MD Muhammad Ali’s straight talk on unintentional greenwashing and data management

What is the most memorable experience you’ve had in your career, in terms of unintentional greenwashing?

Volkswagen (VW) is the one that comes to mind first. It was well covered by the media, where, in 2015, VW installed ‘defeat devices’ in their diesel vehicles to cheat emission tests. The deception was to show cleaner emissions while driving when, in fact, it was not.

In South Africa, Total Energies was found guilty of greenwashing by the Advertising Regulatory Board (ARB). This ruling was the first of its kind in South Africa and came from a complaint lodged by Fossil Free South Africa regarding the company’s sustainable claims related to its partnership with SANParks. The ARB acknowledged Total Energies for environmental protection in partnership with SANPARKS, but the “sustainable development” was misleading, especially with its fossil fuel activities.

Samsung has also been found to misrepresent its eco-credentials in South Africa, with the Advertising Standards Authority in 2010.

What is the single most counter-intuitive piece of advice you offer to a well-intentioned company to help them move from good intentions to truly credible ESG reporting?

Transparency builds trust. My advice is to always be open with regards to where you currently are and stand, know the lay of the land and have open-heart surgery early. Once known, we can then start the process of continual improvement using Edward Deming’s plan-do-check-act model and implement ISO standards to focus on mitigating risk and slowly building stakeholder/shareholder confidence. It’s a process, not a quick fix.

How do you address the human side of data challenges – specifically, what strategies do you recommend for fostering a company-wide culture where every employee understands their role in contributing to accurate and consistent ESG data, transforming data collection from a chore into a shared commitment?

The focus is on simple and fun awareness programmes. If you have a team-building session, contextualise it with the challenges of climate change, governance and assurance needed from shareholders on trust, then build in games and activities to understand the different roles and team effort philosophy.

Furthermore, if top management doesn’t buy into or understand ESG, the starting point is to create ethical policies, objectives and KPIs. Once this is done, you can create animation videos with a mascot and have a fun cartoon to demonstrate the importance of the various roles and values, as well as cost savings.

A good example is gamification where a computer can’t be unlocked until a task is completed. If the manager fails, they need to redo the assessment until they can access their system.

Data collection and integrity is key to this process. Once leaders have set the example, it can become part of the company’s culture. It’s a question of building habits, like switching off the lights in a boardroom that is not in use. It’s these small things that build an ESG culture in an organisation. It is so much more than documents, reports and figures.

Finally, it’s important to install SANS-approved smart metres that include ISO implementation and Independent accredited third-party certification to verify and validate all the data that is reported.