By now, it’s no secret – doing good business often means having a negative impact on the environment. No industry is exempt from that fact – but no industry, barring the fossil fuel industry, is exempt from the possibility of real, positive change.

More and more businesses are embracing that fact – the ability to break new ground, and offer customers the opportunity to be a part of progress, rather than contributing to the issue as it unfolds. As customers, we are getting more conscious of brands that are authentic in their pursuit of sustainability – and, thankfully, many businesses are responding to that awareness.

The more you read into the most promising solutions to climate change, the more everything seems to fall into place. Sustainability is an incredibly broad subject ranging from the very big to the very small but, even still, so many of the solutions intersect with – and directly benefit – one another.

In other words, creating a sustainable future is about making those connections between one thing and the next. Between commercial solar, and how those carbon savings trickle down to the individual, for instance.

Global warming is a complex issue, and its effects can be traced in so many different directions. Like a tree’s roots, these effects are causing damage to the very foundations of ‘life as we know it’ – in some cases, irreversible.

Whether these effects are close to home or half the world away, the conclusion remains the same: we must reinvigorate our commitment to climate reform, and to protecting the world – its people, its communities, and its ecosystems – from rising temperatures and erratic natural disasters.

Greenwashing is now one of the most significant issues facing modern consumers. What started off as a misguided attempt to jump on (what was perceived to be) the bandwagon of sustainability and greenness has snowballed into an incredibly profitable deception – one that exploits our mounting fears of climate change, and our growing desire to minimise the negative impact we have on the environment.

Daily life is now laced with a palpable sense of fear for the planet’s future. This sense remains relatively new. Just a few years back, the climate crisis sat on the periphery of mainstream media. True, you would have been hard-pushed to find someone who was not at the very least somewhat aware of the topics of global warming, pollution, carbon footprints and their risks – but, these days, the subject is largely unavoidable. It dominates headlines even when the world is in the grips of another crisis – although, admittedly, these crises often share their own links with global warming.

Businesses can no longer afford to sit on the fringes of the sustainable revolution. Once upon a time, it was easy to get by on very involvement with ‘the world of green stuff’, and businesses that weren’t directly involved in renewable technologies and solutions could make do with a recycling initiative and, perhaps, a departure from single-use plastic cups and cutlery in the cafeteria downstairs.

For so many people around the world, it is growing increasingly difficult to see the resetting of the calendar as a step toward better and brighter things – particularly when the impacts of the climate disaster, the cost-of-living crisis, and the Ukraine Russia war are growing more and more severe by the week.

The past few years have made increasingly clear the fact that great swathes of the public are actively looking to support businesses who to hold and support values that align with their own. In other words, for businesses to capture and retain customers, they need to be underpinned by a clear and proactive philosophy – one that prioritises the world beyond their own front doors.

The end of another year, the start of another festive stretch – and a time of mixed feelings for so many people up and down the country. It’s certainly not unusual for December to give way to strange combinations of joy, doubt, worry, relief, and trepidation for the start of a new year. There is, however, something about the close of 2022 that is being more keenly felt by people all around us.