The End of Sustainability As We Knew It

There's a narrative that sustainability is in decline, that companies are pulling back. I see it differently. What we're witnessing is fundamental maturity in how organizations approach sustainability and what they expect from it.

During London Metal Exchange Week and the Financial Times Mining Summit this year, a pattern emerged that challenges this decline narrative. People aren't questioning whether sustainability matters, they're questioning how it delivers value, and that distinction represents evolution rather than abandonment.

For years, sustainability operated primarily on moral imperative, which worked reasonably well when budgets were easier to justify. Now every function needs to demonstrate tangible value, and sustainability has become no exception to this requirement.

Our Sustainability Outlook 2025 examined this transition and found that sustainability teams spend most of their time on activities that don't influence decisions. When critical business decisions are being made, these professionals are often managing data rather than shaping strategy. The teams making this shift successfully have moved repetitive work to technology, which creates capacity for work that actually touches revenue, risk, and operational performance.

The question facing organizations is ultimately structural. They must decide whether to continue operating sustainability as a compliance function that sits separate from core business, or rebuild it to deliver measurable value that connects directly to competitive position. Companies making this shift are embedding sustainability in their core operations rather than maintaining it as a parallel function, and the sector is beginning to split along these lines.

Our company works with metals and mining teams to link sustainability work directly to commercial decisions by surfacing insights, identifying risks, and enabling the function to match the speed of the business.

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