Our approach
Measure. Prove. Improve.
Three stages. One continuous loop. Every engagement, whether a single project or a multi-year retainer, follows the same underlying discipline.
Measure
Establish where you are. Baseline your significant impacts before anything else – often including carbon, social value, resource use and productivity.
- Double materiality assessment
- Risk identification
- Opportunity identification
- Measurement framework selection
Prove
Make your performance credible. Verify, assure and communicate it to the audiences that matter – customers, colleagues, investors, regulators.
- Metrics and qualitative evidence
- Reporting and disclosure
- Stakeholder engagement
- ESG assurance & verification
Improve
Turn insight into action. Set targets, monitor progress and identify where impact improvements can deliver real value.
- Target setting & roadmaps
- Monitoring & control
- Corrective action
- Strategy evolution
How to engage with us
Bottom line – we’re flexible. whatever approach gives you the best value.
Many clients start with a fixed-price project, then move to retained support once they’ve seen what’s possible. Some come straight to SHIFT because the business case for improving impacts is compelling and their resource gap is clear.
Fixed price project
Scoped, time bound, delivered.
A defined output. Clear deliverables, clear cost, clear timeline.
SHIFT retained support
Ongoing embedded support
Retained access to our team. Coordination and priortisation of projects, regulatory submission completion, accountability, horizon scanning, risk and opportunity management.
Strategic advice
Board & leadership support
Trusted advisor, non-exec or fractional sustainability director engagement. Governance, strategy and stakeholder engagement.
Training
Capability & knowledge transfer
Workshops, toolkits. training and mentroing that build your team’s confidence to run this independently over time
What our clients achieve
- Protected Revenue and Real Growth: You’ll deeply understand exactly what your customers care about. We help you use that knowledge to engage them authentically, building the kind of trust that deepens relationships and secures long-term business.
- Genuine Cost Reductions: We help you eliminate waste, reduce consumption per unit of output, and boost productivity. In fact, we’ve helped a client achieve 34% material savings by rethinking their design and sourcing.
- A Real Talent Advantage: Top talent wants to work for businesses that care. By embedding sustainability into your culture, you'll see a boost in team morale and retention, which dramatically lowers recruitment costs - our clients have seen up to a 47% reduction in hiring costs.
- Smart Risk Mitigation: You can sleep a little easier knowing your business is fully protected against sudden regulatory changes, supply chain disruptions, and the reputational risks that come with getting sustainability wrong.
- Easier Access to Capital: Banks and investors are tightening their criteria. We ensure your ESG credentials are in peak condition, positioning you as a low-risk investment so you can secure the best lending options and potentially more favourable terms.
What our clients say
"Sustainable X are phenomenal to work with, taking a challenging subject that is sustainability and making it very accessible. They are generous with their time and add value with every interaction you have with them. I can’t recommend them highly enough."
Edward RolandsonRO Group 
"One of my favourite moments of the year was working with Sustainable X on our ESG strategy. R Capital has always been committed to staff, customers and communities effected by investments so it has been really great to formalise our goals and clarify exactly what we are going to do and when we are going to do it by. It so important to me to leave this world in a better state than we found it."
R Capital 
“Thank you for spending your time with us and doing such a great job getting all our achievements and opportunities out of us and into some form of structure on paper. It will be immensely helpful to us to be able to have a proper sustainability policy and a set of goals for further development. We often struggle to talk about our sustainable stuff in a really coherent way.”
Laura CrawfordMama Bamboo 
"The team at Sustainable X demystified our carbon footprint and helped us put a plan together that combined planet & purpose whilst not losing sight of the desire to continue to grow profitability to look after our people and other key stakeholders. With hands on approach they inspired my team, heralded our many successes in this area and worked with us to fill in the gaps to set us up for success to make a material and positive difference to our impact on environment."
Jason L DancigerHANA Group 
"One thing’s certain, when creating a truly sustainable business model, if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. To achieve the level of focus required to create lasting change, sustainability is becoming engrained into every aspect of our business. Achieving net zero is a bold ambition and the journey will be long – but we must make a start and thanks to the work completed with SustainableX, our roadmap is clear."
Steven RawdingRichard Irvin 
"Sustainable X have helped us to clearly see where we are and to define the steps we need to take to get to where we want to go. The process has been invaluable, and the Sustainable X team have been a joy to work with throughout. Not only are we now better able to explain to others what we are doing, but more importantly we are in a better position to win more of the work that we want to be doing."
Thomas BryansIF_DO 
The process with Sustainable X has helped us structure what we are already doing on sustainability and given us a framework to structure and progress our efforts.By understanding and measuring the impacts of our business, we can benchmark our performance and demonstrate our improvements over time to employees, customers, investors and suppliers. Collaboration with our stakeholders is key to us making increasingly positive impacts, and we would recommend Sustainable X to any manufacturer who want to accelerate their sustainability progress.”
Marc CohenHypeTex 
"The Sustainable X process has made the complex simple for us, and we know where to focus now. We were already doing so much, and so many clients have different ways of asking about sustainability. In the last month we have pulled it all together. We’re now clear on the good things we’re already doing and focused on what else we can do to get better outcomes. Our strategy is clear. We have come further in the last month than in the last 5 years."
Eugene MeehanO’Neill & Brennan 
"Our work with Sustainable X has been invaluable. The approach has saved us a lot of time and really focused our drive to keep improving the sustainability impacts of Big Green smile. We have already made improvements for all our stakeholders, and have action plans to move the dial on all our major impacts. It has really highlighted how being sustainable is good business."
Ben WigleyBig Green Smile 
"As a people business, the key drivers to improving in our areas of greatest impact relate to engaging with our employees and clients to help them be more sustainable. The Sustainable X process was highly engaging, making it easy for us to prioritise actions over the short and longer term; the approach was collaborative rather than prescriptive, with the result that we’re confident we’ll achieve the objectives we’ve identified."
Tim NashAPR Actuarial Solutions 
The Sustainable X process has been really thought provoking for us. We understand where we are on our sustainability journey and now have a direction of travel is that is tailored to our business. It would have genuinely taken us a year to get where they have got us already. We feel like we are on a FastTrack to improving our impacts working collectively with our customers, employees and community!
Josh FreethArticad 
"Sustainable X have taken my hand and guided me through this very unknown, sometimes scary, dark road called Sustainability, towards the light! You have helped us understand what ESG involves and helped lay out a roadmap for us to follow. Breaking down and explaining the terminology in layman terms. Thank you for all your support."
Mishel HathiramSigma 