Podcast

CBAM is live but the implementation infrastructure isn't ready : Data verification, supply chain traceability, and third-party audit are all still being figured out; treat year one as the first pancake.

CBAM inadvertently accelerates China's green industrial strategy : By incentivising China to build its own domestic ETS, it hands China both the tax revenue and the motivation to dominate the enabling technologies for green steel and beyond.

The numbers don't fully close the gap : CBAM adds €100–130/tonne to steel by 2034; the green steel premium is €200–300/tonne. It narrows the gap but doesn't bridge it, which is why disruptive green steel projects are still struggling to launch.

Europe keeps setting the rules and losing the prize : From solar to batteries to electrolysers, Europe creates the regulatory demand signal and China captures the industrial advantage. CBAM risks repeating this pattern.

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ESG was a risk framework sold as an investment strategy, and it doesn't hold up : The logic implies a short thesis, not a long one; bidding up ESG-compliant companies generates no structural advantage over the market.

The double bottom line has an original sin : Claiming you can maximise financial returns and social impact simultaneously without trade-off is intellectually dishonest, and that dishonesty has eroded the whole category's credibility.

Impact investing has three places where it actually works : Corporate VC where the impact label builds genuine brand value, venture philanthropy where recycled capital multiplies impact, and catalytic blended finance where DFIs unlock private capital that wouldn't otherwise show up.

$1.5 trillion in impact AUM is a number born of hype : A more honest, focused version of the space would be smaller, thematically specific, and upfront about accepting below-market returns as a known trade-off, not a failure.

Resilience beats agility for strategic commodities : Constantly switching suppliers narrows your options and drives up costs; deep investment in a small number of key origins builds durable supply security.

One investment, multiple returns : Combining supply resilience, carbon credits, and biodiversity benefits into a single supplier partnership makes each individually marginal ROI stack up into a compelling business case.

The triple win only works if you see the chain end to end : Squeezing supplier margins creates fragility; investing in farmer productivity creates resilient supply, better quality, and nature benefits simultaneously.

Sustainability needs to follow the Bradley Curve : The goal is interdependence, where every function internalises sustainability as a reflex : not compliance, where a dedicated team tells everyone else what to do.

The PhD in climate change must become an MBA in business change : Sustainability professionals who can't speak the language of business value will never successfully embed the agenda in the organisations they work for.

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The sustainability function is under pressure from three directions: functional migration to procurement and finance, automation of core workflows, and a retreat from ambitious blue-sky thinking, all at once

Volatility is the right new territory: Commodity price instability is already at historically unprecedented levels, and planetary boundary breaches will make it structurally worse and less predictable for decades to come.

Category leaders need volatility management or they risk losing the category: If cocoa collapses, so does the chocolate business; the sustainability professional who can model and respond to that threat becomes mission-critical.

Three skills transfer directly: systems thinking, data insight, and storytelling: Applied with deep business context, these are exactly what volatile environments require and what no other function currently provides.

Nutrition is the next transformation topic for sustainability teams: As traditional sustainability work gets absorbed by other functions or automated, nutrient density and nutritional portfolio management is a meaningful space to move in:  Health credentials are becoming a commercial imperative, not just a nice-to-have, and the M&A activity at Danone and Unilever signals where the big players are placing their bets.

Portfolio-level nutritional optimisation is a surprising white space: Most large food and beverage businesses have no clear system for optimising their product mix across geographies against evolving nutritional standards, and sustainability teams have exactly the skills needed to build it.

Sustainability is a transformation capability, not a permanent function: Its value lies in moving businesses from one state to another; nutrition is the next transformation that needs that capability applied to it.

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Resilience has replaced net zero as the dominant corporate sustainability conversation: Whether framed as supply chain risk, cost savings, or community wellbeing, resilience is what's landing right now across every geography.

EPR is the quiet regulatory revolution: Federated, practically framed, and politically unthreatening, extended producer responsibility is moving faster than almost any other sustainability legislation and is landing real costs on business now.

Green hushing is winning over greenwashing: Most companies have gone quiet; the ones still communicating are the ones with genuine results behind them.

The best sustainability leaders operate at two levels simultaneously: They make targeted system-level interventions externally while driving specific, commercially grounded changes inside their own business.

Commodity volatility is shifting the business case for sustainability: Rising oil and fertilizer prices are making renewable energy, recycled packaging, and alternative agricultural inputs more financially attractive right now.

Budget pressure is coming: prepare your numbers: Falling equity markets force companies into cost-cutting mode, and sustainability teams will not be exempt from that scrutiny.

Supply chains are about to be restructured whether you plan for it or not: Emerging market sovereign risk will force procurement teams to reshape sourcing, reshuffling Scope 3 in ways most models haven't anticipated.

Revisit your initiative stack immediately: The economics of your entire transition plan have shifted; some initiatives have moved into the money, others out of it, and now is the time to know which is which.

The regulatory pincer is real — California and New York together effectively capture any meaningful American business; federal rollbacks at the SEC level are largely beside the point.

New York's macro track casts a wide net — just $1M in state revenue qualifies as "meaningful business," pulling in companies far beyond their HQ location, including whole conglomerates via subsidiaries.

New York is more durable than CSRD — single-state control, a high revenue threshold, a narrow emissions-only focus, and a built-in citizen lawsuit mechanism make it far harder to roll back than EU legislation.

Scope 3 data requests will cascade downstream — once large companies are forced to disclose, expect pressure to ripple through supply chains, pushing smaller suppliers to improve data quality too.

Slow and steady beats fast and backlashed — the DEI rollback is a cautionary tale; legislation that moves too far too fast triggers reactions that leave things worse than before.

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The sustainability function is being absorbed, not eliminated — most of the work is migrating into procurement, supply chain, and finance, not disappearing entirely.

Be antifragile, not just resilient — build hard, transferable skills (data, insights, stakeholder management) that are most valuable precisely when things go wrong.

In corporates, follow the margin — high-margin companies in pharma, personal care, flavours, and fragrances are the most committed and resourced to sustain the function long term.

Consulting is shrinking, software is consolidating — both are riskier bets right now; wait for the software market to consolidate before picking a side.

Nonprofits may be a hidden opportunity — after two bruising years, many have reset and stabilised; the need for honest brokers bridging corporations and governments isn't going away.

Small packaging is the real enemy : sachets and multi-layer films are nearly impossible to collect or recycle economically; PET bottles are actually one of the good guys.

Most waste never gets collected : 2.3 billion people have no collection, making infrastructure the most urgent fix before recycling technology even matters.

Waste-to-energy locks you in : oversized plants create perverse incentives to keep generating waste and undermine recycling efforts.

Technically recyclable ≠ actually recycled : without end-market demand and minimum recycled content regulation, the business case for recycling simply doesn't exist.

Design for the consumer : the simplest thing brands can do is make packaging that people instinctively know how to recycle

Sustainability is fragmenting : Scope 3 moves to procurement, reporting moves to finance, and the CSO role is quietly being demoted.

2026 is still a down year : budgets, headcount, and ambition continue to shrink; don't expect a rebound before 2027.

PCFs are the new baseline : product carbon footprints are becoming standard practice and entering procurement negotiations as competitive leverage.

2030 targets are quietly dying : most were unrealistic from the start; expect accelerating retrenchment through 2029.

Vendor collapse incoming : most sustainability software and consultancy providers are in distress; consolidations and closures will be disruptive for those who rely on them.

Performance beats purpose: mainstream consumers want the product to work first; sustainability is a bonus, not a draw.

Safety is the new sustainability: most consumers hear "sustainability" and think "is this safe for my family?"

The sugar pill works: embed sustainability into the product, drop it from the pitch.

One checkbox is enough — consumers don't want depth, just reassurance that it's not a zero.

Message for the market: safety sells in North America; environmental credentials resonate in Europe and Japan.

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EPR is coming fast — municipalities need the money, consumers care about waste, and the political backlash that hit ESG is largely bypassing EPR.

Compliance will be a nightmare — dozens of schemes, different rules, different PROs; a major consolidation opportunity for whoever solves it first.

PRO conflicts of interest are a ticking scandal — waste management companies running waste-reduction schemes is a problem waiting for an exposé.

The real prize is circularity, not compliance — getting packaging back to the original producer to close the loop is where the biggest value lies.

Durable packaging + EPR = less waste into the system — fewer top-ups of virgin material needed if you design for return from the start.

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ESG was never designed for operating companies — it started as an outside-in investor checklist and was never meant to become a corporate operating framework.

Clubbing unrelated metrics together is the root problem — there's nothing that connects child labour, water intensity, and emissions under one optimisation logic.

Brand ESG is dead and that's fine — its politicisation, especially on the social side, has made it a liability; losing the label doesn't mean losing what matters.

Fewer metrics, owned by the right teams — water belongs in ops, diversity belongs in talent; sustainability teams should do five things well, not 218 things badly.

Compliance or conviction — pick one — if a metric is just a regulatory requirement, do the minimum; if it's core to the business, treat it as a strategic priority and resource it accordingly.

SECR is backward-looking; UK SRS is forward-looking — the shift from energy usage reporting to risk, opportunity, and transition planning is a fundamental change in what's being asked of businesses.

Sovereignty explains the UK's own version — it's largely IFRS copy-pasted, but the UK won't adopt external rules directly; it never has.

This is partly a professional services play — the UK is positioning its law firms, accountancies, and banks as global experts by shaping the standard early.

Finance teams will own sustainability disclosure — aligning climate and financial reporting together means the CFO's office, not the CSO's, leads on compliance.

Scope 3 finally gets teeth — moving from optional to expected will force businesses to engage with their supply chains in ways most have never done before.

Shadow AI is already here — 90% of companies have employees using personal AI accounts at work, pilots or not.

Most people use AI wrong — Treating it like Google leaves the majority of the value untapped.

Builders beat buyers — Companies that built their own AI tools consistently outperform those that bought off-the-shelf.

Sustainability's natural fit — Unstructured, hard-to-collect data is exactly where Gen AI delivers the most value.

Trust requires testing — Build evaluations (question → expected answer sets) and run them every time your AI system changes.

Greenwashing attacks backfired badly — Campaigning NGOs scared off the very companies voluntarily trying to act, producing green hushing instead of better climate action.

The voluntary market was a fallback, not a plan — South Pole pivoted to voluntary credits out of survival after Kyoto collapsed, not strategic vision.

Perfect is the enemy of impact — Waiting for a flawless carbon credit means never launching a project; imperfect action in hard places still beats inaction.

A government-backed currency could unlock the market — Replacing "carbon credits" with sovereign-endorsed "climate units" could restore corporate confidence to participate openly again.

China is running the real sustainability race — While Western companies retreat, China is dominating EVs, batteries, solar, and rare earths — securing tomorrow's economy today.

Down-cycles are where the real work happens — Pressure waves always return, faster each time; the companies cutting sustainability budgets now will face harder, faster change when the tide turns.

Nature risk is the most underrated business risk — Shelving water and nature agendas is strategically reckless, especially for any company that buys physical commodities from the natural world.

Sustainability professionals need harder skills, fast — Storytelling and convening aren't enough; data fluency, AI, and cross-functional technical depth are now the real differentiators.

Be entrepreneurial, not just employable — The next 10–15 years will reward those who take risks and build deep expertise over those who optimise for the next promotion.

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• The dramatic shift from the sustainability hiring boom of 2-3 years ago to today's restructuring wave
• Which sustainability roles are most vulnerable (hint: it's not who you might think)
• Where sustainability functions are being relocated within organisational structures
• Whether this integration is actually good for sustainability's long-term impact
• Practical advice for navigating your career during this transition

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Saif Hameed sits down with Adam Henkel, a 7th generation farmer and 3rd generation conservationist from Illinois. They break down:

• The true meaning of sustainability on the farm
• Bridging the farmer-corporate gap
• Easy wins vs real challenges in practice
• How corporations and sustainability professionals can help

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In short… yes. But is that really a bad thing?

In this episode, we ask whether the hype around sustainability is deflating, and what that means for progress.

We dive into the latest headlines:

- Is the UK on the brink of scaling back its climate ambitions?

- Are we stuck in a loop of ever-rising energy demand?

- What's next for sustainability-linked executive pay?

PLUS: A climate tech reality check.

This week’s headlines:

• Trump’s Tariff’s and the climate fall out
• Soaring commodity prices and what to do
• Just Stop Oil to disband - victory or retreat?

PLUS: Our how-to segment tackles a question many of you have asked: how to run a board meeting that secures sustainability buy in.

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• Business + Science = Impact: How applying process engineering to conservation created unprecedented restoration scale
• Project set up: Why success starts with understanding local needs, empowering communities, and tailoring interventions to context
• Measuring what matters: Beyond basic coral counts, why and how the team tracks ecosystem health, skills transfer, and ROI.
• Practical takeaways: Consumer insights, cross-team collaboration, and stakeholder alignment strategies

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• The true carbon impact of plastic vs. other packaging materials
• The hidden trade-offs between recyclability, emissions, and functionality
• Why recycling systems struggle and how EPR can help
• Innovations transforming packaging, from light-weighting to full recyclability
• How businesses can navigate legislation and consumer expectations

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In today’s episode we tackle two critical market signals:

• The SEC's dramatic climate disclosure rollback and what it means for corporate transparency
• The Net Zero Banking Alliance's retreat from 1.5°C commitments and if financial institutions are losing their climate ambition

Then we break down the EU Deforestation Regulation essentials:

• Who's affected and compliance timelines
• Geolocation data requirements and verification challenges
• Implementation strategies across different commodity sectors
• Navigating smallholder farmer relationships
• Leveraging compliance data for strategic advantage

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