This is not your average impact report
Most impact reports work the same way. A cover. A letter from the chief executive. Page after page of figures, charts and footnotes, and somewhere near the end, if you make it that far, a few case studies. We’ve read plenty of them, and we’ve written that kind before.
Our 2025 Impact Report is designed differently, because we think that format has the priorities the wrong way round.
The facts are important. As a certified B Corp business, our data is organised against the B Corp framework, with the methodology, caveats and sources published in full for anyone who wants to check our working. That part matters, and it’s all there. But what we really want people to understand is the real impact on people and planet, and we believe more people engage with that when it’s told as a story.
So this report leads with stories. Real ones, from real member businesses, told in their own words where possible.
A flower farmer who grows 85% of what she sells and saved around 28 tonnes of CO2e by ending her reliance on imported flowers. A venue that overhauled its bar to stock British spirits and compostable-pack snacks. A florist who has designed floral foam out of her weddings since 2017. Businesses decoupling growth from impact, growing turnover while their emissions stay flat or fall. Those are the opening chapters now, not the appendix.
Why stories, and why now
We’ve had great feedback on this approach so far, and the reason people give is consistent: they want to hear what’s actually happening in real life, not just be told a series of figures that don’t mean much to them. A number like 213 tonnes of pledged CO2e reductions is real, and our 275 carbon literate professionals behind it are real, but it only becomes meaningful when you can picture the venue measuring its energy, the stationer weighing up paper against digital, the celebrant asking couples better questions.
That’s also what we’re here for. SWA exists to put sustainability at the heart of member businesses, through training, resources, a clear framework and independent verification. A report full of statistics doesn’t help a business start that journey. A story about someone like them, who did, often does.
The rigour hasn’t gone anywhere
To be clear: leading with stories is not the same as being vague. The full data is in the report and on the impact report page of our website, published for everyone to see. Transparency is so important to us that we’d rather show our estimates, with their caveats, than a tidier number we couldn’t defend. Where we’ve reviewed an option and couldn’t yet find a better one, we say that too.
Russ Avery, from our advisory board, was a key part of getting this report right, drawing out the real, true stories from our members’ own impact reports and making them sing. We’re grateful for it, and we think readers will be too.
Read the 2025 Impact Report here: Our Impact
Over the coming weeks we’ll be publishing member stories individually on Instagram and LinkedIn, one per week. Follow along, because every one of them is someone’s real work, measured and published, and they deserve to be seen.
