Top 5 sustainability trends for 2025
By Mark McLardie, Head of ESG, Westcon-Comstor
As 2024 slides into the rear-view mirror, policymakers and business leaders are left to reflect on a mixed and challenging year in the fight to protect the planet from the effects of climate change.
New data confirms last year was the hottest on record, with Earth warming by more than 1.5C for the first time.
The COP 29 conference in Azerbaijan in November received a decidedly lukewarm reception from experts, while Donald Trump’s return to the White House has prompted uncertainty over the broader international direction of climate policy.
Here in the UK, the government published its Clean Power 2030 Action Plan, which is centred on an ambitious target for 95% of electricity generation to come from clean sources by 2030, up from 58% in 2024. That’s a big ask, especially given the state of the public finances.
Against this backdrop of political, economic and environmental uncertainty, what will be the main sustainability trends that UK PLC needs to look out for in 2025? Here are five issues that I believe will shape the agenda.
- Regulatory landscape becomes more complex
Recent years have seen an increase in ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) regulation and a shift from voluntary to mandatory reporting. This will continue and arguably accelerate in 2025, for example through the EU’s landmark Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD).
The CSRD aims to standardise and harmonise sustainability reporting across the bloc and beyond on climate change, human rights, anti-corruption and more.
UK companies operating in the EU and with securities listed on a regulated EU-market will need to comply, along with large non-listed companies that have a significant EU presence. Those affected will need to ensure that ESG metrics are easily accessible to investors, regulators, and other stakeholders by making disclosures in a digital, machine-readable format.
Meanwhile the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), another piece of legislation that will affect larger UK firms with an EU presence, imposes stringent human rights and environmental due diligence requirements.
- Supply chain collaboration grows in importance
The CSRD and CSDDD are just two examples of an ever-expanding ESG regulatory framework that, while well intentioned, will potentially cause a few headaches in boardrooms in the City and beyond this year.
Putting the alphabet soup of these regulations and their precise requirements to one side to look at the bigger picture, what they both point to is a stronger emphasis on embedding sustainability and ethical best practice across supply chains. For companies, this means getting higher visibility upstream of your supply chain partners and how they operate.
There are no shortcuts here, and often there will be a need to engage with a broader range of suppliers than ever before, but ultimately stronger collaboration and sharing of information will help to ensure audit readiness.
As a global technology distributor that works with some of the world’s leading cybersecurity, networking and cloud software vendors as well as a network of some 12,000-plus IT channel partners globally, supply chain collaboration is a key challenge for us at Westcon-Comstor, especially in relation to cutting our Scope 3 emissions.
- Data moves centre stage
Data has been growing in importance within ESG and sustainability for some years, but I believe this year we will see it become truly central. There are several excellent platforms out there helping companies to capture, analyse and report on their ESG efforts and build a roadmap for positive change.
New players are emerging in this space all the time, and this is an area where generative AI clearly has the potential to be transformative (though of course that comes with its own environmental impact).
We will see even more organisations adopt a data-driven approach as they seek to mitigate their environmental impact in 2025. This is something we’re passionate about at Westcon-Comstor, and in fact one of our priorities for this year – as set out in our latest Responsible Business report – is the development of ESG data management tooling to drive improvements and efficiencies.
- Emission reductions get tougher for global companies
Around the time of the pandemic we saw lots of companies, especially large multinationals, set ambitious targets on net zero and other sustainability milestones. Many have seen impressive results since then, and I’m proud to say that at Westcon-Comstor our UK operations are now powered purely by renewable electricity.
The reality for many global firms, however, is that much of the low-hanging fruit of emission reductions, represented by more mature markets across Europe and the US, has already been picked. Speaking from personal experience I can say that making progress in emerging markets across Asia and the Middle East, for example, can be much more challenging.
I therefore think we may well see a deceleration in firms’ global emission reductions in 2025 and beyond, with more importance being attached to the high energy needs of AI and cloud-based solutions, and the challenge of meeting this increased demand through green sources. Also look out for a greater focus on energy efficiency within operations, particularly in those markets where green energy procurement can be challenging.
- Circular economy comes of age
Looking beyond emissions reduction, 2025 could be the year that the circular economy moves from fringe buzz-phrase to mainstream. The concept is gaining traction across multiple industries, from IT/electronics and heavy manufacturing to hospitality and textiles. It’s also increasingly being cemented in legislation, including in mandatory reporting and disclosure frameworks such as the CSRD mentioned above.
In the technology space in which Westcon-Comstor operates, the focus is on extending the lifetime of IT hardware and reusing items wherever possible.
This is crucial given that e-waste is the world’s fastest-growing waste stream, with a reported 62 million tonnes generated in 2022 according to the United Nations and only around 15% of the world’s e-waste currently being recycled.
Progress on challenges of this scale is never quick or painless and requires genuine collaboration across the supply chain, but expect to see more companies seizing the initiative this year by putting the circular economy at the heart of their sustainability strategy.
Mark McLardie heads up global ESG strategy at Westcon-Comstor, a specialist technology distributor operating across EMEA (Europe, Middle and Africa) and APAC (Asia-Pacific).
For more information on Westcon-Comstor’s sustainability strategy, visit: