Businesses are uniquely positioned to drive meaningful climate action, making the role of Chief Sustainability Officers (CSOs) and ESG leaders vital yet often challenging. Our new column is here to inspire those working to make a real impact within their organisations. Each month, we’ll bring you insights from a CSO, sharing 4 strategies, 3 challenges, and 2 sources of inspiration to help you on your journey.

This is the first in a regular collaboration between The Beautiful Truth and Four32, highlighting leaders in sustainability and the progress they’re making. Four32 is a consultancy helping businesses integrate sustainability and innovation into their core strategies, becoming pioneers in the transition to a greener future.

Here are 4 wins, 3 challenges, and 2 sources of inspiration from Hannah Cornick, Head of Sustainability & Social Innovation at Danone UK & Ireland, to consider this week.

Four Wins

1. Working with Farmers to Promote Regenerative Agriculture

“We believe regenerative agriculture can help to make farming part of the solution to some of the key environmental challenges we face, rather than the problem. Since 2017, we’ve supported farmers with financial and technical resources to transition to practices that improve the planet, animal welfare, and farmer livelihoods. So far, we’ve implemented projects in 14 countries, and 38% of our key ingredients now come from farms that have begun to transition towards regenerative agriculture. We share our learnings via our Regenerative Agriculture Knowledge Centre to help scale the impact.”

2. Boosting efficiency with logistics partners while cutting carbon

“Building the business case to invest in carbon reduction can sometimes be challenging. In our logistics operations, we’ve shown that efficiency and carbon reduction can actually go hand in hand. We simplified distribution in Ireland, reducing costs and emissions simultaneously. Our logistics partners embraced this by introducing biofuels, and we’ve started using electric vehicles for some patient deliveries.”

3. Winning Wimbledon by creating a reusable water system

“Our customers and partners play a key role in challenging us to go further. Our Evian brand has been partnering with The Championships, Wimbledon for over 15 years.  When they came to us with the ambition to reduce the environmental impact of plastic at the tournament, it spurred us on to think differently about what could be done in the natural mineral waters category.  In 2023, we launched a reuse system for players at the tournament and in 2024 we were excited to pilot a spectator refill solution.  This will provide us with valuable learnings for the future of refill in our portfolio.”

4. Becoming part of something bigger by joining the B Corp community

“Since 2022 all our UK & Ireland operations have been B Corp certified.  The process has inspired us to make changes in the way we operate in areas such as diversity and inclusion and circular packaging. It’s been really powerful to be part of a wider community of organisations working to make business a force for good, and we have found that B Corp has built a sense of pride amongst our colleagues and helped to attract new talent to work with us.”

Three Challenges

1. Engaging Our Entire Team in Sustainability

“Engaging all employees in our sustainability efforts is crucial but challenging with a small team. We’ve been experimenting with a range of approaches, from interactive immersion sessions for the full company at our annual conference to bespoke workshops, to keep the whole team involved in our mission.”

2. Balancing Reporting with Action

“As reporting requirements increase from both regulators and customers, it can be challenging to balance measurement with delivery. Ultimately, we recognise that the time we invest in measurement is crucial to building the business case for action and demonstrating our impact both internally and externally.”

3. Decoupling Growth from Emissions

“Biotechnology is a field that gives me hope for a more sustainable future.”

“Our aim is to deliver growth with purpose, but decoupling growth from carbon emissions remains a challenge. We’ve started embedding carbon considerations into our innovation process to develop low-carbon products by design, but we still need to find better ways to unlock value from sustainability for our brands, such as engaging consumers on the benefits of regenerative agriculture.”