Environmental disclosure organization CDP has added artificial intelligence to its online reporting system, as part of its effort to streamline the time it takes for companies to complete its annual questionnaire and encourage deeper participation.

The “Suggested Response” tool, developed by German software startup Briink, mines existing documents such as annual reports and sustainability messaging materials, then maps that information to relevant answers in CDP’s questionnaire. 

Approximately 800 corporations who received early access to the resource were able to reduce prep time by an average of 40 percent, according to CDP. The technology also increased survey response rates by approximately 25 percent.

“AI will make CDP reporting more consistent and efficient,” said Matthias Berninger, executive vice president of public affairs and sustainability at Bayer AG. “Team Bayer will be empowered to focus more on where we can improve our performance by eliminating busywork, which makes disclosure an even more powerful tool for advancing the transformation.”

CDP plans to introduce additional capabilities to support simpler data preparation and higher-quality disclosures. 

More than 22,000 corporations shared greenhouse gas emissions data with CDP in 2025, a decrease from the prior year. The organization, founded in 2001 to encourage voluntary corporate disclosures of environmental impact metrics, finds itself at a crossroads as more nations adopt mandatory disclosure regulations.

In early June, CDP sold a majority stake to private equity firm Permira and began the process of splitting into two organizations: a commercial entity that will manage its widely used online disclosure platform and a nonprofit foundation that will continue to evolve CDP’s disclosure methodologies.  

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The opinions expressed here by Trellis expert contributors are their own, not those of Trellis or its editors.

A recent article in Harvard Business Review discussed sustainability investments that don’t get approved, even when “heads nod” and “there is no pushback.” The authors, who include Ann Tracy, the CSO of Colgate-Palmolive, and Steven Goldbach, who heads Deloitte’s U.S. sustainability practice, discuss the need to better demonstrate the ways sustainability creates value. 

This has been my focus for more than 25 years, so unsurprisingly I agree. 

But there’s something else that must be said: Sustainability starts with a credibility deficit compared to finance, operations, investor relations and other corporate functions. And too many common habits make it deeper. 

Starting from behind

In the past two months, I’ve talked to sustainability leaders from many different organizations. Out of more than three dozen, the vast majority reported that requests for sustainability investments are not treated the same way as requests by finance or operations.

Only 5 percent of the leaders said that sustainability requests are treated equally, while more than half (55 percent) said sustainability investments were considered fluffy or “nice to have,” and more than one-fifth  (21 percent) said they were held to a higher standard. 

In fact, 16 percent of sustainability professionals said they don’t even get in the room with the CFO.

Other perspectives 

Other professionals see this too. When the Arthur Page Society asked 56 US-based chief communications officers whether most of their executives thought that climate action was “in the best interest” of the organization, only one-quarter of them said yes. (When they asked all employees the same question, 32 percent said yes.) This is part of the problem: If executives don’t buy the value initially, CSOs face a tougher road in convincing them.

It’s fair to wonder if this is only the subjective perception of sustainability and communications professionals. Is there objective data we can use to determine how sustainability is seen inside companies? 

At Valutusm we decided to tackle this question. We set out to determine whether sustainability professionals have equal business prominence compared to top execs from other areas of corporations. 

Unequal billing

We looked at 200 top global companies and examined whether they listed their head of sustainability as part of the “About Us” page on their websites, as they do with their other top executives. The results were clear: 100 percent of the companies listed the CFO on the page; 85 percent listed the chief legal officer. 

Only 14 percent listed the head of sustainability.

This also raises the question: Is sustainability special or are all non-revenue generating parts of the business seen this way? Legal doesn’t generate revenue, but the head of the legal function is more than six times more likely to be listed among the company’s top management.

What you can do

Some of this perception of sustainability is beyond your control, the result of previous failures or ingrained perceptions. But some of it you can change, especially by avoiding four things that hurt your credibility.

Words vs. action: First, don’t make it seem like you don’t know the difference between what people say and what they do. Reporting survey answers as if they were actual choice data is a good way to ruin your credibility. 

A survey from a well-known sustainability organization said some consumers are willing to pay 9.7 percent more for sustainable goods. But this was only what people said in a survey.

Everyone knows that what people tell survey takers is not necessarily the same as what they actually do. (In fact, the original survey being cited pointed out that intent and action are not the same.) Not acknowledging this is credibility kryptonite.  

Avoid self-deprecation: Second, don’t downplay or disown the sustainability function itself. Framing your own job as one the company should eventually not need is something no CFO or CTO does. 

As Yalmaz Siddiqui, Disney’s sustainability lead, told Heather Clancy at GreenBiz 26: “The storyline that companies don’t need a CSO devalues the unique expertise … sustainability professionals bring.”

Be precise: Third, don’t use vague or mealy-mouthed language. Don’t say “companies can use sustainability to increase resource efficiency.” This is true in many cases, but it lacks concreteness (How exactly? When?). If you say something like that without those details, it damages your credibility.

Instead, use concrete language, such as: “Insurance premiums are rising. It’s harder to predict seasons, meaning the right goods aren’t always in stock at the right time. Both trace back to climate-related shifts in weather patterns.” 

Prioritize measurement: Fourth, don’t tell people that you are incapable of measuring sustainability’s benefits. Millions of managers grew up hearing “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” Saying that you can’t measure immediately makes people suspect you can’t manage, either.

Unfortunately, some sustainability professionals still say just that. Saying “it just costs more” and “you may not be able to prove the financial benefits” is not something the rest of the business would do. Saying this to an executive who equates the ability to measure with the ability to manage immediately downgrades your influence.

False beliefs and the false zero

The belief that sustainability’s benefits are unmeasurable is not only damaging, it’s also false. A $20 billion apparel company compared suppliers with strong wage practices and those without and found the differences in attrition, work stoppages and on-time delivery (even using conservative numbers) were substantially more than the cost of the higher wages. 

Had the benefits remained unmeasured, as MIT management professor John Sterman points out, they would have been given the value of zero: the one value they couldn’t have.

It’s unfair, but sustainability is still stuck paying a credibility tax. But the amount is within your control. Start by changing the things that make it worse.

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Software firm Salesforce has added metrics about energy consumption and carbon emissions to the model cards it publishes for several of its widely used artificial intelligence models.

Model cards, sometimes called AI “nutritional labels,” are fact sheets that are published alongside machine learning models to provide developers with information about how the AI was trained, how it performs, potential applications and demographic factors.

Many enterprise software companies publish them, but Salesforce is unique in its decision to include carbon emissions and energy consumption, as of June.

“It’s still early, but we’ve received positive feedback so far on the usefulness of bringing more transparency and structure to AI sustainability, with many customers expressing hope that other model providers will follow a similar path,” said Sunya Norman, senior vice president of impact at Salesforce. 

Salesforce has published model cards since at least 2020. The first to add the electricity and carbon metrics are ones trained directly by Salesforce — including first name match and account match models. 

“As organizations scale AI, they’re asking broader questions about how to deploy it responsibly, including how to better understand its environmental impact alongside performance, cost and business value,” she said.

Long-time commitment

Salesforce has published AI environmental data for at least two years as part of its “Sustainable AI Policy,” which calls for tighter governance and transparency about AI’s social and environmental impacts. 

The strategy was championed by Boris Gamazaychikov, who left Salesforce this spring to co-found a consulting and research firm dedicated to managing AI’s environmental impacts.  

The information for the AI model cards was calculated using the AI Energy Score, an initiative started by Gamazaychikov and computer scientist Sasha Luccioni. 

The resource is published by open source software firm Hugging Face. It covers common tasks such as AI image generation or speech recognition and analyzes the hardware used, along with the location of the data center, run times and other metrics. 

While measures for AI training models are fairly straightforward, because they involve a discrete process and computing environment, it’s more challenging to estimate the impacts for inference — when the AI is applied to a specific task — because that impact varies depending on where it runs. The Salesforce calculations include that phase.

“More broadly, we see AI sustainability as an ecosystem challenge that will require shared methodologies, collaboration and continued innovation,” Norman said.

The Salesforce sustainability team collaborated with the company’s office of ethical and humane AI use to create the model card data. Salesforce plans to add this information to additional models as measurement techniques become more straightforward, she said.

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Computer-accessories maker Logitech has cut greenhouse gas emissions from its supply chain and other indirect sources by one-third since 2021.

That means the Swiss company is more than halfway toward its commitment to halve that part of its footprint by 2030, according to its 2026 impact report, published July 21.

Logitech also reduced emissions from its direct operations and purchased electricity by 49 percent against a 2019 baseline, as of fiscal year 2026; its pledge is for an 85 percent reduction by 2030, the report said.

These achievements were enabled by Logitech’s decision to study the carbon impact of every product and to include sustainability metrics in design decisions, as part of a long-time initiative it calls Design for Sustainability that was more formally codified over the past four years. 

The philosophy applies to materials choices, manufacturing processes and supplier relationships for all of Logitech’s products, which include computer mice, game controllers, headsets, cameras and videoconferencing equipment.

Logitech built a library of related resources from its emissions-reduction projects, including simulation tools to be used in the brainstorming and prototyping phases, according to Elaine Laird, Logitech’s chief people executive, who was named chief sustainability officer this week.

“We’ve gone from having one engineer working on an isolated project to having a design-for-sustainability engineer that works on every product inside our business groups and works with the engineers and designers on a continuous basis on new product development,” she said.

Latest tool: carbon impact labels

Logitech’s decision in 2020 to calculate the emissions for its entire product portfolio — a metric verified by an independent auditor — provides designers with insights that they can use for future updates. 

The assessment considers raw materials, manufacturing, transportation, packaging, energy use and what happens at the end of a product’s life, among other factors. The score, expressed as kilograms of carbon emission equivalent (kg CO2e), is printed on Logitech’s packaging. 

For example, the footprint for the Logitech MX Master 3S mouse is 7.78 kg CO2e; for perspective, charging a smartphone 608 times produces emissions of 5 kg CO2e.

Logitech developed its own methodology to create its labels; measurement company Dekra reviews the math, using the International Organization for Standardization’s ISO 14067 standard, which covers life-cycle footprints for individual products.

“It forces you to innovate in a different way,” said Laird. “I do believe there’s business value in that.”

Logitech’s designers can compare footprints from generation to generation and use information from other products to inform their decisions.

“The learnings we got from each one of our products having a carbon footprint study done, in depth, really has helped us figure out where to look to further decrease our carbon footprints,” Laird said. “We still believe consumers need to transparently understand the carbon impact of the purchases they make.”  

For example, the current generation of Logitech’s solar-powered keyboard has half the footprint of its predecessor because it includes post-consumer recycled plastic, the aluminum was manufactured using renewable electricity and the rechargeable battery life was extended to 10 years. Plus, the keyboard can be repaired.

Logitech is using typical product update cycles to determine how the next generation can contribute to corporate sustainability goals: It estimated that those decisions helped avoid more than 200,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2026. 

More than 80 percent of its products, for example, now include recycled plastic; 43 percent use low-carbon or recycled aluminum. And Logitech has published repair guides for close to 70 of its products, tripling the number from two years ago.Range of benefits

Sustainability-inspired design decisions offer myriad advantages, Laird said. The replaceable ear cushions and head strap in the Zone Wireless 2 ES Headset help cut the product’s carbon footprint by 12 percent compared to its predecessor; they also allow for customization.

Likewise, an interest in reducing power consumption led the designers behind Logitech’s RS50 Racing Wheel System game controller to rethink the motor design, resulting in performance improvements. 

They considered how changing the copper and magnets used in the device would affect torque and optimized the sleep mode to save more energy when the technology is idle. Logitech estimates these changes helped reduce the emissions impact by 43 percent.

One of the best proof points for Logitech’s Design for Sustainability agenda was the company’s replacement of all plastic clamshell packaging for its retail mouse products with paper boxes certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.

The move saved 580 metric tons of plastic — 33 million single-use plastic water bottles — but concerned Logitech marketers, who worried that consumers wouldn’t be able to see the devices and with retailers that needed to redesign shelf space.

“What we found is that, actually, consumers kind of prefer it because those clamshells are kind of tricky to open,” she said. 

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The number of chief sustainability officers at publicly listed companies in the U.S. has declined for the first time in 15 years, data from recruiter organization Weinreb Group shows.

CSO ranks surged in the first half of this decade following a period of slow if steady growth during the 2010s, according to previous editions of the survey, which the group conducts every 18 to 24 months. 

The latest count indicates that the total dropped 10 percent to 193 as of July 1. The fall, from 216 in 2025, is largely due to departing CSOs not being replaced, said Ellen Weinreb, the group’s founder. 

CSOs at publicly listed U.S. companies

A thinning of CSO ranks could be interpreted as another sign of what some call the “sustainability recession,” a downturn in corporate efforts triggered in part by opposition from the current U.S. administration and earlier anti-ESG efforts by other GOP leaders. Some companies created CSO positions for the optics; with the pressure to be seen to be acting on climate lessened, leaders felt free to leave vacant roles unfilled.

Positive forces

Weinreb suggested that other more positive factors are also at work. In some cases, she noted, CSOs have taken on additional responsibility and while “sustainability” has been dropped from their job title it remains part of their remit. In May, for example, Tara Hemmer swapped the CSO position for the chief operating officer role at environmental services firm WM. Elsewhere, sustainability responsibilities have been integrated into other areas of the business — a sign, Weinreb argued, of intent to operationalize the function rather than cut costs.

The trend is consistent with Trellis’ State of Sustainability Profession in 2026 report, a survey of more than 500 sustainability professionals at firms with at least $1 billion in revenue that was released this May. That report found that most businesses have continued to expand their sustainability staff over the past two years, albeit at slower pace than earlier in the decade. In 2024, 74 percent of companies had increased their staff size, with only 4 percent cutting it. This year, 50 percent of companies added people and 26 percent reduced headcount.

How has the number of people working on sustainability changed in the last two years? 

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