With rising pressures for businesses to actively reduce their environmental impact, and many leveraging their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and environmental commitments to gain favour with stakeholders, Scope 4 emerges as a critical tool for businesses to elevate their environmental processes.
Scope 4 will help strengthen businesses' internal carbon counting process by giving them a clear-cut method for evaluating which suppliers, technologies, and any indirect emissions associated with the business. This, in turn, will help them achieve better stakeholder trust through a more comprehensive way of carbon reporting. Allowing their consumers to easily navigate through the market to see which consumables are better for the planet. Overall Scope 4 promotes a chain of proactive business practices, working to not only reduce their carbon footprint but avoid those emissions from being created.
How Scope 4 reporting will help businesses
Whether your business is at the supply chain level or public facing, with the increased pressures from stakeholders for more businesses to go further with their environmental commitment, for a modern business to thrive they must go beyond mandatory initiatives and be proactively committing to improving their environmental impact.
But the benefits behind Scope 4 reporting go beyond just helping the environment, Scope 4 has benefits that will help businesses within this green market space. These are:
Improving other scopes: Scope 4 reporting also helps businesses measure their overall impact from different areas of the business. This can guide and help businesses in addressing then reducing their Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions.
Transparency: Reporting on Scope 4, helps form a more transparent market space. Rather than this stalemate of eco-claims in the market place, Scope 4 emissions can help all businesses to set new bars for eco-success, as this heightened range of transparency will make businesses further accountable over their carbon emissions.
Stakeholders: The accountability and transparency behind Scope 4 reporting, will build on trust and relationships with many different levels of stakeholders. Scope 4 emission reporting, will help potential investors, employees, and consumers to cut through the noise of the marketplace, and showcase your business's authentic drive towards environmental commitment.
Navigation: With stricter environmental regulations across the globe, for businesses to succeed either in their home market or within an international market, businesses need a strategic, yet universally understood method to demonstrate their approach proactive approach to exceeding regulatory requirements. By incorporating Scope 4 into a business plan, these definitive numbers help spearhead your businesses USP in a saturated market space for investors and consumers.
Innovation and Efficiency: Due to the nature of Scope 4, it often requires a thorough assessment of internal and external operational processes. Although this may seem like added work at face value, by undergoing these examinations will help businesses identify inefficiencies and areas of improvement, promoting a better overall operation, from costs to carbon. And with these pressures, businesses will be driven to commit to continuous improvements from supply chain to resource management.
Accessing new markets: Sustainable business practices are a key consideration for many modern investors. Businesses that report on Scope 4 will gain a competitive advantage, access green financing, and through their environmental commitments, help them enter new markets that have a greater demand for sustainable practices (e.g. public sector). This adds to the longevity of a business's success as it adds to reputation and financial stability.
How will reporting on Scope 4 boost my reputation?
It’s no secret that many consumers are more likely to support and engage in a company that “gives back”. Even though many businesses are adopting initiatives into their business, and may see that as enough. Yet by starting to roll out Scope 4 reporting to your business can help businesses stand out from their competitors, and give them a continuous benchmark on how to further better their eco-credentials.
Scope 4 showcases a business’s commitment to environmental responsibility, demonstrating to different markets and stakeholders, that a business is proactive and wants to go further than traditional measures. The modern stakeholder values, a two-way dialogue with businesses, where businesses are seen to address the values and concerns that their stakeholders have. So with the elevated transparency behind scope 4 reporting, it builds on this dialogue based on trust. Eliciting a call and response style communication with your stakeholders to show that your environmental pursuits are factual rather than marketing ploys.
