SME Sustainability Checklist: Start Here

🌱 SME Sustainability Checklist

A practical, interactive tool to find the sustainability risks, opportunities, and first steps that fit your small business — across Environmental, Social, and Governance areas.

Why sustainability matters for small businesses

Customers, lenders, and larger partners increasingly expect every business — whatever its size — to manage its environmental and social impact. Small and medium-sized businesses make up most companies worldwide, employ a large share of people, and are rooted in their communities. Open each card to see why it matters for you.

🛡 Future-proof the business

Spot sustainability risks and opportunities early, and adapt so the business stays resilient.

📄 Be ready for reporting requests

Regulation, large customers, and finance providers are asking for more sustainability data — often as part of their own supply chain reporting under the ISSB standards (IFRS S1 and S2).

📈 Improve performance

Cut costs, win customers and talent, find new business, and stand out from competitors.

🌍 Increase positive impact

Reduce your environmental footprint and strengthen your social impact — for reputation, for compliance, or simply because it's the right thing to do.

Linked UN Sustainable Development Goals

Small businesses contribute directly or indirectly to many of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, especially:

Goal 8Decent work and economic growth

Goal 9Industry, innovation, and infrastructure

Goal 13Climate action

How to use this checklist

Work through the sections in order. In each checklist, tick the actions you've completed, mark whether each initiative applies to you, set a priority, and add comments. Your action plan collects everything in one place.

STEP 1

🧭 Build your ESG framework

Interactive SWOT and KPI cycle

STEP 2

🌿 Environmental

7 initiatives · 45 actions

STEP 3

🤝 Social

6 initiatives · 36 actions

STEP 4

🏛 Governance

9 initiatives · 33 actions

RESULT

📋 My action plan

Your priorities, open actions, and notes

Work with your accountant

Your professional accountant knows your business, your industry, and your environment — which makes them the ideal partner for this checklist. Not every initiative applies to every business, so tailor the actions together. The goal is a few good first steps, not everything at once: sustainability is a journey that develops over time.

Quick readiness check

We know which ESG issues matter most to our customers and lenders. We have at least one written sustainability policy. We measure our energy use or emissions. Someone in the business is responsible for sustainability. We could answer a supplier questionnaire about sustainability today.

What does my result mean?

0–1 ticked: Start with Step 1 — the ESG framework — to find your priorities.
2–3 ticked: You have a base. Go straight to the checklist that matches your biggest gap.
4–5 ticked: You're well on your way. Use the checklists to find what's missing, and build your action plan.

Based on the Small Business Sustainability Checklist published by the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC), 2023. This interactive version summarizes and restructures the guidance; see ifac.org for the original publication.