Global climate-tech platform The Surpluss has launched a new certificate to encourage engagement across industries and support SMEs in achieving their sustainability goals. Current certifications and accreditations are often narrow in scope, expensive, and claims are hard to verify. The Surpluss Standard is being introduced to fill this gap, allowing smaller businesses that are new to sustainability to be assessed only on their collaborative efforts outside their own vertical supply chain.
The Surpluss Standard, acknowledged by the UK government IP Office, measures engagement based on how companies work together towards sustainability. It shares the same principles as The Surpluss Platform, a digital ecosystem where businesses can share resources to enhance sustainability, encourage innovation, generate new income, and become more competitive.
The Surpluss member companies can apply for consideration by submitting evidence of their top synergies. Eligibility requirements include completing collaborations aligned with the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), diverting waste from landfill, co-sharing resources such as warehouse space, and exchanging knowledge hours with other industries.
The standard recognizes that companies will have varying synergies as no two businesses are the same. As such, it measures the quality of collaborative efforts, not quantity, to even the playing field for SMEs whilst simultaneously providing access to new opportunities outside of their conventional operations.
The Surpluss founder Rana Hajirasouli explains: “Although standardization is important for sustainability, it is unfair to assume companies have access to the same resources. We wanted to provide a standard which can assist organizations, irrespective of their size, to find the right sustainable business models that work for them, whilst also driving revenue.
She added, “collaboration has historically been a neglected component of accreditations, as has the need for building financial resilience whilst companies commit to undergoing the lengthy process of certification. We wanted to disrupt that cycle to embed a framework that is easily digestible for all businesses, so they can focus on creating a lasting positive social and environmental impact in their communities, instead of struggling against paperwork that yields no business benefit.”
Developed in the UAE, The Surpluss’ mission is to empower businesses to become passionate about climate action by creating a collaborative ecosystem to share resources and waste nothing.While things are changing for the better, there are still several points of resistance preventing more widespread adoption of industrial symbiosis and circular economy solutions; these are related to the high barriers to entry, whether technical, technological, or financial, and a lack of physical infrastructure. The Surpluss makes the transition easy and cost-effective. Companies are onboarded and trained within 30 minutes, quickly gaining a new perspective on the solutions for pain points within their supply chain.
