Sustainability has evolved beyond just being associated with the colour green. Organisations instinctively reach for green when discussing sustainability, but it has outgrown this single colour. Environmental responsibility remains fundamental, but sustainability is a much bigger business conversation that encompasses how organisations affect the environment, treat people, and govern themselves.
Ruth Musembi, Associate Managing Partner at Burson, part of WPP Scangroup, has worked in sustainable development since 2004, including five years leading communication at the National Environment Management Authority. Her experience has convinced her that sustainability needs a multi-coloured approach. Musembi argues that organisations can cut emissions, manage waste, and conserve water yet remain vulnerable if they neglect social safeguards, lack effective oversight, tolerate unethical conduct, or make claims they cannot defend.
Environmental, social, and governance considerations must be understood together. The environmental dimension is often easiest to communicate because it is visible, with metrics such as trees planted, emissions reduced, and renewable-energy projects. However, social and governance performance is harder to package but no less important to an organisation's ability to create value and retain trust. Claims must stand scrutiny, and governance is therefore inseparable from communication.
Boards need to understand the organisation's material claims, ask for evidence, challenge overstatement, and hold management accountable for inconsistencies. The question is simple: can leadership defend every sustainability claim? If the answer is unclear, the organisation has more than a communication problem. The same test applies to social performance, with a business needing to build a credible sustainability story that includes workplace safety, fair labour practices, inclusion, employee wellbeing, and social effects of its operations.
In Kenya, sustainability cannot be separated from livelihoods, employment, inclusion, institutional trust, and responsible economic growth. Organisations invest substantial time, expertise, and money in sustainability reports, but many reports fall silent after the launch event. This is a missed opportunity, as a single report often contains stories for different audiences, including investors, employees, customers, and communities.
The report should remain the single source of truth, and the task is to translate its evidence throughout the year for the people who need it. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals show that sustainability was never meant to wear a single colour. The SDG wheel covers environmental protection, poverty, health, education, gender equality, decent work, inequality, strong institutions, and partnerships.
A multi-coloured approach to sustainability can be represented through a visual vocabulary that includes green for environmental stewardship, orange for people and livelihoods, and dark blue for governance. This is not a new ESG framework or a replacement for established standards but a communication device based on a visual language the sustainability world already knows. If sustainability is multidimensional, the way it is described and shown should be too.
Key points
- Organisations need to move beyond just environmental sustainability and adopt a multi-coloured approach that includes social and governance considerations.
- Sustainability reporting should be a year-round conversation, not just a one-time event.
- A multi-coloured approach to sustainability can be represented through a visual vocabulary that includes green, orange, and dark blue.
