DIY vs. Buy: The Real Tradeoffs (and Why Sustainability Is Harder to DIY Than You Think)
Companies often approach a sustainability program the same way they'd approach any other compliance task: assign an owner, set a deadline, check in occasionally. That works for something like SOC 2, which usually lives with one or two people. Carbon accounting doesn't behave the same way, because the data it requires touches nearly every part of the business at once.
A footprint pulls in facilities for office space, HR for remote work, and procurement for everything the company purchases. None of those departments report to whoever got handed the sustainability project, so that person has to build relationships across the company just to gather what's needed. Those relationships aren't a one-time setup either. They get rebuilt every reporting cycle, year after year.
That coordination time is easy to underestimate, and companies underestimate it even when they have people dedicated to the work. We've supported clients with a fully staffed sustainability function, more than one person working on it full-time, and outside guidance still made a measurable difference in how the process ran. Headcount doesn't remove the complexity. It just means more people are navigating it.
EcoVadis submissions show where this goes wrong most clearly. A junior employee gets assigned the assessment, gathers whatever policies they can find across departments on their own, and submits something that undersells what the company is actually doing. The score comes back lower than expected. There's no quick fix. A resubmission takes roughly six months, and the business relationship tied to that score sits exposed the entire time.
A useful comparison here is hiring a personal trainer instead of building a diet plan from a Google search. The free version works fine for someone getting curious about fitness. Once there's a real goal on a real timeline, the gap between free advice and a tailored plan starts to cost time, not save it.
Carbon accounting isn't more difficult than other compliance work because the concepts are harder. It's more difficult because the work spans departments that don't typically coordinate with each other, and that coordination has to happen every single year.
FAQ
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Because it requires data from departments across the entire company, like HR, procurement, and facilities, rather than sitting with one team the way something like SOC 2 usually does.
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Not always. Even fully staffed sustainability teams benefit from outside guidance, since the complexity comes from company-wide coordination rather than headcount alone.
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There's no immediate resubmission option. Companies typically wait around six months before they can try again, which leaves the relationship tied to that score exposed in the meantime.
