Article updated 28 October 2026.
The E in ESG stands for environmental. It covers how a business affects and depends on the natural environment, including its emissions, energy use, water, materials, waste, pollution and biodiversity.
For marketing and communications teams, the challenge is explaining that work accurately. A reduction in electricity use, a new material or a supplier certification can all provide something worth sharing. Each needs a different explanation.
What changed? What does the evidence show? And how much of the business does the result cover?
Those questions shape environmental content that customers, employees and business partners can assess. This guide explains what to look for, with examples from Kyyte’s writing and messaging work.
What is ESG?
ESG stands for environmental, social and governance. These three areas help organisations and their stakeholders assess business impacts, risks and responsibilities.
- Environmental: How a business affects and depends on nature, including emissions, energy, water, waste and biodiversity.
- Social: How a business affects people, including employees, customers, supply chain workers, and communities.
- Governance: How a business is directed and held accountable, including leadership oversight, ethics, controls and decision-making.
This article focuses on the environmental pillar and how to communicate the work behind it.
What does the E in ESG cover?
The environmental pillar covers a business’s impact on nature, its resource use, and the environmental risks and opportunities it faces.
Relevant topics can include:
- Greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.
- Energy consumption and renewable energy.
- Water use, water quality and water availability.
- Materials, waste, repair, reuse and recycling.
- Air, soil and water pollution.
- Biodiversity, land use and ecosystems.
- Environmental impacts across suppliers, transport, product use and disposal.
The priorities depend on the business. Water use may be central to a food producer. Materials and disposal may matter more for an electronics company. A professional services firm will have a different mix of impacts.
Climate risk also belongs here. A business may need to explain its exposure to flooding, heat, or water shortages, as well as changes in regulation, technology, and customer demand.
The other pillars examine social responsibilities towards people and governance, oversight and accountability. They connect with environmental work, but each deserves its own attention.
Choose environmental subjects that reflect the business.
Start with activities that meaningfully connect to your operations, products, or services.
An office recycling initiative may not warrant an employee update. It shouldn’t dominate the environmental story of a manufacturer whose larger impacts lie in production, materials, and transport.
Ask the people responsible for sustainability and operations which issues deserve attention. Where the business has assessed its significant impacts and risks, use that work to inform the content brief.
Through our work writing SME spotlight stories (1) for UN Global Compact Network Singapore, we have explored environmental subjects across technology, paper supply, aquaculture and corporate merchandise. The details change with the business. A generic description like “committed to a greener future” says very little about any of them.
iWOW: explain how the technology is used.
The GCNS story we wrote about iWOW described smart metering for electricity and water consumption, alongside its approach to recovering and refurbishing devices.
These provide different content marketing opportunities. Metering can help explain how customers identify consumption patterns. Refurbishment can show how the business manages equipment beyond its first use.
The communications question is what happened next. Did someone act on the readings? Which devices were recovered, and what could be refurbished?
Installing a meter alone doesn’t show lower consumption. Explain the role of the technology, then support any claimed savings with results.
Establish what the evidence allows you to say.
Before writing the headline, collect the information that supports the proposed claim.
You need to understand:
- The change: What was introduced, reduced, replaced or improved?
- The comparison: What is the result being compared with?
- The boundary: Which sites, products, activities or markets are included?
- The period: When was the information collected?
- The method: How was the result measured or calculated?
- The limitations: What is excluded, estimated or still being assessed?
Say your business reports a 15% reduction in electricity use. Readers need to know whether that covers one office or the whole organisation, which periods were compared and whether operations changed.
If the building was partly vacant, that context affects the explanation. The reduction may be real, but attributing it entirely to an efficiency project would need further evidence.
Keep the source information with the draft. Our guide to turning ESG data into clear content explains how to present figures without losing meaning.
Explain emissions without losing the context.
“Carbon emissions” can hide several different measures. Confirm what the figure represents before simplifying the language.
The GHG Protocol groups corporate greenhouse gas emissions into three scopes:
- Scope 1: Direct emissions from sources the business owns or controls.
- Scope 2: Emissions from generating purchased electricity, steam, heating, and cooling the business consumes.
- Scope 3: Other indirect emissions across its upstream and downstream value chain.
A reduction covering Scope 1 and Scope 2 should retain that qualification. Calling it a reduction in the company’s entire footprint could give the wrong impression if Scope 3 is excluded.
Also distinguish total emissions from emissions intensity. Total emissions show the amount emitted within the stated boundary. Intensity expresses emissions relative to something else, such as each unit produced.
A factory can reduce emissions per item while its total emissions rise as production increases. Both figures can be correct. Your wording needs to explain which one improved.
Finally, separate targets from results. A commitment to reduce emissions by a future date should identify its starting point, coverage and planned action. It should not read like an achievement.
Be precise about materials, waste and certification.
“Recycled”, “recyclable” and “certified” describe different things.
Recycled content concerns the materials used to make a product. Recyclability concerns what can happen after use, including whether suitable collection and processing are available. Certification addresses the requirements of a particular scheme.
Avoid treating these words as interchangeable evidence that a product is sustainable in every respect.
OVOL: give each environmental activity its own explanation.
Our GCNS story about OVOL Singapore covered its work supplying certified paper, collecting wooden pallets from customers and repurposing used release liners into packaging material.
Those activities should be explained separately. Paper sourcing involves the material’s origin and applicable certification. Pallet collection needs to explain what happens after collection. Reusing release liners involves different materials and processes.
When discussing certified paper, name the relevant label and what it covers. For example, FSC distinguishes between FSC 100%, FSC Recycled and FSC Mix. An FSC label does not automatically mean that paper is made entirely from recycled material.
The same care applies to waste figures. Material collected for recycling is not necessarily the same as material confirmed as recycled. Use the description your records support.
Include the limitations and decisions behind the progress.
Environmental work involves trade-offs, costs and incomplete information. Those details can help readers understand the decision.
In the OVOL story, the company discussed the cost and timing challenges of changing its forklift fleet. That context would have been missed in a simple list of green initiatives.
The lesson for a writer is to ask why an option was chosen, what alternatives were considered and what remains unresolved. Explaining a constraint does not prove that a decision was environmentally preferable. It does make the organisation’s reasoning available for scrutiny.
DTC World: revisit claims when the evidence changes.
In the GCNS spotlight, we wrote about DTC World, which described withdrawing products after finding that claims about their materials did not stand up to further scrutiny.
That is a useful communications lesson. Supplier information can change, and previously approved copy may need correction.
When new evidence affects a claim, check where it appears: product pages, catalogues, proposals, sales presentations and campaign materials. Give the people using that content the revised information.
Environmental content also needs an owner after publication.
Explain environmental partnerships without overstating their impact.
A partnership announcement should explain what each organisation contributes and what the work is intended to achieve.
Funding, technical expertise, research, implementation and communications are different contributions. Be clear about yours.
The same applies to membership, certification and sponsorship. They describe different relationships and should not be presented as equivalent endorsements of a business’s environmental performance.
For example, a tree-planting contribution can be reported as support for a project. It does not automatically establish that the company has offset its emissions or restored biodiversity.
Link the activity to the wider environmental picture. Readers should understand its scale and relevance alongside the business’s other impacts.
Use writing and design that match the evidence.
The overall impression counts. A narrow claim in the body copy can be overwhelmed by a sweeping headline or imagery suggesting a wider environmental benefit.
The UK Competition and Markets Authority’s Green Claims Code checklist provides a practical reference: claims should have current supporting evidence, make their limits clear and avoid hiding information that changes the reader’s understanding. Its legal context is the UK.
Review the finished page or campaign, including its headline, graphics, captions and qualifications. Do those elements describe the same result?
e-Stewards: make technical messages clear enough to use.
For e-Stewards, the electronics recycling and reuse certification programme, Kyyte developed the written guidance behind its values, tone of voice and key messages.
One existing message, “Do not export harm”, needed supporting explanation of the risks associated with exporting hazardous electronic waste. The writing had to communicate serious environmental and human consequences while remaining constructive for businesses and certified processors.
This is where detailed messaging guidance helps. Writers need to understand the issue behind a statement and how to explain it to the intended reader.
Turn environmental information into content people can act on.
Choose the format around what the reader needs.
A customer may need disposal instructions. A procurement team may want evidence behind a materials claim. Employees may need to understand how a new process affects their work.
Possible formats include a project case study, product FAQ, supplier explainer, progress update or interview with the team responsible. A sustainability report can provide the starting information, supported by further questions and checks.
Our guide to developing stories from sustainability reports explains that process. For broader topic planning, see our sustainability content marketing guide. If several teams need to contribute, our article on planning ESG communications covers responsibilities and review.
At Kyyte, we keep returning to a simple question: what can the reader reasonably conclude from this content? If the answer goes further than the evidence, the copy needs another look.
Environmental ESG communications FAQs
What does the E in ESG mean?
The E in ESG refers to how a business affects and depends on the natural environment. It can include emissions, energy, water, waste, pollution, materials, biodiversity and climate-related risks.
How can businesses communicate environmental progress clearly?
Explain the initiative, the baseline, the action taken and the measured result. State which operations or products are included and avoid making the claim broader than the available evidence.
What evidence should support environmental claims?
Useful evidence may include emissions data, energy records, waste and water measurements, audited reports, certifications, project results and progress against published targets. The evidence should be relevant to the exact claim being made.
How can companies avoid greenwashing?
Use specific language, explain the basis of each claim and include important limitations or context. Avoid vague descriptions such as green, eco-friendly, or sustainable unless the business can clearly show what those terms mean in practice.
What content can communicate the E in ESG?
Relevant formats may include sustainability reports, environmental case studies, climate disclosures, website content, leadership messages, project updates, infographics, employee communications, and supply chain stories.
Need help communicating your environmental work?
Kyyte helps organisations turn environmental information into clear articles, case studies, website copy and stakeholder communications. Our work includes SME spotlight stories for UN Global Compact Network Singapore and brand messaging for e-Stewards.
If you have a defined writing brief, explore our ESG and sustainability copywriting services.
For support with messaging, planning and content delivery, explore our sustainability and ESG communications and marketing services.
References:
(1) UN Global Compact Network Singapore SME Spotlight stories. Kyye was responsible for stories highlighting iWOW Technology Ltd, DTC World International, OVOL Singapore Pte Ltd and SEATOBAG®
