You Can’t Decarbonize Alone

Edition #07

Your weekly update from The Sustainability Circle. What in-house sustainability leaders are trying, tackling, and talking about — delivered weekly in under 5 minutes.

This Edition:
A reflection on adaptability, and why it’s always been at the heart of leading sustainability work.

⏱️ Read time: 4 min

What it really takes to drive Scope 3 — from supplier engagement to procurement transformation

How do you tackle emissions outside your direct control? Across supply chains, systems, and decisions you don’t fully own...

That’s the reality facing sustainability leaders today.

In our recent roundtable, senior professionals from manufacturing, logistics, automotive, and beyond shared how they’re approaching Scope 3: where they started, what surprised them, and what’s actually working on the ground.

Here’s what we learned — from early steps to system shifts.

🧱 First: Get your house in order

Before asking suppliers to provide data, leaders emphasized one thing: clean your own backend.

“We all want real product carbon data,” one member shared, “but we’re still struggling to link part numbers, suppliers, and cost in our ERP.”

Multiple members stressed that even basic information — like weights, material types, or consistent supplier IDs — was often missing or fragmented. Trying to layer carbon data on top of this? A recipe for noise.

“It’s not about starting with a shiny carbon tool. It’s about knowing what data you already have, where it lives, and how to connect it.”

🔍 Spend-based methods help you start — but mislead fast

Most teams begin Scope 3 with spend-based estimates. When supplier data is missing, it’s fast, auditable, and good enough for early reporting.

But the method breaks down quickly. Spend reflects cost — not volume, material type, or geography. That means low-impact services can show up as top emitters, while carbon-heavy materials like steel or aluminum get undercounted.

“Steel prices doubled one year — our emissions doubled too. But nothing physical had changed.”

Participants agreed: the next step is moving toward more advanced methods in way that makes sense, such as hybrid models aligned with GHG Protocol and SBTi guidance. These combine spend-based data for low-impact categories with supplier-specific or material-level data where it matters most.

🛠 Choosing tools? Start with the problem, not the platform

Many shared some hard-won lessons from tool selection.

The biggest? Don’t let vendor promises set the agenda.

Instead, start by clarifying your internal needs:

What systems does the tool need to integrate with?
Who will manage the data — and who needs to act on it?
How easy is it for suppliers to engage?

While many tools look good on paper, they often fall short in practice, especially when the goal is to move beyond reporting and drive real decisions.

Some weren’t built for product-level granularity.

Others couldn’t connect with core procurement or engineering systems.

As one participant put it:

“The system is only as good as the questions you’re able to ask.”

The takeaway? Having a tool isn’t enough. Without clear data ownership, integration points, and user needs, even the best platform just adds another layer of complexity.

🤝 Procurement won’t change for carbon. It’ll change for cost and risk.

Internal alignment came up again and again — especially with procurement and finance teams.

Sustainability leaders described the challenge of being taken seriously by buyers focused on cost, availability, and performance. Carbon isn’t their language — but risk and cost are.

Procurement teams are under pressure to hit savings targets, reduce risk, and keep supply flowing. If carbon isn’t tied to those outcomes, it feels like a distraction.

The most effective strategies didn’t ask procurement to change priorities. They reframed carbon as a driver of the priorities that already exist.

Embed in the process: Don’t bolt on a CO₂ step. Integrate it into existing workflows — sourcing, awarding, costing, supplier reviews.
Speak their language: Link emissions to risk, resilience, and cost drivers. One team aligned carbon with material volatility — helping buyers anticipate financial exposure.
Make it measurable: Some introduced a KPI for procurement teams — like the % of suppliers covered with primary carbon data.

“If it’s not in the procurement KPIs, it won’t happen.

But if it is — it changes everything.”

Real traction starts when carbon becomes their problem too — not just yours.

🎯 Supplier engagement is partnership, not pressure

You don’t drive change with surveys alone.

Real engagement starts with segmentation, support and shared incentives.

“We’re not auditors.

We’re coaches. That’s how we see our role with suppliers.”

Members shared how they’re mapping supplier maturity, offering guidance, and even co-investing upstream. One company supported regenerative forestry efforts to secure future access to certified materials.

Whether through coalitions, third-party data, or direct support, the message was clear: to get better data and real progress, you have to meet suppliers where they are — and help them move forward.

🧭 You won’t fix Scope 3 in a quarter, but you can shift the system

The systems are messy. Incentives don’t always align. But momentum is building.

And the leaders making real progress are the ones embedding carbon into how the business already runs, not treating it as an add-on.

❓How are you tackling Scope 3 in your organization?

Hit reply and share your story. We’re collecting practical examples to help members move from reporting to reduction — and we'd love to include yours.

✨ Meet a Member: Daria Graul Sagdahl

👋 Meet Daria — Head of ESG at Accountor Software, where she’s scaling sustainability across a fast-growing software group operating in multiple markets.

🛠 Her path into sustainability

Daria started out in mechanical engineering, moved through R&D and process improvement, and eventually took on leadership roles in quality and sustainability. Her technical foundation and systems mindset shaped a clear focus: doing more with less, and always linking sustainability to real value.

🥇 What she’s proud of
"Building our ESG management system from scratch and earning EcoVadis Gold."
This recognition puts Accountor in the top 5 percent of assessed companies worldwide and helps attract the right talent while keeping sustainability rooted in execution.

🔄 A challenge she’s navigating
"Integrating sustainability during M&A."
As new companies join the group, Daria is working to embed sustainability as a value enabler from the very beginning. She designed an onboarding framework that builds ESG into the integration process and helps new teams align with the company’s priorities from day one.

📊 A decision that made a real impact
"Running a double materiality analysis and aligning ESG goals with business strategy."
It clarified what matters most for the company, especially on the social side of ESG, and helped turn those insights into concrete, shared priorities across functions and countries.

💬 A quote that stayed with us
"Focus on whats important. Do something real. You can always improve later (forget about being perfect)."

👉 Read the full spotlight with Daria on LinkedIn
🔗 Connect with Daria

🧠 Join Us Today at Noon

Leadership Mindset Session: "Leading people through transformation"

You can’t deliver transformation if no one’s coming with you.

Many sustainability leaders know a version of this:
✅ The strategy is sound
✅ The roadmap is in place
❌ But the organization isn’t moving

More often than not, the issue isn’t better targets or more reports.
It’s about people.

The subtle resistance that doesn’t show up on a dashboard.
The gap between where you need the business to go and where it’s still stuck.

You’ll learn how to: