How Kenvue gets its product designers thinking more environmentally

Kenvue, the consumer goods company behind brands including Tylenol, Neutrogena and Listerine, is training its 1,800-person research and development workforce to include environmental metrics in their innovation process.

The move follows an internal trial of Kenvue’s patent-pending product assessment tool, the Sustainable Innovation Profiler. R&D teams, product formulators and packaging engineers can use the tool to evaluate a product’s environmental and emissions footprints, green chemistry credentials and packaging makeup. The rollout will continue amid a strategic review of the company, launched after the ouster of its CEO in mid-July.

The Sustainable Innovation Profiler was used to evaluate the impact of reformulations and packaging redesigns for 20 Kenvue product lines during 2024, including OGX Argan Oil of Morocco shampoo and Nicorette lozenges. While the individual results for those products were unique, the profiler documented carbon footprint reductions of at least 16 percent for both. 

The evaluation results convinced Kenvue to introduce the tool into its product-design process from the beginning, said Jennifer Duran, global head of sustainability. “With the Sustainable Innovation Profiler, we’re really modeling the sustainability impacts of the different development designs that we’re making,” Duran said.

Image showing tool used to assess sustainability metrics.
Kenvue’s Sustainable Innovation Profiler considers potential design impacts in four environmental categories. Source: Kenvue

Strategy shift

The decision to embed sustainability metrics more deeply into product development dovetails with a restructuring that saw Duran promoted to group head of sustainability in June after focusing on product resilience and sustainability. She reports to Kenvue’s chief scientific officer, with dotted lines to the operations and corporate affairs teams.

The Sustainable Innovation Profiler supports Kenvue’s goal, adopted in May 2024, to screen 75 percent of the company’s new product development projects for improved environmental performance by 2030. It could apply to anything from a straightforward packaging overhaul to a complete product reformulation, Duran said.

So far, 600 product designers and packaging engineers have completed online training to use the resource. Anyone can take the course, but for certain design roles and groups it’s mandatory. “These are the people making decisions about the recipes of our products,” Duran said.

Overarching design principles

The Sustainable Innovation Profiler builds on life-cycle assessment approaches used by the European Commission’s Product Environment Footprint and the Global Aquatic Ingredient Assessment. It studies four categories of environmental metrics:

  • Environmental footprint, including water, land and resource use; whether the product disrupts the nutrients in marine or fresh water (which can cause algae blooms); and ecotoxicity
  • Carbon footprint, measured by greenhouse gas emissions
  • Green chemistry, such as the use of ingredients with improved biodegradability
  • Packaging circularity that reduces virgin plastic use

Designers compared scores for each category against a baseline to identify areas of potential improved environmental performance. The tool flags ingredients Kenvue has on its internal watch list, which includes information about restricted substances and materials, and newer options that aren’t widely adopted. It also looks for “hotspots” related to 40 chemical ingredients that carry the highest carbon emissions. 

The Argan shampoo considered in the trial earned better scores across all four categories of the profiler by replacing the surfactant, reducing the use of silicone and polymers and using a bottle made out of recycled plastic.

The data used in the profiler comes from Kenvue’s own product life-cycle assessments and existing databases maintained by respected industry associations. Over time, the company will add information contributed directly by suppliers. Kenvue’s sustainability team is collaborating with the company’s new chief data officer to develop processes for collecting this information in Kenvue’s broader enterprise information management systems.

“The advantage of being a two-year-old company in this pretty mature sustainability space is we can learn from some of the mistakes others have made,” Duran said. (Kenvue, a former division of Johnson & Johnson, became a publicly traded independent company in 2023.) “If we start ingesting primary carbon data, we need to have a place to put it.”

The weighting for each category considered by the Sustainable Innovation Profiler remains the same across different product lines. Kenvue intends to publish more information about the methodology as it becomes more widely used across the company. It also plans to report progress against its sustainable product innovation goal in its next sustainability report, to be published in 2026.

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Why Chipotle and Danone are feeding cows dried seaweed

There’s a growing appetite across the food industry for dried seaweed. No, it’s not to satisfy a trendy diet craze. Rather, it’s a solution to tackle methane pollution from agriculture.

Chipotle, Mars, Danone and Clover Sonoma are among the market-leading companies investing in varieties of seaweed-based feed additives to cut the amount of methane produced by cattle. 

Methane pollution from agriculture needs to fall by 30 percent over the next five years to avoid worsening impacts of planet warming, which have already decimated agricultural outputs. Last year alone, droughts, hurricanes and other extreme weather events cost U.S. farmers and ranchers over $20 billion in damage to crop and rangelands.  

But the industry’s methane-reducing challenge is twofold: known techniques can only get us around halfway there, and existing technologies such as feed additives are expensive. To make up for the gap and lower the cost, the industry will have to create new ways to raise livestock to ensure the viability of farms and farmers’ livelihoods — and the supply chain they feed into. 

At the same time, food companies will have to identify, incorporate and develop more plant-based or alternative proteins to reach their methane goals and protect the industry’s long-term value.

That’s where methane innovation comes in. Scaling financial support for research and advancing remedies for taming methane can open the barn door to enhancing operational efficiency, expanding market reach and gaining a competitive advantage by introducing cutting-edge food and agricultural products. 

Major players across the industry have caught on to these possibilities. From dairy giants to meat traders, companies are taking three important steps to capitalize on slashing methane. 

Fund research and pilot projects

Across industry and research communities, innovators are exploring pathways to stem methane pollution from livestock. Adding seaweed or other plant-based and synthetic supplements such as Bovear — recently approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration — to cow diets is a near-term option, while vaccinations and genetically breeding animals that emit less of the pollutant are potentials down the line. Companies can play a key role in fast tracking these approaches to curb methane by funding related research and launching pilot projects. 

Nestlé, for example, is researching ways to address livestock emissions — the company’s single largest emissions driver — through its Institute of Agricultural Sciences, which is exploring methane-inhibiting feed additives and animal waste management. The institute also works closely with farmers, universities, research organizations and industry partners to test solutions before deploying them on farms in Nestlé’s larger supply chain.

Invest in the startup ecosystem

Another path for food companies to leverage innovation is by investing in promising, up-and-coming methane technologies. Not only can companies cash in if the products are successful, but the investments are crucial to helping startups overcome initial business challenges such as brand awareness and proof of concept.

Dairy giant Organic Valley, for example, has set up the Farmers Advocating for Organics program, in which dairy farmers can invest in projects aimed at developing long-term methane solutions. In 2023, the program awarded Hawaiian startup Symbrosia a grant to test the viability of a seaweed-based feed additive that could significantly curtail how much methane cattle churn out. The grant funded a six-month pilot project on several of Organic Valley’s member farms to evaluate the impact of feeding cows the product before considering it for wider expansion.

Participate in public-private partnerships

As we’ve mentioned before, food companies will have to work together to drive down methane pollution from livestock. By creating partnerships with other companies and governmental entities, the industry can work together to boost their individual innovation efforts, pooling resources and sharing lessons learned. 

The Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research’s Greener Cattle Initiative provides a good illustration of such a partnership. It’s a consortium of organizations and companies that shares knowledge, sparks investments and accelerates research for mitigating methane emissions from cattle on topics such as the cattle microbiome, methane inhibitors and breeding practices. Beyond these steps to trim methane from livestock, food companies can also pioneer alternative protein products to offer consumers. Hershey, for example, replaced milk solids with roasted grain flour in a dairy-free chocolate, and Bunge sells a lineup of plant proteins that can be used in meat products and as meat alternatives. 

With so many opportunities, the race is on to uncover methane busters that will make agriculture more resilient. Food companies can set the pace while unlocking the biggest bang for their methane buck by plowing forward with business strategies to fund innovation and support farmers and industry adoption.

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Google’s unique $3 billion hydropower contract will not be the last

Google’s ambitious plans to power its data centers directly with low-carbon electricity now includes hydropower, a power generation resource that’s still eligible for tax incentives under the Trump administration’s new budget law.

The tech company will initially spend $3 billion under a unique arrangement announced July 15 with energy developer Brookfield Renewable. In return, Brookfield will supply Google with up to 3 gigawatts of hydro generating capacity in the U.S.

Google’s financial support will enable Brookfield to update and relicense existing hydro facilities. The first two hydro plants covered under the deal are in Pennsylvania on the lower Susquehanna River: Holtwood, the oldest of three dams built around 1905 and 1910; and Safe Harbor, constructed in the 1930s and featuring fish lifts that aid upriver migration.

Google will invest $25 billion by 2027 on a data center expansion in the mid-Atlantic region, where the plants are located and run by the PJM transmission organization. The tech company has signed a 20-year power purchase agreement for each of these facilities, covering 670 megawatts in capacity.

Brookfield and Google will also evaluate hydro plants in the central U.S., covered by the Midcontinent Independent System Operator.

Some big technology companies, such as IBM, discuss hydro as an important piece of their renewable electricity portfolios, but the Google-Brookfield deal is the first publicly declared corporate procurement centered on this generating source.

Google declined to provide more details on its evolving hydro strategy, and Brookfield did not respond to requests for comment.

Fresh look at hydropower

More large corporations are re-evaluating hydropower as part of the portfolio of options required to reduce emissions from purchased energy, or Scope 2. “It’s attractive, cheap, consistent power,” said Gregory Lavigne Jr., partner in the energy, project finance and infrastructure practice at corporate law firm Sidley. 

New greenfield hydro projects are unlikely in the U.S. but more companies are looking to expansions of existing projects as a source of clean baseload power, said Rick Powell, CEO of the Clean Energy Buyers Association. “Most of the hydro capacity has already been tapped, but there is potential for upgrades and relicensing,” he said.

Hydropower is the largest global source of renewable electricity, and likely to remain so through 2030 until solar and wind catch up, according to the International Energy Association. The U.S. is the third-largest producer of hydroelectricity, after China and Brazil, with at least half of its capacity concentrated in the west, particularly Washington, California and Oregon. In 2023, hydroelectricity contributed about 6 percent of all U.S. utility-scale generation, or about 240 billion kilowatt-hours. 

Hydropower is a controversial renewable energy source, because of the impact dams have on local habitats and communities, especially in periods of drought. Despite those reservations, the Inflation Reduction Act created tax incentives for new generation sources such as pumped storage, incremental conventional hydropower and marine and hydrokinetic technologies. Those incentives were among those spared in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act: they’re intact until 2033.

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3 key takeaways from Mars’ 2024 sustainability report

The latest sustainability report from Mars, the private company that sold more than $50 billion worth of snacks and pet food in 2024, paints a picture of an organization on track to hit its science-based 2030 target — but with little room to spare. Here are three takeaways for other businesses from the report.

Emissions only recently started tracking to net zero

Mars set a total emissions target in 2017, started working toward the goal immediately and had its plans validated by the Science Based Targets initiative in 2023. But it took several years for that effort to show up in the numbers. By 2021, emissions had fallen just 6 percent below its 2015 baseline, leaving the company well off pace on 2030 targets of a 63 percent cut in Scopes 1 and 2, alongside a 42 percent drop in Scope 3.

That’s because Mars, based in McLean, Virginia, had to start by working with suppliers — Scope 3 is 96 percent of the company’s current footprint — to reduce deforestation, as well as changing pet food recipes and increasing use of renewables in its direct operations, said Kevin Rabinovich, Mars’ global vice president for sustainability and chief climate officer. 

That work is now bearing fruit: the company emitted around 29 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e) in 2024, a drop of 16 percent since 2015. The progress has been achieved during a period of solid sales growth.

Source: Mars 2024 Sustainable in a Generation Report.

Mars will at least land close to its 2030 target if it can maintain its recent rate of reductions. Rabinovich said the focus going forward will be on encouraging climate-smart agriculture and use of renewables by suppliers, together with continued work on deforestation. Each of those three pillars will drive around 10 percent cuts on 2015 levels by 2030, he added.

Mars will use land-based removals to hit its 2030 target

Regenerative agriculture can do more than cut on-farm emissions: Producers that integrate forestry with agriculture and use low-till practices can also help draw down CO2. In 2024, Mars deducted close to 42,000 tCO2e from its Scope 3 total to account for land-based removals it helped suppliers to implement.

That’s a sliver of the total for the year, but it’s set to grow. “The full potential is probably on the order of 10 or 15 percent of our footprint,” said Rabinovich. By 2030, that would equate to 1-2 million tCO2e annually.

Mars is not alone in planning to lean on removals to hit targets. Nestlé’s net-zero roadmap, for example, sees the company subtracting 13 million tCO2e of removals from its Scope 3 inventory in 2030. 

Advocates for the strategy argue that removals are an essential component of future net-zero strategies and that working with suppliers leads to more robust changes than investing in carbon credits from outside a company’s value chain. But critics counter that land-based removals are relatively easy to reverse and should not be netted against emissions to the atmosphere, some of which are essentially permanent.

Mars guards against the re-release of land-based carbon by placing 50 percent of the removals it generates in what’s known as a “buffer pool.” The removals are quantified, but rather than being subtracted from the annual total are held as insurance in case future reversals, say by wildfire, need to be accounted for.

Longer-term, added Rabinovich, that objection will become less important because emissions will increasingly be tracked on a granular level at global scales. “The idea that you’re going to stop monitoring the farm and something bad is going to happen that’s not going to get accounted for — if that’s the system we’re expecting for in the future, we’re not going to solve these problems,” he said. “There can’t be large amounts of emissions that aren’t somehow being either voluntarily or regulatory managed.”

Weak consumer demand nixed carbon-neutral product lines

Last year saw the end of carbon-neutral claims on the packaging for Mars Bars in the UK, Ireland and Canada, as well as kitten and puppy growth products in the company’s Royal Canin line. Plans for carbon-neutral status had been announced in 2021.

“The thought was if that was a more marketable claim that would resonate with consumers and drive incremental sales, the revenues could then fund the cost of the required carbon credits,” said Rabinovich. In practice, the consumer demand didn’t materialize and the program “basically wasn’t self-funding,” he added.

Rabinovich said that the company does not have a full understanding of why the claims did not drive more demand, but noted “a much discussed and well researched attitude and behavior gap in sustainability.” Asked about climate, recycling and other environmental issues, consumers say they care. “But then you go look at actual purchasing data and behavior of consumers in stores, and it really doesn’t translate.”

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What you need to know about Microsoft’s 5 million “poop” credit buy

Microsoft’s history of dominating the market for carbon removal continued when the tech giant announced late last week it was buying 4.9 million tons of removal credits from Vaulted Deep, a startup that buries organic waste underground. Here’s what prospective buyers and other carbon credit players need to know about the deal.

It’s not all about human waste

The Wall Street Journal described the deal thus: “Microsoft wants your poop to lower its emissions.” 

That’s not quite right, according to Vaulted co-founder and CEO Julia Reichelstein. The startup takes multiple different types of organic waste, including manure and sludge from paper mills, and injects it hundreds or thousands of feet below the ground. This “bioslurry” contains carbon that was removed from the atmosphere by plants before being eaten by animals or used in paper processing, making the process carbon negative.

But, yes, excrement is involved. Vaulted’s bioslurry injection technology was originally developed as means of disposing of waste from a water treatment plant in Los Angeles, and human fecal matter will be an important input going forward.

Will the credits deliver real climate value?

One of the biggest problems in carbon markets is proving “additionality’ — knowing that credit revenue is essential to making a project work. Some forest conservation schemes, for example, have been criticized for selling carbon credits to protect forests that were really not at risk. 

Vaulted’s process is clearly additional, said Reichelstein, because the vast majority of the organic waste it’s targeting in the U.S. is spread on land, incinerated or sent to landfill, releasing carbon dioxide and methane in the process. Without a commercial incentive or regulatory requirement to do otherwise, credit revenues are needed to fund the removal.

Buyers will want that and other claims — including guarantees that the carbon will not seep back into the atmosphere — to be verified by an independent third party. At present, none of the carbon credit rating agencies have assessed Vaulted’s projects. But the startup does have important proof points. It follows a methodology developed by Isometric, a credit registry with a reputation for thoroughness. Microsoft is also known for doing extensive due diligence on prospective sellers, as is Frontier, a coalition of removal buyers that purchased a total of slightly more than 150,000 credits from Vaulted in 2023 and 2024.

“Having them do months and months and months of diligence on us and deciding to purchase from us is good industry validation,” argued Reichelstein.

What you can expect to pay for a Vaulted credit

The cost of the Microsoft deal was not disclosed, but Frontier paid $58 million for its credits, putting the per-ton price just over $380. For comparison, other recent deals involving “durable” removal — defined as locking away carbon for hundreds or thousands of years — include direct air capture, which costs $500 per ton or more, biomass electricity generation with carbon capture ($350/t) and carbon capture at pulp and paper plants (less than $200/t).

Prices of all these credit types are expected to fall, however. Frontier is willing to pay high prices to back emerging technologies, but the coalition only backs projects that can demonstrate a plausible path to reducing costs to less than $100/t. Reichelstein said she expected Vaulted’s costs to come “dramatically down” and to be competitive with other methods for storing biomass.

Where buyers can find Vaulted credits

Vaulted’s operations are relatively small scale at present: The company has generated 18,000 credits from a facility in Hutchinson, Kansas, that has been operating since August 2023. Thanks to the deals with Frontier and Microsoft, it’s now scouting other sites to fulfill those contracts and bring more credits to market. Vaulted is already developing a site in Monarch Fields, Colorado, and has applied for permits to develop a facility at an undisclosed location on the East Coast, said Reichelstein.

The challenge is in part about finding sites that are close enough to bioslurry sources for the process to make economic sense. The supply of waste itself shouldn’t be an issue: Reichelstein said the U.S. produces around 1 billion tons of “unused or unusable” organic waste annually, enough to generate hundreds of millions of tons of removal credits.

Companies interested in purchasing credits can explore offtake agreements like the one signed by Microsoft or purchase in smaller amounts direct from the Vaulted Deep website.

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Why Kenya is setting the bar for climate investing in Africa

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

The Global South — home to most of the world’s population — is where most of the planet’s economic growth and greenhouse gas emission growth is taking place. In the runup to COP30 in Brazil later this year, we explore how a sample of these economies are shaping climate financing.

Kenya is known as the Pride of Africa, thanks to its wildlife tourism, successful marathoners and bustling economy. And when it comes to climate financing, that moniker also rings true due to a clean electric grid and thriving climate innovation culture.

While the average electricity access for East Africa hovers around 56 percent, electricity access is at 90 percent in Kenya, with 20 percent of households using solar mini grids or standalone renewable energy systems for their electricity needs.

Thanks to leveraging geothermal resources and growing solar and wind capacity, Kenya’s grid is 90 percent clean. The government of Kenya has set a goal to reach 100 percent renewable energy generation by 2030. This goal makes Kenya stand out as a gem to locate low-carbon manufacturing, attracting companies such as Enda running shoes and East African Cables.

The major challenge in transforming Kenya’s electricity system to support massive clean manufacturing and livelihoods is increasing the reliability and capacity of the grid. The government has set a goal to expand grid capacity to 100 GW – up from its current 3.3 GW – by 2040, which could require an estimated $40 billion in investment. Last year, new regulations opened up access to private companies to invest and run transmission and distribution networks. Like in the case of Indonesia, expanding and reinforcing the capacity of the grid could be an attractive investment for both local and global investors.

A new wave for land use and food systems

The land use side of the climate equation– where climate investors and corporations often look to invest — hasn’t progressed as quickly as the energy side of Kenya: over 75 percent of Kenyan soil is degraded and forest cover remains low.

Goals to improve both exist, with the goal of a minimum forest cover of 10 percent by 2030 and strategies for agroecology that centers community-driven innovation. This is critical, as Kenya is home to a number of commodity industries and food crops that are important in global trade, including cut flowers, avocados, coffee and black tea, for which Kenya is the world’s largest exporter.

Land use thus presents opportunities to align with agroecology and regenerative principles. Special credit providers in East Africa such as SHONA Capital are increasingly supporting climate-friendly food systems’ small and medium-sized enterprises.

An investor-friendly environment for climate mitigation

There’s a plethora of climate action opportunities for retail and institutional investors in Kenya. Credit unions, known as Savings and Credit Co-operative Societies (SACCOs), are increasingly providing loans for climate-friendly activities, such as solar energy for rural customers. Reform is underway to insure SACCO deposits, which could further attract retail capital. Some SACCOs even specialize in attracting diasporic capital, tapping into the approximately 3 million Kenyans who live overseas. The diaspora can be thought of even wider than that if one includes the 350 million Afro-descendent people living outside of the African continent.

A number of incentives exist to attract investment across Kenya’s sustainable development goals, including climate action. Export processing zones provide a 10-year corporate tax holiday and exemptions on import duties and VAT for export-oriented firms; special economic zones allow investors tax holidays of up to 10 years, duty-free capital imports, and simplified licensing.

Looking ahead

Kenya is arguably the tech capital of East Africa. Nairobi is home to many startup incubators, accelerators, venture studios and venture capital funds, including those dedicated to pursuing sustainability and climate action. Foreign and domestic firms including Persistent Energy, Melanin Kapital and DRK Foundation have chosen Nairobi as regional headquarters for such activity.

Agriculture fintech providers such as Apollo Agriculture have enabled smallholder farmers to improve land productivity outcomes through instant credit. Pay-as-you-go solar providers, such as Kenya-founded M-KOPA, have helped unlock the solar market in Kenya and many other African countries. Motorcycles are increasingly electric and companies such as BasiGo are expanding electric bus networks along with charging stations along key routes.

Fixing high-emission landfills is another climate investment opportunity. Kenya hosts the largest landfill in East Africa of Dandora. Converting this landfill into a waste-to-energy operation, for example, would be a useful public-private partnership.

The opportunities for multinational and local investors to take action by leveraging Kenya’s unique climate position are abundant. Whether through sustainable bond issuances, the stock market or bank and credit union products, investors would be remiss to overlook Kenya.

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Automotive giants are called out for fuzzy net-zero plans

Uncertainty around plans by major car manufacturers to phase out internal combustion engines is one of several shortcomings undermining the sector’s transition to net zero, said researchers who conducted a detailed analysis of five leading automotive companies.

The team from the NewClimate Institute and Carbon Market Watch, two European nonprofits, also highlighted several developments by the companies that they describe as encouraging and worth replicating. Yet overall, the researchers concluded, the companies are “making inadequate progress in accelerating the long-overdue transition to electric mobility.”

The researchers compared the net-zero plans of five manufacturers — Ford, General Motors, Stellantis, Toyota and Volkswagen — with a transition framework for the industry developed by the NewClimate Institute. By far the most critical component in the framework is the reduction of tailpipe emissions, which can be achieved by transitioning to electric vehicles. Switching to low-carbon steel, aluminum and batteries are other components.

Viewed through the framework, the companies’ commitments appear well short of what’s required. Only GM has set a sales target — 100 percent electric vehicles globally by 2035 — that aligns with limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Other targets are delayed (Ford will “work toward” 100 percent EVs by 2040), regionally specific (Stellantis’ 100 percent target applies only to the U.S.) or incomplete (VW and Toyota have committed to selling more EVs, but not to reaching 100 percent).

All five companies have committed to reaching net-zero emissions: Stellantis has the earliest target year, 2038; Toyota and VW the latest, 2050. But the report authors argued that such commitments are of limited use without specific transition plans, such as vehicle sales targets, to back them up.

“Emissions reduction targets are only helpful to a certain degree, in that they paint a picture of where a company wants to be in terms of outcomes,” said Saskia Straub, a climate policy analyst at the New Climate Institute. “But they don’t tell us how they are planning to reach those outcomes.”

The absence of 1.5C-aligned EV sales targets is also notable given the latest draft of the Science Based Target initiative’s (SBTi) automotive sector standard requires companies to commit to 100 percent low-emission vehicle sales by 2030 in advanced economies, and by 2040 globally. The draft is open for consultation until August 11, 

Asked to comment on the lack of sales targets and other issues in the report, VW stated its commitment to becoming carbon neutral by 2050 and Ford referred to the company’s latest sustainability report. GM, Stellantis and Toyota did not share a response. But uncertain demand for EVs in some territories is a known issue, with consumers remaining concerned about access to charging points and put off by the higher price tag on EVs. Demand in the U.S. is likely to take a further hit in September when the federal tax credit for EVs, which is worth a maximum of $7,500, is eliminated.

Despite the overall misalignment between the manufacturers’ actions and 1.5C pathways, Straub and colleagues identified several bright spots in the companies’ plans:

  • Stellantis has improved the transparency of its net-zero goal by setting an interim absolute emissions target: the company aims to cut emissions to 20 percent below 2021 levels by 2030.
  • Ford and GM have committed to purchasing 10 percent near-zero or low-carbon steel and aluminum by 2030.
  • VW included the emissions of a high-emissions subsidiary — Traton, which produces trucks and buses — in its annual inventory for the first time.

The automotive report is the final installment of the 2025 Corporate Climate Responsibility Monitor. Previous chapters have focused on food and agriculture, apparel and tech companies.

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7 in 10 experts say backlash against sustainability agenda is intensifying

If there’s a silver lining to the backlash against sustainability, it’s this: You’re not alone in what you’re seeing and feeling.

New findings from a survey conducted by Trellis data partner GlobeScan, in conjunction with the ERM Sustainability Institute and Volans, reveal a sharp rise in global sustainability professionals’ concern about the backlash against the sustainability agenda and ESG. Globally, seven in 10 experts now say there’s a significant backlash in their country, up 13 percentage points from last year.

This shift is especially pronounced in North America, where more than 90 percent of experts report experiencing significant resistance. In contrast, nearly two-thirds of experts in Asia-Pacific say there is little to no backlash, underscoring the uneven and regionally fragmented nature of the pushback. In Europe, seven in 10 experts believe there is a backlash, while Latin America and the Caribbean (60 percent) and Africa and the Middle East (61 percent) fall in between, reflecting a globally uneven but broadly felt sense of resistance.

What this means

The surge in backlash — particularly in North America and Europe — reflects growing polarization around sustainability. In these more resistant markets, progress will require careful messaging, stronger coalitions and reframing sustainability in ways that resonate with local priorities and issues.

In less-polarized regions, particularly in Asia-Pacific, there are ample opportunities to accelerate impact, scale innovation and demonstrate the value of sustainability as a driver of economic and social resilience.

Based on a survey of 844 sustainability practitioners across 72 countries globally conducted April-May 2025.

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Bezos Earth Fund appoints former Amazon SVP as its new leader

A former Amazon senior vice president who oversaw the company’s Alexa teams is taking the helm at the Bezos Earth Fund, a $10 billion climate philanthropy established by his old boss.

Tom Taylor announced the move this week, saying he was thrilled to “lead with the bold mandate to invent our way out of Earth’s environmental challenges with a combination of long-term thinking, technical curiosity and excellent execution.”

Taylor was a 23-year Amazon veteran when he left in 2023. He joined the company as a director of operations for fulfillment centers and went on to oversee 10,000 engineers, product leaders and other employees working on the Alexa smart speaker. On leaving his role, Taylor updated his LinkedIn job title to “Relaxed” and his employer to “@Ease.” 

Taylor succeeds Andrew Steer, who stepped down in February. “For some time, I’ve been hoping to get back to my roots, focusing on international development and the interaction of the environment, finance and the economy,” Steer wrote at the time. His previous role was president and CEO of the World Resources Institute.

The Bezos Earth Fund has emerged as a major player in climate philanthropy since it was established in 2020 with the mission to give away $10 billion of Jeff Bezos’ fortune. The fund is noted for its work on AI and conservation, among other areas. It’s also attracted criticism from environmental groups for its advocacy for carbon markets.

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New onboard technology captures maritime emissions at source

The first commercial-scale trial of an innovative technology for onboard capture of carbon dioxide emissions from shipping vessels has been slated for later this year.

Seabound, a U.K. startup, will install a unit around the size of a shipping container on the deck of the UBC Cork, a 5,700-metric-ton vessel that carries cement from Heidelberg Materials, one of the world’s largest producers of the building material. The vessel’s exhaust will be routed over CO2-absorbing material in the container, safely locking away a portion of the vessel’s emissions.

The trial comes at a time of mounting pressure on the maritime shipping industry, which generates around a billion tons of CO2 annually, or roughly 3 percent of the global total. The International Maritime Organization, the United Nations agency that regulates the sector, recently announced plans for emissions-intensity rules that would force large vessels to cut emissions by up to 43 percent by 2035.

Additional advantage

Onboard carbon capture appeals because existing vessels can be retrofitted relatively quickly and cheaply, said Lars Erik Marcussen, logistics project manager at Heidelberg Materials Northern Europe. In the coming tests, the system will capture 25 percent of the CO2 emitted by the vessel, but the technology can achieve up to 95 percent capture, according to Seabound.

Onboard capture has an additional advantage for Heidelberg: the process involves reacting pebbles of calcium hydroxide, commonly known as lime, with CO2 to produce calcium carbonate, or limestone, which is an input into cement production.

“We can take the limestone pebbles and put them straight into our cement kilns,” said Marcussen.

The UBC Cork is one of nine vessels that Marcussen oversees. If the trial is successful, he hopes to install the carbon capture technology on an additional vessel every year. The work complements capture technology that Heidelberg has installed at its cement plant in Brevik, Norway, which now captures 400,000 tons of CO2 annually.

Energy expenses

One challenge to be surmounted before the technology scales is the production of low-carbon lime. The issue is serious enough to give some experts doubts about Seabound’s approach.

“There are systems that regenerate limestone back into calcium oxide [a precursor of calcium hydroxide], but this is a very energy-intensive process that incurs significant costs, even with 100 percent green electricity,” said Felix Klann, maritime transport policy officer at Transport & Environment, a nonprofit that works across Europe. “Shipping companies should focus instead on avoiding their emissions altogether by investing in green e-fuels, electrification and designing efficient ships.”

The technology is not yet cost-competitive, but Alisha Fredriksson, Seabound’s co-founder and CEO, expects costs to come down to around $150 per metric ton of CO2 capture as the technology scales. She added that once the cost of complying with the IMO rules and the European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme are factored in the process will produce savings that pay back upfront costs within one to five years.

Seabound also needs to identify sources of low-carbon lime. At present, the emissions associated with producing and transporting the lime more than outweigh the benefits of capturing CO2 from the ship’s exhaust.

“We’re working with lime companies to ensure that there is a supply of green lime for our full-scale deployments,” said Fredriksson. “We want to team up with lime companies to develop dedicated kilns as close to the port as possible, so we can reuse the material over and over and then either sequester or sell that pure CO2.”

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