The sustainability committee

Sustainability in small companies often starts with emotion and good intention. Many companies have the first instinct might be to start a committee. Grab your most passionate employees, schedule a few meetings, brainstorm ideas, and suddenly you’re “doing sustainability.”

Here’s the problem: enthusiasm alone is not a strategy. As a result, sustainability is often no more than a side project, focusing on coffee cups, recycling bins and “paperless offices”.

You wouldn’t let your kids build the foundations of your house just because they’re excited about Lego and sandpits. And you shouldn’t let your most passionate, well-intentioned employees build the foundations of your sustainability strategy. Although this passion and enthusiasm should be harnessed (more on that later).

Passion is valuable, but not sufficient. Without structure, commercial perspective, and experience, it will burn a lot of energy and deliver little value. Sustainability, when done right, is a lever for innovation, growth, and competitive advantage.

A sustainability committee isn’t a volunteer club. It’s a decision-making body that sets priorities, allocates resources, and integrates sustainability into how your business creates value. The people around that table determine whether your initiatives are transformational or just feel-good exercises.

A well-structured committee ensures sustainability is integrated into decision-making, rather than treated as a hobby or a marketing exercise. Here’s who should be at the table:

An executive sponsor, preferably the CEO or MD: Sustainability has to be strategic. Without visible leadership from the top, it remains peripheral. The sustainability committee needs to have power for action.

Finance: Sustainability without funding and a business case is just talk. Finance ensures actions link to P&L, investment decisions, and risk mitigation. Mandatory climate related financial disclosures increases the need for finance to be involved in sustainability.

Sales and Marketing: Sustainability should solve customer pain points. Bring the customer perspective to the committee via the people responsible for talking with them. Sustainability without value is charity.

Operations and/or Supply Chain: This is executable savings and value are found. Waste, procurement, and logistics can all transform ambition into measurable results.

Product / Service Delivery / Strategy: Innovation happens here. Embedding sustainability into your offering can unlock new revenue, reduce costs, and create competitive advantage.

People and Culture: Nearly every company grapples with finding the right workforce. Understanding the communities in which the company operates, and recruits from, drives real social value. People and culture are also the ones responsible for harnessing passionate and interested employees.

Legal / Risk: Sustainability is a compliance and reputational issue as well as a value and innovation opportunity. Get the balance right.

Data / IT: You can’t improve what you can’t measure. Data underpins credible reporting, informed decisions, and evidence-based innovation.

Sustainability Expertise should complement the sustainability committee. If you don’t have it, bring it in (fractionally). Think of them as the architect. They understand the landscape, translate ambition into business outcomes, and connect sustainability to growth, efficiency, and risk management.

Final Thought

Sustainability in small companies often starts with emotion. But if you want it to deliver value, you need strategy first, enthusiasm second. Get the right people in the room: authority, expertise, commercial perspective, and operational power. Build a foundation that connects sustainability to growth, innovation, and risk mitigation.

Then let your team unleash their creativity in the right space. Harness the good will and enthusiasm of your interested employees through the agreed structures and initiatives decided by the committe.

Do that, and sustainability stops being a nice story. It becomes a source of real advantage; the spark that drives innovation, efficiency, and long-term business success. Because at the end of the day, enthusiasm is the spark, but structure is the engine. And the businesses that get both right are the ones that thrive.

A Fractional Chief Sustainability Officer can help you lay these foundations right, turning passion into impact and ambition into measurable value.