Dow has expanded the job description for its chief sustainability officer, Andre Argenton, to include the chemicals and materials science company’s growth and innovation strategy.

His title now includes chief technology officer, filling the position vacated by A.N. Sreeram, who retired effective Jan 1. In his new role, Argenton is responsible for Dow’s global research and development organization and for its environment, health, safety and sustainability strategy. His team also leads Dow’s ESG reporting and governance.

Scientist by training

The expanded role marks a homecoming for Argenton, who was vice president of Dow’s core research and development before being named as Dow’s chief sustainability officer in April 2022. 

He replaced Mary Draver, who joined Dow in 1989 and rose to leadership roles in manufacturing and EH&S before her retirement in 2022.

Dow has built environmental metrics into its innovation agenda over the past decade, and more than 90 percent of its portfolio is aligned with some sort of sustainability outcome, as of Dow’s latest ESG report in June 2025.

A key growth opportunity for Dow is advanced recycling technology for plastics. The company aims to recycle 3 million tons annually by 2030 and is using artificial intelligence in collaboration with Google parent Alphabet to speed things up. 

The company’s top-line climate goal is to cut emissions for operations and electricity consumption (Scope 1 and 2) by 15 percent by 2030, compared with a 2020 baseline, and to be carbon neutral by 2050. Dow hasn’t disclosed its progress against those targets, but plans to do so with its 2025 progress report, due in mid-2026.

Argenton was educated as a physical chemist. He joined Dow Brazil in 1999 and moved to the U.S. in 2007.

His new role was revealed in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Dow did not respond to a request for comment.

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When Trellis assessed food industry leaders and laggards in 2021, Post Holdings featured in the second category. Back then, the maker of food service products (Michael Foods), breakfast cereals (Grape-Nuts, Weetabix) and pet foods (Rachael Ray Nutrish) hadn’t set emission targets and wasn’t fully disclosing emissions. 

A lot has changed since at the St. Louis, Missouri-based company, which employs 13,000 people and reported sales of $8.2 billion in 2025. Trellis checked in with Nick Martin, Post’s vice president of corporate sustainability, to learn more.

Why Post set emission targets

Multiple factors combined around 2021 to motivate the company to publicly commit to reductions. Investors were asking questions, for one. So, too, were big retailers such as Tesco and Walmart, many of which have targets and count a portion of Post’s emissions in their Scope 3 inventory.

“We jumped out as one of the few large food and beverage companies that didn’t have a target,” said Martin. “We didn’t show very well in the ratings and rankings, so we were automatically perceived as not doing anything.”

Now, the company is committed to a 30 percent cut in combined emissions from company operations (Scope 1) and purchased electricity (Scope 2) by 2030, measured against a 2020 baseline. It’s roughly halfway to that target, thanks in large part to a 26 percent drop in Scope 2 emissions. One key factor has been the addition of low-carbon sources to the grid in Missouri, which is home to many of the company’s facilities.

The bulk of Post’s emissions — 90 percent of the 2024 total — come from indirect (Scope 3) sources, principally the ingredients it sources. Like a growing number of companies, Post bases its target for this scope on an intensity measure: emissions scaled by either net sales or mass of product. Although the company aims to cut emission intensity by 30 percent by 2030, it hasn’t decided on which of the two metrics it will use to assess progress. 

What it decides will matter: Sales-based intensity is down 29 percent, but the mass-based alternative is up 7 percent, according to Post’s most recent data.

How structure shapes strategy

The current arrangement allows subsidiaries a relatively high degree of flexibility. Each is committed to working toward the top-level targets and aware of emissions from specific sites, which leaders from the subsidiaries discuss at monthly meetings of the company’s Operations Council. Individual brands, however, are not explicitly required to achieve the same reductions.

Post is unusual among large food brands in that it is structured as a holding company with those multiple subsidiaries. The challenge of figuring out how best to craft sustainability strategy within this structure was what attracted Martin in 2022. “There weren’t a lot of role models to try to mirror,” he said.

That freed him to aim higher. Last year, Weetabix, a UK subsidiary, had its near and long-term emission goals validated by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi). These include a 39 percent cut in land-based emissions by 2033 and reaching net zero across its value chain by 2050. 

One reason why Weetabix is able to commit to larger cuts is an unusually close relationship with its wheat suppliers. Wheat is sourced from a “Growers Group” of 120 farmers that operate within 50 miles of a central England factory. That reduces the barriers to trying out low-carbon farming methods, such as reduced use of nitrogen fertilizer.

“I would argue it’s a leading model for how you build a sustainable approach to engaging your supply chain,” said Martin.

SBTi: not a good fit

Weetabix’s adoption of an SBTi target was designed as a pilot exercise for Post. In the end, though, the experience didn’t prompt Martin to ask other subsidiaries to try it.

One frustration was that Weetabix was forced to restart the validation process a couple of times after making acquisitions. Perhaps more importantly, Martin felt the subsidiary already had a strong sustainability strategy, and achieving SBTi validation distracted the team from implementing it. 

The SBTi listing does help meet requests from retailers for such an approval, Martin offered. Still, he concluded, “at the end of the day, I don’t know that we would say it was a good return on the time and investment.”

A counter-argument — which Martin also acknowledged — is that the SBTi pushed Weetabix to adopt more ambitious goals. Post Holdings’ commitments, while meaningful, would likely not be approved by the SBTi as being in line with limiting global temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius. General Mills and Kraft Heinz, rival companies with SBTi-approved targets, have, for example, committed to absolute Scope 3 cuts and to reaching net zero by 2050.

“For companies that are going to reduce their Scope 3 absolute emissions by 50-plus percent — how are you going to do that and grow your company?” asked Martin. “That’s really, really difficult.”

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

As an impact investor and educator, I’ve learned to distinguish between the noise that dominates headlines and the signals that actually move capital. As we begin 2026, this discernment has never been more essential.

The jarring political landscape is enough to make you think impact investing is retreating. But here’s what the headlines miss: Markets are moving on their own momentum. Capital hasn’t slowed. It’s just getting smarter about where it flows.

I see 10 trends that will shape impact investing this year. What unites them is a central theme: the transition from aspirational ideals to financial materiality. Impact investing in 2026 isn’t about virtue — it’s about value.

1. Financial materiality becomes the organizing principle

The shift I wrote about last year — from moral imperatives to financial materiality — is in full swing. Asset managers approach climate and biodiversity with a focus on measurable impact to cash flows, valuations and cost of capital. This isn’t a retreat from impact; it’s an evolution. Some studies show that companies reporting clearer sustainability data are being rewarded with lower financing costs and higher equity valuations. The market is speaking and it’s saying, “Show me the numbers.”

2. Technology and AI multiply impact

AI isn’t just transforming how we invest; it’s transforming how we measure impact. The KPIs that demonstrate how a business addresses environmental or social challenges can be tracked with unprecedented precision. AI-driven geospatial analytics are making physical risk assessments more robust and comparable across markets. For investors, the ability to see a fuller picture of financially material issues has never been greater. The challenge now isn’t gathering data — it’s converting raw material into reliable, actionable insights.

3. The energy transition is driven by economics, not policy

Consider a statistic that should fundamentally alter the investment narrative: During the first nine months of 2024, renewables captured 90 percent of new U.S. generating capacity, with solar alone representing over 70 percent. Mandates aren’t driving this transformation — mathematics is. The cost curves have crossed.

Markets have noticed. Businesses monetizing mature, commercially viable clean technologies have delivered stronger performance than peers betting on nascent innovations. New-energy equities more than doubled the gains of broader indices through the latter half of 2025. Washington’s priorities will rotate, but for solutions that have achieved genuine unit-economic advantage, each production cycle compounds its competitive position independent of whoever occupies the White House.

The key analytical task ahead: separating enterprises that can thrive on pure economics from those whose fortunes remain hostage to legislative tailwinds.

4. Physical climate risk repricing across asset classes

Owners of operating companies and tangible assets can no longer relegate physical climate exposure to the appendix. Surface-level projections can mislead: Aggregate extreme weather damages may increase just 2 percent through mid-century under a 3 degrees Celsius pathway. Yet averages mask the distribution that matters. Morgan Stanley’s analysis suggests the proportion of holdings facing ruinous impairment — losses beyond 20 percent of value — could multiply fivefold.

Underwriters are already adjusting. Natural catastrophe protection premiums are projected to rise around 50 percent through decade’s end. Allocators thinking beyond the current cycle may find that positioning for durability in 2026 represents not merely prudent defense, but a pathway to outperformance.

5. Regional, small and mid-cap companies gain competitive advantage

The globalization trend of the past 25 years is reversing. Smaller, more nimble private companies that maintain emphasis on domestic supply chains are gaining relative advantage over those at the mega end of the market.

Their ability to move quickly, navigate local environments and maintain regional supply chains is becoming a distinct edge against global market shocks, presenting a “picks and shovels” approach for investing in infrastructure. 

6. A graying America sells privately held companies to employees

The long-anticipated “silver tsunami” — the wave of Baby Boomer business owners reaching retirement age — is cresting, with an estimated 2.9 million privately held businesses expected to change hands over the next decade. 

For investors, the question of who acquires these companies carries profound implications for wealth distribution. While private equity and strategic acquirers remain the default exit paths, Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) are emerging as a vehicle for converting retiring owners’ equity into broad-based employee wealth. The mechanics are elegant: Sellers receive favorable tax treatment, employees acquire ownership stakes at no out-of-pocket cost, and communities retain locally rooted businesses that might otherwise be consolidated, stripped or relocated.

Research from the National Center for Employee Ownership shows that ESOP participants accumulate retirement assets three to five times greater than comparable workers at non-ESOP firms — a differential that compounds dramatically for lower-wage and historically marginalized employees who rarely access ownership economics through conventional channels. 

 7. Impact investment infrastructure grows up

Impact investing is moving from a cottage industry to institutional scale. Governments, including Brazil and Turkey, are expanding impact capital and using it as a key driver of sustainable growth.

Perhaps more significantly, impact wholesalers — vehicles that invest in intermediaries — are increasing the pool of domestic capital. The Japan Network for Public Interest Activities, for example, channels dormant bank assets into social enterprises. Germany is exploring similar legislation. 

8. Outcome-based financing moves from pilot to policy

Outcome-based financing mechanisms, such as social impact bonds and outcomes funds, have crossed the threshold from experimentation to institutionalization. In Canada, for example, outcome-based transactions have mobilized over $14.5 million since 2023, reaching more than 10,000 beneficiaries.

Pay-for-results is becoming an embedded government procurement strategy. For impact investors, this shift fundamentally changes the risk profile: governments now serve as creditworthy outcome payers while private capital assumes the risk that social programs fail to produce outcomes that trigger payment — a structure that offers both downside protection and scalable deal flow.

9. Sustainability disclosure standards consolidate

Here’s the irony of the current moment: As some policymakers ease back on reporting requirements, investors are using market mechanisms to protect their access to information. 

Despite the retreat in the U.S., the number of companies disclosing decarbonization targets continues to grow. Brazil’s Securities Commission announced that by 2026 all listed companies must publish reports aligned with ISSB standards. The EU’s Omnibus package proposes simplifications to CSRD requirements. The direction is clear: Focus on a narrower set of reported metrics that are financially material. For markets, value lies in the decision-useful, not the exhaustive.

10. Geopolitical realignment redefines ‘responsible’

Military escalation and energy security concerns have prompted many asset managers to rescind broad exclusions in defense and energy sectors. At the same time, governments are taking more direct roles in strategically important industries — from critical minerals to AI — sometimes taking equity stakes to secure supply chains and national capabilities.

This industrial policy shift matters for portfolio construction. One analysis shows that state-owned enterprises have underperformed over the past decade and the greater the government’s stake, the worse the underperformance. Yet for bondholders, the calculus flips: Government backing narrows spreads and reduces default risk.

The implication for impact investors is clear: As governments reassert their role in capital formation, knowing where public involvement supports stability and where it erodes profitability will be key to positioning portfolios for the next phase of industrial policy.

The post 10 impact investing trends that will define 2026 appeared first on Trellis.

MilliporeSigma’s 40-person sustainability team reports to the chief strategy and transformation officer of parent company, Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany.

That means environmental considerations are automatically included in product design and packaging decisions, and the lead sustainability executive for the life sciences company often accompanies sales representatives to meetings with strategic accounts.

“I see firsthand where it’s creating a more attractive environment for our customers to choose us more often because of what we’re doing related to sustainability,” said Jeffrey Whitford, vice president of sustainability and social business innovation at MilliporeSigma, the operating name for Merck KGaA’s U.S. and Canadian life science business. “We’re changing the narrative that it’s costs, costs, costs. We’re finding the connection points to make the financial picture much clearer and, I would say, much more attractive for the business.” 

Clear results

Even when Whitford isn’t in the room, MilliporeSigma’s climate agenda is a component of how the company pitches new accounts and wins new business. It considers both potential savings and sales upsides during the product design process, something it has been doing since 2021 when sustainability started reporting to the strategy team. (Whitford started in environmental, health and safety 20 years ago with Sigma-Aldrich, which was acquired by Merck KGaA in 2015.)  

That reorganization has served the company well.

Merck KGaA’s company-wide commitment, validated by the Science Based Targets initiative, calls for a 50 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions related to its operations and purchased electricity by 2030 (Scope 1 and 2, respectively) compared with 2020. It has cut Scope 1 by 53 percent and reduced Scope 2 by 30 percent. Merck KGaA has an emissions intensity goal that calls for it to cut emissions to 230 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per 1 million euros of gross profit; the result for 2024 was 359 metric tons of CO2e.

Sales for MilliporeSigma’s Greener Alternatives Portfolio — more than 2,500 products that contain bio-based solvents or chemicals, were repackaged with fewer plastics and more renewable materials or have some other preferable sustainability attribute — doubled in the past year. 

MilliporeSigma sells more than 300,000 products. The company doesn’t disclose what percentage of its annual sales for 2024 were attributable to Greener Alternatives. It added more than 880 products to the portfolio in 2024 including mPredict, an artificial intelligence tool that uses green chemistry concepts to help scientists eliminate thousands of physical screening experiments, and Cellvento, a feed solution that doesn’t need to be refrigerated, saving energy. 

Source: MilliporeSigma

Dedicated packaging plan

One place where sustainability goals win over MilliporeSigma customers is packaging, which contributes 10 percent of the company’s emissions. Merck KGaA has committed to reducing packaging weight per unit sales by 10 percent by 2030, ensuring that all fiber materials are deforestation-free, and designing packages to be recovered, recycled or reused.

The more than 100 projects the company has completed under its SMASH Packaging 2.0 initiative have cut emissions by more than 400 metric tons on an annual basis. Many products are distributed in glass, because it doesn’t react with certain chemicals, but the company is taking steps to reduce plastic-derived and fiber-based materials where possible.

One example is the bulk packaging option MilliporeSigma adopted for several filter product lines, including Millstak (which removes particulates and clarified liquids during biopharmaceutical manufacturing) and Clarisolve (used with cell cultures). The approach reduces waste by 33-53 percent and also cuts the time it takes customers to unbox them in half.

“So, they have a reduction in the CO₂ footprint, they have a reduction in operator time, and they have a reduction in the amount of waste they have to deal with,” Whitford said.  

MilliporeSigma also stands out for its Green Cooler initiative, replacing the styrofoam typically used to transport refrigerated items such as blood products or antibodies with an insulated starch and paper-based option that can accommodate dry ice and disposed of in curbside recycling systems. Recycling instructions are printed directly on the cooler’s inside flap. 

MilliporeSigma handled 60,000 shipments using the Green Coolers in 2025 in Australia, Germany, Korea and the U.S. The new coolers will be introduced to all U.S. distribution centers in 2026, eliminating an estimated 60 metric tons of styrofoam annually — six jumbo jets’ worth of material. 

Two challenges in rolling out the new format was satisfying quality control teams and training distribution employees how to handle the coolers. For example, a distribution center in Phoenix, where summer temperatures can soar above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, must have confidence that a shipment arriving late on a Friday will stay cold over the weekend.  

“These are the things you uncover when you’re encouraging change, and you have to figure out how you have the resilience to navigate them and not get thrown off by the hurdles,” Whitford said.

Hybrid funding approach

Because sustainability considerations are part of MilliporeSigma’s commercial plan, the investments for supporting programs such as the Green Cooler initiative come from two main sources: product development budgets and strategic development funds that are meant for longer-range projects. 

The chief technology officer has also dedicated a portion of the corporate research and development budget to sustainability-related innovation, further demonstrating the company’s high-level commitment. 

“The biggest constraint is time, to be honest, because we are really fortunate to be in an organization where I have been given freedom to go and run,” Whitford said.  

The post Why MilliporeSigma’s sustainability lead sits in on sales pitches appeared first on Trellis.

We’ve just concluded our 25th year since the website GreenBiz.com — now Trellis.net — debuted: “The Resource Center on Business, the Environment and the Bottom Line,” read its tagline at the time. We’ve now been covering sustainable business for a quarter century — not quite since the beginning of the era, but still from its earliest days.

The journalists and analysts at Trellis — complemented handily by a sizable community of practitioners willing to share their ideas, perspectives and insights — have produced more than 25,000 articles during that time. And throughout, we’ve continually assessed the scope, veracity and impact of what we do and how we do it.

In many ways, just like our readers.

It hasn’t been easy. Sustainable business journalists have long struggled to get it right — the right mix of stories, of course, but also the right tone, balance and level of depth. There were no halcyon days when sustainable business journalism was easy, popular or uncontroversial. Nearly everything has been subject to punishing scrutiny, whether from activists, companies, investors, political point-scorers, watchdog groups, regulators or a corps of self-appointed sentinels.

If you get it mostly right, you find yourself as we have: scrutinized and criticized but generally respected by all sides.

At this 25-year juncture, I’ve been reviewing the trajectory of sustainable business reporting, including revisiting some of our earliest stories. It’s a bit like looking at an old picture of yourself and wondering what that “you” was really like back then. And how different things might be to have known then what you know now.

Capturing eyeballs and clicks

The evolution of sustainable business journalism roughly paralleled that of the internet, where “content” became cheap and ubiquitous, and where capturing “eyeballs” and clickthroughs required ever-spicier headlines and lede sentences.

More recent years saw the emergence of social media where, um, content needed to be bite-sized and sometimes salacious. Then came the tsunami of narrative podcasts, live online interviews, carousel storytelling, video explainers, micro-series and “snackable reports” (trust me, they’re a thing), among other novel formats.

Each added new opportunities and challenges for reporters and editors, requiring “journos” — shorthand for journalists in an era of bite-sized attention spans — and their publications to adjust their reporting and publishing strategies.

Now, in the era of AI, many such strategies are being cast aside as algorithm-based technology radically transforms how information is created and consumed, and who creates it and their agendas, if any.

It’s enough for an old-school journo like me to pine for the simpler world of blue pencils and bulldog editions.

Meanwhile, the business of sustainability has evolved from a largely engineering-centric profession into one confronting an atmospheric river of trends and terms: triple bottom line, eco-efficiency, stakeholder engagement, corporate citizenship, corporate social responsibility, shared value, carbon neutrality, double materiality, ESG, decarbonization, nature-positive, carbon-negative, circular economy, just transition and many others.

All in just the past 25 years.

Three eras of coverage

Amidst all this, how has media coverage changed? I view the past quarter century in three eras, which parallel the trajectory of sustainable business itself.

2000-2005: Shallow but earnest. Early reporting focused on mostly small, self-reported activities: a company phasing out polystyrene foam packaging “peanuts” from its shipping department, for instance. A name-brand company publishing its first-ever environmental report could become a headline-grabbing moment.

There was relatively little effort by reporters to peel back the covers to understand what was behind these stories. Sustainable business (it wasn’t even called that yet) was sufficiently novel that nearly everything seemed worthy of covering, if not cheerleading.

2005-2015: Less shallow, more serious. Reporting grew deeper, with more-experienced journalists examining meaningful changes in companies’ products, processes and operations. We started to focus not just on the “what” but also the “how” and “why” of company initiatives.

There was more effort taken to explain the nuts and bolts of what’s needed to nudge a company in a more sustainable direction: how increased transparency and disclosure, for example, could improve company operations; the challenges of accurately measuring and reporting a firm’s carbon footprint; the use of biotechnology and biomimicry to find less-problematic ingredients for everything from biofuels to blue jeans.

How we looked in 2020.

2015-2025: Serious and deeper. Heightened scrutiny and politicalization, in tandem with more ambitious corporate initiatives, pushed reporters to ask more probing questions: Can companies truly offset their way to carbon neutrality? Is hydrogen a viable transportation fuel? Does ESG investing actually move companies and markets?

Trellis’s Chasing Net Zero series represents a prime example of reporters digging deep to answer a seemingly simple question: What does it take for a company to dramatically reduce or eliminate its greenhouse gas emissions? The answer turns out to be far from simple. Trellis reporters use a detailed methodology to assess how specific companies across multiple sectors are faring. The complexity of these stories reflects the growing sophistication of sustainable business journalism overall.

Four challenges ahead

Today, we face both new and continuing challenges, among them:

• An evolving media landscape. Journalism now straddles two worlds: traditional balanced reportage and a digital, AI-enabled free-for-all, where a story dismissed as “fake news” might actually be accurate and where seemingly authoritative stories can turn out to be anything but. Publishing today requires balancing the consequential with the click-worthy, not to mention pairing context with clarity.
• Nuanced stories. As coverage goes deeper into company operations, the risk grows that complexity becomes oversimplified. For example, a story about a company restoring forests and protecting Amazonian biodiversity requires knowledge of land use; measurement, reporting and verification; and development finance, not to mention supply chains and Indigenous rights — but may be reduced by inexperienced writers and editors to merely “planting trees.”
• An uneven playing field. Some companies gush a steady stream of announcements and proactively court reporters and editors. As a result, such well-known brands as Amazon, Google, IKEA, Microsoft, Nike, Salesforce, Unilever and Walmart seem to appear disproportionately more frequently in stories, including ours (according to my unscientific survey). They can receive an outsized share of coverage even though their more circumspect peers may be doing as much or more.
• Finding balance. An evergreen challenge is determining the appropriate point of view for a given story: Do we criticize the leaders, always imperfect, or cheer them on? Do we lambaste the laggards or write encouragingly about their baby steps? Is an even-handed approach always fair to readers? We continue to strive to tell stories in a way that meets readers’ growing sophistication — and their perpetually shrinking attention spans. 

For today’s journalists and editors, there is no unified theory of how to cover sustainable business — only our instincts, experience, expertise and the abiding conventions of journalism. That’s what’s carried us for the past 25 years and what will propel us forward.

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