A sustainability mission statement, or as some call it a “green mission statement,” provides your company and its stakeholders with an understanding of what’s most important when it comes to social responsibility and participating in the preservation and betterment of the natural world.

Creating a sustainability mission statement doesn’t mean a complete overhaul of the company’s current mission – unless that’s needed as part of your evolution and business plan. Rather, it can be a supplemental statement that homes in on the significance of your efforts and values in this realm.

While there’s not a one-size-fits-all approach to writing such pieces, there are some universal guidelines and tips for putting together a sustainability statement that is memorable, impactful and influential.

Here are four tips to help you craft your promotional products company’s sustainability mission statement.

1

Ask Yourself Why

When beginning this process, you want to focus on the significance of the project itself: Why is sustainability important in our industry and to our company? What do we believe about our current impact and why must it change? Have collective brainstorming sessions, or hire a consultant to ask you the pointed questions that get to the heart of the matter. One of the purposes of a mission statement is to unify your internal team around common core values, and doing this process together can be a powerful exercise in ensuring your employees’ voices are heard.

2

Be Specific About Your Goals

As more companies adopt greener practices, it’s important to be intentional and specific about your goals. Consumers are attuned to differentiating between performative allyship and true dedication. Hint: You don’t want to fall into the former category. So, ask yourselves: What do I want to accomplish? What steps am I taking to achieve these goals? Make a long list, then prioritize the initiatives that feel most doable and important as a company.

3

Clarify How You Measure Success

You have your motives, your large goals and the action steps you’ll take in pursuit of the goals. Now imagine what markers you will use to measure your success. Is it tons of pounds of plastic recycled? Banning a certain chemical from your supply chain or processes by 2025? Upcycling a percentage of cutting room floor materials? Establish parameters that hold your company’s efforts accountable and articulate those measurements in your statement.

4

Create a Simple Structure

Oftentimes when writing mission statements, companies want to break out the formal, industry jargon to appear sophisticated and jam every last detail of their vision into the piece. Keep the language simple and sentence structure short, and imagine someone being able to easily paraphrase and repeat it to others. The Green Business Bureau suggests a three-part approach to the statement itself. Use these guidelines for creating the structure, then substitute your own details in.

• Start with “We will,” “Our mission” or “We are committed to.”
• Explain what you’ll do: “Reduce our waste and pollution” or “Use clean energy sources.”
• State the larger end goal: “to minimize our carbon footprint.” Here’s where you can be more specific about your goals and success markers, if necessary.

In addition to crafting your sustainability mission statement, appoint a team that’s committed to seeing it through. Schedule biannual meetings to check on the progress and reroute if business is straying too far from the decided values.

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