ESG Guidance Document

Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) Guidance Document

The British Plastics Federation (BPF) is committed to helping its members improve their sustainability and, through its Sustainability Committee, examine what support and resources can be developed to assist members.

Although many multinational companies have had Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) strategies and commitments for several years, the BPF recognises that the majority of its members are Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) so are still in the early stages of exploring this.

This guidance document published in October 2025 has been produced by the BPF Sustainability Committee and is exclusively available for BPF members.  The document can be downloaded HERE (login required).

NOTE: If you are a BPF member and unable to login you can register for instant access HERE

Contents

• What is ESG?
• Business benefits of an ESG report 
• What needs to be done by law (in the UK) and who needs to report what?
• Reporting principles how you should report ESG
• Materiality
• How do we report without greenwashing? 
• How do we set ESG goals and timelines? 
• Using Management Systems to transition towards ESG 
• What can we do to ensure that our data is accurate and believable? 
• What are the steps required to produce an ESG report? 
• Conclusions and next steps - the most important thing is to start! 
• References and Further Reading

This free resource, available free to all to BPF members, sets out how to decide what to report on through conducting a materiality assessment, how to collect data and how to set goals and KPIs. It also tackles greenwashing and how to ensure you promote the successes of a company without potentially falling foul of greenwashing rules. 

The BPF would like to thank Altro Ltd, McAlpine and Co Ltd, Robinson PLC, Tangram Technology Ltd and Trowers & Hamlins LLP for their support in producing this document.

"We encourage all our members to download and use this document within their own companies. A key requirement for the document was to be easy to understand, and we hope especially the step-by-step guide achieves this. Across all the  resources available on the BPF sustainability hub, we have focused on trying to make implementing sustainability within BPF member companies as straight forward as possible." Helen Jordan, BPF Sustainability Manager  

 

 

 

The BPF are hosting a webinar at midday on the 6th November 2025 featuring Helen Jordan, Sustainability Manager British Plastics Federation and David Lever, Sustainability Manager at Alto to go through the key topics covered in the webinar.  The webinar is open exclusively for BPF Members.  Members can register free of charger HERE