Privacy & Cookie Policy

Updated 01/13/2025

We recognize that your privacy is very important and take it seriously. This Privacy & Cookies Policy describes Sustainability Examples' policies and procedures on the collection, use and disclosure of your information when you use the services, websites, and applications offered by Sustainability Examples (the “Services”) and tells you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you. By using the Services, you consent to our use of your information in accordance with this Privacy & Cookies Policy. This Privacy & Cookies Policy is intended to meet our duties of transparency under the “General Data Protection Regulation” or “GDPR”.

We will post any modifications or changes to this Privacy & Cookies Policy on this page.

SustainabilityExamples.com (“SustainabilityExamples.com”, “we”, “us” or “our”) is committed to protecting the privacy of personal information (i.e. any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person) who visit our site: https://sustainabilityexamples.com and use the services available thereon (the “Services”). Amendments to this Privacy Policy will be posted to the Site and/or Services and will be effective when posted. Your continued use of the Site and/or Services following the posting of any amendment to this Privacy Policy shall constitute your acceptance of such amendment.

Sustainability Examples is the Controller (for the purposes of the GDPR) of your Personal Data (referred to as either “Sustainability Examples”, “we”, “us” or “our” in this Privacy & Cookies Policy).

If you have any questions about our practices or this Privacy & Cookies Policy, please contact us at support@sustainabilityexamples.com or via phone at +353-01-493-5965

Consent and Information Collection and Use When you register as a "champion" and/or "doer" (the "Users") of our Site and Services, we ask for personal information that will be used to activate your account, provide the Services to you, communicate with you about the status of your account, and for other purposes set out in this Privacy Policy. Your name, company name, address, telephone number, email address, credit card information (where any transactions take place), any content you post to the Services, your preferences regarding receiving marketing from us, inferred or assumed information relating to your behaviour and interests based on your online activity, Internet Protocaol (IP) address including related data, and certain other information about you may be required by us to provide the Services or be disclosed by you during your use of the Services such as links to your website, social media. You will also be asked to create a user name and private password, which will become part of your account information.

By providing personal information to us and by retaining us to provide you with the Services, you voluntarily consent to the collection, use and disclosure of such personal information as specified in this Privacy & Cooke Policy. The legal bases for our processing of personal information are primarily that the processing is necessary for providing the Services and that the processing is carried out in our legitimate interests, which are further explained below. Without limiting the foregoing, we may on occasion ask you to consent when we collect, use, or disclose your personal information in specific circumstances.

Your rights relating to your personal data

Under the GDPR You have the right under this Privacy and Cookies Policy to:

• Request access to your Personal Data. This enables you to receive a copy of the Personal Data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
• Request correction of the Personal Data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you corrected.
• Request erasure of your Personal Data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove Personal Data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your Personal Data where you have exercised your right to object to processing (see below).
• Object to processing of your Personal Data. This right exists where we are relying on a legitimate interest as the legal basis for our processing and there is something about your particular situation, which makes you want to object to the processing of your Personal Data on this ground. You also have the right to object where we are processing your Personal Data for direct marketing purposes.
• Request the restriction of processing of your Personal Data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of Personal Data about you, for example if you want us to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it.
• Request the transfer of your Personal Data. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your Personal Data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.
• Withdraw consent. This right only exists where we are relying on consent to process your Personal Data (“Consent Withdrawal”). If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide you with access to certain specific functionalities of our Site. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.

If you want to exercise any of the rights described above, and/or submit a complaint regarding this policy, please contact: support@sustainabilityexamples.com

Marketing communications preferences

You can ask us to stop sending you marketing messages or modify your email preferences at any time through any of the following methods:

• by following the opt-out links on any marketing message sent to you; or
• through your account settings in your dashboard once logged in as a user; or
• by contacting us at any time at support@sustainabilityexamples.com

Where you opt out of receiving these marketing messages, this will not automatically apply to Personal Data provided to us as a result of setting up as a user to use the Services but you can request to do so anytime at support@sustainabilityexamples.com under the GDPR.

We take steps designed to ensure that only those employees who need access to your personal information to fulfill their employment duties will have access to it. We may use your personal or account information for the following purposes:

To provide the Site and Services to you and to other users of the Site and Services; personalise content, remember information to help your efficiently access your account, analyse how the services are being used, diagnose service or technical problems, monitor aggregate metrics such as total number of visitors, traffic, demographic patterns, To improve the quality of the Site and Services through polls, surveys and other similar feedback gathering activities conducted by SustainabilityExamples.com and/or third parties; to manage your account and provide you with customer support; To create, manage and control your account information, and to verify access rights to the Site and Services; To bill your account; To communicate with you (subject to your opt-out rights set forth in this Privacy Policy), including without limitation for the purpose of providing you with information about the Services, or informing you of changes or additions to the Services or of the availability of any other services or features we provide; To assess service levels, monitor traffic patterns and gauge popularity of different features and service options of the Site and/or Services through Google Analytics; To enforce this Privacy Policy or our Terms of Service; To protect against fraud or error, and to respond to claims of any violation of our rights or those of any third parties; To respond to your requests for customer service; To protect the rights, property or personal safety of you, us, our users and the public; and As required to comply with applicable laws or as authorized by applicable laws. For the purposes of billing your account (if you have a paid account) and in order to process payments, SustainabilityExamples.com utilizes third party payment gateways, such as Stripe, who will utilize your credit card and other payment information in accordance with their respective privacy policies. SustainabilityExamples.com shall not be liable to you or any other person for any damages that might result from unauthorized use, publication, disclosure or any other misuse of such payment information, including credit card information.

In respect of each of the purposes for which we use your Personal Data, the GDPR requires us to ensure that we have a legal basis for that use if you are within the EU. The legal bases depend on the Services you use and how you use them. This means we collect and use your Personal Data only where:

• We need it to provide you the Services, including to operate the Services, provide customer support and personalized features and to protect the safety and security of the Services;
• It satisfies a legitimate interest (which is not overridden by your data protection interests), such as for research and development, to market and promote the Services and to protect our legal rights and interests; or
• We need to process your data to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation.

Your personal information is stored and processed in Ireland or in which we engage third party service providers such as Google Analytics. By using the Services, you consent to the transfer of information to countries outside your country of residence, which may have different data protection rules than in your country. While such information is outside of Ireland, it is subject to the laws of the country in which it is held, and may be subject to disclosure to the governments, courts or law enforcement or regulatory agencies of such other country, pursuant to the laws of such country. However, our practices regarding your personal information will at all times continue to be governed by this Privacy Policy and will comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) requirements providing adequate protection for the transfer of personal information from the EU/EEA to third country.

We may occasionally communicate with you regarding our and our affiliate partners' products, services, news and events. You have the option to not receive this information. We provide an opt-out function within all email communications of this nature, or will cease to communicate with you for this purpose if you contact us and tell us not to communicate this information to you at support@sustainabilityexamples.com. The only kind of these communications that you may not “opt-out” of are those required to communicate announcements related to the Services, including information specific to your Account, planned Services suspensions and outages. We will attempt to minimize this type of communication to you.

Aggregated Data

We may also use your personal information to generate Aggregated Data for internal use and for sharing with others on a selective basis. “Aggregated Data” means records which have been stripped of information potentially identifying users, and which have been manipulated or combined to provide generalized, anonymous information. Your identity and personal information will be kept anonymous in Aggregated Data.

How we use Cookies and Other Tracking or Technologies

We may collect non-personally identifiable information regarding your usage of the Services, including the pages and articles and presentations you viewed, time spent using certain features of the website, demographic data such as server locations, connection speed, and other information that does not identify you. Like most online services, we also use cookies, log files, clear GIFs, tracking pixels, web beacons, and other technologies that may collect Personal Data.

Cookies and Log Files

We use cookies and log files to track user information. Cookies are small amounts of data that are transferred to your web browser by a web server and are stored on your computer’s hard drive. We use cookies to track which page variant a visitor has seen, to track if a visitor has clicked on a page variant, to monitor traffic patterns and to gauge popularity of service options. We will use this information to deliver relevant content and services to you.

Our Site uses the following types of cookies for the purposes set out below:

Essential Cookies

These cookies are essential to provide you with services available through our Site and to enable you to use some of its features. For example, they allow you to log in to secure areas of our Site and help the content of the pages you request to load quickly. Without these cookies, the Services that you have asked for cannot be provided, and we only use these cookies to provide you with those services.

Functionality Cookies

These cookies allow our Site to remember choices you make when you use our Site, such as remembering your login details and remembering the changes you make to other parts of our Site which you can customize. The purpose of these cookies is to provide you with a more personal experience and to avoid you having to re-enter your preferences every time you visit our Site.

Analytics and Performance Cookies

These cookies are used to collect information about traffic to our Site and how users use our Site. The information gathered via these cookies does not “directly” identify any individual visitor. However, it may render such visitors “indirectly identifiable”. This is because the information collected is typically linked to a pseudonymous identifier associated with the device you use to access our Site. The information collected is aggregated and anonymous. It may include the number of visitors to our Site, the websites that referred them to our Site, the pages they visited on our Site, what time of day they visited our Site, whether they have visited our Site before, and other similar information. We use this information to help operate our Site more efficiently, to gather broad demographic information and to monitor the level of activity on our Site. We may use a number of different tools including Google Analytics, Segment, Amplitude, Intercom, and HotJar for this purpose.

Targeted and advertising cookies

These cookies track your browsing habits to enable us to show advertising which is more likely to be of interest to you. These cookies use information about your browsing history to group you with other users who have similar interests. Based on that information, and with our permission, third party advertisers can place cookies to enable them to show adverts which we think will be relevant to your interests while you are on third party websites. Third party advertisers may also use other technologies in addition to cookies placed on the Site (such as JavaScript, or web beacons) to measure the effectiveness of their advertisements and to personalize the advertising content.

Social Media Cookies

These cookies are used when you share information using a social media sharing button or “like” button on our Site or you link your account or engage with our content on or through a social networking website such as Facebook, or X. The social network will record that you have done this. These cookies may also include certain code that has been placed on the Site to help track conversions from ads, optimize ads based on collected data, build targeted audiences for future ads, and remarket to qualified users who have already taken certain action on the Site.

You can typically reset your web browser to refuse all cookies or to notify you when a cookie is being sent. In order to do this, follow the instructions provided by your browser (usually located within the “settings”, “help” “tools” or “edit” facility). Many browsers are set to accept cookies until you change your settings.

If you do not accept our cookies, you may experience some inconvenience in your use of our Services and some features of the Service may not function properly. For example, we may not be able to recognize your computer or mobile device and you may need to log in every time you visit our Services.

Further information about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set on your computer or mobile device and how to manage and delete them, visit www.allaboutcookies.org and www.youronlinechoices.com.

Log Files

Log file information is automatically reported by your browser each time you access a web page. When you use the Services, our servers automatically record certain information your web browser sends whenever you visit any website. These server logs may include information such as your web request, Internet Protocol address, browser type, referring / exit pages and URLs, number of clicks, domain names, landing pages, pages viewed, and other such information.

Clear GIFs Information (Web Beacons): 

When you use the Services, we may employ clear GIFs (also known as web beacons or tracking pixels) from an ad network to anonymously track online usage patterns. Web beacons allow ad networks to provide anonymized, aggregated auditing, research and reporting for us and for advertisers. Web beacons also enable ad networks to serve targeted advertisements to you when you visit other websites. Because your web browser must request these advertisements and web beacons from the ad network’s servers, these companies can view, edit, or set their own cookies, just as if you had requested a web page from their site. You may be able to opt-out of web beacon tracking by adjusting the settings on your browser. In addition, we may also use clear GIFs in HTML-based emails sent to our users to track which emails are opened by recipients. The information collected is used to enable more accurate reporting and make Sustainability Examples better for our users.

Third Parties’ & Interest-Based Ads

We may use Google Analytics and other tools to help understand use of the Services. These tools collect the information sent by your browser as part of a web page request, including cookies and your IP address. These tools also receive this information and their use of it is governed by their respective privacy policies. You can also prevent the use of these tools relating to your use of our Services by downloading and installing the browser plugin available via this link: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout?hl=en-GB.

We do not control third parties’ collection or use of your information to serve interest-based advertising. However, these third parties may provide you with ways to choose not to have your information collected or used in this way. You can opt out of receiving targeted ads from members of the Network Advertising Initiative (“NAI”) on the NAI’s website.

In addition, your Personal Data you choose to add to your profile as well as most Content you choose to post will be available for public viewing on the Service. If you want your information to remain private, don’t make it available to other users on our Site.

Security and Retention

We will strive to prevent unauthorized access to your personal information, however, no data transmission over the Internet, by wireless device or over the air is guaranteed to be 100% secure. We have implemented and maintain reasonable security procedures and practices (based on the nature of the information we collect) to protect that information from unauthorized disclosure. We will continue to enhance security procedures as new technologies and procedures become available.

We strongly recommend that you do not disclose your password to anyone.

Please remember that you control what personal information you provide while using the Site and Services. Ultimately, you are responsible for maintaining the secrecy of your identification, passwords and/or any personal information in your possession for the use of the Site and/or Services. Always be careful and responsible regarding your personal information. We are not responsible for, and cannot control, the use by others of any information which you provide to them and you should use caution in selecting the personal information you provide to others through the Site or Services. Similarly, we cannot assume any responsibility for the content of any personal information or other information which you receive from other users through the Site or Services, and you release us from any and all liability in connection with the contents of any personal information or other information which you may receive using the Site or Services. We cannot guarantee, or assume any responsibility for verifying, the accuracy of the personal information or other information provided by any third party. You release us from any and all liability in connection with the use of such personal information or other information of others.

We will retain your information for as long as your account is active or it is reasonably needed for the purposes set out in How We Use Your Personal Data and Why unless you request that we remove your Personal Data as described in Your Rights Relating to Your Personal Data. We will only retain your Personal Data for so long as we reasonably need to use it for these purposes unless a longer retention period is required by law (for example for regulatory purposes). This may include keeping your Personal Data after you have deactivated your account for the period of time needed for us to pursue legitimate business interests, conduct audits, comply with (and demonstrate compliance with) legal obligations, resolve disputes and enforce our agreements.

Our Policy on Children's Privacy

Protecting the privacy of young children is especially important. The Services are not intended for children below 16 and we do not knowingly collect or solicit personal information from anyone under the age of 16 or knowingly allow such persons to register with the Services. If you are under the age of 16, please do not submit any personal information through the Site. We encourage parents and legal guardians to monitor their children’s Internet usage and to help enforce our Privacy & Cookies Policy by instructing their children never to provide personal information on this Site. If we become aware that we have collected personal information from a child under age 16, we will take steps to remove that information.

Links to Other Websites

This Privacy & Cookies Policy applies only to the Services. The Services may contain links to other websites not operated or controlled by Sustainability Examples. We are not responsible for the content, accuracy or opinions expressed in such websites, and such websites are not investigated, monitored or checked for accuracy or completeness by us. Please remember that when you use a link to go from the Services to another website, our Privacy & Cookies Policy is no longer in effect. Your browsing and interaction on any other website, including those that have a link on our Site, is subject to that website’s own rules and policies. Such third parties may use their own cookies or other methods to collect information about you.

Changes to this Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we do so, we will send an email to users subscribed to the Company News list. We will also add a site banner alerting users who may not be subscribed. If the change materially effects the treatment of your personal data, and we have your email but you are not subscribed to the Company News list, we will send you an email. (You are responsible for ensuring that we have an up-to-date email for this purpose.)

Contact Us

If you have any questions or comments about this Privacy Policy or your personal information, to make an access or correction request, to exercise any applicable rights, to make a complaint, or to obtain information about our policies and practices with respect to any service providers outside Ireland, our Privacy Officer (or Data Protection Officer) can be reached by mail or email using the following contact information: by email at andrew@sustainabilityexamples.com.