The UK Government has just announced that it will adopt Internationally approved sustainability standards to help crack down on corporate greenwashing and secure London as a global financial centre. The rules will be based on those set up by the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB), under which, companies will face more pressure to publicly disclose their impact on their climate and their Scope 3 emissions. This comes as a new set of G20-backed global rules have recently been announced aimed at helping regulators crack down on greenwashing. Marking one of the fastest-growing areas of litigation, businesses are now forced to re-evaluate how they are making impactful changes to address the climate crisis, from accurate ESG reporting to environmental initiatives. However, new proprietary research from the UK’s leading corporate sustainability platform, SaveMoneyCutCarbon, has uncovered that less than a fifth of UK businesses (18%) have sustainability as a central training process at their place of work.

In a bid to prevent the number of businesses from being targeted by new litigation, SaveMoneyCutCarbon has launched an industry-first programme, EcoWise, which allows organisations to audit, document and track their ESG credentials, whilst rewarding staff for engaging in sustainable practices. Mark Sait, sustainability expert and CEO/founder of the service, comments on the importance of transparency and genuine commitment to sustainability to avoid accusations of greenwashing, and further, how the new innovative platform goes some way in contributing to meaningful environmental impact.

Greenwashing amongst UK companies remains a major threat to consumers’ environmentally conscious ambitions, as only 1-in-40 businesses have fully adopted ‘gold-standard’ net-zero targets. The result of this can be observed through the number of employees leaving their jobs, as a new report from KPMG found that 20% of UK office workers would turn down a job if environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors were deemed lacking. Contributing to this, SaveMoneyCutCarbon’s new study shows that this also prevents people from applying for jobs with 19% (9.9 million) of UK employees actively avoiding companies that do not prioritise sustainability.
What is EcoWise?
Heralding a much-needed solution for the estimated five million small businesses at risk of going under, SaveMoneyCutCarbon’s EcoWise offers a year-long course for employees and business owners to track in real-time their contributions to reaching net zero. Consisting of carbon literacy assessments and educational articles, explicitly informing how staff can go about inciting change in their behaviour to be more sustainable, users are able to gain rewards, or Planet Points for them to spend in the Home Shop, at their leisure. Companies can then see quantifiable data on the progress of companies ESG strategies so they can see their progress in real-time.