By sharing this data with customers, companies can prove that they are paying attention to sustainability and give customers the information they need to make an informed decision, which also increases trust.

“The transparency allows our customers to ask questions such as, ‘Is this packaging reusable, or is it actually reused?’ ‘If a truck is 90 per cent full, what does that mean in practice?’ ‘How does it compare with the rest of the supply chain?’,” says Berkenbosch. “If companies and consumers have this data, they are more equipped to navigate a path toward sustainability.”

Large, complex organisations can still be transparent

Many companies struggle to reach this level of transparency because they have thousands of products and suppliers, each with their own carbon footprint.

Grupo Éxito is one example of a large business that has risen to the challenge. The South American retailer monitors and mitigates its own carbon footprint alongside its Scope 3 emissions to help its suppliers to reduce their social and environmental impact.

“we have taken steps to map our suppliers to understand the most important groups to start working with,” says Claudia Campillo Velásquez, vice president corporate affairs and secretary general at Grupo Éxito. “A great example is the cattle industry, where we are working with suppliers to monitor territories for deforestation. We are also working with these suppliers to try and help them practise biodiversity conservation.”

Communicating these efforts is crucial to building trust. Grupo Éxito publishes extensive annual sustainability reports — one of the most effective ways to increase transparency for consumers, according to Smurfit Kappa’s research. Grupo Éxito’s online channels are another important transparency tool.

“Many young people only engage with us via social media, so we need to ensure they have access to the information they need,” says Velásquez. “The same goes for other stakeholders and our website.”

Sustainability does not end at the point of purchase

Some companies are now working to create circular value chains that limit waste, pollution and consumption while reusing as many raw materials as possible.

Pandora, the world’s largest jewellery maker, will exclusively use recycled silver and gold by 2025, which could save the equivalent of 37,000 tonnes of CO2 per year. It will source these recycled metals using the Responsible Jewellery Council’s Chain of Custody standards — which adheres to a strict definition of what recycled means — to ensure that the whole process is verifiable, certified and traceable.

“The validity of our sustainability data should be equal to all the data coming out of the company, and so we're always preparing for that.' says Mads Twomey-Madsen, Pandora’s vice president of corporate communications and sustainability. 'We have also established an organisation with a central sustainability function and then embedded resources in many parts of the company, because we think that that's the way forward to make sure that this is credible and it's embedded in the business.”