NewTech Friday: SDG Assessment – Supporting businesses in sustainability & ESG reporting
Sian Young is the Co-Founder and COO of SDG Assessment. She tells Qorus about the company and their innovative reporting system that supports SMEs in achieving sustainability, while helping large businesses monitor and improve supply chain impacts and reduce scope 3 emissions.
Sian Young is the Co-Founder and COO of SDG Assessment. She tells Qorus about the company and their innovative reporting system that supports SMEs in achieving sustainability, while helping large businesses monitor and improve supply chain impacts and reduce scope 3 emissions.
What led to the creation of SDG Assessment?
SDG Assessment was conceptualized from our founder’s work at the Centre for Sustainable Action, a UK based cooperative that supports SMEs and entrepreneurs to become sustainably managed enterprises. It was inspired by our combined interests, expertise and passion for inspiring organizations to implement ethical and environmental practices, while recognizing that lack of human action has created a sustainability implementation gap within the SME, government and finance sectors.
Our initiative is focused on the improvement of SME sustainability and understanding of interconnections to nature. Fostering responsible interaction with the planet, enabling SMEs, governments and financial institutions to achieve sustainable objectives including net zero emissions.
What is your business all about?
SDG Assessment is a research based mobile app designed to support small business in sustainability, environmental and social governance (ESG) planning, implementation and performance reporting. Supporting large businesses with improving value chain impacts and reducing scope 3 emissions.
We are not just saving our planet, we are saving your profits!
What makes your business special?
Our team has a collective 95 years of experience in their respective fields of expertise and the app's methodology is based on 12 years of research. This is an app you can rely on to lead companies towards improving their sustainability risk maturity levels, fostering value chain SDG/ESG compliance. Thereby benefiting large businesses and financial institutions with improved value chain impacts and reduced scope 3 emissions, ensuring both state and local government regulatory obligations are achieved.
SDG Assessment seeks to create a low carbon economic ecosystem by supporting SME sustainability, ESG planning, implementation and performance reporting.
Using the proven SDG Assessment, Sustainable Strategic Growth Model (SSGM) approach, can help small businesses and fast-growth companies to reduce emissions by 28% annually as compared with alternative strategies. Thereby improving productivity, reducing waste and encouraging green economic growth.
A key component of the SDG Assessment app is data analysis and reporting to assess gaps in meeting UN SDG/ESG compliance obligations that can be accessed by clients' leadership teams using our interactive dashboard.
Could you present SDG Assessment's offer?
SDG Assessment brings together non-profit organizations, SMEs, the finance sector, cities, towns and local governments to report on sustainability/ESG performance data aligned to UN SDGs using the SDG Assessment app. Using this app's Sustainable Strategic Growth Model, fast-growth companies and small businesses/organizations can reduce their carbon footprint by 28%.
Through using the SDG Assessment app, the government and finance sector can lead efforts to achieve global goals by:
• Better supply chain data management
• Sustainable resource management
• Influencing sustainable action for value chain ESG reporting
• Creation of low carbon business ecosystem network
• Quantification of sustainable resource use and progress towards UN SDGs and emissions reduction
• Promotion of partnerships for UN SDGs
The SDG Assessment app supports SMEs and finance sector companies to:
• Reduce carbon emissions
• Attract ESG funding and investment
• Measure and reduce business carbon footprint
• Demonstrate compliance and commitment to UN SDGs
• Gain environmental market leadership
• Reduce supply chain sustainability and ESG risk
• Avoid expensive consultancy fees
What's coming next for SDG Assessment?
The application of blockchain technology is a major focus for us, moving forward. Although there has been a trend within the financial industry towards ESG integration, i.e. the assimilation of environmental and social risk into the decision making process, critically there is limited application of blockchain technology directed to deliver sustainability/ESG self-assessment tools for risk management.
The SDG Assessment app fills this market gap with the application of blockchain technology to sustainability/ESG self-assessment reporting as a platform input to deliver quality, scalability and performance efficiencies as compared to conventional app development platforms. A blockchain enabled approach to sustainability management using the SDG Assessment can provide a coherent structure for the deployment of sustainability within the government and the finance sectors, incorporating sustainability improvement, sustainability assurance, sustainability footprints and sustainability reporting.
Sustainability improvement is a process of achieving enhanced economic, informational, social and environmental performance on a recurring basis.
Sustainability assurance is the evaluation of the effectiveness of actions taken by governments and financial institutions to achieve their goals and objectives within the operational context, acknowledging planetary constraints and the needs of future generations.
Sustainability reporting is the transparent disclosure of economic, social and information performance and environmental impact of government and finance sector activities on stakeholders to which they are accountable. Sustainability reporting is dynamic in nature as stakeholder feedback is encouraged to ensure that information is fit for purpose and dedicated to fulfilling expectations for sustainable performance.
Sustainability footprints involve the use of carbon footprint, social footprint and water footprint and other methodologies by government and financial institutions to evaluate the potential risk of business decisions on the survival of future generations.
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