When choosing sustainable products, Italian consumers focus on substantial aspects and are increasingly aware of green washing operations or “window-dressing” sustainability claims: such actions raise a red flag regarding the credibility of a company. It’s one of the findings of a report by Deloitte on the consumption habits of Italians, a survey that explores the awareness and ideas of customers about sustainability.
Another interesting point: when evaluating the commitment to sustainability by brands and companies, consumers focus on transparency, straightforwardness and practical actions on key issues such as decarbonisation of production processes and supply chains, reducing the use of energy from fossil fuels, and responsible management of resources.
Italian customers are losing interest in formal aspects and are ready to change their buying habits if they notice greenwashing operations or unsubstantiated claims about environmental awareness. In short: it’s not enough to state we’re concerned about the planet and committed to sustainability, we must support these statements with substantial actions and specific data or information.
This report by Deloitte explores the ideas and choices of final consumers, therefore we can’t directly “export” these findings to our B2B industry. The survey, however, is very interesting for a company like Maganetti, since sustainability is one of the core values of our business organisation.
We’re constantly working to reduce our environmental footprint by focusing on substantial issues (emissions, fuels, energy sources, energy efficiency), so it’s encouraging to see that Italian consumers do pay attention to these matters. Moreover, transparency and accountability are also a part of our commitment as a BCorp. We’ve built our path to sustainability on concreteness, substantial operational commitments and transparency on the actions we carry out, both for large-scale projects and smaller, day-to-day activities.
We’ve set an important target, that is to fully decarbonise our business, and we’re working towards it with a very practical approach: step by step, through stages that give measurable and verifiable results. This is evidenced by the certifications that we have gradually added to those based on ISO protocols, such as the SOSLog certification obtained in 2018 or the BCorp certification (2020). These protocols have helped us to organise our effort in a systematic way and are a recognised guarantee for our clients.
