Where to start with sustainability in your business

Almost nobody starts sustainability work because a strategy document said to. Something happens: a customer sends a questionnaire, a tender demands evidence, a regulation comes into view, or leadership announces a target and the organisation discovers it has no idea how to meet it. The question that follows is always the same. Where do we start? The honest answer is that it depends on what just happened, because the trigger is not background noise. It is the most useful piece of information you have about what your first step should be.

What usually triggers the question?

Four triggers account for most first conversations we have. The first is a customer request: a buyer asks for a carbon number for a product you supply, or sends a sustainability questionnaire as part of a supplier review. The second is a tender or contract condition, where evidence such as a life cycle assessment or a product carbon footprint is named as a requirement rather than a preference. The third is regulation: frameworks such as BRSR in India, or CSRD and CBAM affecting companies that trade with Europe, reach an organisation directly or through its customers, and someone is asked to work out what they mean here. The fourth is internal: a target announced, a board question asked, a competitor's report noticed. Each of these arrives with its own deadline pressure and its own definition of a good answer, which is why they lead to different first steps.

Why does the trigger determine the first step?

Because the trigger defines who has to accept your answer and in what form. A customer asking for a product carbon number will accept exactly one thing: a credible number for that product, calculated to a standard they recognise, as we describe in what to do when a customer asks for a carbon number. Starting that situation with an organisation-wide strategy exercise wastes the months you do not have. Conversely, an internal target with no external deadline is badly served by rushing into a single-product study; the useful first step there is a baseline broad enough to show where the target will be won or lost. A tender naming an LCA standard points at a defensible study; an unclear facility footprint points at an on-site audit; a regulation points first at understanding which of its requirements actually apply to you. Matching the first engagement to the trigger is most of what good scoping is.

A plain map of maturity

It also helps to be honest about where you currently stand. Most organisations pass through recognisable stages. At the start, nothing is measured: there is no baseline, obligations are unmapped, and no one owns the topic. Next comes the reactive stage, where individual customer or regulatory requests are answered one at a time, each answer assembled from scratch and none of them building on the last. Then comes a measured baseline: a footprint exists, the data sources behind it are identified, and the gaps are at least known. Beyond that lies a repeatable system, where collection and calculation follow a defined process with named owners, versioned emission factors and an audit trail, so next year's answer is a re-run rather than a fresh project. The stages matter because the work that moves you from one to the next is different at each point, and because skipping stages does not work. An organisation that has measured nothing cannot jump to a reporting system, because the system would have nothing reliable to run on.

Why does data come before analysis?

Whatever the trigger, the first real work is usually data work. Every analysis, whether a product footprint, a facility baseline or a disclosure, is a calculation performed on activity data: quantities of electricity, fuel, materials, transport and waste drawn from meters, invoices and records. When that data is missing, scattered across spreadsheets nobody fully trusts, or inconsistent between sites, the analysis built on it produces a confident-looking number that cannot survive questioning. Most failed sustainability projects fail at this stage, not at the analysis stage. This is why we treat Data Collection and Systems as an engagement in its own right rather than a buried prerequisite, and why our guide to sustainability data collection is probably the most broadly useful article on this blog. If your instinct says your data is not ready, your instinct is very likely right, and it is cheaper to fix that first than to discover it mid-study.

What does a sensible first engagement look like?

A sensible first engagement is small, matched to the trigger, and designed to make the second step obvious. In practice it usually takes one of a few shapes: a data collection exercise that establishes what exists and what is trustworthy; a facility audit that produces a measured baseline, as described in our guide to the facility sustainability audit; a screening study that finds a product's hotspots before committing to a full assessment; or a product carbon footprint where a customer has asked for exactly that. What it should not look like is a large transformation programme sold to an organisation that has not yet measured anything. If a proposal's first deliverable is a strategy deck rather than something measured, mapped or collected, be wary.

Our own How to Get Started pathway is built around this logic. The first introductory phone call is free: you describe the situation, we say honestly whether and where we can help. Everything after that call, from a structured look at where you stand to the engagement itself, is scoped and quoted in writing before it starts, so you always know what you are buying and what it will produce. The output of the pathway is not a commitment to a long programme; it is a recommended first engagement with its boundary, deliverables and price stated, and a view of what it makes possible next.

Frequently asked questions

Do we need a sustainability strategy before doing anything?

No. A strategy written before anything is measured tends to be rewritten once the first real numbers arrive. Answer the trigger in front of you, establish a data foundation, and let the strategy form around what the measurements show, with advisory input where genuine decisions have to be made early.

We have no dedicated sustainability person. Can we still start?

Yes, and most organisations start exactly there. What is needed at the beginning is a named internal contact with access to records and the authority to ask colleagues for information, not a specialist. Capability can be built in parallel through training once the shape of the work is clear.

What does the first conversation cost?

Nothing. The introductory phone call is free, and its purpose is to identify the trigger, understand what already exists, and say plainly whether we can help. Any work after that call is scoped and quoted before it begins, so the decision to proceed is always made with the price and deliverables in front of you.

This article describes reporting obligations in general terms and is not legal advice.