💫5 regulations to change your sustainability game

This is the monthly newsletter from Everloop where we share how not to get lost in sustainability. This month we look at the key reporting regulations you need to know about and how to prepare for them. 

Sustainability compliance has been the talk of the town. Some might think that compliance is the ultimate bore, we say: boring is the new bold. Sustainability compliance can feel relentless, but those who keep up find it is actually a fast lane to unlocking business value.

In this newsletter issue, we share how to turn must-do regulations into real returns, with minimum fuss but maximum impact. To encourage you to be bolder in your thinking, we also provide a principle per regulation, to help you align your business practices with how nature self-regulates and continues to thrive. 

1. CSRD: it’s here to stay

Whilst there are still uncertainties with the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), the latest drafts from the simplification exercise suggest that its focus on transparency, value chain and double materiality are here to stay. Companies may have more flexibility in exactly what they put in their annual reports and the scope of the requirements may have left quite a few organisations out, but CSRD remains the main standard for the EU. Therefore, if your business works with a large EU company as a supplier or customer, sooner or later these requirements will affect you.

Steps to take now:

• Conduct CSRD readiness assessment - what information and data are you able to gather at the moment? Have you conducted a double materiality assessment? Do you have robust risk management processes in place?

• Engage with your suppliers to start getting a better visibility of supply chain impacts and risks. Suppliers often have more information and are doing more than you think.

• Train key staff in sustainability literacy and CSRD principles, so when regulation extends or your customers ask, you are ready to respond credibly and quickly. You’ll also become well-versed in key commercial stakeholder communication, signalling readiness and building trust. 

Nature-Aligned Principle:
In a healthy ecosystem, organisms “read the signals” of change and adapt before they must react.

2. UK Sustainability Reporting Standards (UK SRS)

If you are currently reporting under SECR, these standards will affect you. Consultations have now been completed, and UK SRS are expected to apply to the larger UK companies (500+ employees, meeting turnover/balance sheet thresholds), UK listed companies and some of the subsidiaries of non-UK entities from 2026 with first reports coming out in 2027. The requirements are largely aligned with ISSB climate and sustainability standards, and will replace SECR reporting requirements for those in scope. 

This means significant expansion of what needs to be assessed and reported beyond energy and controlled sources of carbon emissions, requiring a change in the approach organisations will need to take. Reporting will be integrated with financial reporting so your finance team should be on board and ready to roll. 

Steps to take now:

• Conduct a double materiality assessment - understanding of your financial materiality alongside impacts will be important.

• Start establishing your data collection systems for a broader suite of sustainability information.

• Review your risk management practices and methodologies to allow integration and evaluation of sustainability risks at a more granular level than “sustainability”.

Nature-Aligned Principle:
Focusing effort mirrors how trees send roots to rich soil, boosting overall health—with less energy.

3. ISSB: Reporting with Global perspective

The International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) brings clarity and comparability to sustainability-related financial disclosures. Over 35 jurisdictions have adopted or are moving to adopt ISSB standards for mandatory sustainability reporting as of mid-2025, from Hong Kong, Mexico, Nigeria, Singapore, Japan and Chile to the UK (see SRS above) and South Korea. ISSB standards require consideration of how resilient the business is to climate and sustainability risks, and extends this to board-level accountability for climate and sustainability governance, tying ESG metrics to executive remuneration.

Steps to take now:

• Start identifying the key climate and sustainability risks to your business.

• Develop climate governance within the business, aligning it with commercial and strategic governance and objectives. 

• Engage and upskill your finance team to ensure ownership and integration with financial management.

Nature-Aligned Principle:
Ecosystems thrive by making resilience a shared, system-wide responsibility, not a siloed task. Adaptation and distributed accountability keep nature healthy just like robust, board-level governance and clear metrics keep businesses future-fit.

4. ESPR: Design for circularity, Win loyalty

The Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) makes circularity a strategic advantage. Organisations will need to understand the environmental impact of their products and start integrating circularity to reduce pollution, emissions and resource use. The regulation is aimed at driving portfolio and product redesign for durability, reusability, repairability and refurbishment for products placed on the EU market. The scope is rolled out in phases with textiles, furniture, tyres, detergents, paints, iron, steel, aluminium and electronics being in the first wave.

Steps to take now:

• Conduct a circularity and environmental impact assessment on your portfolio to estimate the impact, opportunities and priorities.

• Redesign your bestseller for circularity. You don’t need to rework every product at once.

• Engage your supply chains and external partners to redesign systems - this is not a single-player game.

Nature-Aligned Principle:
In nature, nothing’s wasted—fallen leaves feed new growth. Make your products part of a cycle (or as our new name suggests: a loop!). 

5. California SB261: Climate-related financial risk act

This new legislation requires larger companies to report on climate related financial risk in a format aligned to ISSB or TCFD. Given the recent changes in the USA environmental standards and governance, it is important to note that climate action still remains on the agenda in the USA, albeit in some locations. It is an important reminder that sustainability-related action is not a trend based solely on election cycles.

It also shows that international reporting requirements are broadly based on the same standards and principles, so if a business prepares for these, it will future-proof itself across jurisdictions.

Bonus: the legislation mentions that the authorities will actually be monitoring the climate exposure reported by businesses to understand the gravity and adjust measures accordingly! This is a shift from reporting for reporting sake to reporting driving action

Steps to take now:

• Check that your organisation meets the “doing business in California” test (direct sales, US subsidiaries, registration or material business ties).

• Prepare to disclose Scopes 1, 2 and 3 emissions.

• Build capacity for TCFD or ISSB style climate risk assessments and reporting. 

Nature-Aligned Principle:
Nature thrives on open flows of information - nutrients, signals, and energy travel through ecosystems so risks can be quickly spotted and managed.

Everloop update

📣 We have partnered with the British Institute of Interior design to help interior design and lifestyle organisations to learn more about biodiversity, nature and what they can do to address nature loss - we are running a virtual Biodiversity Collage workshop on the 26th November.

Sign up here https://biid.org.uk/events/interior-design-nature-biodiversity-collage-workshop

👁️‍🗨️ We run Biodiversity collage workshops regularly, check out the schedule and sign up here https://www.everloop.agency/sustainability-workshops/biodiversity-collage

🦓 Our Blue Zebra workshops on climate, nature, and business transformation are designed to help you define your distinctive approach – turning ambition into strategy and strategy into action. You can focus on what is most pressing for you now, or work through the full suite to cover all aspects. Book your workshop today → https://lnkd.in/ejTpdUWf 

Meme of the month

Recap of Good News this month

💫 That’s it for this month. We hope it sparks a change for you and your organisation - we would love to hear what change it is. Let us know!

Is there an advice that has been very helpful to you and you think others would find helpful too? Please share by emailing [email protected].