Just how much green guff are we reading, day by day, month by month, ad nauseam? Is it significant? Is it saying something either credible or useful about the firm it’s coming from? And what’s the context? Is the company better, or worse than its competitors? Does the company know? What’s being achieved?

I’d love to see more firms thinking before speaking. So, here’s one way to cut through the waffle and get to something that’s actually worth communicating.

For consumer products, and for IT products, by far the greatest proportion of carbon footprint is in making the product. Take a mobile phone or computer – it consumes relatively small amounts of electricity to function, but manufacturing the device has a much greater footprint. Similarly, a chocolate bar.

There are exceptions, of course – a kettle, an oven, a car. But this principle largely holds true in B2C.

In the world of business-to-business (B2B), the inverse is usually true. Take an industrial machine. It will be consuming huge quantities of power, lubricant, coolant, etc over its lifetime, far in excess of the carbon emitted when it was first assembled. The same is true for a haulage fleet, or heating and ventilation systems in a building.

So, the first principle is to talk about the bit that’s important. Where are the majority of your emissions – on-site or from your products when used by customers?

If you’re talking about something relatively insignificant, what’s the point, and what do you hope to achieve?

People usually focus on their on-site emissions and sustainability because it’s EASY. But that’s no good if it’s insignificant.

We have to remind ourselves that the customer is not a fool. In fact, they’re usually quite bright, quite up to speed, and quite impervious to being in any way influenced by poorly conceived or directed sustainability communications from their suppliers.

If it wouldn’t fool you, it wouldn’t fool them!