Guest blog: With companies missing key sustainability goals, is it time for an industry re-think?

Guest Blog; Boris Saraber, Earthworm Foundation’s Chief Operations Officer, offers a frank view on the need for a major global sustainability reset. With over 20 years’ experience making raw material supply chains more sustainable, he has worked from plantations and forests in Asia to global engagement with producers, brands and retailers.

As one major brand after another misses their sustainability goals, Boris Saraber argues for a dramatic shift in thinking: one that dispenses with rigid checklists and targets and instead focuses more on impact for people and nature in the sourcing regions.

Twenty-twenty-five was meant to be a milestone for many companies. A year for celebrating meeting targets to end the deforestation tainting their supply chains, ridding their packaging of plastic, and slashing their carbon emissions.

One after another, however, major brands have fallen short of their 2025 sustainability goals.

Many made their pledges in less turbulent times: before the global pandemic, growing geopolitical instability, and a political backlash against investing in sustainability.

Yet the crises these pledges aim to tackle are as urgent as ever. In 2024, energy related emissions and global temperatures reached all-time highs; the world lost primary tropical forest at the fastest rate ever recorded; while the global use of plastic is set to increase.

So, where does this leave companies struggling to meet sustainability commitments? For a start, we need to shift our thinking. After more than two decades working to support companies and producers achieve sustainability, it’s become strikingly clear to me that the fixation on complying with rigid targets is an albatross.

When anything less than 100% compliance with a target is seen as failure, companies are pushed into tick-box mode: collecting paperwork, geo-coordinates, and supply chain data that may be meaningless or inaccurate – and none of which equates to the real engagement needed to change things on the ground. Paperwork using flawed data is just theatre.

Instead, companies should realise that falling short of a target is only a failure if you try to hide it. There has to be room for compromise. Not every company will hit their sustainability goals, especially overly ambitious ones set years ago without fully understanding the reality of implementing them. We need to normalise transparency around compromises, trade-offs, and shifting timelines.

What’s dangerous is not the act of adjusting, but sweeping results under the rug to protect one’s reputation. That’s when trust erodes, internally and externally: sustainability teams lose faith, partners disengage, consumers tune out.

Compromise done with integrity is far more powerful than blind adherence to an unrealistic goal. Rigid targets can also create hidden human and financial costs.

For example, the drive to cut carbon emissions can obscure other priorities.

Carbon has become the dominant lens for corporate sustainability, but when it’s the only lens, priorities get distorted. Sustainability isn’t just about carbon math, it’s about people and places.

Projects selected on the merits of maximising carbon often provide little benefit to local communities, the very people who should be long-term stewards of forest protection. Without meaningful inclusion or economic benefit, rising living costs may push these communities to exploit natural forests for survival. The net result is an island of conservation in a sea of gradually degrading forests.

What I see in my engagement of business across the supply chain is their people drowning in audits, metrics and checklists: overwhelmed by meeting traceability demands, uploading geo-coordinates, aligning with multiple standards that are evolving all the time.

I see a compliance-driven culture sapping the energy and motivation of the people who should be driving innovation. When systems prioritise perfect documentation over practical impact, there’s no space left for creativity, reflection, or problem-solving.

So, instead of being trapped in a compliance straitjacket, companies should be free to focus on deeper problems and the innovations that are needed in these spaces.

Every company needs a long-term direction, a North Star to guide them, driven by fundamental questions about people, nature and business.

Consequently, it’s essential to ask: Are producers and farmers benefiting from companies’ sustainability targets? Are forests, soils and ecosystems improving? Is the supply chain becoming more resilient?

If a target doesn’t help empower farmers and producers, if it doesn’t help create healthy landscapes, and if it doesn’t strengthen business resilience, drop it. If a goal is so detached from reality that it starts pulling a company away from meaningful impact, it’s time to rethink it.

What’s more, individual companies can only go so far by themselves. Compliance frameworks may help meet minimum standards, but they often fall short in driving systemic transformation, especially in complex sourcing landscapes.

For that, collaboration between companies is needed, whether through pre-competitive platforms, shared verification systems, or aligned supplier expectations. It reduces duplication, builds trust, and allows suppliers to invest in long-term improvements instead of juggling conflicting requirements.

A company acting alone has limited leverage. Real impact comes when multiple actors align and invest in a place-based approach that leverages the connections they have to a long-term vision for a responsible and sustainable supply. In practice, this means companies investing not in isolated suppliers, but in the broader geography where they source from, working collectively.

Collective action isn’t just more efficient, it’s more effective.

Rather than despair at endless dispiriting headlines about failing to fulfill their commitments to protect people and the planet, companies can achieve these aims via a more productive path: one free of the constraints of spreadsheets and key performance indicators, too often created in airless offices thousands of miles from the real world problems they’re meant to help solve. One that deeply motivates their employees to drive positive change in everything they do.