What happened

The Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) published its 2026 Status Report in September. It counts 802 TNFD Adopters, organisations that have publicly committed to report on nature in line with its recommendations, up from 620 a year earlier. Financial institutions among them have an estimated USD 26.6 trillion of assets under management. Separately, the TNFD's own analysis of published reports suggests over 1,000 organisations in 56 countries now make at least some TNFD-aligned disclosure, double the year before. ESG Today reported the figures on 16 October 2026.

Two standard setters are now building on that work:

  • The ISSB, whose climate standard the UK's own sustainability standards are based on, says it will launch an exposure draft on 22 October 2026 proposing a Practice Statement on nature-related disclosures. It draws on the TNFD's work and is open for comment until 19 February 2027.
  • ISO approved a proposal in September 2026, according to the TNFD, for a standard based on the TNFD's LEAP assessment approach. Work is expected to start in the last quarter of 2026 and finish in 2028.

The timing is deliberate. COP17, the meeting of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, runs in Yerevan, Armenia, from 19 to 30 October 2026. One of the targets governments agreed in 2022, Target 15, asks them to make sure large companies and financial institutions monitor, assess and disclose their risks, dependencies and impacts on biodiversity, including along their supply and value chains.

What it means for a small UK supplier

Nothing here puts a legal duty on a small business. TNFD is voluntary, the ISSB proposals are a consultation, and the UK has proposed no nature reporting rule for small firms. For the basics of the framework itself, see our plain-English guide to TNFD for small businesses.

The effect comes through your customers, the same way carbon did. A large company that has signed up to TNFD has to say how its supply chain depends on and affects nature. It can only do that with information from suppliers, so the questions travel down the chain. In practice, expect four topics to appear next to the carbon questions you already get:

  • Land: where your sites are, and whether any are near rivers, protected areas or places short of water.
  • Water: how much you use, from your water bills, and how much goes back to the sewer.
  • Waste: tonnes produced, by type, and where each goes: landfill, incineration or recycling.
  • Sourcing: what your main materials are and where they come from, especially timber, paper, food and anything farmed or mined.

Not every adopter will ask straight away, and many questionnaires will start with a single yes or no question. But the direction is clear, and answering with real figures is easier than starting from scratch when a tender is due.

What to do now

  1. List your sites with addresses. Location is the first thing a nature question needs.
  2. Pull a year of water bills. Our post on water use in your carbon footprint shows how to turn them into cubic metres and emissions.
  3. Ask your waste contractor for tonnages by type and destination. See waste emissions from your contractor's data.
  4. Note your main materials and their origin. A short list of the top five is enough to start.
  5. Keep carbon answers consistent. Our guide to what to do when a customer asks for carbon data covers the carbon side of the same questionnaires.

Where the nature numbers and the carbon numbers meet

Waste shows how one set of figures answers both questions. An illustrative business sending 10 tonnes of general commercial waste to landfill produces 5.21 tonnes CO2e with the 2026 government factors (520.58023 kg CO2e per tonne). Sent for incineration with energy recovery instead, the same waste is 0.05 tonnes (4.65358 kg per tonne), a cut of about 5.16 tonnes a year. The tonnes are what a nature questionnaire asks for; the destination is what changes the carbon.

How Carbon Recycling helps

Carbon Recycling is a carbon reporting tool, not a biodiversity assessment. What it does is hold the records that nature questions start from. You set up each site with its address and postcode, then record water supplied, wastewater, and waste by material and treatment route alongside your energy and travel. Each entry is converted to CO2e with the government factors and kept year by year, with a report for each site. When a customer's questionnaire asks about water or waste, the quantities and their emissions are already there, and the free supplier questionnaire answer bank writes model answers to the carbon questions that sit beside them.