SME Sustainability Basics

Demystifying ESG as Sustainable Business Practices When a supplier portal asks for your ESG information, most small business owners think one of three things. “This is for big companies. Not us.” “We have never done ESG. We need to start from scratch.” “We are not ready for this.” All three are wrong. And the reason they feel true is not a failure of understanding. It is a failure of translation. The word ESG comes from a world that was never designed with small businesses in

You did not plan to become a sustainability reporter. Then a customer sent a questionnaire. Or your bank asked for ESG data before approving a loan. Or a landlord requested an environmental summary before renewing your lease. Now you are here, reading about sustainability reporting, and you have no sustainability team. This article explains what sustainability reporting actually means for a small business. It covers what the EU framework now requires from your clients, what y

Getting your team involved in ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) sounds straightforward. In practice, it’s where many small organisations quietly give up. This guide skips the theory. It covers what actually works for teams of 5 to 25 people, with no sustainability budget, no dedicated ESG manager, and real work to get done. You will find specific actions, honest data, and a tracker you can use from next week. If you are still figuring out which ESG metrics your orga

Most green workplace guides read the same way. Turn off your monitor. Get a recycling bin. Add plants. None of them explains which habits generate ESG data. Nor do they explain which habits are just good feelings with no reporting value. That distinction matters now. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, 30% of the energy in commercial buildings is wasted. That number is not a design problem. It is a behaviour problem. The lights were left on in empty meeting

A supplier sustainability questionnaire typically runs between 8 and 40 pages. It covers environmental data, social policies, governance structures, and supplier codes of conduct. Most small businesses open it once, feel overwhelmed, and forward it to someone else. That someone else usually has no idea either. The questionnaire is not as complex as it looks. Most of the questions map to five or six topic areas. A large share of the data you need already exists inside your bus

Most Dutch SMEs approach ESG reporting the same way: pick a framework, start collecting data, and figure out what to report as you go. The double materiality assessment is the step they skip, and it’s the one that determines whether everything else is worth doing. Here’s the problem that creates. A logistics company in Noord-Holland spends three months tracking biodiversity metrics because a guide said they were important under CSRD. A professional services firm in Amsterdam

Learn how Dutch SMEs can master ESG data collection in 2026 with a practical five step approach covering preparation, execution, verification, and compliance with CSRD regulations.