Olivia Pickering
Marketing Executive
July 1, 2026
For years, sustainability sat quietly in annual reports, treated as a compliance exercise rather than a business priority, but today, that has changed.
Customers, employees, regulators and procurement teams are increasingly demanding evidence that organisations are reducing their environmental impact. Yet according to experts featured on DTP Group’s Control Alt Disrupt podcast, many businesses are still relying on carbon offsetting schemes instead of addressing the behaviours and systems creating emissions in the first place.
The result is a growing gap between sustainability ambitions and meaningful action.
Businesses are under pressure to prove sustainability credentials
Sustainability is no longer a niche concern driven solely by environmental teams. Increasingly, it is becoming a commercial consideration that influences supplier selection, procurement decisions and customer trust.
Dan Wogan, Product Manager at Epson, explains:
“Internal clients, external clients, staff and prospective customers absolutely want to see that the organisations they deal with behave in the right kind of way.”
This shift means sustainability is moving from a reporting requirement to a strategic business issue. Organisations are increasingly expected to demonstrate measurable progress rather than broad commitments.
Why offsetting alone is no longer enough
Many businesses have adopted carbon offsetting programmes as part of their sustainability strategy, funding projects such as tree planting or renewable energy initiatives to compensate for emissions elsewhere. While experts agree offsetting still has a role to play, they argue it cannot replace behavioural change.
The issue is that offsetting addresses the consequences of emissions rather than the causes. As sustainability expectations increase, organisations are being challenged to demonstrate how they are actively reducing energy consumption, waste and resource use within their own operations before relying on offsets to bridge the remaining gap.
Sustainability and profitability are becoming increasingly linked
One of the biggest misconceptions highlighted in the discussion is that sustainability comes at the expense of business performance. In reality, many sustainable technology decisions also deliver operational and financial benefits.
From reducing energy consumption to lowering maintenance requirements and extending equipment lifecycles, organisations can often reduce both environmental impact and costs simultaneously.
Wogan explains: “Sustainability and operational efficiency are absolutely deemed to be part and parcel of the same thing.”
This is changing the conversation for IT leaders, who are increasingly being asked not just how technology can improve performance, but how it can improve performance more efficiently.
Measuring impact remains one of the biggest challenges
Despite growing interest in sustainability, many organisations still struggle to understand their actual environmental footprint. Different technologies are measured in different ways, reporting standards vary, and many businesses simply lack the expertise required to interpret the data. As a result, organisations often don’t know where their biggest opportunities for improvement exist.
According to the experts, the first step is not necessarily making large investments, but understanding current consumption levels and identifying areas where meaningful reductions can be made.
Even relatively small changes can have a significant cumulative impact when implemented across large estates of devices, infrastructure and systems.
The future of sustainability will focus on “insetting” rather than offsetting
Looking ahead, the experts predict a shift away from long-term net-zero pledges and towards what is increasingly known as “insetting”. Unlike offsetting, which compensates for emissions elsewhere, insetting focuses on reducing impact directly within an organisation’s own operations through technology choices, operational improvements and behavioural changes.
Gary Smith, Divisional Lead for Print Sales at DTP Group, believes this approach will become increasingly important over the next five years. As sustainability pressures continue to grow, organisations are likely to face greater scrutiny not only on the targets they set, but on the actions they take to achieve them. The businesses that succeed will be those that move beyond reporting ambitions and start embedding sustainability into everyday operational decisions.
More about the Podcast:
DTP Group’s CTRL ALT Disrupt podcast explores the real challenges facing IT leaders and organisations navigating digital transformation. Hosted by BBC weather presenter Abbie Dewhurst, the six-part series features industry experts and business leaders discussing the structural and cultural issues shaping technology, performance and security.
Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube.
