For this year’s International Women’s Day, the Beyond Green team tried something different to bring independent and invisible women from history to the fore, so we could explore, understand and discuss their ground breaking achievements despite facing many barriers. 

We used a board game called “Dreams for Rebel Girls” (designed by Simone Luciani), which is in turn based on a book series of nighttime stories for children, the first being called “Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls” by Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo. Lisa and Evelin adapted the game to play it remotely and in the context of International Women’s Day (IWD), putting more focus on learning about the women in the process of gameplay. You can read more about the background of the game on our LinkedIn Post.

What did we discover?

Well, a lot of unfamiliar stories, from our starting group of eight women spanning different areas of achievement and parts of the world. The women represented different countries, cultures, and ethnicities, and areas of life from politics (Eva Peron), the arts and music (Melba Liston), medicine and science (Maria Montessori & Matilde Montoya), writing (Cora Coralina), Sport (cyclist: Alfonsina Strada), activism (Harriet Tubman) & Political leadership (Lozen). 

What they all had in common, is fighting for women’s rights, independence from society’s shackles and more broadly a just society where all are treated with respect. Most of the women were born in the 19th century and early 20th century when their activities would have been generally considered unacceptable. They had to overcome discrimination and derision by their male contemporaries, such as Alfonsina being called the Devil in a Dress because she was a faster cyclist than the male competitors! 

They Gave, we Gain

It is because of these women and others that women’s suffrage and rights could develop. For women, especially trans women, there is still a long way to go in terms of equity in law, in business and society. It is not a linear journey, and the progress we have made is not set in stone.

Nevertheless, we can and are building on their foundations and pillars of strength to bring parity. And the work is not down only to women, men are essential allies in breaking down the barriers, speaking out and at the very least have women’s backs in the home, school, workplace and social settings too.

Avoiding IWD Tokenism

Some women feel increasingly disconnected from IWD because there’s a lot of tokenism which diminishes the essence of IWD. And often it’s the women who do the emotional and invisible labour behind the scenes to shout about IWD, with little recognition for their work and often little impact.

It’s why we wanted to try out a different approach in using a game, and why we invited some of our clients into the room. From the conversations about the women in the game, we discovered women that inspired us and importantly strengthened allyship from male colleagues to voice the achievements of past and present women that are making a difference every day. 

Here are some of our takeaways:

What I found fantastic was that this is the most I’ve ever heard about IWD not only via work but my friends outside work too. Seems like a positive step to recognising the achievements and impact of many great women and to push for gender equality”

This board game is about Women in history who created space for themselves in worlds dominated by men. I must admit, most of these women were completely new to me. It was a friendly and collaborative space to learn, reflect and celebrate women who have broken boundaries so the rest of us have more opportunities.”

What about next year?

We were joined in this friendly space by Lynsey Mackenzie from J. Smart & Co. (Contractors) PLC and her colleagues where we discussed clues, uncovered the identities of these women, and pieced together their achievements. Maybe next year we can widen our audience and invite more people from our community to join the conversation and discover more courageous women from history. 

In preparation, we’d like to share another insightful resource: the book “Women who Dared” edited by Sara Sheridan, which covers over 40 short extracts obtained from the Dangerous Women Project at the University of Edinburgh.

The post International Women’s Day (IWD) 2026 first appeared on Beyond Green.

Launching Net Zero Trailfinder

Starting in the New Year, we’ll be offering a new Net Zero service package for getting organisations started on their Net Zero journey. 

For more information, have a look at our updated Net Zero page and our new Net Zero Services Overview brochure. We also have a text only version of the Net Zero Services Overview here.

Webinar – “Embarking On Your Net Zero Strategy”

We ran a webinar for Midlothian and East Lothian Chamber of Commerce on embarking on your Net Zero Strategy. Our goal for this webinar was to help make the journey to Net Zero feel achievable rather than overwhelming. From our survey results (see below) and the feedback we received, we’ve been successful! 

We’ll be taking this format forward to help our clients and our wider networks engage with their supply chain via free taster sessions designed to help businesses feel more confident that they’re up to the challenge of planning for Net Zero. If you think you (or someone in your network) would benefit from this, please feel free to reach out!

COP30 – Where do we go from here…?

The COP30 in Brazil last month was framed as Ambition and Action,  instead it was Power and Politics, and against the background of growing global disunity and breakdown of consensus around climate change and the actions required.

30 years ago, the COP process was a response to the Environmental Emergency, which evolved into the Humanitarian Emergency, as an overstretched planet will diminish the livelihoods of 99% of citizens, especially those most vulnerable.

Now, with the latest global warming trending towards 1.5°C and recent impacts of extreme heat, flooding, and drought are affecting the economic systems that support our daily lives;  where do businesses go from here? 

Read our initial thoughts on COP here.

This photo was taken at COP21 – how much progress have we really made? 
“Civil society sit-in demanding climate justice outside COP21 plenary rooms” by John Englart, CC BY-SA 2.0

“From LGBTQ+ Confusion to Inclusion”

As part of our accessibility and inclusion programme, we’re always looking to expand our understanding of how we can make the workplace a more inclusive and supportive space for everyone. This year, we’ve completed an online training course by Proud Futures focused on increasing our knowledge and awareness of the LGBTQ+ community. 

We’ve got a blog post in the works on some of the points we’ve found most striking as a team and some of our reflections on the experience, but in the meantime, we want to flag this course up to you! It’s an excellent course informed by lived experience that can be completed at your own pace and puts a strong emphasis on creating a supportive space to learn and reflect.

You can find out more about LGBTQ+ course here.

The post Beyond Green Sustainability Newsletter Winter 2025 first appeared on Beyond Green.

What it means for Businesses

Following a master’s in sustainability in the mid-2000s, I moved away from accountancy. On disclosing my diagnosis to prospective employees, it was a shock to experience how their attitude changed and diminished me. This, amongst other reasons, is why I founded Beyond Green, which became a B Corp in 2018 and was recognised for both our environmental work and workplace programmes. Over 3 years, our Accessibility and Inclusion programme led to our accreditation as a Disability Confident Leader (DCL), led by Lisa Kaiffer.  

Making Change Together

Working under Lisa’s leadership, I learnt as much about disability in 3 years as I did in the previous 50! As importantly, we transformed how we enacted our core values of Fairness, Ambition and Freedom in supporting mental wellness, inclusion and accessibility. Actions we’ve taken, which I am proud of, include: 

• Implemented a well-being policy that provides two weeks of paid leave that can be taken as a way to prevent mental health issues from building up, and up to 6 sessions of paid professional therapy. 
• Share interview questions with all candidates in advance, along with designing interviews to include various options to share skills and knowledge – it’s not a test, we want to understand your strengths and growth potential.
• Interviews focus on a collaborative session, a growth mindset, instead of skill / knowledge-based questions
• Accessibility and inclusion training on topics like unconscious bias, improving document accessibility, LGBTQ+ and various aspects of mental health and neurodivergent conditions
• After a 1-year pilot in 2024, we introduced a proper 4-day working week, as disabled people will generally expend more energy overcoming the barriers of work and usually face a pay cut to manage energy levels.
• Introduced additional leave for perimenopause/menopause, as well as new parent connection personal connection time.
• Monthly 1-1 check-ins with senior management to talk through the good times and tough times at work.  
• Regular check-ins on workload pressures and taking proactive action to minimise stress.

Above all, our mantra is what can we do to reduce the energy it takes you to fulfil your role and deliver rewarding work to our clients.   

Sharing with Sir Charlie Mayfield – “Keep Britain Working” Workplace review

As part of the disability confident employer scheme in Scotland, I was invited to a round table discussion with Charlie Mayfield in Glasgow earlier this year.  In the session, I shared the points above and responded to the challenge of employers in the private and public sectors about funding workplace adjustments as follows:

“We frame adjustments in the context of energy demand. If we make adjustments to our process, technology, or how we work together to remove barriers, we reduce energy, anxiety, or stress. In turn, this leads to people working to their strengths, enhancing skill development, client service, and productivity.   We don’t see it as a cost, but a way of working differently. Just as we have done with the introduction of a four-day work week, it benefits all, and disabled people do not need to take a pay cut for reduced hours because the unadjusted workplace consumes their energy.”   

Working with the People in Front of You

And we are not alone in caring for our team, as Charlie noted in the interview, that many businesses are concerned about employee wellbeing, recognising the marked shift in employees showing early signs of mental ill health over the last decade.  Working together, mental ill health and disabilities do not need to be life-defining conditions, but we need to deal with the real issue in the workplace.   It is about creating a supportive environment and understanding difficulties, even when you don’t experience them yourself. Businesses need to work with the person in front of them, lean into their needs, and by doing so, create a culture where all the people are able to perform well.  Its fairness, which at Beyond Green means equity as well as equality depending on the case in hand, and the unique needs of the employee – we don’t all need the same help, but we all often need help that works for us. 

Moreover, as business leaders, we need to recognise that the whole person comes to work and brings an ever-increasing set of anxieties about the world we live in, such as the cost-of-living crisis, the climate crisis, the housing crisis, and supporting dependents.   With a supportive and adaptive culture, the employer and employee can ride these waves together as both parties fundamentally want to perform well. 

It may not always work out, but it will mean that employees are better placed to understand the type of work that suits them best, and employers are learning where they can be flexible and where their business model requires a more fixed approach.  Above the legal requirements, employers do not need to have a perfect solution or get it right the first time. At Beyond Green, our approach evolved with each situation, and what sticks with employees is how you made them feel; and they’ll take that with them as advocates of your business and a new way of engaging.  

All the players on the pitch

As Charlie Mayfield noted in the interview and at our roundtable, to improve our workplace wellbeing and create an environment where everyone has the opportunity to flourish, a genuine partnership between the healthcare system, employers and employees is required.  And it is important to remember: those with disabilities are already expending a lot of energy battling to break down barriers in their path, be it housing adaptations, access to transportation or struggling in the workplace, such as taking notes, planning work, or sensitivity to noise in an open plan office. 

They’re on the pitch in work or trying to find work. Now the employers, with the support of public services, need to join them as equal partners because we are only going to win with a full squad playing towards the same goal.  

I chose to write this piece because it’s not about how hard it was for me. After all, lots of other people had/have it harder than me (imposter syndrome coming on); and I could follow our conditioning of just suck it up, get on with it and do your best. it’s about how life could be so much better for everyone and for organisations that are struggling with productivity if we worked collaboratively to reduce the total energy required to bring the change we desperately need to improve wellbeing, the state of the planet and the prosperity for the 99%. 

The post Workplace Wellbeing and the impact of our decisions – Part 2 first appeared on Beyond Green.

Our founder and director Paul Adderley reflected on some recent news around the workplace and mental health, and how it relates to his own experiences throughout his career and the role we as a business play in that conversation.

Strengthen workplace mental wellness, collaboration and productivity; and is diagnosis an enabler?

Two news items this morning that are strongly connected to me and the internal work at Beyond Green:

• Wes Streeting orders review of mental health diagnoses as benefit claims soar
• Sir Charlie Mayfield’s prime time interview on Radio 4  (8:10 – 8:20) about disability and mental health in the workplace

My personal reflections below bring together the two strands of these articles: i) the presumption that the rise in mental health and disability benefits is driven by overdiagnosis (my personal story), and ii) businesses need to work with the real people around the table (how we work at Beyond Green).

Diagnosis- A necessary enabler?

The overdiagnosis narrative is deeply worrying for someone who struggled in school, university and professional qualifications with undiagnosed dyslexia until I was 34.  From clearing out my family home after my father passed away this year, I came across my old school reports, and a consistent theme was very good effort but “careless mistakes”.   This continued at university, with earlier feedback on my essays as good points/insight, but let down by sub-standard writing. This began to sow seeds of anxiety and not being good enough, regardless of how hard I worked.   

Struggles and Survival Strategies

Like many people with neurodivergent minds, there is a determination to develop survival strategies to overcome our struggles and the associated anxieties. For me, personalised strategies in a world with limited support and many barriers enabled me to progress through university and embark on an accountancy qualification with the ICAEW.   Though in the late 1990s, the world of numbers was moving toward report writing and the digestion of a lot of written information.  Despite passing 12 exams, the Final Admitting Exam (FAE) – a case study – was, in my view, the F****** Awkward Exam, as it took me several attempts before I passed. With 10s of practice papers, four exams over two additional years, I realised something after my diagnosis.  The jo-jo marks I received correlated with the volume and density of written information in the exam.  With no diagnosis, a life of strategies means you just get on with it and do your best; there was no additional time, support, or curiosity about why this employee was struggling with the FAE, despite being highly rated in performance reviews.  

The invisible hand of technology

In the workplace, the firm Price Waterhouse (PW) ‘s vision to digitise audit work within the first year of my training enabled me to adapt how I process information, document my work, and use my dyslexic dexterity to connect disconnected information to gain insights.  However, the struggle continued as promotion shifted the focus of work further away from numbers and closer to report writing, email communication, etc. The promotions also enabled my abilities to understand a range of points in a room and to build authentic relationships to flourish.  A childhood strategy to avoid writing at all costs enabled me to develop skills in building trust through better listening and communication. As the saying goes, people will remember how you made them feel above all. 

Needs Key players on the pitch 

So was this diagnosis an enabler as I moved through my career? In short, yes, it was, though it took 15 years to feel it! For non-disabled people, an enabler could be a mentor or a network that opens doors. BUT it needs other players on the pitch to really transform the working lives of neurodivergent people and others, the value we bring to the organisations they invest a huge proportion of their time in, and the broader economy and society.

Read Paul’s thoughts on how businesses can make a difference in part 2 of the blog post.

The post Workplace Wellbeing and the impact of our decisions – Part 1 first appeared on Beyond Green.

We’re especially proud to have won the Scotland and UK wide Diversity and Inclusion award in the Celebrating Small Business awards, and the Microbusiness of the Year award by the Midlothian and East Lothian Chamber of Commerce.

Read through our annual report below – if you prefer, there is a pdf version below and we’re providing a text only version of the report in Google Doc.

You can also sign up to our newsletter to receive quarterly updates and our annual report sneak peek directly to your inbox.

Please note that the alt text for images below will be big picture summaries, with the complete transcription to be found in the text only document.

The post Beyond Green Annual Report 2024 first appeared on Beyond Green.

B Corp Recertification 

We’ve gone through our recertification process in May this year, and are proud to share that our impact score has increased from 101.7 in 2021 to 125.9 in 2024. The score shows almost a 25% improvement from 2021, which is a testament to the hard work of our team during that period.Find our profile on the B Corp website for more details.

Centre Circle Event Management Ltd Case Study: ESOS

Centre Circle Event Management Ltd is a company that provides security staff for some of the UK’s most iconic venues and events, such as football stadiums and music venues. We’ve supported them through their first experience of ESOS compliance. You can read the case study on our website here.

Pentland Science Park Case Study: Environmental Management System internal audit

Pentland Science Park Ltd was established by The Moredun Foundation to improve the welfare of livestock for the Scottish farming community. The science park is home to leading scientific and research organisations, including Moredun Research Institute. Pentland Science Park Ltd (PSP hereafter) manages the park’s estate, facilities and two farms to ensure its environmental management complies with ISO14001 requirements. 

In late 2024, our friends at On-site Generation introduced us to PSP to respond to the Compliance Manager’s request for assistance with internal auditing of the Environmental Management System of this large and complex estate with multiple tenants. 

This is was Gillian Galbraith, Compliance Manager at PSP, had to say about our work together:

“PSP was extremely pleased with Beyond Green’s work at short notice. Their expertise and efficiency ensured a seamless internal audit of our Environmental Management System, despite the complexity of our estate and tight deadlines.”

Read the full case study on our website here.

Rebecca moving on

Rebecca is moving on after a year and a half with Beyond Green. During her tenure with us, she worked diligently on our ESOS projects in 2024, ensuring that all complex reporting requirements were met, including creating a comprehensive spreadsheet to process the data needed for the board reports.

She also embraced working on Business Energy Scotland projects to help smaller organisations save money and carbon from reducing energy consumption. Rebecca brought her creative skills to the Beyond Green table, through her involvement with our presentations and interview-style videos to share with our clients. The team will miss her positivity and liveliness, and wish her all the best in her new role.

The post Beyond Green Sustainability Newsletter Summer 2025 first appeared on Beyond Green.

Pentland Science Park Ltd was established by The Moredun Foundation to improve the welfare of livestock for the Scottish farming community. The science park is home to leading scientific and research organisations, including Moredun Research Institute. Pentland Science Park Ltd (PSP hereafter) manages the park’s estate, facilities and two farms to ensure its environmental management complies with ISO14001 requirements.

Beginnings

In late 2024, our friends at On-site Generation introduced us to PSP to respond to the   Compliance Manager’s request for assistance with internal auditing of the Environmental Management System (EMS) of this large and complex estate with multiple tenants.  We quickly developed a collaborative relationship with the compliance manager,  devised a risk-based approach, and agreed on working practices so we could achieve a tight deadline by mid February 2025. 

Now

PSP required an experienced audit team that could hit the ground running, work with their systems and prioritise a complex compliance regime to ensure all the processes were completed within 10 days. Having never been to the site before, we invested effort in understanding the underlying business activities through conversations and site walks with key process owners; we then set up collaborative working methods to efficiently share information, track progress and resolve issues.

The audits included the following: 

• Waste Management, 
• Emergency Response, 
• Fuel Delivery and Storage, 
• Compliance obligations, including carbon reporting and Net Zero,
• Site maintenance, 
• Monitoring, Communication and Leadership.

Our internal audits exceeded PSP expectations as we went beyond the minimal compliance requirements for ISO 14001 to identify compliance risks and opportunities, improve efficiency and drive continual improvement. As with all our audit and assurance projects, we robustly challenge the business-as-usual and use open conversations to ensure the project outcomes create value beyond compliance while aligning with our clients’ values. For Moredun, this means focusing on collaboration, maximising impact, and protecting communities and the environment now and in the future. 

With our work completed on time and on budget, PSP was ready for its annual external audit by a UKAS-accredited body.

Future

Now that they have successfully achieved an excellent result from the external audit, Pentland Science Park and Beyond Green will debrief their work together. Our project debrief process is an important part of our client service. It helps explore the support that Beyond Green can provide PSP with internal auditing and the Moredun Research Institute with Carbon Reporting and achieving their Net Zero commitment.

This is was Gillian Galbraith, Compliance Manager at PSP, had to say about our work together:

“PSP was extremely pleased with Beyond Green’s work at short notice. Their expertise and efficiency ensured a seamless internal audit of our Environmental Management System, despite the complexity of our estate and tight deadlines.

They quickly developed a collaborative approach, engaged key process owners, and implemented effective methods to identify compliance risks and improvements beyond standard ISO 14001 requirements. Their audits covered critical areas, including waste management, emergency response, and carbon reporting, all with a focus on continual improvement.

Thanks to their thorough and timely efforts, PSP was fully prepared for its external audit, achieving excellent results. We look forward to continuing our collaboration to enhance environmental compliance, carbon reporting, and our Net Zero commitments.”

Looking for more real business examples of our work? You can find our other case studies here.

The post Pentland Science Park Case Study: EMS internal audit first appeared on Beyond Green.

Centre Circle Event Management Ltd (CCEM hereafter) is a company that provides security staff for some of the UK’s most iconic venues and events, such as football stadiums and music venues. 

Beginnings

It started with the introduction from our community: Richard Whitney from Edinburgh based On-site Generation. Richard, like Beyond Green’s Director, Paul Adderley, is a registered ESOS Lead Assessor; CCEM had initially reached out to him, but he did not have capacity at the time and redirected them to us. With Christmas 2024 fast approaching, Beyond Green promptly responded to the call for help from CCEM to support them with their ESOS Phase 3 compliance. This was CCEM’s first experience of ESOS compliance, and they were unaware of the requirements going into the project.  

Now

We quickly reassured them, explained how to engage with the Environmental Agency, and set up templates for the CCEM team to collate the necessary energy data before we all headed off for a well-deserved festive break. 

As we embarked on the new year, the Beyond Green team drew on their experience of delivering six ESOS Projects in 2024 alone, and nearly 1000 energy assessments overall, to deliver the three key requirements for this project: 

1. Calculate Total Energy Consumption and Significant Energy Use
2. Conduct an Energy Saving Opportunity Assessment for CCEM’s head office, and transport activities
3. Prepare the ESOS report for CCEM’s board

The BG team drew on their digital expertise to facilitate a virtual energy savings ideas session. Using an online whiteboard tool (Miro), we guided the CCEM team through a brainstorming and prioritisation process to identify viable energy and cost saving actions around using company cars and grey fleet. Our Miro process allows everyone to participate and to easily develop ideas together. Once we had some great ideas in the bag, we then worked with CCEM’s finance director to quantify the savings; examples include the fuel saved from staff staying in rented accommodation for summer events, and switching to Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEV) or Electric Vehicles (EV).

Future

Central to how we work is collaboration to ensure we bring along all those involved on the journey to a lower carbon future. We hear that the ESOS process has energised the team to be more engaged with energy management, and CCEM’s operations team is already switching to EVs and PHEVs ahead of plan. CCEM’s landlord has also been very supportive, and new smart electric heaters are now being installed. 

ESOS requires companies to submit progress to their action plans in December 2025, and CCEM are already ahead of the curve!   

The post Centre Circle Event Management Ltd Case Study: ESOS first appeared on Beyond Green.

This newsletter, we’re sharing a case study on our work with Vegware on the Green Claims Code, and talk about B Corp Month, International Women’s Day, and how we can make a difference as a business for disabled and trans employees and communities.

Vegware Case Study – Green Claims Code

Founded in 2006, Vegware is an Edinburgh-based food packaging company like no other. They specialise in certified compostable ”Packaging made from plants”. With their pre-sales advice and market education, followed by their after-sales support with the Close the Loop service, their passion is to maximise food packaging becoming compost.

We have been supporting them with their certification to ISO14001 and ISO9001 for Environment and Quality Management since 2013 – in 2024, we expanded the depth and breadth of our internal compliance audit of Vegware’s market and customer communication to evaluate compliance against the 13 aspects of the Green Claims Code (GCC). You can read our case study on the project on our website here.

Here is what Kelly Falconer, Head of Marketing at Vegware, had to say on our work together:

“Working with Beyond Green is invaluable in keeping us on the right track with our communications. They help us ensure we’re using clear, transparent language and avoid making bold claims that can’t be backed up. Their guidance gives us confidence that we’re communicating responsibly and effectively. I always enjoy our sessions as they are insightful, practical and a real asset to our work at Vegware.”

B Corp Month

Last month was B Corp Month. This year’s theme was #GenB or Generation B – being part of a generation of businesses aiming to have a positive impact on the world.

The theme of generations of changemakers is a very relevant topic in sustainability conversations, so for this year, we decided to focus on different aspects of the role different generations play in driving change in business and in sustainability. Here are some of our thoughts on the topic:

• “When we forget that our present grew out of the seeds sown by people coming before us, we forget that it is never just on one generation to create change.” (What came before – LinkedIn) 
• “We must all pull on the levers for change.” (A Generation for Good – Blog Post)
• What practical actions to support intergenerational collaboration are we taking as a business to make a difference? (LinkedIn)

International Women’s Day 2025

The theme for International Women’s Day this year was #AccelerateAction. Inspired by the theme for B Corp Month this year, we reflected on how different generations can work together in accelerating action for women’s rights, within our shared space of sustainability work.

We’ve reached out to women in our professional networks to get some of their thoughts on what they’ve gained from working with different generations of people, and on what they’d like to see for the future. Read our blog post for International Women’s Day 2025 here.

Making A Difference

After all this talk about being a business for a good, we feel it is only appropriate to share a couple of the areas where we see an urgent need for action.

Disability Benefits Cuts

As a B Corp as well as a Disability Confident Leader, the news of the planned benefit cuts for ill and disabled people and the huge impact the cuts would have on the most vulnerable populations is difficult to see. The wider conversation is often skewed towards individual responsibility, without accounting for the systemic barriers to work for disabled employees or the role of organisations in addressing them. We’ve shared some of our thoughts on the responsibility of businesses to support our disabled employees on LinkedIn.

It is also on us as businesses to speak up, and to support our employees in doing so if they would like to. Disability Rights UK has pulled together resources on how to take action against the proposed disability benefits cuts.

Support for Trans Women

With the recent UK Supreme Court ruling on ‘woman’ as an identity being based on biological sex, it is now more important than ever to think about how we can support our trans employees, co-workers, and connections in our community.

The ruling and the uncertainties around what comes next will have a significant impact on a lot of people’s lives and mental wellbeing. Staying informed and checking in on your trans contacts can make a world of a difference during a time when they may be made to feel unwelcome and isolated.

In addition, a good first step to making a difference is to share resources, appropriate training materials and opinions from people directly impacted, so these are some of the resources we’ve found helpful:

• This excellent list of support resources for trans people, pulled together by the Good Law Project 
• Disability Rights UK’s blog posts on the connections between disabled and trans experiences
• Biological Science Rejects the Sex Binary (Article) – “The data-driven bottom line is that “man/woman” and “masculine/feminine” are neither biological terms nor rooted exclusively in biology.” 

At Beyond Green, we’ve been focused on accessibility and general inclusion in our social sustainability work over the last few years, but the current situation has highlighted to us that trans rights should be its own theme within our advocacy for responsible business practices.

The post Beyond Green Sustainability Newsletter Spring 2025 first appeared on Beyond Green.

Founded in 2006, Vegware is an Edinburgh-based food packaging company like no other. They specialise in certified compostable ”Packaging made from plants”. With their pre-sales advice and market education, followed by their after-sales support with the Close the Loop service, their passion is to maximise food packaging becoming compost. They have shelves of industry awards, were recognised with a Queen’s Award for Enterprise, and continue to drive change in the packaging industry.  

Beyond all, Vegware values trust with its customers and strives to be clear, transparent, and honest in its claims about its products and performance. This continues following its incorporation into the Novolex family of Eco Products  in 2021. 

Beginnings

Beyond Green began working with the Vegware team in 2013 to help them become certified to ISO14001 and ISO9001 for Environment and Quality Management. For a fast-growing company, documenting a process that was constantly evolving as they expanded the team, markets, and processes was challenging. Working together, being robust while pragmatic, we got there and with continued growth, they have maintained their certification since 2015.  As the team became more confident and comfortable with ISO compliance requirements, Beyond Green’s role evolved into becoming their trusted partner for their half-yearly environmental compliance audits. 

Our internal audits ensured Vegware went beyond the minimal compliance requirements in ISO 14001 to identify compliance risks and opportunities to improve efficiency and drive continual improvement. The audit process, though challenging, involves open feedback and coaching to ensure its outcomes align with Vegware’s ambition to always do better. 

Now

Operating in UK and global markets, especially across Europe, Vegware is impacted by legislators’ and regulators’ increased focus on the packaging industry and the scrutiny of Green Claims in the UK and EU.

Reflecting on this in 2024, we expanded the depth and breadth of our internal compliance audit of Vegware’s market and customer communication to evaluate compliance against the 13 aspects of the Green Claims Code (GCC). Drawing on our expertise in non-financial assurance, we seek robust evidence to corroborate claims, have an objective and critical mindset and engage in collaborative conversations with Vegware’s Head of Marketing. Why this approach? It allows us to capture the big picture perspective to spot omissions, hone in on key phrases and detailed evidence, and explore and stress test solutions. 

An example is questioning the phrase “sustainably sourced” – What does this mean to Vegware’s end users? 

Sustainably is an ambiguous and nebulous term, mixed up with a range of concepts: environmentally friendly, responsibly sourced, low-carbon, green products, the list goes on.  Through our open conversation, the Head of Marketing, with the perfect marketing mindset, responded “ Well let’s ask our customers across our community what they think!” 

Future

This case study is an example of their transparency in ensuring that they continually raise the bar in their industry to ensure the customers get what is said on the tin. Vegware has always invested time and resources in educating their market on the pitfalls and solutions for compostable packaging, and now they have upped the ante with their Webinar Series, “Transparency Talks” with one webinar taking on Green Claims, covering the Green Claims issues: greenwashing, green hushing, etc.

Here is what Vegware had to say about our work together:

Working with Beyond Green is invaluable in keeping us on the right track with our communications. They help us ensure we’re using clear, transparent language and avoid making bold claims that can’t be backed up. Their guidance gives us confidence that we’re communicating responsibly and effectively. I always enjoy our sessions as they are insightful, practical and a real asset to our work at Vegware.” – Kelly Falconer, Head of Marketing, Vegware

As for Beyond Green, we will continue to adapt our compliance approach to focus on the key risks, combat complacency by objectively questioning the information in the context Vegware operates in, and openly explore issues to ensure our support helps Vegware in its quest for transparency. 

Looking for more real business examples of our work? You can find our other case studies here.

The post Vegware Case Study: Green Claims Code (GCC) first appeared on Beyond Green.