Efforts by the dairy industry to address the warming caused by methane are gaining momentum, with more companies disclosing data, releasing action plans and reporting progress in reducing emissions of the potent greenhouse gas.

Agriculture creates close to 40 percent of human-caused methane emissions and livestock is responsible for most of that. With plant-based alternatives making only limited inroads into the market, companies with science-based targets are in need of methods for cutting the methane released from cattle burps and manure.

The good news is that the company with perhaps the industry’s most ambitious methane commitment appears to be on track. Danone announced this week that it had reduced methane emissions from its fresh milk supply by 25 percent since 2020, keeping it on course to hit the targeted 30 percent reduction by 2030.

Methane alliance

Danone’s announcement was one of a flurry from members of the Dairy Methane Action Alliance, an industry collaboration convened by the Environmental Defense Fund and Ceres, two climate non-profits. Alliance members commit to disclose methane emissions as a step toward creating an action plan for reducing them. The group, which includes Starbucks and Nestlé, meets every other month. 

Other alliance developments include:

• Three more companies — Agropur, Idaho Milk Products and Savencia Fromage & Dairy — joined the group.
• Lactalis USA and Danone published two of the industry’s first-ever dairy methane action plans. 
• Bel Group, Clover Sonoma, General Mills and Starbucks also disclosed their dairy methane emissions.

Danone is tackling its methane challenge on multiple fronts, said Chris Adamo, the company’s head of global sustainability impact and B corp. Notable progress has come in lower-income countries, where there is more scope to cut emissions by making dairy farms more productive. This includes working with farmers to source more nutritious feed and introducing breeds of cattle that produce more milk. Danone is also partnering with Sistema, a company that has developed a modular biodigestor that smaller farms can use to process manure into fertilizer and biogas.

Danone generated $31 billion in sales in 2024, but smaller dairy companies are deploying similar tactics. Clover Sonoma sources 100,000 gallons of milk daily from 27 farms close to its headquarters in Petaluma, California. The company is on track to hit its target of cutting methane intensity by 10 percent by 2026, thanks in part to helping its suppliers access government funding for technology that processes manure and reduces emissions.

Feed additives

Neither Danone nor Clover Sonoma, though, is yet deploying another much-discussed methane-reduction approach: feed additives, which studies suggest can cut methane emissions by as much as 90 percent.

“When we jumped into the project, we had some hope that feed additives might be one of the effective levers to drive some change,” said Michael Benedetti, Clover Sonoma’s vice president of sustainability, quality and regulatory. And, in fact, a trial of a seaweed-based additive resulted in a more than 50 percent reduction. But regulatory and sourcing challenges have prevented the company from further pursuing the solution.

Costs are an issue for Danone, noted Adamo; additives are a “pure cost to the farm or to us,” he said. Other mechanisms the company is working on have their own benefits, such as reduced labor due to better manure processing.

Feed additives could still play a role, however, especially as more companies begin to disclose methane emissions and, if they choose to follow Danone’s lead, set reduction targets. There are still plenty of gains to be made using other methods, particularly by improving productivity in low and middle income countries, said Katie Anderson, senior director for business, food and forests at the Environmental Defense Fund. Elsewhere, additional mechanisms are going to be needed, she added: “We have a lot of tools today and we need to use them fully, but we’ll also need more to reach a 30 percent across-the-globe target.”

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GE’s Ecomagination initiative, launched May 9, 2005, certainly turned heads. Here was the world’s ninth-largest company, a 113-year-old conglomerate founded by Thomas Edison, inventor of the first commercial light bulb, putting sustainability front and center in its new corporate strategy.

It seems, 20 years later, paradoxically overhyped and underappreciated.

At first glance it appeared to be a slick marketing campaign, complete with fun TV commercials (such as this one, aired during the 2011 Super Bowl, featuring an electric cow). But Ecomagination turned out to be much more than that.

On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of Ecomagination’s debut, I’ve been reflecting on GE’s bold initiative and its implications for today’s companies. What did Ecomagination teach us about heavily marketed sustainability strategies? What impact did it have on GE’s business and reputation? How would an Ecomagination-like initiative fare in today’s complex business and political environment?

And what are the lessons learned from the entire effort?

What was Ecomagination?

When GE’s then-CEO Jeff Immelt took the stage at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., to announce Ecomagination, the company was seen as a laggard in sustainability, if not an outright eco-villain.

The company — which at the time manufactured everything from lightbulbs to aircraft engines to large healthcare devices such as those used for MRI and CAT scans — had a long and unenviable environmental reputation. Over a 30-year period starting in the mid-1940s, GE released more than a million pounds of toxic PCBs into the upper Hudson River, a byproduct of its nearby manufacturing of electrical capacitors. Over time, PCBs contaminated nearly 200 miles of the Hudson, making it the nation’s largest Superfund site. (In 2015, GE announced that it had removed the majority of the toxins, at a cost of more than $1 billion.)

At the same time, GE’s business customers were seeking to reduce their energy spend along with their greenhouse gas emissions. Immelt and his team saw a significant business opportunity that might also dig the company out of its reputational hole.

So GE committed to:

• Double its annual revenue from “clean technology” products, from $10 billion in 2005 to at least $20 billion by 2010, “with more aggressive targets thereafter”
• More than double its research investment in cleaner technologies, from $700 million in 2004 to $1.5 billion in 2010
• Reduce its greenhouse gas emissions 1 percent by 2012 and the intensity of its greenhouse gas emissions 30 percent by 2008, both compared to 2004. (Based on the company’s projected growth, GE said its emissions would have otherwise risen 40 percent by 2012.)

Given the company’s environmental history, GE’s announcement was met with skepticism. Critics called it “greenwashing,” among other epithets, noting that the company continued to operate in polluting sectors such as coal and oil. Moreover, Ecomagination included technologies that would make oil sands production and natural gas fracking marginally cleaner, which sustainability experts and activists saw as fundamentally misaligned with true climate leadership.

GE was, though, also ramping up production of wind turbines, solar inverters, electrified locomotives and a dozen or so other truly cleaner technologies.

What went right?

The company made clear that Ecomagination was unabashedly about growing revenue. Its goal was to drive business growth through clean technology, energy efficiency and environmental stewardship, while also improving GE’s own operational footprint.

In that regard, the company exceeded its goals. By 2010, five years after launch, GE claimed $85 billion in cumulative Ecomagination revenue. (The company used a third party to assess and certify whether products and associated revenue met the Ecomagination standard.) It also could boast impressive gains in reduced emissions, water use and other metrics.

Ecomagination’s 5-year status report

One key success factor was that Ecomagination goals were owned by the entire company leadership. “This was GE board-level approval; the biggest champion was the chairman and the CEO,” Deb Frodl, the company’s chief marketing officer at the time and later head of Ecomagination, told me recently.

Money talked. The fact that GE could show impressive revenue growth from its greener products from the get-go gave the program solid momentum, internally as well as externally.

Moreover, it won over some critics, including Mindy Lubber, CEO of Ceres who, in a previous role, led the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in the Northeast region, including overseeing litigation related to the Hudson River cleanup. Lubber was one of GE’s eight-member Ecomagination Advisory Board.

“For the CEO of one of the largest multinational companies to sit through four- and six-hour meetings and followups to make sure input was heard and goals were clear, I think that stayed pretty consistent,” Lubber told me.

What could have gone better?

Policy support, for starters. “We thought federal policy and smart regulation would follow, and that didn’t happen,” said Frodl. “Cap-and-trade didn’t happen. The Clean Power Plan didn’t happen. There was just nothing to give us the tailwinds.”

There was also a messaging muddle. The initiative’s broad scope — encompassing both breakthrough technologies and incremental efficiency improvements — blurred the line between what was truly game-changing and what was business-as-usual. And the company’s unwillingness to divest from its “dirty tech” businesses or prioritize emissions reductions beyond legal requirements fueled skepticism about the depth of its commitment.

What was the outcome?

By the time Ecomagination was shuttered in 2017, it had achieved significant results in business growth, R&D investment, emissions reductions and other key metrics. According to Frodl, writing in 2017, during Ecomagination’s 12-year life, GE:

• Invested $20 billion in Ecomagination solutions
• Generated $270 billion in revenue
• Reduced greenhouse gas emissions and freshwater that saved the company more than $480 million
• Saved customers more than $3 billion in energy and water costs while helping them reduce more than 5 gigatons of greenhouse gases

But even those stats belie the greater changes in GE, said Frodl. “I honestly believe that it changed the company for the good. It culturally changed the mindset to be ‘We’re innovating some of the world’s most efficient technologies.’”

Could Ecomagination exist today?

It would be difficult, particularly in the United States, where political forces are keeping corporate sustainability initiatives low-key, and in Europe, where aggressive greenwashing rules would likely tamp down some of the bold commitments GE made in 2005.

That doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen, said Lubber. “It should happen in most large businesses. Informed, stakeholder input that’s done in the right way, that’s not about throwing bombs on street corners but about hearing each other, is a helpful thing.”

What were the learnings from Ecomagination?

Business first, sustainability second: Ecomagination was explicitly a growth strategy, not an environmental mission. GE’s leadership was upfront about saying that the initiative’s goal was to capitalize on the emerging demand for cleaner technologies.

Rebranding vs. reinvention: Much of the early success came from rebranding existing products (such as wind turbines and efficient turbines) as Ecomagination products rather than fundamentally transforming the business or divesting from polluting sectors. The approach, though, did raise questions about the depth of the company’s commitment to sustainability.

Scale and impact discrepancy: While Ecomagination generated billions in revenue and notable environmental progress, the achievements were modest relative to GE’s overall scale. For example, its Ecomagination Challenge, an open-innovation process that solicited ideas from individuals and start-ups to identify potential energy ventures for GE to invest in, led to $140 million of investments, a mere blip considering GE’s $37 billion energy business.

Skepticism and legacy issues: Despite public commitments and transparent reporting, GE continued to face scrutiny from environmental groups — especially around legacy pollution issues, such as the Hudson River cleanup. The company’s marketing prowess sometimes outpaced its substantive change.

Innovation and collaboration, within limits: Ecomagination’s open innovation efforts fostered collaboration and generated thousands of ideas. But the scale and timeline for these innovations to materially affect GE’s core business highlighted the challenge of integrating breakthrough sustainability into large, established firms.

In the end, the cautionary tale of Ecomagination is that even well-publicized, well-funded and board-backed corporate sustainability initiatives can fall short of transformative change if they prioritize business growth over systemic environmental impact, rely heavily on rebranding and fail to fully address legacy issues.

Still, Ecomagination demonstrated the potential of aligning profit with purpose in business, while reminding today’s leaders of the need to balance ambition, transparency and genuine transformation.

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CDP, the most widely used platform for environmental disclosures, is laying off one-fifth of its workforce as it invests in innovations that the organization said will better serve disclosing companies and users of its data.

The organization did not provide specifics on which departments would be affected, beyond saying that the cuts will not be focussed on specific regions and will take place this year. As of March 2024, CDP employed 541 people in 15 countries, according to its most recent annual report.

The cuts come after a challenging year for the organization, which receives disclosures from more than 23,000 companies annually. A new questionnaire, which combined previously separate requests for information on climate, forests and water, proved time-consuming for companies to navigate, as did a new portal for submitting data. Annual scores assigned to companies by CDP — based on their disclosures and typically delivered before the winter holidays — were not sent out until February.

Rising costs

Operating costs have also been growing faster than income, noted Shannon Joly, CDP’s chief marketing and communications officer. The need to cut spending to address rising costs, together with the decision to shift spending toward improved technology and processes, is behind the layoffs, she said.

The overhaul of how CDP ingests and exports data will be driven by several new arrivals. Former Mastercard public policy lead Sherry Madera took over as CEO in October 2023. She has since brought in Ian Brocklehurst, a product and data expert with experience at the London Stock Exchange who now runs CDP’s product work, and Chief Growth Officer Kari Stoever, who has a background in external relations.

Joly said the organization aspires to cut the time it takes to submit to CDP by 70 percent. One strategy will be a “use case” approach to disclosure. Rather than asking all companies to answer a similar set of questions, CDP will tailor its requests to suit the needs of the disclosing company. That could mean focusing on the data required under the European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive or on a specific set of questions posed by a major investor. 

Global fragmentation

In parallel, Brocklehurst will modernize the systems that customers such as Bloomberg use to access information from CDP, which now holds what the organization says is the world’s largest collection of data on environmental action. “We need to make sure that we’re servicing clients as they would expect from any kind of data provider,” said Joly. The platform used for public access to CDP disclosures, which has been unavailable for several months, will be open again in coming months, she added.

Providing streamlined access to sustainability data is particularly important at a moment when policies and standards relating to disclosure are in flux, noted Joly. “We’re operating in a world of more and more global fragmentation,” Joly said, which reinforces the need for CDP to retain its position as a provider of a “global, independent baseline” for sustainability data. 

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When the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) was dismantled earlier this year, there were two focal points of media coverage. First, there were the humanitarian costs. Second, the headlines analyzed geopolitical impacts for the U.S. in losing its primary tool in delivering one of three legs of national security (defense, diplomacy and development). 

But underneath these predominant losses is yet another: global sustainability efforts. Beyond humanitarian aid and democracy building, USAID was also the leading provider of foreign aid across the spectrum of sustainable development, from agriculture to energy to waste management. 

USAID’s collapse is not only the loss of a leading mission-aligned partner for many companies. It’s also a harbinger of a larger trend in shrinking foreign assistance that’s important for corporate sustainability professionals whose scope includes global supply chains and emerging markets. 

The impact of USAID’s loss on corporate sustainability

USAID played a pioneering role in private sector engagement among government donor agencies. Over the past two decades, it evolved its approach from ad hoc collaborations to a more strategic and systemic model of co-creating and co-funding development solutions with companies of all sizes. Between 2000 and 2020, it implemented over 1,600 private sector partnerships, called Global Development Alliances, involving Fortune 500 companies, local businesses and industry associations — pairing private-sector expertise, assets and innovations with its funding, local networks and knowledge to build resilient supply chains and inclusive markets. 

Many of the world’s largest companies understood the value of partnering with USAID. For example, PepsiCo and USAID had partnered on a $20 million project to empower female farmers in PepsiCo’s supply chains across Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. Unilever, EY and USAID, meanwhile, had recently announced a $21 million project to address plastic waste across Asia. 

USAID had increasingly been investing in these types of private-public partnerships over the last decade. While the latest data on the size of their investments is now difficult to find, a reasonable estimate is that it invested around $200 million per year through private-public partnership mechanisms. 

But USAID was more than a check-writer and project partner. Its $40 billion annual budget helped develop the foundation of stronger operating environments for business activities across Africa, Latin America and Asia that allowed corporate sustainability teams to launch impactful innovations and initiatives, regardless of whether they were formally partnering with the agency. 

The loss of USAID’s direct funding and co-investment will make the business case for sustainable supply chain and market expansion activities harder to articulate. It’s easier to make the case for a $10 million investment over five years when USAID matched that funding, than to make the case for a $20 million corporate investment to achieve the same outcomes. 

While USAID is disappearing, it’s important to note that foreign aid still has a future in America and is being re-tooled within the Department of State with three pillars—strategic humanitarian assistance, development finance for trade and politically oriented programming. It’s unclear exactly how long it will take before the new policy and initiatives are launched. 

A changing foreign aid landscape 

In addition to 83 percent of USAID programs being cut over the first half of 2025, global official development assistance (ODA) spending declined 7.1 percent in 2024, with more foreign aid cuts being announced across Europe. Aid from Germany (the second largest donor) is expected to drop 9 percent this year and France is cutting its budget 11 percent for 2025. The U.K. (the fourth largest donor) will almost halve its ODA budget, moving $7.6 billion into defense spending. 

Overall, foreign aid is becoming more transactional, politicized and vulnerable to the ideological mood swings of governments. Amid this retrenchment and remaking of “aid,” many European governments are pivoting toward sustainable investment projects rather than grants as the focus of their foreign assistance because they seek to get more direct economic returns for their aid contributions. 

For companies, especially those headquartered in Europe, this highlights the growing opportunity for innovative financing partnerships, such as blended finance mechanisms that allow companies to partner with public capital to de-risk their sustainability investments in emerging markets.

How companies can adapt and respond

In a moment when our interconnected global challenges call for increasing levels of cooperation, government responses are growing more insular and unilateral. The growing emphasis among European donors on investment-oriented models offers a bright spot through blended finance approaches. These vehicles — structured to share risk and rewards across a range of stakeholders — enable businesses to scale successful programs as traditional grant pools dry up.

But blended finance is only part of the solution. Sustainability teams can also explore pre-competitive and complementary collaborations, particularly in geographies where shared challenges require collective solutions. One example of this approach is the Rimba Collective, in which P&G, Nestle, PepsiCo and Unilever are pooling their funding to deliver conservation projects in the landscapes of Southeast Asia that supply palm oil for their businesses. 

The next frontier of private-private collaboration will be even more focused on systems change at the local level. We’re seeing an increasing interest from companies exploring partnerships across industries within landscapes and communities of mutual interest. For example, food companies that source various crops (corn, wheat and dairy) from the same supply shed are exploring how to work with technology and infrastructure providers to increase productivity and efficiency along the first miles of global supply chains. By combining business cases focused on supply and demand, companies can de-risk their individual investments and create conditions for success that also improve social and environmental outcomes.

Ultimately, the decreasing availability of foreign aid, especially grant-based mechanisms, highlights the urgent need for sustainability teams to strengthen their ability to calculate and articulate the business case for corporate investments in their sustainable supply chain and market activities. Internally, company executives have to understand the future value of potential investments to provide the required budgets. Externally, the business case is a crucial component of articulating the investment thesis to potential public and private partners. 

By shifting strategies and embracing new partnership models, companies can maintain global sustainability momentum despite the changes happening in government-backed support.

[Sustainability work is hard. Ready for Trellis Network to help? Learn more about our peer network.]

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As long-held global economic norms and reliable trade partnerships are disrupted by the Trump administration’s ad hoc tariff policies, the need for a domestic supply chain that can recycle and refurbish critical materials has become increasingly necessary for market stability.

Enter Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) legislation. These state-level laws require manufacturers to develop products that can be recycled and repurposed back into the supply chain.

Many states already have such laws in force, while others are in the process of enacting them. Below is a roundup of states with full or limited EPR laws or pending legislation.

States with active EPR laws

Maine

• Law: An Act to Support and Improve Municipal Recycling Programs to Save Taxpayer Money (LD 1541)
• Enacted: July 2021
• Summary: The first EPR law, for packaging, requires producers to finance stewardship organizations that manage the collection and recycling of packaging materials. The law employs fee structures to incentivize the use of recyclable and environmentally friendly materials.

Oregon

• Law: Plastic Pollution and Recycling Modernization Act (SB 582)
• Enacted: January 2022
• Summary: This law requires producers to join a Producer Responsibility Organization and pay fees based on the type and quantity of packaging. It sets recycling goals for plastic packaging and food service ware, aiming for a 25 percent recycling rate by 2028, 50 percent by 2040 and 75 percent by 2050.

California

• Law: Plastic Pollution Prevention and Packaging Producer Responsibility Act (SB 54)
• Enacted: June 2022
• Summary: This law mandates that by 2032, 100 percent of packaging in California must be recyclable or compostable, with a 25 percent reduction in plastic packaging and 65 percent recycling rate for single-use plastics. Producers must join a Producer Responsibility Organization or submit an individual plan to manage packaging waste.

Colorado

• Law: Producer Responsibility Program for Statewide Recycling Act (HB 22-1355)
• Enacted: June 2022
• Summary: This law establishes a statewide recycling system funded by producers of packaging and printed paper. Producers are responsible for the costs of recycling, including capital, operating, education and promotion expenses.

Minnesota

• Law: Packaging Waste and Cost Reduction Act (HF 3577)
• Enacted: May 2024
• Summary: This law mandates producers to manage the lifecycle of packaging materials, including registration with a Producer Responsibility Organization. It sets targets for recycling rates and encourages the use of eco-friendly designs. Non-compliance may result in fines ranging from $25,000 to $100,000.

States with limited EPR legislation

New Jersey

• Law: Recycled Content Law (P.L. 2021, c. 391)
• Enacted: January 2022
• Summary: This legislation sets post-consumer recycled content requirements for certain products and prohibits the sale of polystyrene loose-fill packaging. Producers must register annually and meet recycled content standards starting in January 2024.

Washington

• Law: Post-Consumer Recycled Content Law (70A.245)
• Enacted: January 2023
• Summary: This law requires producers of certain plastic products to register with the state, pay annual fees and include a minimum amount of recycled plastic in their packaging. It aims to reduce the production of new plastic and incentivize the development of new markets for recyclable plastic.

States with proposed EPR legislation

Illinois

• Proposed Law: House Bill 1087 — Polystyrene Ban in Schools
  • Summary: This bill proposes a ban on polystyrene foam food service-ware in schools, which would take effect Jan. 1, 2027. It mandates the procurement of recyclable or compostable alternatives, aiming to reduce environmental impact and promote sustainable practices within educational institutions. It has passed the Senate and must make it through the House.
• Proposed Law: House Bill 1146 — Single-Use Carryout Bag Ban
  • Summary: This legislation seeks to ban single-use carryout bags, including both plastic and paper, under the Solid Waste Planning and Recycling Act. Exemptions are provided for specific uses such as raw meat, produce, live animals, hot food and dry cleaning garment bags. The bill aims to reduce plastic pollution and encourage the use of reusable alternatives.
• Proposed Law: Senate Bill 132 — The Plastic Bottle Cap Reduction Act
  • Summary: This legislation proposes that single-use beverage containers made from plastic have caps attached or “tethered” to the container. It also mandates mono-material packaging across bottles and caps, prohibiting mismatched materials such as HDPE caps on PET bottles. The law, which would take effect Jan. 1, 2029, aims to enhance recyclability and reduce litter.

New York

• Proposed Laws: S1464/A1749 — The Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act
• Summary: This pair of bills would require producers to eliminate certain chemicals from packaging materials, with reduction goals of 10 percent minimum three years after implementation, then 30 percent after 12 years. The bill also provides producers with options to purchase recycled materials, with a goal of 35 percent recycled material for glass, 40 percent for paper bags and 20 percent for plastic trash bags two years after implementation.

Maryland

• Proposed Law: SB901 — Packaging and Paper Products — Producer Responsibility Plans
• Summary: This bill would require producers to submit a five-year responsibility plan by July 1, 2028. Then, once every decade, producers would carry out a statewide needs assessment that covers packaging, beverage containers and organics. The plan calls for reimbursement of at least 50 percent of cost per ton by July 1, 2028, then raising to 75 percent by 2029 and 90 percent by 2030.

Rhode Island

• Proposed Law: House Bill 6205 – Extended Producer Responsibility for Packaging and Paper Act
  • Summary: This bill establishes an EPR program for packaging and paper products, aiming to reduce waste and increase recycling rates. It mandates producers to manage the end-of-life of their products through a Producer Responsibility Organization. The bill outlines requirements for recycling targets, reporting and compliance mechanisms.
• Proposed Law: House Bill 6206 – Beverage Containers Recycling Act
  • Summary: Commonly referred to as the “bottle bill,” This legislation proposes a 10-cent fee for each individual beverage container purchased by a consumer. The consumer can then earn this money back upon returning the empty container to a designated site.
• Proposed Law: House Bill 6207 — Extended Producer Responsibility for Packaging and Paper Act
  • Summary: Not to be confused with HB6205, this bill would combine the “bottle bill” and HB6205, which focuses on mandated recycling for packages and paper products.
• Proposed Law: Senate Resolution 671 — Study of Plastic Recycling Improvements
  • Summary: This resolution establishes a commission to study and identify pathways to improve the state’s recycling of plastic bottles, miniature alcoholic beverage containers (“nips”) and single-use plastic packaging. The commission is tasked with considering container deposit and EPR programs, with findings and recommendations to be shared with the General Assembly by June 10.

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