Which brands were 2023 sustainability heroes?

Consumers want transparency, honesty, integrity and clarity around carbon reduction, in content that is switched-on and readily available 365 days of the year, to enable them to make more responsible choices about their products and the brands from which they shop.

So here’s our hero-gram for the car brands busy telling us what they’ve done and where they’re headed, all year round .

First up, a strong hurrah for Kia, which has achieved Gold Carbon Literacy status. That shows daily commitment across the company: a Carbon Literate Organisation (CLO) is an business where a substantial proportion of its workforce has been trained to be carbon literate and is demonstrating carbon literacy through organisational behaviour. CLO accreditation works on a tiered system based on increasing levels of commitment to action on climate change and creating a low-carbon culture. Auto Trader worked with the Carbon Literacy Project a few years ago to create and then roll out a version of carbon-literacy training specifically for the automotive industry.

Kia has trained 71 per cent of its head office staff in the UK in carbon literacy, which involves an individual learning and assessing what impact both their professional role in their company and their private life have on climate change. Employees commit to reducing their daily carbon footprint at work and at home through behavioural change and small but achievable acts, such as putting insulated foil behind their radiators to reflect heat back into the room, eating less meat, reducing electricity or paper usage at work and so on.

A round of applause, too, for Tesla, and also Honda. The Sustainable Marketing Performance League Table from Flourish is out. Flourish is a sustainability marketing agency and has examined the marketing strategies and communications of the car brands, and pulled apart their eco pledges and content, to see how much of it has translated into action. Their team of analysts are all tutors and assessors for the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership. They reward alignment with UN goals and transparent communication about environmental awareness and regulatory compliance. A robust and planet-conscious purpose beyond sales earns high marks, as does consistent messaging across platforms, and clear communication of sustainable practices and efforts to encourage eco-friendly behaviour, like EV incentives.

The results might surprise you: Flourish has Tesla in top spot (not a surprise) followed by Honda (very much a surprise), Hyundai, Volvo and Renault. It's important to note the report focuses on marketing, not product design or manufacturing...

For anyone thinking that sustainability is a nice-to-have but irrelevant part of a commercial strategy, businesses that communicate the importance they place on environmental, social, and governance measures (ESG) have enjoyed profit growth of 9.1 per cent. That’s 5.3 per cent more than those that don’t, according to Capital Monitor’s "The link between ESG & profitability” 2022 report.

Meanwhile, Volvo has done a life-cycle analysis (LCA) on its EX30 EV which has the lowest carbon footprint of any of its models. About a quarter of the aluminium, a fifth of the steel and same fraction of its plastics used to build it come from recycled materials. If charged with an average European blend of renewable and conventionally generated electricity, Volvo says the EX30 has a lifetime carbon footprint of 23 tonnes, which is 60 per cent less than that of a petrol-powered XC40 over the same usage cycle. 

Of course, car brands can eliminate all the carbon they want from the manufacturing, but if the driver doesn’t charge the car using electricity from renewables, the brand has little control over the Scope 3, downstream emissions of the car.

Which brings us on to the updated SBTi (Science Backed Targets initiative) assessments for car brands which wish to be SBTi-accredited. This method is proving popular for companies for whom B Corp accreditation is impossible to get, given the nature of the company. The SBTi has confirmed that companies wishing to align with its forthcoming target-setting standard for the automotive sector will need to get control of the use-phase of vehicles they have sold.

In other words, car brands will need to figure out a way to measure the carbon emitted when the car is being driven. The SBTi says car brands “will likely need to set specific goals to reduce them”. How on Earth they do that, it’s hard to say, but with road transport emissions contributing heavily to climate change, time is of the essence.