Where should responsibility for improving corporate sustainability sit? While a rising number of organizations are appointing chief sustainability officers, many leaders will argue that businesses cannot isolate sustainability in a single function. To achieve their ESG targets, it must be embedded across every part of the business.

"Sustainability is part of our company’s strategy to a point, but it must become a normal part of how each function works," said the sustainability director of a consumer business, which preferred to go unnamed. "If you take any sustainability target — for example, net zero — it affects every part of our business, from supply chain to R&D to product development. For us to make progress, CO2 management must be built into how those teams work."

This same scenario exists in every industry. For most businesses, impacts on environmental and social sustainability are concentrated not in their own direct operations, but in their value chains. For one healthcare company that Sustainability Leaders recently spoke to, only 5 percent of its impact on various ESG issues exists in its direct business. The remaining 95 percent is upstream in its supply chain and downstream in its consumer base.

To effecting change in these parts of a company’s value chain, the strategy cannot lie within a corporate sustainability function alone. This approach requires that procurement and supply chain teams factor sustainability into purchasing decisions; that product development and R&D teams consider the environmental impact of what they design; and that finance operations invest in the people and structures necessary to enable these changes.

There are several ways chief sustainability officers and their teams are achieving this, with three standing out:

  1. Translate corporate sustainability targets into specific functional goals.
  2. Appoint functional sustainability leads to coordination with corporate sustainability.
  3. Introduce sustainability collaboration forums.

Read the full article about companies' approach to sustainability by Samuel Wrest at GreenBiz.