In this episode of our Simply Sustainability series, we dive deep into the evolving ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) regulatory landscape, where navigating compliance can feel like wading through an ‘alphabet soup’ of new regulations.
Host and Clarasys Sustainability Lead Matt Morton is joined by Managing Consultant Rob Gillingwater and Markus Pretzl, ESG/ESH Director at TIP Group, to explore how businesses are rising to the challenge – and opportunity – presented by major legislation like Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD).
Markus shares firsthand insights on how his team is preparing for compliance, breaking down the complexities of reporting, data governance, and financial modelling. They discuss how cross-functional collaboration is more crucial than ever, not just for meeting regulations but for unlocking business value along the way.
Packed with practical tips and strategic advice, this episode is a must-listen for anyone looking to turn ESG regulatory challenges into opportunities for business growth.
Listen here or read on for an edited transcript.
Matt Morton: Welcome to this episode of Clarasys Simply Sustainability podcast series. In today's episode, we'll be talking about the evolving ESG regulatory landscape, how companies are responding to this agenda to navigate its challenges, but also to leverage the opportunities that it can provide.
I'm Matt Morton, one of the Sustainability Leads at Clarasys, and I'm also joined by Rob Gillingwater.
Rob Gillingwater: Hey everyone. Like Matt, I am also a consultant at Clarasys based here in London. My background is in procurement and supply chain, I’ve got a lot of interest in the sustainability space and more recently, I've been helping clients look at how they respond to emerging ESG legislation, and all the people, process and technology that comes with that. Also really delighted to be joined by Markus as well.
Matt Morton: Perfect. Yeah, we're joined by Markus Pretzl today, ESG director at Tip Group, who kindly offered to come and share some insights on your experience with responding to this evolving landscape ahead of what's going to, I guess, be quite a pivotal few years for businesses.
Markus, it'd be great to get you to introduce yourself atell us a bit about what Tip Group does and also your role within the company.
Markus Pretzl: Sure. So first of all, thank you so much for having me. It's the first meeting of the day on a Friday morning. So I can't think of any better topic to talk about than the ESG regulatory landscape. But I'm really pleased to be here with you.
I'm working for TIP group. You mentioned this before, when you're on the roads, in Europe, sometimes you see an Amazon, a FedEx or a DHL lorry with the logos printed on the side of those assets largely. And usually those assets are not owned by those companies, but they're owned by companies like TIP Group. And we are then leasing and renting out those assets to customers. Because this helps them just think about the Christmas peak where all of those companies, there is a much higher volume in road freight transport, and this is where we are providing them with the assets. So we have more than a hundred thousand assets in our fleet. Besides that, we also operate a network of workshops all across Europe, more than 110 workshops so far. In those workshops, we provide maintenance and repair services on such assets.
My role at TIP Group is that I'm taking care of sustainability. So this means not only that I'm doing my best to prepare the organization for a low-carbon economy, but also to make the business future-proof and make sure that ESG principles are deeply embedded in our corporate strategy.
So that's a little bit about TIP Group and myself.
Matt Morton: Excellent, thank you. Rob, do you want to kick us off and talk about the landscape to start with and paint a picture for us of what's out there and what the challenges are that we're facing?
Rob Gillingwater: Yeah, so we were just talking before we started recording about a couple of pieces of legislation, in particular the CSRD and CSDDD, but the landscape is very much emerging. There are lots of new ESG pieces of legislation that are coming, particularly in the EU space where they're seen as a bit of a pioneer with the type of directives that they're putting out. All of us on this call think that a lot of these pieces of legislation are well-meaning and well-spirited, but they also do create challenges for businesses that they have to navigate as well. So yeah, lots of opportunities there too, which we're going to discuss a little bit on this podcast as well.
Markus, we were talking a little bit, as I said, before we recorded, about this CSRD and CSDDD in particular. It'd be good to get a bit of insight from you on how that's impacting your organization and how it will over the next few years.
Markus Pretzl: The CSRD and CSDDD those abbreviations will be known internally and externally, either they are already well known, or they will be known. For the CSRD it's more focused on your internal stakeholders pretty much. So everyone at my organization are familiar with this abbreviation. And then when we look at the CSDDD, this is really where we are going beyond the boundaries of an organization.
So I think the main challenges are not really coming from the fact that we have those extensive data reporting requirements. It's more about what's actually included there. So we're not only talking about collecting data about your carbon emissions. We're talking about forging a decarbonization plan. Just think about the climate transition plan.
And again, then it doesn't stop by putting down a couple of initiatives and what's going to be the impact on your carbon footprint. It's also the entire financial modelling that you need to build around this. It's about the governance that you need to build around this. And this of course will have a substantial impact on an organization, but also, and we sometimes tend to forget about this, the EU taxonomy, which is also something similar that is emerging in the UK right now. This will have a huge impact on your refinancing capabilities as an organization. It's not only about providing finally a clear definition of what sustainable business practices are or sustainable business activities, more precisely, it is actually the first step in refunneling the financial flows in Europe towards businesses that are closer aligned to the EU taxonomy.
So think about the reporting requirements, the processes that you need to establish, think about the financial modelling capacities that you need to build, think about refinancing. So these are some of the core pillars that will, of course, dramatically impact businesses that fall under the CSRD. But also businesses that don't fall under the CSRD that have customers that fall under the CSRD, let's assume, but also the CSRD in the future.
Rob Gillingwater: Yeah, that makes sense. And could you talk a little bit about how you specifically and your department is involved in responding to ESG regulations?
Markus Pretzl: The first step is that you have to understand what the application criteria is and we need to understand when is the effective date. So in our case, 1st of January 2025 is when we have to get going with the data collection and then first report our integrated report, it's a requirement under the CSRD in early 2026. So that's something where it starts to get a clear understanding of the timeline and the scope. But not only this, besides the actual application, you find yourself pretty early on in the weeds of things. For example, do you have to report on a consolidated group level, or do you have to do this on an entity-specific level? So these are the things that constituted for us a starting point.
Then in the next step, you need to build up the knowledge and the capacities internally. So in our case, we have designated resources that really invested time and effort to understand the CSRD, to understand the ESRS in future, because for the CSDD we have a bit more time to understand supply chain due diligence in detail. So this is how we initially approached this, understanding the ESG regulatory application requirements, building up the knowledge internally, and then the actual starting point is performing a proper double materiality assessment. Double materiality assessment is the corner, builds the cornerstone for the CSRD, for your sustainability strategy, for the actions that you're supposed to take in the topics that you have identified to be material and also your corporate strategy more broadly.
Rob Gillingwater: That's really interesting. And I think the point you made about getting in the detail definitely resonates with me. And when I speak to clients, I think one of the challenges that keeps repeating itself is around data.
Would you say that data has been one of the biggest challenges for you? And if not, maybe touch on a couple of other challenges that you've faced as a business and responding to this emerging ESG legislation.
Markus Pretzl: Data availability, and data quality, that's of course a big challenge. But that's also something that you can overcome by implementing proper reporting tools, by using systems that you have in place to also sometimes life is about letting go of things. We all have to let go of Excel, using Excel to report our CSRD data. just because it's impossible.
What in my point of view is the bigger challenge is internally, you have some sense of understanding of how ESG reporting works. You had various state requests coming from previous exercises, maybe from your funding partners, maybe from your shareholders, maybe from your customers, suppliers, other stakeholders. But now the CSRD is a completely different animal. It's not just about putting the data, quantitative data in a field. It's about building the governance around the data gathering process. It's about explaining the actions of what I mentioned before, the climate transition plan. So one of the bigger challenges is to make this change in your mindset, it's not just sending you the quantitative data. It's about explaining the processes behind the data, making sure that you have policies in place, that you have reporting manuals in place and so on. And this is what requires a lot of discussions, especially with internal stakeholders to make them understand, hey, this is now a vastly increased scope we're looking at.
Matt Morton: One of the topics that interested me the most, and you've mentioned it already, is that this legislation is changing the role of not only the sustainability and ESG team, but it's going to change the role of those functions that sit around it in terms of embedding new requirements, new processes into what they're already doing.
You mentioned that a key part of building that capability so far has been training. I'm interested to hear what other initiatives or mechanisms you have used to collaborate with those departments that you know are going to be critical to this?
Markus Pretzl: Yeah, you need to start by getting a top management buy-in.
Usually, the CSRD, CSDDD, getting ready for any piece of legislation, you need to make the organization understand that this will cost some resources, there will be time and money that goes into compliance. So top management buy-in ensures that you can tap to resources necessary. So that's a very important first step. And this is achieved by explaining to management why this is important. And look, you can make this very easy by saying, if we don't comply with the CSRD, the potential penalties are 5 percent of the global annual turnover. And this is kind of a pretty strong argument, but, an even stronger argument is to make management understand what the opportunities are and I hope that we'll have a chance to talk about those opportunities a bit later, some more. So it starts from the top again, and then you need to go into the discussions with the department heads, with specific subject matter experts internally, so they understand what the requirements are.
So how do you do this? If you go there and tell them we need this, usually you will be confronted with some level of resistance because no one really enjoys change that much. But if you really go into the details, understand what pain points are of those functions at this moment in time, and then you try to build the connection to those reporting requirements, the kind of insights that we gain from this, it will help you to paint the picture where you ask for the data, but at the same time, you can tell them, hey, there's something that you will receive in return for this data that will help you to alleviate some of the pain points that you were suffering.
And that's something that I found quite useful in our CSRD readiness process. But frankly, in any project that we are running as an ESG team, it starts by understanding what are the pain points of your internal and external stakeholders, what are the KPIs that are driving them, and then try to build the connection to your sustainability story.
Matt Morton: Yeah, that's really interesting. I like that end goal of trying to find mutual ground, mutual benefits that everyone's going to gain from it. I think that's really important.
We mentioned the internal engagement and partnering with different functions. We're interested as part of the double materiality process, your insights or any reflections you've had on engaging external stakeholders as part of that.
Markus Pretzl: Well, for the double materiality assessment, there's a big risk that you, so there's a term in German that you're boiling in your own soup. I don't know if there's something similar in English. I would just assume that people will understand what it means. So sometimes, especially for the double maturity assessment, you need to get this external view. You need to understand what are, from an external point of view, the impact, risks and opportunities based on their, sometimes very limited understanding of the organization, that helps you to broaden the scope and to identify a long list or to put down a long list of impacts that you can then further investigate as part of a double metrology assessment. This is where external partners come in. It can be consultants that can provide you with some expertize on your industry, but you can also talk to your suppliers or to your customers and ask them, "Hey, when you look at TIP group, for the sake of this discussion, what are some of the impacts that you see?".
And then you go down the list of AR16 in the ESRS of all the topics and sub-topics and so on. And this is usually something that provides you with really good insights. Just think about to give you a practical example in ESRS S2, you're supposed to assess what are workers in your supply chain. What are those impacts there? This is something that's quite difficult for you to assess. So talk to your supply chain partners and ask them, "Hey what are the challenges that you're facing?". And then you can include this in your double materiality assessment.
Matt Morton: I just want to put a spotlight specifically now on the sustainability and ESG team. What are your reflections of, let's say the last five years in terms of if you take yourself back five years and think about the function and the responsibilities and the overall aim and mode of the team back then, and then bring yourself back to the present day and think about, how that's operating now, what do you think are the key differences that you've observed in terms of the role that the sustainability team needs to play in an organization?
Markus Pretzl: As of five years ago, I've been still working in the finance team and there was no ESG team. So if you think about five years ago and when you look at our annual report, then you will read a statement in this report, which now I'm paraphrasing. We don't have to worry about carbon emissions. Most of our semi-trailers are non-motorized assets. So we are not contributing to global warming. That was very much a blanket statement and that's it. This is where we started five years ago. Then it took a little while and then three and a half years ago, this is where we decided we need to become more serious about this. We cannot just completely neglect the responsibility that we are bearing as a major player in the transportation industry in Europe. This is then where I started building from scratch our sustainability strategy based on a very simple materiality assessment back then. And it was pretty much a one man show. So, It was all about getting the management up to speed, understanding what are the priorities that we can set for the next couple of years.
By the time you realize, and in our case this was with the carbon accounting, scope one and scope two, something we can manage. Scope three, very difficult, requires a lot of expertise in a complex organization like ours. So you had to get someone on board to help you with this. This is when we built up another internal resource, supply chain due diligence, another very specific topic where we had to build the capabilities. As I've mentioned before, it's all about having the knowledge in the ESG team over the past couple of years. So the way that the ESG function changed over the past couple of years is that at the very beginning, the scope of responsibilities was very broad. Everyone in the team could talk about all the topics that we are dealing with on a more superficial level.
Now you see that there is much more in depth knowledge, more allocation of work happening in the team, and you're really building the subject matter experts within your department.
Matt Morton: You mentioned that the knowledge has deepened over the last few years across different topics and that's probably gone from something that's more theoretical to something that now people have practical real-world examples of.
I'm interested to know what you think the key softer skills are that a sustainability team needs to complement that knowledge in order to really drive impactful change.
Markus Pretzl: Well, it's not an easy job and not so much for myself, but I'm also talking about my team. And the reason is we are all navigating in a pretty new environment. So it's uncharted waters for us. You need to be highly flexible. You need to adjust to those changes very quickly. Again, think about the CSRD, the ESRS from the first draft and the first kind of details we learned about this piece and then how it turned out. Ultimately, this was a pretty long journey. So you constantly need to be aware of those changes so you can fine-tune your approach. So this flexibility in adjusting to a changing environment, it's incredibly important. And the other key soft skill is definitely communication. It's very easy as an ESG function to step on the toes of other functions. Think about the whole financial modelling that all of a sudden needs to be involved in your sustainability strategy. Think about the reporting, the sustainability report that's usually produced by the sustainability team. An annual report is usually produced by your investor relations or your finance team. And all of a sudden you have to bring this together into an integrated report. So there is a big potential for conflict. And so you need to communicate. You need to understand how can you overcome obstacles within your organization, but also how can you talk to external stakeholders like your auditors or funding partners? It's not like auditors have it all figured out just yet, they are also on a learning journey together with us. So it's really talk to each other on the same level, exchanging views and making sure that you're not scorching any earth on the way to CSRD compliance.
Matt Morton: Perfect. Obviously, Rob and I, as sustainability consultants, are thinking about this challenge very much through a consulting lens, and what we want to try and achieve with our clients is to build that capacity and facilitate that transition in a way that builds that long term capability to not only just respond to the legislation and be compliant, but as we mentioned, really try and realize those opportunities that it presents.
Matt Morton: Interested to hear your perspective on how you think consultants can play an effective role in this transition.
Markus Pretzl: The role of consultants, and this is a topic that is of course, very, very sensitive. I have a background in consulting with KPMG and what I felt is the main added value that external service providers, consultants can bring to the table is they see many different organizations dealing with similar issues.
And this gives you a big opportunity for some kind of benchmarking, understanding what are challenges that other companies are facing in this regard, so you don't have to fall into the same potholes as other companies do. So I think this comparison to your peers, to other players in the industry that’s where consultants can shed a light on. This is one of the key benefits that I see. Of course, depending on your organizational structure, those requirements will exhaust your internal resources very, very early on. So if you cannot build up those capacities internally, or at least not quick enough, then this is of course something where consultants can play a crucial role.
However, what I would like to say is it does not work to outsource a CSRD project. I've also seen this before. I understand that that's something that companies would love to push away as far as they can, but it just does not work because of the elements that we've been discussing on this podcast. You need to build those relationships internally. You need to understand those pain points. You need to, you know, this is an ongoing exercise. It's not a one off. Again, I think that many consultancies, they're very good in those one off exercises. So what you want is a consultancy that understands what is the scope of work, that understands that this is a long term challenge, a long term engagement, and then really acts as a partner, but it's not trying to take over elements of such a project where this external view is rather counterproductive than really adding value.
So this is pretty much a coin with two sides. I think that there is very clear value that external consultants can bring to the table. Super happy, you know, the exchanges that we are having, it's always good to open up your mind to get this external view in, but you should not believe you can completely outsource a project like the CSRD.
Rob Gillingwater: Yeah, and that absolutely resonates, I think, with some of the conversations that Matt and I have had with clients as well. You talked quite a lot about CSRD already, and also a little bit to Matt about not just external demands, but some internal demands, maybe for information, whether it's other teams wanting to support sustainability reports, things like that.
With CSRD demanding more data, internal stakeholders demanding more data, how are you and your team handling that increased level of responsibility and increased requirements for you from a data perspective?
Markus Pretzl: Well, we touched upon this briefly before. I believe there's this Excel phase that we all had to go through and now we are in this, this post Excel period.
In our case, we had an ESG reporting system implemented that helped us on our first steps along our ESG journey. However, when the CSRD came across around the corner, we realized that this solution wouldn't be capable of dealing with the requirements. So we went out there to the market, we screened various providers, some of the big names, but something that I've experienced several times was they're very good in building the structure and then asking you to input the data in your tool. But what they are all missing is the ESRS. So when we're not talking about the CSRD data reporting requirements, it's legal text, it's highly technical jargon. So you need a tool that also helps you to translate this into a language that is understood internally by your subject matter experts. Because we couldn't find this anywhere out there in the market, we teamed up with a company that we already used for our carbon accounting and that had a pretty good ESG reporting tool in place and then started co developing a CSRD ready reporting solution that can actually take care of those requirements and also and look, we can talk about those legal requirements as much as we want and what are the objectives and so on. The ultimate goal is that you need to get a limited assurance. You need to get limited assurance from your auditors on your sustainability statement. That's the end goal. And one milestone is that you need to have reporting that is audit ready. So again, you need to have a system in place that allows auditors to go into it, to tap into the source information, understands the data conversion processes and so on. This is what we built together with an external service provider.
Rob Gillingwater: Yeah, that's really interesting. And I think one of the things that I've observed working with clients is that a lot of this stuff is new. And so going to fetch data from different parts of the business is a new experience. And one of the findings has been sometimes like data quality isn't always up to scratch. Has that been a bit of a journey for you and your business in terms of how you initially started out and how do you go about ensuring that what you do report is accurate and compliant and audit ready, as you say?
Markus Pretzl: The good thing is that you're forced doing so. The carbon accounting I think provides you with a good example in this regard. You usually start with a spend based approach. So you take spend information on your utilities and then convert this into carbon emissions. It's a good approach to get a high level overview, but of course you need to move towards an activity based approach. You need to really understand what are the main consumers, what are the main emitters in your organization and then measure them and then do the conversion into emissions. And this is something that we see in many areas.
Usually, If we go through the main sources of the data that we require, usually HR data is pretty well structured. Why? Legislation around personal data, just think about the GDPR. It already gives you some pretty detailed requirements. So this is something that's usually pretty well managed. It's becoming more difficult when we are looking into operational data. So when you're then building your decarbonization plans, when you're looking at data like water consumption and so on. So all of this is of course very, very challenging, but there is a big opportunity in this. You now have, let's say the backing of regulatory requirements to go out there to your internal partners and say, "Look, maybe it's time for us to install those smart meters. Maybe it is time for us to become better in our processes". This is, by the way, the biggest opportunity that I see. It forces you to improve your processes. It forces you based on the sheer amount of data that you have to collect to think about automation. So I think there is a big challenge, but the bigger opportunity is in the efficiency improvements that you can gain from going through this process.
Rob Gillingwater: Yeah, that's really interesting and it lends nicely into sort of next topic around that opportunity piece and I think, you know, if we're honest, a lot of the time, I think the ESG space is criticized for maybe they've been overly bureaucratic and exhausting the small amounts of capacity in those teams, and it's been filled up with analysis, reporting, and maybe stopping those teams from contributing to more positive impacts in the business. What do you, Markus, think of that viewpoint of maybe it being a bit too overly bureaucratic and too filled with analysis and reporting and maybe stopping those positive impacts? Or do you have a different view of that and see maybe, yeah, there are more opportunities to this?
Markus Pretzl: It gives me actual pain because it's absolutely true. Your resources as a team are pretty much absorbed by preparing for those reporting requirements, by collecting the data, but managing the stakeholders internally. So this is a real struggle without a doubt. However, it is the responsibility of an ESG team to find a way out of this. And the way out of this is that we tend to take in responsibility for everything. We collect the data and then we start telling the functions how they can collect the data themselves. You talk about initiatives, you talk about writing policies, the whole governance backbone that you are supposed to build. But it is your job to bring the CSRD out there into those functions. You need to explain, look at the data collection pieces at the end of a process, we need to start by understanding where we can have an impact and then putting in place action and building again governance, such an important aspect of this, to build this around this. And once you start to use this to inform your internal functions, to engage in a genuine discourse with them about the requirements and you discuss about actions with the functions. This is where you will move from data gathering and analysis reporting to actually bringing about change in an organization. This is actually what we are focusing on right now to use the CSRT and the stimulus that it is providing us to make functions move, get going. To make this again more practical, it is about “What is in your supplier code of conduct? What do you expect from the suppliers that you work together? To what extent are you sourcing teams willing to enforce the standards? “, and these are some really exciting discussions. And if you don't watch out, you might even learn the one or the other thing about your own business. So I think that there is a huge opportunity to move from a very administrative function into a highly proactive and business critical function. That's why, you know, I would never see the ESG function as a center of excellence or just a simple internal business partner. If you understand what's really driving the organization, and that's still in most cases financial KPIs. So how can you contribute to the top line of the business? How can you help the business to win tenders? How can you help the business to save money? So if you assume more the role of a profit center. If you really make a contribution to the driving KPIs in the business, then I think you're playing a role where you will see that you'll get resources that you require. And more importantly, currently, we are all experiencing an economic downturn. Of course, businesses are looking at ways how they can save costs. Of course, they might have to shrink their operation. As with many of my peers, that they're looking at the ESG functions. And they consider them to be good to have, but it is your responsibility as an ESG function to make, understand, Hey, we are contributing for you earning money. And that's why we are business critical. And I think we should not complain about these discussions, but we should see our responsibility to make the organization understand how critical we can be.
Rob Gillingwater: Yeah, that's really interesting. And I think there's almost like a carrot and stick approach to this in terms of the stick being the penalties that you've touched on of the costs that are incurred if we don't do this. But I think it really is important to emphasize the carrot part and the opportunity, whether that is fostering that culture of sustainability within a business, whether it's skills development, really engaging the supply chain, looking at cost reduction opportunities, that type of thing.
So yeah, I think it's really important to balance the challenges that companies have in meeting some of these pieces of legislation with the opportunity that also brings as well. And I think that brings me nicely to, one of my final questions that is around looking at what you've done to date. What do you feel has helped you progress as a business the most in terms of pursuing your sustainability goals, responding to ESG legislation? And is there maybe something you would have told yourself a year ago or a couple of years ago when you were sort of first embarking on this journey?
Markus Pretzl: It's a very interesting question, especially, you know, what I would have told myself a year ago. Some of us, especially people working in sustainability, usually there's a reason why we work in sustainability. Usually, it's people who have some understanding of what it means to do business or to work in an ethical environment. Most of us hopefully have this inner drive and that's good. It's positive because we're looking at compromises, but what we are sometimes lacking is to have a bit more of a killer instinct, right?
Sometimes we need to go into the discussions with the knife between our teeth and then say, this is what needs to happen. You need to be a real sparring partner with management. Maybe not so much top management. Usually, they understand and they understand when you build up the narrative properly, but more with maybe the operational side of the business, people that will face a change in what you're doing, but you need to be tough. Sometimes you need to be relentless and maybe even sometimes annoying.
The other part of my job, because sustainability is as if this wouldn't be enough, is health and safety. So I'm also responsible for health and safety at TIP group. And it's the same story there. So you go out there into our workshops. And if you see someone who is doing something stupid, it is your job to walk up there and to say, "Hey, you cannot do it like this. You will hurt yourself or you will hurt one of your colleagues". And you need to explain, but sometimes you also just need to say, stop it. And it's very, very similar to what we have to do in sustainability. It's not about us knowing everything best, no. But you need to do this from a position of knowledge, a position of understanding, not only of the legal requirements but also understanding of the business. But then you need to be strong. You need to explain this is the way where we have to go. These are the actions that we have to take. This is the financial impact that this will have. Otherwise, no one will listen to you and this will make you succeed on your sustainability journey. Don't think that just because you're a principled person and you say that this is good, that the entire organization will follow suit. You need to really, you know, pan this out and explain this properly.
Matt Morton: Yeah, I really like that response, Markus, I think. It builds nicer on what we were just talking about in terms of really framing it as an opportunity. And I think one of the key challenges that we have to do in sustainability is reconcile the agenda for growth and the agenda for being more sustainable. And I think sometimes positioning it as it's not, you know, a dichotomy. Those two can be brought together, right? And I think, making that argument of we need to find a way to move forward on this, it's an opportunity. We need to be pursuing it aggressively.
Markus Pretzl: It's not, sorry for interrupting you, but Matt, it's not just something, of course, this is what we have to do, but we have to understand it is our responsibility as sustainability professionals in a corporate context, as sustainability professionals in working in consulting it’s our responsibility. We need to make the organization understand this is not a mutually excluding subject. Let's bring this together, but no one else will do this for us.
Matt Morton: Yeah, I really like that.
Last question from me before we close out is, that you've offered a huge amount of insight and experience and lots of brilliant advice that I'm sure listeners will be writing down furiously as you were speaking. If you could pick out one single piece of advice or maybe condense something you've said already, what would you choose?
Markus Pretzl: Yes, actually there's a lot of room to cover, but I think the best is to link this to what I said just before, be relentless, even annoying if it has to be to make the organization understand that this is not a nice to have. The opportunities, of course, vary from organization to organization, but they are definitely there.
So take your time to chisel out those opportunities for your organization from the ESG regulatory requirements, just like a stonemason would carefully carve a stone. So this is really the one piece of advice that I would give. Be relentless, be strong, be principled. It's again, not mutually exclusive and go for those opportunities.
Matt Morton: Brilliant. I think I might get a post-it note, write 'be relentless' on it and stick it on my screen from now on because I think that's a great piece of advice.
Markus Pretzl: Thank you so much, Matt.
Rob Gillingwater: I'll join you with that, Matt. So yeah, just bringing this first episode to a close, I just want to say a special thanks to Markus, really appreciate your time and insights, it’s always really insightful when we catch up.
We'll be sharing this podcast on our social media channels. So for anyone who's going through similar experiences, it'd be great to hear your thoughts on any topics that we've discussed. And definitely look out for future episodes, which will be released in the future.
Thanks again, Markus. And thanks to Matt.
Markus Pretzl: Thank you so much for having me. Was really fun being with you two guys.
Clarasys: Thank you for listening to our Simply Sustainability podcast. We hope you enjoyed it. For more information, please contact us at sustainability@clarasys.com.
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