From greenwashing to energy prices, sustainability is entering the decision-making processes of businesses. LifeGate's Impact Tables offer a pragmatic approach.

Companies have plenty of opportunities to engage with the major trends in sustainability. Festivals and conferences, enriched by the presence of experts from the academic, business and institutional worlds, have in many cases become regular fixtures. Understanding where sustainability is heading, however, is just the starting point. The next step — far from intuitive — is translating that knowledge into real decisions within one's own organisation. That is why LifeGate has chosen to enrich and renew the Impact Table format.

The Impact Tables are organised in small groups, with around ten company representatives at each table, and participation is by invitation or through a selective application process. Each meeting is dedicated to a specific topic, identified by LifeGate's consulting team based on the challenges that most frequently emerge in day-to-day work with businesses.

Meetings open with a brief contextual overview and a contribution from an external expert, so that the discussion can begin from a shared language and common knowledge base. With those foundations in place, the workshop begins. Participants are presented with a case study inspired by real situations, along with a series of possible directions to take. There is no predetermined correct answer, because every option carries advantages, limitations and trade-offs that the group is asked to weigh up.

LifeGate's consultants guide the discussion with questions and prompts that help bring the implications of each possible choice into focus, without steering the conclusions. At the end, each table retraces the path it has followed and presents the solution it considers most robust.

This format, already successfully tested in previous years, returned for a new edition on 24 June at the SmartCityLab Milano spaces. Participants included primarily sustainability professionals, joined by colleagues from marketing, communications and technical functions such as packaging. A deliberately cross-functional composition, reflecting the fact that many decisions involve multiple areas of expertise within the same company.

The day began with a first table on greenwashing — a highly topical issue ahead of the entry into force, on 27 September, of the amendments to the Consumer Code transposing the European directive Empowering consumers for the green transition. The workshop examined a series of environmental claims inspired by real cases, assessing their strengths and weaknesses, verifying whether sufficient data existed to support them and, where necessary, rephrasing them.

In the afternoon, two working tables ran in parallel. On one side, the packaging transition made necessary by the imminent entry into force of the European Ppwr regulation. On the other, the best approaches for proactively managing energy price instability rather than simply absorbing it. The topics are therefore highly varied, but underpinned by a firm, shared conviction: even apparently very technical issues can be addressed with a strategic vision, by keeping the focus on the impact of one's decisions.