Reading and writing corporate sustainability claims
Companies in healthcare report on their own sustainability, and a writer who reads or writes such a report meets the vocabulary it uses, the frameworks and ratings it answers to, what it measures, and the point at which a claim becomes greenwashing or an offset stops being one.
Sustainability, ESG and corporate social responsibility
One head of corporate sustainability observed in March 2022 that over the previous 18 to 24 months the general consumer of information had become dramatically more aware of terms such as sustainability, environmental, social and governance (ESG) and corporate social responsibility (CSR). In her view an argument could be made that all of these terms are synonymous, but she focused more on sustainability and ESG because that is where expectations and the conversation were heading, and to her ESG is a list of ingredients and sustainability is the whole pie. She held that defining sustainability and ESG is one of the most important things any organisation can do when developing a strategy and framework in this space, whatever its industry, and aligning on these definitions was one of the first things she did on entering an organisation, because a comprehensive strategy that touches all areas of a business is incredibly difficult to develop if those involved do not use the same words to mean the same thing.
Frameworks, directives and ratings
The United Nations Global Compact is an association of businesses that seeks to move humanity's economic activity in the direction of sustainability. It seeks to unite businesses by having them align their strategies and operations with ten principles on human rights, labour, the environment and anti-corruption and take strategic action to advance the development goals.
In 2024 the European Union's CSR directive was the most challenging instrument for one healthcare company; it includes environmental sustainability but covers all of corporate social responsibility. Complying means doing materiality assessments to establish which parts of the directive apply, and then deciding what to do to comply.
In 2020 many sustainability indices and ratings were associated with financial investments, where the term ESG is used, and they usually worked by excluding some activities. The Dow Jones Sustainability Index, run with a company called SAM, is one of them, and pharmaceutical companies are among those it includes. In one speaker's view in 2020, such ratings were not yet very selective: they tried to eliminate the worst performers rather than focusing on, for example, the top 20%, but they existed and were watched and used.
One head of corporate sustainability held in 2022 that awards, rankings and ratings can give great insight into what is expected next and may validate work done to date, but that they are not the ultimate goal, which is to make the most impact possible, wherever possible.
What a sustainability report measures
Setting a target is one thing, and reaching it is another.
Novartis's "Novartis in Society" report, as presented in 2020, set environmental targets that included carbon neutrality in its own operations and neutrality in all areas by 2030. It tracked performance indicators over the years as financial measures are tracked in accounting, alongside figures on access to healthcare and global health, such as how many people it serves, that try to show the good impact it has.
Another company's report shows recurring targets for the different greenhouse gases, for fresh water use and for waste sent to landfill, each with a baseline year, a target financial year and what has been achieved so far. It sets the economic value retained in the company, a purely financial measure, beside a social value. As the company presents it, the economic value it distributes to stakeholders and its strategic social investments make its social value and contribution to society far higher than the economic value retained in the company. In 2020 this was how major pharmaceutical companies presented themselves on sustainability.
Greenwashing
Greenwashing is the process of conveying a false impression, or providing misleading information, that a company's products are more environmentally sound than they really are. Supermarket products often carry terms such as bio, non-toxic and earth friendly, which point in the right direction, but many of them do not stand up to a very deep check on quality, so real green differs from greenwashing. "Non-toxic" on baby products was raised as an example, since those products should be non-toxic anyway.
One speaker on greenwashing held in 2020 that it is quite common, sometimes intentional and sometimes not, because no company wants to appear as the bad guy, lose business or appear negative. In his view it is sometimes not outright lying but not telling the full truth, or focusing more on the positive aspects than on the negative ones, so in a sense everybody does it. There were some clear offenders, and by 2020 many NGOs looked out for greenwashing and tracked it. The reputational damage it could bring was by then quite substantial, so companies cleaned up or improved for the following year.
Green energy agreements and offsets
In 2024 Thermo Fisher pursued its renewable energy goals through virtual power purchase agreements with a wind farm and a solar farm, both in the United States, under which enough green energy is put into the grid to match the amount of energy the company draws from it, so the electrons used at any one of its facilities may not come from a green source. The company regarded putting green energy into the grid in an equivalent amount as an acceptable reduction approach for reaching net zero. It did something similar in Spain to cover its European emissions, and used renewable energy credits in other parts of the world where it could not do this. It counted this among its more important measures, because the grids of 2024 did not have the electrical capacity to cover all energy needs, so increasing the grid supply makes a difference. A group called Energize lets pretty much anybody join and do something similar on a smaller scale.
In 2024 Thermo Fisher's patient-engagement programme planted a tree on behalf of each participant who enrolled in a trial at one of the sites it operates directly. The plantings are not used in any way to offset the company's carbon and do not enter its calculations. The company finds that study participants like the programme and that it helps them see that the company has a commitment to the environment.