The opinions expressed here by Trellis expert contributors are their own, not those of Trellis.​

Securing an internal promotion within corporate sustainability has always been tough. In the early days, teams were so small you couldn’t get to the next level unless your manager was promoted or left. Later, when demand for sustainability talent was on fire, people could move up one or two levels just by changing organizations.

However, today’s job market is incredibly competitive and hiring managers have a large candidate pool to select from. Economic uncertainty and job market instability are also driving many people to stay longer with their current employer. As a result, investing effort in an internal promotion is likely the best option for growth right now. 

The path to internal promotion begins with understanding the scope and requirements of various levels within your organization, says Ellen Weinreb of Weinreb Group Sustainability Recruiting. In companies with several levels, managers tend to be sole contributors, directors concentrate on strategy within their domain and vice presidents take a more active role managing up and influencing senior leadership.

While managers often require technical skills and subject matter expertise, director and VP roles rely more on leadership competencies such as stakeholder engagement, the ability to balance strategic vision with execution and systems thinking. To find out more, I spoke with several directors and VPs and they consistently shared two key insights: 

• At the director level and above, it’s less about sustainability expertise and more about leadership skills and the ability to navigate internal politics, secure resources and drive transformation. 
• At the time they were promoted, they’d already been performing work of the quality and scope expected at the new level.  

Below is advice on how to secure a promotion to a director or VP of Sustainability role within your current organization.  

Positioning yourself for an internal promotion 

Build a wide network: Teams that award promotions often include senior leaders from multiple areas of the business evaluating a pool of candidates up for a limited number of open roles. That’s why it’s important to build visibility and trust beyond your direct reporting line.  

• Reach out to leaders you admire from outside of your team, function and company to ask them for advice, ideas and feedback. They’ll become informal mentors and advocates who can help you learn and grow. 
• Attend and speak at conferences to build your reputation as a thought leader and representative of your corporate brand.  

Develop skills outside of the sustainability function: Most senior sustainability leaders bring a strong functional skillset from another area to their roles and understand how the business works. Develop a knowledge of how each functional area contributes to profit, loss and risk and learn how to operate effectively across different domains. 

• Get experience beyond sustainability by taking a role on a different functional team or working on cross-functional projects. 
• Invite people to lunch or to present to your team to learn about their functional area’s priorities, KPIs and incentive structures. 

“I had already demonstrated my ability to do the role, and had created strong connections with stakeholders who had seen what I could deliver and could act as advocates for me.”

— Katie Schindall, VP of Decarbonization Strategy and Transformation at Schneider Electric, on her promotion to global director at Cisco

Get experience engaging with key stakeholders: Stakeholder engagement takes up a larger part of your role as your career advances. Get as much experience as possible with engaging the board, executive team, investors and other key stakeholders. 

• Listen to investor calls and ask your manager to sit in on board meetings or executive conversations to develop a sense for how these audiences operate.  
• Volunteer to help your manager or another leader prepare for key stakeholder conversations. Offer to manage the development schedule, draft slides, collect feedback or manage updates.  

Demonstrate a desire and readiness for more scope and strategic work: One of the most difficult parts of transitioning to director is demonstrating readiness to move from programmatic project delivery to responsibility for longer-term strategy across a portfolio. Do as much strategy work as possible in your current role.  

• Clearly communicate about the kind of work you’d like to take on and the ways in which you’d like to contribute more. Be eager to take on less-glamorous projects. 
• Ask your manager if you can help with strategic work. Offer to write first drafts, do research, collect stakeholder feedback or update documentation. 
• When you learn of new initiatives, reach out to the lead with ideas for how to approach the work and ask if you could contribute to the project. 
• Take on responsibilities for co-workers who go out on leave.  

“I was well-positioned for promotion due to my extensive procurement experience and my ability to apply a sustainability lens to the function.”

— Allison Lin, Global VP of Healthy Planet and Chief Circularity Officer at Mars, about her promotion to global director at Coca-Cola

Get an MBA, maybe? Trellis’s 2024 State of the Sustainability Profession report showed that only 38 percent of directors and 44 percent of VPs had an MBA or other advanced degree, so attending graduate school isn’t a requirement for advancement; however, if you’re having difficulty using the approaches described above at your organization, an MBA can help you to: 

• Gain experience with leading a team of peers by doing practicum projects. 
• Practice pitching and communicating ideas to diverse audiences.
• Learn to speak the language of business by mastering core concepts such as profit and loss drivers, risk-adjusted scenario planning and resource optimization.

What could be preventing your promotion

While it’s important to know what can help you secure a promotion, it’s equally important to understand what could hold you back. Here are the most-cited reasons for why people aren’t promoted to the director or VP level.  

Internal or external competition 

• A “high-potential talent” candidate from another function is given the position as a recognition of their achievements or development opportunity. 
• An external candidate with more experience in leadership, broader business experience, or specific subject matter expertise is hired. 
• Sustainability is moved to report under a different unit and there’s no opening in the new leadership structure. 

Organizational politics and fit

• Your approach to influencing others doesn’t align with the organization’s culture whether through over-reliance or underuse of charisma, assertiveness or data-driven reasoning.
• You’re viewed as having “only” sustainability expertise.
• An influential stakeholder is intentionally impeding your growth. 

Poor performance and attitude 

• You don’t consistently deliver on commitments or respond in a timely manner. 
• You struggle to communicate complex sustainability topics effectively to broad audiences. 
• You push back when offered the opportunity to take on new projects or areas of responsibility. 
• You have unrealistic expectations about the timing and number of promotions you should expect throughout your career and express your impatience in an unproductive way. 

The post How to get promoted to sustainability director or VP in 2026 appeared first on Trellis.

Heineken plans to install a 100-megawatt heat battery at a brewery in Portugal under a service contract with vendor Rondo Energy and energy company EDP. The technology will significantly reduce or eliminate the European brewer’s need for boilers that run on fossil fuels such as coal or natural gas.

“This project not only helps us reduce our reliance on conventional energy, it shows how practical innovation and strong partnerships can deliver meaningful improvements across our supply chain,” said Magne Setnes, chief supply officer at Heineken, in a statement. 

Industrial emissions related to food production, manufacturing and other heat-intensive processes account for close to one-quarter of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions; if you include emissions related to making steel and cement, the number rises close to 40 percent.

Adoption of options for addressing that footprint has been slow, but thermal batteries are making in-roads alongside other options such as industrial heat pumps and renewable natural gas sourced from biomethane. 

Technology manufacturer Siemens, for example, discovered that installing electrified paint drying and curing ovens at its factories in Texas could reduce almost 80 percent of the emissions related to that process, said Stacy Mahler, vice president of vertical markets at Siemens, during a session at Trellis Impact 25.

“We had to go and look at paint chemistries that would work with the new electric ovens, which were lower temperature,” she said. “So there was a lot of work that went into it. The good news is once you do that work, once the learnings can scale, you can share that with suppliers.” 

PepsiCo’s biomethane investment

Projects for reducing factory emissions have been slow to take shape in part because an approach that works in one location isn’t appropriate everywhere, said another Trellis Impact 25 panelist, Nora Singh, senior director of global sustainability at PepsiCo.

“Some of them are very expensive and the solutions are also not one size fits all, and they’re very local, depending on where in the world you’re looking at,” Singh said.

One way that PepsiCo is reducing emissions is by turning organic waste at its food processing facilities into biomethane gas.

Its facility in Manisa, Turkey, for example, uses cogeneration equipment to convert potatoes, other starches and oils into enough biogas to meet 35 percent of the electricity needs, avoiding 1,370 tons of carbon dioxide in 2024. The rest of the electricity needed for the operation is sourced from solar panel and renewable energy companies. “Obviously it doesn’t work everywhere,” Singh said. 

Nike: Borrow from other industries

The transition related to footwear and apparel maker Nike’s industrial emissions is happening in multiple phases. 

Some factories in its supply chain are moving away from coal but choosing short-term alternatives such as biomass, said Nike’s Courtenay McHugh, director of climate and environment, during the panel discussion.

That creates new obstacles, including the need to ensure that the biomass is sourced from waste and not from deforestation. 

“You have to have really good certification processes for that,” said McHugh. “Biomass is, for us, considered to be a transition option, but it’s not the last stop on the road.” 

Nike uses the levelized cost of heating — the average cost to produce a unit of heat over the lifetime of a piece of equipment — to evaluate alternatives for parts of its manufacturing process that are difficult to electrify, such as fabric dying.

One of the best options it has found are steam heat pumps, used widely by the pulp and paper industry in the drying process. The downside is that this technology hasn’t been used for textile applications and carries a high upfront cost. Nike is collaborating with the Apparel Impact Institute to perform feasibility studies — largely in China, India and Vietnam, where renewable electricity is available — that are also supported by other brands.

“We’re prepared that it’s not necessarily the way that we need to go in all cases,” said McHugh, “but we might get some really great learnings about where it is most optimal, so that we can share that information with our suppliers, give them a little bit more confidence in this technology as a path forward.”

Heineken’s battery project

Those studies will also evaluate what sorts of financing models might be effective at accelerating adoption, including leases rather than outright purchases.

Heineken is exercising that option: Its battery is being procured under a service agreement, so it won’t represent a capital expenditure for the company. It will charge using an on-site solar installation and provide up to 7 megawatts of steam for its brewing processes without requiring a massive equipment retrofit. 

Heineken’s installation, the largest of its kind in the beverage industry, will begin operation in April 2027. 

Rondo is a well-funded supplier, with backers including apparel company H&M. Its technology stores heat in refractory bricks then releases it at temperatures of up to 100 bar, or about 340 degrees Fahrenheit, to power industrial processes. The startup signed another deal Nov. 13 that will support a cement factory in Thailand.

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The opinions expressed here by Trellis expert contributors are their own, not those of Trellis.​

When a recent study asked, “Are carbon markets fixable?” it did more than assess the performance of carbon markets. It reflected a deeper debate about how the world should decarbonize versus how it actually does.

While there’s certainly an important discussion to be had around the integrity of decarbonization solutions, it’s equally important to understand that what’s really playing out here is often a question of ideology: Should climate action be pure or should it be pragmatic? Meaning, should we wait for perfect systems before acting or make the best use of imperfect ones to drive impact now?

The “purist” theory of change rests on the premise that all government and corporate emission targets will be fully achieved, making offsets an act of displacement rather than contribution. Therefore, if we simply take credits off the table, these actors will take more aggressive, and costly, action to cut their emissions — in many cases voluntarily. 

The premise might rest on solid moral ground, but it’s a comforting fiction. That’s because such a notion implies that credits necessarily displace action that would otherwise happen. In other words, critics of markets often assume that every tonne promised in a net‑zero plan will be achieved internally, but in a world where targets are often aspirational, under-financed or politically constrained, that logic collapses.

A false premise

The fact is that despite three decades of pledges — and some notable areas of progress — global emissions continue to rise. Many companies set ambitious goals only to postpone or quietly abandon them once the real costs become clear. And more still don’t even do that. 

There is nothing to suggest that carbon credits are to blame for this. In fact, evidence suggests that high‑quality credits don’t displace inevitable abatement — they finance additional action that wouldn’t otherwise occur, particularly in regions that receive little climate investment. Research from Forest Trends shows that companies using carbon credits are also decarbonizing internally at nearly twice the rate of those that don’t, underscoring that credits can complement, rather than replace, internal action. 

The real flaw isn’t in the arithmetic, but in the assumption that ambition equals delivery. Recognizing that gap helps explain why carbon credits exist: not to replace internal reductions, but to fill the space between aspiration and reality with verifiable impact.

Economic and climate mitigation models — the kinds used to simulate net-zero pathways and estimate marginal abatement costs — often assume perfect compliance and unlimited investment. These models can underestimate real-world limitations of political will, financing capacity and the pace at which new technologies can scale.

In reality, decarbonization costs vary dramatically. In developed economies, cutting emissions in major industrial sectors can cost up to $500 per tonne of CO₂ and higher. By comparison, high‑integrity nature‑based credits typically cost $25 to $50 per tonne. Even if these credits deliver only half their claimed reductions, the effective cost would still be $50 to $100 per tonne — a fraction of the cost of deep industrial abatement.

The resources available for decarbonization are finite and in many regions, contracting. Of course, buying credits can’t and shouldn’t replace industrial decarbonization. These mechanisms are designed to complement, not substitute for, deep emissions cuts in core operations. The right question isn’t whether one approach is morally superior, but which delivers the greatest total climate impact per dollar spent. 

In that context, high‑quality credits can direct scarce funds toward the most cost‑effective climate impact while providing benefits that internal abatement cannot — biodiversity conservation, watershed protection, and support for Indigenous and local communities who steward vast carbon‑rich ecosystems. At the end of the day, we need to deploy the full suite of solutions available to us. 

Ideology vs. implementation

Much of the decarbonization debate comes down to ideology. Purists believe that rejecting markets will force faster, deeper internal cuts. Pragmatists argue that we need every credible lever available to reduce emissions today while continuing to reform the system.

The purist defines integrity as abstinence — focus only on the most ambitious levels of action and dismiss other solutions as a distraction or delay. The pragmatist defines integrity as continuous improvement — act now with credible tools, strengthen standards and build better mechanisms over time in an effort to deliver progress in a messy, incremental world.

That divide plays out daily in policy and boardroom decisions. Some governments and companies have paused credit purchases entirely, fearing criticism for imperfection. Others are engaging in reformed, transparent markets and reporting openly on how credits complement internal progress. The latter group is helping build the very integrity mechanisms that critics claim don’t exist. This shift raises a practical question for corporate leaders: how can they engage credibly and effectively in these evolving markets?

From integrity to impact

The real question isn’t whether markets are perfect; they’re far from it and face well-founded criticism when it comes to methodologies being too lenient and verification being inconsistent. What matters more is whether abandoning them accelerates or delays global progress. But serious reform is underway and every tonne avoided or removed counts. The atmosphere doesn’t care where the reduction occurs, only that it happens. 

A credible portfolio approach combines internal decarbonization with high‑quality, independently verified credits that channel finance to where it’s needed most. Companies navigating between “purist” and “pragmatist” approaches can bridge the gap by focusing on credibility, transparency and alignment:

• Integrate credit purchases into transparent, science‑based strategies that disclose both internal and external mitigation.
• Support jurisdictional or program‑level initiatives that align with national climate goals.
• Co‑invest in systems that improve market integrity — from monitoring infrastructure to community readiness.
• Understand the landscape of today’s voluntary carbon market: smaller, more conservative and more transparent, with the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market and other reforms setting higher standards and fewer loopholes.
• Communicate clearly by explaining how credits complement, not replace, internal decarbonization and share methodologies, volumes and impacts openly.

Reform, not rejection

True integrity lies not in purity, but in progress — in building systems that get stronger with use. The climate challenge demands such pragmatism. The responsible path forward is to keep improving standards, transparency and fairness while scaling credible finance for climate and nature. It’s about leveraging every tool in our toolkit. 

Markets aren’t a silver bullet. But without them, we risk cutting off one of the few scalable mechanisms that can mobilize private finance at the speed and volume the science demands. The fact that we haven’t done it yet does not mean that we can’t. In fact, it’s one of the most viable paths forward if we can end this circle firing squad among dedicated climate champions.

Reform is already happening. The choice now is whether we continue that progress or stall it by turning our back on a real solution in favor of a laudable but ultimately unattainable one. 

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Nike just inked back-to-back deals for future supplies of circular polyester in its mainstream athletic wear. The Beaverton, Oregon, brand is betting that it can make good use of polyester recycled from castoff fabrics in more than pilot programs and one-off collections.

On Nov. 10, Nike shared plans to become the “anchor” customer for recycled-textile polyester resin from Loop Industries of Quebec. The next day, Swedish recycling startup Syre announced that it will become the “lead strategic supplier” of circular polyester for Nike.

The partnerships reflect a vote of confidence in emerging textile-to-textile recycling technologies, a crowded space that is seeing fierce competition and, recently, a steady series of brand contracts.

Nevertheless, the companies providing the material don’t yet have operational plants. In fact, the site for Syre’s factory in Vietnam has not yet been announced. Loop Industries’ facility in a petrochemicals investment region of India is scheduled to open in 2027.

“Our partnership with Syre represents a shift in our materials strategy and how we source,” said Sitora Muzafarova, vice president of materials supply chain, in a release. “Innovation is at the heart of Nike’s DNA, and textile-to-textile recycled polyester is essential in our ambition to design and produce breakthrough products that both perform to the highest standards that our athletes expect and are more sustainable at the same time.”

Materials and emissions goals

Nike has science-based targets for 2030 to slash Scopes 1 and 2 emissions by 65 percent and Scope 3 by 30 percent, all relative to a 2015 baseline. Lessening the impacts of polyester, Nike’s staple material, is important for reducing its carbon footprint, 34 percent of which came from raw materials in 2024. The company used 183,619 metric tons of polyester by volume last year, two thirds recycled.

The sneaker colossus reached 48 percent “environmentally preferred” materials last year, closing in on a goal of 50 percent for 2025. That would deliver half a million metric tons of Scope 3 emissions reductions. Recycled polyester is among those materials, as is cotton that’s organic, recycled or certified to third-party standards.

The latest deals mark a diversification of suppliers and a gradual shift away from beverage bottles as a polyester source. Nike has kept 3 billion plastic bottles out of the environment by purchasing bottle-to-textile-recycled Repreve material, according to producer UNIFI of North Carolina. 

Nike was an early adopter of recycled polyester when waste-bottle sources were in vogue. At the Sydney Olympics 25 years ago, it featured the Stand-Off singlet, a textured shirt of single-material recycled polyester. Ten years ago, Nike said it was the industry’s top user of recycled polyester, with non-virgin content in 39 percent of its garments.

The tech

Syre and Loop Industries each use chemical recycling to break apart long-chain polyester molecules, which are later rebuilt into pellets that are spun into polyester yarn.

Syre has taken the approach of planning a global network of recycling plants for resin or yarn, and de-risking by signing major offtake agreements with brands. In an analysis undertaken with McKinsey, Syre projected that it can provide 3 percent of the future market for recycled polyester.

The company formed in early 2024 in a joint partnership with H&M Group, which agreed to purchase $600 million of its recycled material over seven years. In June, Syre signed up Gap, Houdini and Target as “launch partners.” 

”This is not a one-off initiative or capsule collection; this is a moment when circular materials move from concept to commercial reality at scale and wider adoption,” Syre CEO Dennis Nobelius said of the Nike deal, expressing the desire for circularity to become “the new normal.” 

Loop Industries creates Twist resin that’s meant to drop into existing manufacturing processes. The company says its Infinite Loop technology turns mixed polyester waste into virgin-quality material. Nike would obtain materials from a facility Loop is planning with Ester Industries. The output would offer an 81 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions compared with virgin polyester.

Loop, which has been NASDAQ listed since 2015, also has agreements to provide recycled polyethylene terephthalate (PET) packaging resin for L’Oréal and Danone. Branching further into fashion, it has recently collaborated with yarn experts Hyosung TNC of South Korea and Shinkong Synthetic Fibers of Taiwan.

The next-gen material space is progressing in fits and starts, with polyester recyclers appearing to make more progress than those brokering in natural fibers.

For example, REI of Sumner, Washington, signed an offtake agreement on Oct. 28 to purchase Cycora, the textile-to-textile material created by Los Angeles startup Ambercycle. The Danville, Virginia, company Circ is unique for creating both synthetic and cellulose-based output from recycling mixed polyester-cotton waste. On Oct. 14, it announced a collaboration with H&M and fiber giant Lenzing Group.

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Patagonia needs to cut greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 10 percent each year to reach its commitment to be net zero by 2040. 

Like most other apparel makers, it’s struggling to deliver on that promise in a global economy complicated by trade wars and shifting ESG regulations. 

For its 2025 fiscal year ended April 30, the 52-year-old, storied outdoor gear and apparel maker’s footprint rose 1 percent to 182,159 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. 

The big reason for the year-over-year rise: “more carbon-intensive” materials in new duffels and packs, which were a larger part of its product assortment, the company said in its first comprehensive environmental and social progress report published Nov. 12.

Raw materials and finished goods manufacturing accounted for 92 percent of Patagonia’s footprint in fiscal year 2025, according to the 130-page narrative, which pulls together disclosures that the Ventura, California, company makes on its website, through certification audits and to nonprofits. 

Patagonia, which had revenue of $1.5 billion in FY2025, compiled the information so employees, customers and suppliers could learn more about the evolving best practices that it uses to reduce emissions. Since its 2017 baseline year, Patagonia’s emissions are up about 19 percent. 

Unique perspective

As a private company, Patagonia isn’t required to report its climate progress, but the company’s leadership felt it important to counter the rise of greenhushing and to demonstrate that companies should still talk about their work. It hasn’t committed to a publishing cadence. 

“Patagonia is not perfect by any means,” Founder and ex-CEO Yvon Chouinard, now 87, said in a note leading the “Work in Progress” report. “We do not have all the answers, but the fear of getting things wrong in the process cannot stop us from trying to get things right in the end.”

The company’s near-term targets include reducing emissions from its direct operations and purchased electricity by 80 percent by 2030, compared with 2017. Patagonia has pledged to cut absolute emissions from its supply chain by 55 percent in that same timeframe. 

Chouinard, along with current CEO Ryan Gellert, oversees Patagonia’s climate strategy and approves long-term, multimillion-dollar decarbonization investments. Patagonia is organized under a unique ownership structure: the Patagonia Purpose Trust owns the voting stock (2 percent) with the rest held by Holdfast Collective, an environmental nonprofit that has received $180 million in dividends since it was created in 2022. 

Source: Patagonia

Progress: It’s complicated

Patagonia gives itself passing grades on two of four 2025 environmental goals in the report: eliminating “forever” chemicals from its fabrics and buying 100 percent of materials from “preferred” sources certified as having reduced climate impacts.

It reached 84.4 percent overall for the latter goal, but made particular progress on using recycled polyester (93 percent) and nylon (89 percent), which significantly reduced the company’s dependence on products made from fossil fuels.

Patagonia measures every product using its proprietary Ironclad Quality Index, which evaluates design metrics such as how materials can reduce environmental impact; manufacturing indicators, in an effort to minimize defects that cause returns; and use factors such as durability.

“Responsibly made high-quality products that are multifunctional, durable and repairable can be used for years and years,” the company said in the report. “As a result, they reduce waste and take full advantage of valuable resources already extracted. Quality, for us, is an environmental attribute.”

For example, Patagonia’s Black Hole Duffel has a score of 9.3 (out of 10), compared with a score of 7.2 in 2016. One reason was a decision to replace a thermoplastic polyurethane made from virgin petroleum with a recycled material that had the same qualities but had a matte finish instead of a shiny one. The potential risk to sales was worth it, the company said.

Supply chain: the path forward

The report also outlines several new initiatives intended to encourage more direct action on decarbonization in Patagonia’s supply chain — which contributed 95 percent of its emissions in FY2025. They include:

• A pilot of a new carbon accounting approach that would allow Patagonia to get credit for investments it funds for suppliers, such as electrification, that reduce emissions.
• The use of an internal fee — called the Verified Carbon Intervention Unit — that calculates the price of emissions reduction measures and factors this into contracts with Patagonia’s 10 biggest partners. This represented a $37.3 million operational expense in FY2025.
• A policy that requires suppliers to write a coal-phaseout plan and share the timeline.
• A “no carbon offset” mandate that applies both to employees and partners.
• An environmental impact manual that lays out compliance requirements for its supply chain; new suppliers must pass a related screening process during their onboarding.

Untapped potential: Product recycling and reuse

The analysis is rife with contradictions, including high hopes for plans to recirculate and reuse materials even though there is no clear recycling pathway for at least 85 percent of its products.

For example, a typical rain jacket could include at least three different fabrics bonded together with adhesive.

Just 1 percent of the products Patagonia has ever made have been returned for recycling. Just 20 percent of those can be processed; the rest are being stored “indefinitely” until Patagonia can figure out what to do with the items. This requires an industry-level response, the company said.

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