Evaluating the environmental impacts of Marin Trust activities

Project overview

For a sustainability system to improve its effectiveness, address barriers and demonstrate the difference it is making, it must regularly review the outcomes and impact of its activities. This project comprised a comprehensive impact evaluation to assess whether MarinTrust activities lead to improved or protected environmental parameters. It focused on the synergies, challenges and factors driving improvement between MarinTrust-certified and MarinTrust Improver Programme factories. The Improver Programme supports marine ingredient production factories which are not ready for MarinTrust certification to improve their practices towards this.

Learnings

• The findings suggest that MarinTrust activities most frequently lead to improvements in responsible sourcing, traceability, and responsible manufacturing of marine ingredients. Impacts vary across regions.

• Customers and competitors play a significant role in driving participants to engage with MarinTrust activities. Other stakeholders, such as suppliers and NGOs, are also more or less influential depending on the context.

• Unintended effects of MarinTrust activities include a heightened sense of stewardship and pride among participants, potential increases in product prices, and attracting investment. More work is needed to interpret these findings.

• Recommendations for future evaluation work include capturing early improvements by participants in MarinTrust activities, building a continuous feedback loop, understanding legal requirements, and continuing to offer participation in multiple languages.

Find out more in the evaluation full report or summary available below and on MarinTrust’s website.

Impact

Responsible sourcing, tracing and responsible manufacturing of marine ingredients were all identified as being key areas of positive impact influenced by the MarinTrust programme. This allows MarinTrust to focus their messaging and engagement to potential new applicants and regions, as well as continue developing and improving in these areas.

The findings will be used to review and adapt MarinTrust's current monitoring, evaluation and learning system to feed into relevant organisational elements, such as their Theory of Change.

Download project outputs

Impact Evaluation Report

Evaluating the environmental impacts of Marin Trust activities

Evaluating the environmental impacts of Marin Trust activities

Impact Evaluation Report

Impact Evaluation Report_Summary

Lessons Learned report - Impact Evaluation

Evaluating the environmental impacts of Marin Trust activities

Evaluating the environmental impacts of Marin Trust activities

Impact Evaluation Report

Impact Evaluation Report_Summary

Lessons Learned report - Impact Evaluation

Related content

Moving towards outcome-based standards

Demonstrating and Improving Poverty Impacts project (DIPI)

Sustainability systems and GIS technology