Businesses Must Strengthen Partnerships for Our Planet

Today is Earth Day, an important moment to reflect on how we can all step up to the challenge of ensuring a prosperous future for generations. The scientific evidence is clear: we must act now if we are to stand a chance of halting runaway climate change. A transition to a greener and healthier future is a business and moral necessity, not an option – and every business must do more to accelerate faster progress.

This year’s theme for Earth Day is ‘Invest In Our Planet’, calling for greater partnership working to protect our planet. At The Consumer Goods Forum (CGF), this ethos of collaboration is core to what we do. As a CEO led organisation, we bring together consumer goods businesses to find industry-wide, cross-sector solutions.

We are committed to making change happen through co-ordination, open dialogue and tangible action. We exist to have genuine and lasting positive effects on people, planet and business; protecting the planet is an integral part of what we do. And we know that while the scale of the climate challenges we face are unprecedented, they are also shared: so business approaches to tackling them should also be shared.  

The consumer goods sector is vital to achieving net zero – including the need for better agricultural production, better operations, and transparent measurement and reporting. To encourage faster carbon reduction progress across our global membership, CGF is an official Accelerator of the UN-backed Race to Zero initiative – which commits companies to setting science-based targets aligned with limiting global temperature rise to 1.5°C.

Alongside Race to Zero, our eight Coalitions of Action will continue their vital work on areas that can help to drive a fairer, zero carbon world more quickly. This ranges from tackling deforestation, to combatting the emissions caused by food waste, and creating a more circular and resource-efficient economy for plastics. We are also working to support healthier and more sustainable diets.

While delivering solutions to complex issues cannot happen overnight, we know we are stronger together. Collective action helps members to answer the needs of customers, partners and the environment. The world needs business at its best – and no businesses can thrive unless the wider communities and the places where it operates can thrive as well.

The annual CGF Global Summit, taking place in Dublin in June, will be a key moment for the industry to come together and drive change. We are very much looking forward to bringing hundreds of senior leaders together in person to strengthen collective approaches on some of the most urgent concerns our people and planet are facing.

Every business must keep pushing to do more to face the unprecedented challenges of the climate emergency. It’s in our collective power to avoid the point of no return – and increasing business collaboration is an essential part of the solution.