Sustainability consulting

Put a number in the proposal, not a pledge.

Clients ask for help when a buyer, a bank, or a tender has demanded an answer they do not have: emissions, a supplier code, a report. The proposal should say which claim you will make defensible, and which claims you will not let them print.

Which claim must become defensible

Quote the ask. A retailer's questionnaire. A loan covenant. A tender that scores carbon. The proposal is a response to that ask, with the data you will use and the data you will mark as missing. A general sustainability strategy, unbound from the ask, is how companies end up with a pledge their operations director has not read.

Name the boundary of the number. The sites, the year, the categories of emission or the supplier tier. A number without a boundary will be reused in a press line you did not approve. Say where the number may be repeated, and where it may not.

Claims you will not let them print

Write a sentence on what you will refuse. You will not call the company net zero because they bought an offset. You will not let marketing turn a partial product footprint into a slogan. Serious clients are relieved. The others were going to be a problem in month two.

Assurance by a third party, a full life-cycle model of every product, and a science-based target submission are separate scopes. If the buyer only needs a first inventory good enough for the questionnaire, stop there and say what a later assurance engagement would add.