; It does not require a lot of resources and time to solve ESG issues and engage key stakeholders in a collaborative way. Some stakeholders prefer to work at a sector level rather than a single business.

• Risk Management: ESG issues can pose significant risks to businesses and value chains. Through collaboration, sectors can jointly identify and address risks.

• Building a good reputation; Collaborating on common ESG issues builds industry trust, credibility and reputation and helps build and grow a sector’s social license.

• Meeting expectations: Collaborative ESG leadership can address employee, investor, customer, regulatory and community needs.

• Impact Policy: By working together, businesses can shape, influence and prepare for government ESG regulation. Trade cooperation can influence policy makers more easily than any other organization.

• Attract funding. ESG collaborations can leverage and stimulate government and philanthropic funding (eg foundations and donors).

• Build relationships. ESG collaboration can build positive government-stakeholder relationships.

• Attract partners. Industry ESG leadership can attract partners who share the Renaissance’s goals and contribute funding, insights, expertise, networks and other capabilities on ESG. So it increases the possibility of moving the needle on a case.

• Show leadership. Industry ESG Collaboration can demonstrate business ESG leadership at regional, national and global levels.

• Accelerate innovation; Industries can open up vast market opportunities by working together.

Steps to implement ESG cooperation

These are some of the common steps that companies take to evaluate collaboration opportunities and then recruit and mobilize industry partners.

ESG practices for business cooperation

The following outlines the path ESG collaborations can take to build the capacity of an industry or partnership to jointly address their challenges and opportunities. This tool can similarly be used by industry associations to help their members take action on ESG. (The SDGs in the image below refer to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.) is divided into basic, fundamental practices, starting with consultation, information and education. Best practices where the partnership embraces long-term goals, standards and metrics to drive the organization towards sustainability.

How does this work in practice?

It is an example of one of the 12 case studies in the guide. Canadian Round Table for Sustainable Beef (CRSB). It was founded in 2014 to “address the need for a collaborative approach to defining, discussing and improving sustainability in the Canadian beef industry. CRSB’s founding members are beef producers, processors, agriculture and agri-food businesses, retailers, food service companies, governments, researchers, academic institutions , have a vision to create a space where animal care and environmental organizations can collaborate on a sustainable common goal: improving the sustainability of beef production in Canada. It allows them to work together.

In its early years, it adopted the Five Beef Sustainability Principles. Global Roundtable for Sustainable BeefNatural resources, people and society, animal health and welfare, food, efficiency and innovation. Priority areas of focus are greenhouse gas (GHG) management, carbon sequestration, wetland and habitat protection, food loss and waste, animal welfare and pesticide use. The Roundtable has developed a certification program to guide its members in adopting sustainable practices. Proven sustainable beef structure.

Based on this standard, CRSB created an industry-benchmarking tool
National beef sustainability assessment. This helps measure the industry’s environmental, social and economic performance, and the areas where the industry is performing well and where it needs improvement. Using this benchmarking tool, Canadian industry’s GHG footprint is about half of the global average, demonstrating the success of their collaboration. The Round Table has now agreed on the National Beef Strategy 2022-2024, which includes 10-year goals to continuously improve cattle breeding and increase the natural areas under the care of cattle breeders and ranchers.

Summary

No matter where your company is in its sustainability journey, the sooner it joins or initiates ESG collaborations with industry peers, the better. The benefits are many and the risks and costs of going it alone are many. This guide should be in the back pocket of every sustainability professional when it comes to defining an ESG strategy – not just the business on a sustainability course, but the entire industry as well. Doing so is essential to ensure a sustainable future for all.