See Beyond: Transforming Environmental Reporting in the Food & Drink Sector
The demand for transparent environmental reporting is growing—but for many businesses, collecting and verifying data remains a major challenge. Indeed, 79% of surveyed food businesses said it's their biggest barrier to measuring their environmental performance. See Beyond, an initiative by the Environment Agency, is tackling this head-on with a new incentive-based approach that standardises environmental metrics, making reporting more efficient, cost-effective, and impactful.
The next part of this initiative will see these metrics tested with food businesses at site and company levels. It will also look at integrating them into digital platforms to ease reporting burdens, and leveraging AI and global standards for seamless data sharing.
Notably, farming and agricultural production do not form part of this current project so metrics like soil health and biodiversity will have to be included in future projects. However, it's of interest as it represents the first attempt to embed behavioural incentives into the design of environmental strategy. Such incentives can include improving brand value, improving personal performance and gaining business value beyond growing profits.