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How to communicate sustainability

Sustainability communications

Communicating about sustainability

At all points in your sustainability journey, it is vital to communicate with all audiences, including employees, your board, customers, suppliers, and trade associations. Why?

  • Communication is two-way: it's to raise awareness and also to listen
  • To ensure you share information accurately and with context
  • To avoid making false claims and falling foul of advertising standards
  • To foster a sense of responsibility for and excitement about sustainability
  • To clearly show goals reached as well as areas for improvement — sustainability isn't always quick and easy!
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How to avoid greenwashing

Have you heard of greenhushing? That’s when organisations keep quiet about their sustainability goals, such as science-based targets, for fear of raising their heads above the parapet and being criticised for greenwashing or for not delivering on their strategies.

Grain can help your company communicate transparently and confidently, while adhering to the ever more rigorous standards of the Advertising Standards Authority. We’re firm believers in nurturing honest dialogue with all stakeholders.

Embarking upon and creating a corporate sustainability or ESG strategy requires communication from day one. Having clear channels for dialogue at every step of the way will ensure that everyone is on board.

Once a strategy is in place, you will likely want to create your first sustainability or impact report, ideally aligned with the rest of your annual reporting. Grain is happy to create the full content of the report and even design it following your brand guidelines and tone of voice.

We can also conduct a communications audit, provide you with sustainability messaging, and create a sustainability communications strategy and implementation plan. Sustainability messaging can be used across all of your communications channels, including:

  • Internal: email newsletters, intranet, Yammer, posters, town halls
  • External: website, social media, Glassdoor, company presentation, pitch documents

Marrying words and visuals

Communicating about sustainability doesn’t mean overwhelming your audience with tables and charts. There are varied and truly delightful ways of visualising data — often with infographics — that make information easily understandable.

Storytelling is another engaging and informative way to communicate about sustainability progress.

We are uniquely positioned to provide you with the perfect blend of words and visuals since Grain was born as a branding, design, and marketing consultancy. In the current team, many of us have a background in communications and design. We’re experts at engaging storytelling, impactful design, and effective data visualisations.

From employee communications to eye-catching infographics, from case studies to full end-to-end sustainability reporting, we can bring life and vitality to your sustainability strategy and activities with perfectly-crafted words and visuals.

Why work with Grain?

To continually improve our services, we engage a third-party consultant to interview our clients. Here’s what they say.

  • Grain has a deep understanding of sustainability measures and frameworks
  • Grain’s work has a positive impact on employees, customers, and suppliers
  • Grain is able to engage with a wide variety of stakeholders, from C-suite all the way through
  • Grain understands and interprets the data and what it means to clients
  • Grain is able to be critical in a positive way — a ‘critical friend’
Get in touch

Communications work

“Grain is a very valuable and trusted partner. They have quickly and fully grasped our complex organization, our ambition to become a more sustainable company and what is at stake for us. We have really moved our green journey in the right direction with their guidance and support. Also, they are always positive and a pleasure to work with — something not to take for granted!”
Sophia KazoglouGlobal Communication & Sustainability Manager, Nordic Pharma
“Pegasus had a challenge in identifying how sustainability could be measured within the industry and our own organisation. We decided that partnering up with Grain was without a doubt the best option. They had all the expertise in sustainability and in undertaking all the necessary research that we really valued and were able to offer the in-depth detail we were looking for. We were able to pull together a Sustainability Strategy for the future of Pegasus with positive results. Grain provided value for money and continue to stay connected regularly. We would happily return to Grain for future guidance and advice.”
Sam KerbyChief Finance and Group Services Executive Officer, Pegasus Group
"We chose Grain to support us, initially due to our shared values and passions for the people and the planet. However, the support that we received was so much more than we were expecting. Their in-depth knowledge and understanding of the B Corp process was incredible and their ability to simplify the most confusing of questions was invaluable. I believe that their input hugely reduced the time we spent on the application, allowing us to really focus on the areas we needed to research and work on. The end result seemed so out of reach, but Grain helped us make this a reality — and we’ve made some great friends along the way."
Victoria WattsDirector of Operations, Xytal
“Grain has been the driving force to move Rupert’s sustainability programme from good intentions and high-level policy to more integrated reporting systems and management tools. The work with Grain identified the key material issues faced by the business, areas where we were doing well and others where we were deficient. It was important for us to work with a group with experience outside the extractives sector to provide some external perspective on the mining industry.”
Thomas CredlandHead of Corporate Development, Rupert Resources
“Plastics Europe recently defined a new purpose and strategy revolving around sustainability. We chose Grain to support us in articulating our strategy and to reflect it in a rebranding, with a new logo and visual identity, strapline, website including copywriting and marketing materials. Their work helped us gain consensus with many stakeholder groups, repositioning Plastics Europe and providing us with new tools for effective engagement and communication.”
Sylvie AitkenCommunications Director, Plastics Europe
“Working with Grain brought clarity and direction to our energy and enthusiasm, giving us a laser-focus on the key topics, approaches, and opportunities that would allow us to make the most positive impact possible.”
Josh PitmanManaging Director, Priory Direct
“Grain have been invaluable during our B Corp journey, providing us with clarity and support throughout. They have helped us recognise our achievements to date and guided our social and environmental plans for the future. Using their knowledge and experience, Madelyn and her team have ensured that our B Corp submission is the strongest it could be. But most importantly, they have inspired us to be a better practice for our team, for our clients and for everyone who lives, works and visits our buildings and neighbourhoods.”
Denise HeseltineDirector, Mæ Architects
“As a multi-generational family business established in 1947, here at Sharon Lee we have always put people first. We wanted to become a more sustainable company and to be able to communicate that to our customers. We chose to work with Grain because of their experience in fashion, and we’re very happy with the results, particularly the sustainability report which clearly sets out our goals and achievements.”
Danny ButterfieldManaging Director, Sharon Lee
“Grain Sustainability have been invaluable in the creation and growth of Sustainable Amersham, from setting up the website and email account to assisting with social media output, and guiding those of us who are less tech savvy! Their knowledge and ability to communicate with the public has been incredibly helpful and enabled us to build the organistion from a small group of friends concerned about the environment to an organisation with 150 members, 665 followers on Instagram and 570 members of our Facebook group. We are very grateful for their ongoing input.”
Anne FulleloveSecretary, Sustainable Amersham

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