The Clear View Packaging sustainability team completed a 6-part series focused on Environmental “E”, Social “S” and Governance “G” in November 2022. (see blog ESG training Underway for details on the program). The training occurred over the course of 5 months and provided an overview of ESG and challenged the company to apply what they learned to the business. Four key concepts summarize the training.
Stakeholder View: There are many stakeholders in any business — that is people interested in the business. Customers, employees, vendors, investors, the community, regulators, non-governmental organizations are the primary ones. Understanding the sustainability issues most important to stakeholders helps the business deteremine the issues to address.
Materiality: Materiality basically means importance. A materiality assessment helps the business identify and understand the relative importance of specific sustainability issues. Materiality helps the business prioritize the issues.
Authenticity: Each sustainability journey is different. Authentic actions to address the most important issues are based on each business’ unique circumstance. Authenticity often leads to new opportunities, limits risk and sparks innovation.
Communicate: After authentic actions are taken, communicating what has been done in the form of advertisements, emails, sales calls, website updates etc. are then relayed to relevant stakeholders.
There are a lot of potential ESG issues to address and many ways to address them. Part of the training was to recognize there is limited time and resources, so the aim is to focus on the issues most material to the business and to focus on issues that make good business sense to drive value. The issues and ways the committee has chosen to deal with the issues will be communicated in months to come.
The training also emphasized the goal of doing a few initiatives well rather than doing many poorly. Authenticity of initiatives takes time and comes from internal change of processes, thoughts, training, and goal setting. Authentic actions get results that are then communicated to relevant stakeholders. Communicating prior to authentic actions can be labeled as “greenwashing.” Greenwashing conveys a false impression or provides misleading information about how an organization engages in ESG.
We are excited to chart an increasing sustainable course to offer more sustainable materials, operate in a more sustainable way, engage employees, help create a better community and drive value. We will continue to build our collective education, self-awareness and actions to achieve our sustainability goals.
Sustainability requires collaboration. Collaboration with stakeholders in many ways. We are here to collaborate with you to meet your sustainability objectives. Please contact us if you have any needs, questions, or feedback.
Sustainability requires collaboration. Collaboration with stakeholders in many ways. We are here to collaborate with you to meet your sustainability objectives. Please contact us if you have any needs, questions, or feedback.