B2B Sustainability Disclosure: Telling Your Sustainability Story to Your Business Partners

When it comes to communicating sustainability information, one of the biggest challenges facing companies is accommodating business partners. Every firm is pursuing its own sustainability story, and companies increasingly expect their suppliers and partners to help them meet their own sustainability goals.[1] Accommodating the sustainability disclosure needs of business partners can also be extremely difficult as companies try to satisfy often conflicting demands on a variety of different timetables. But however fraught, this dynamic can ultimately be a positive one—not just in accelerating progress toward important environmental and social goals, but in strengthening business partnerships. If you engage your business partners at a strategic level, sustainability can help drive innovation and growth. This essay offers practical guidance—based on interviews and roundtables with sustainability executives—to help companies bypass the chaos and tell their sustainability stories effectively.