The B2B Opportunity in Corporate Sustainability
Major brands need help meeting their sustainability commitments. Here’s how B2B suppliers can turn this challenge into a growth opportunity.
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As consumer demand for sustainable products grows and regulatory pressure increases, B2B suppliers have an opportunity to grow market share by helping their customers meet sustainability goals. Success requires developing credible sustainability offerings, investing in well-trained salespeople who can effectively communicate both environmental and economic benefits, and backing sustainability claims with data and third-party certification.
Suppliers for major brands have a unique opportunity to grow market share through B2B sustainability solutions. Corporate leaders are facing mounting pressure from global markets and regulators to make verified, traceable sustainability commitments, such as decarbonization, circularity, and sustainable sourcing. Brands are leaning on suppliers to help them meet this demand. Suppliers are seeing more requests for evidence of sustainability performance in requests for proposals and on third-party due-diligence questionnaires, and those businesses that can provide solutions for sustainability challenges are receiving increased investment.
Major brands that require suppliers to improve the sustainability of their offerings include McDonald’s, which has asked its beef suppliers in Brazil to provide deforestation-free beef; Salesforce, which asks its suppliers to demonstrate their compliance with Science Based Targets initiative standards, carbon neutrality, and other climate commitments in its procurement contracts; and Mars, which requires its suppliers to provide proof of low-carbon, no-deforestation approaches for producing key commodities, such as palm oil.
Despite the increasing scrutiny of environmental, social, and governance practices from federal and state governments in the U.S., demand for sustainable products and services is continuing to grow across the country and in global markets. Market research conducted by the NYU Stern Center for Sustainable Business (CSB) has found that sustainability-marketed consumer packaged goods products in the U.S. are growing nearly twice as fast as conventionally marketed products, with a 28% price premium, on average (based on 10 years of data). And other CSB research found that sustainability is of interest to all types of U.S. consumers — across political parties, locations, levels of education, incomes, and other demographics.
In addition, regulatory trends outside of the U.S. are driving uptake of sustainability goals and requests for supplier sustainability solutions. A 2024 B2B sustainability study found that making commitments to global sustainability standards and managing sustainability risks requires brands to turn to their suppliers for help. For example, three-quarters of European companies and more than half based in the U.S. have announced net-zero goals aimed at reducing their emissions by 2030. Forty percent of those companies, in both Europe and the U.S., are also required to report and reduce Scope 3 emissions, which are those embedded in a corporation’s value chain.