After nearly a decade of spurring Lululemon’s embrace of innovative materials and secondhand sales, Esther Speck is stepping away. Speck, who joined the Vancouver athleisure wear giant in 2015 as vice president of global sustainability, spent the past two years as its senior vice president of global sustainable business and impact.

“When I joined Lululemon 10 years ago, I set out to build a global function, enterprise strategy, and platform for impact — one that would help shape the future of this high growth brand and catalyze impact beyond the company’s walls,” Speck posted on LinkedIn on May 8. “I’m proud to say that we’ve accomplished this. What began as a small, mighty team is now a global network of over 80 brilliant leaders around the world … .”

Speck approached sustainability as an innovation challenge, she told Trellis Co-Founder Joel Makower in 2024. She also saw that work through the lens of “what it means to be a brand rooted in well-being.”

Innovating

Athletic wear relies heavily on synthetic materials made from fossil fuels. As Lululemon’s net revenue more than doubled from 2020 to 2023, so did its greenhouse gases. And that attracted fire from activists. So in 2020, Lululemon made an ambitious commitment: for 100 percent of its products to feature preferred content and end-of-life solutions by 2030.

In taking Lululemon halfway through this 10-year transformation, Speck was involved in numerous interconnected programs and workstreams to extend product life and innovate materials. Startups benefiting from Lululemon’s strategic investments and partnerships included Geno, maker of a plant-based nylon, and Bolt Threads, maker of a fungus-based leather alternative (discontinued in 2023). Most recently, Lululemon announced, in March, a partnership with ZymoChem to expand work on biobased nylon. Another partnership, with Australian enzymatic recycler Samsara Eco, resulted in the Swiftly Tech long-sleeve top and an anorak jacket. 

By 2023, Lululemon counted 57 percent preferred materials in its sourcing, a one-year rise of 44 percent.

Source: Trellis Group / Elsa Wenzel

Meanwhile, Lululemon Like New branded resale program llaunched four years ago. Speck credits the heads of retail and innovation for spearheading that initiative.

During Speck’s tenure, Lululemon also engaged in multiple collaborations to advance climate progress across the apparel industry. These include the UN Charter for Climate Action; the Fashion Climate Fund, an Apparel Impact Institute project to drive down emissions in the industry’s supply chains; and Fashion for Good’s Sorting for Circularity USA effort to map textile waste.

Moving forward

One year ago, the Women’s Executive Network named her one of the top 100 most powerful women in Canada. “Play the long game, trust and invest in people, be true to yourself, invite bold vision and pragmatic action,” Speck said around that time.

Her undefined next steps include “adventuring on this beautiful planet beyond the boardroom, while continuing to contribute through thought leadership and mentorship before starting new impact endeavors.”

Likewise, it’s unknown who will fill her shoes at Lululemon as its 2030 materials innovation targets and increasingly challenging net-zero climate goal for 2050 near.

The post Lululemon’s global sustainability leader departs appeared first on Trellis.

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Inter IKEA Group, which makes the wide range of home goods sold in IKEA stores, has officially named the former head of its textile supply chain strategy as its new chief sustainability officer.

Lena Julle, who has been with IKEA for more than 30 years, had been acting CSO since September, when Pär Stenmark stepped aside to prepare for a new, as-yet-undeclared, role within the company. 

Julle’s permanent appointment became effective May 1, after nearly two years of her being readied for the position. Most recently, as the sustainability manager for IKEA Range, maker of the company’s stoves and ovens, Julle was involved in shaping the division’s burgeoning circular economy practices. Prior to that, she managed supply chain operations for the textiles division for six years.  

“With her leadership and deep knowledge of IKEA, Lena has continued our journey to be more sustainable in everything we do,” said Inter IKEA CEO Jon Abrahamsson Ring. “As acting chief sustainability officer, she’s already made strong contributions in our journey towards net zero and further developed the overall IKEA sustainability agenda.”

IKEA’s science-based targets include a goal to cut its climate footprint in half across all three emissions scopes by 2030, based on a 2016 baseline. The company reported a cumulative reduction of 28 percent as of the fiscal year that ended August 31.

One of the thorniest challenges in delivering that 2030 commitment is reducing the impact of raw materials and extraction, which accounted for 52 percent of IKEA’s footprint in 2024. Textiles and “comfort materials” such as foam used to stuff sofas are the third biggest chunk in that category after metals and wood. Julle’s experience with that supply chain will be invaluable in finding alternative sources and increasing the percentage of recycled content used in IKEA manufacturing.

“Creating smart, well-designed, functional products for everyday use at home, based on our life-at-home expertise, while making steady progress on our sustainability agenda, presents a tremendous opportunity,” Julle said.

[The sustainability agenda is broad, deep and changing fast. Join Trellis Network to gain the powerful peer network you need to drive more impact.]

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Outdoor retailer REI Co-op kept 90 percent of the discarded packaging and other waste generated at its 190-plus stores, distribution centers and warehouses out of landfills or incinerators in 2024 — delivering early on a 2025 goal and edging out other national chains including Walmart and Target that have made similar commitments.

REI’s long-term vision is to become a zero-waste operation, although the 24 million-member co-operative hasn’t published a target date for its ambition.  

“Being literally zero waste — i.e. 100 percent diversion from landfill — is an aspiration,” said Andrew Dempsey, director of climate at Seattle-based REI, which logged $3.76 billion in sales for 2024. “We have no timeframe on this, but we hope to improve diversion across our stores by 0.5 percent this year.”

REI recycled or composted 78 percent of its waste in 2020, and the company reached 86 percent in 2023. It’s the first high-profile retailer to report the 90 percent mark, a claim that was audited and independently verified. The disclosure was made in REI’s latest ESG report, published May 8. 

Two larger retail organizations that have made zero waste a top priority are still shy of their goals, as of their latest environmental impact progress reports. 

Target, aiming for zero waste by 2030, was at 85 percent as of July 2024. Walmart’s diversion rate for 2023 was 83.5 percent. The world’s largest retailer by revenue was aiming for 90 percent diversion in the U.S., Mexico and Canada by the end of 2025, but acknowledged in February that it will fall short of the mark.

Reducing waste plays directly into retailers’ Scope 3 emissions reduction commitments, specifically at the end-of-use stage, Dempsey said. It also gives the REI workforce a very tangible way to contribute to the company’s climate goals.

“Our employees are absolute champions of this work across our distribution centers and our retail fleet,” Dempsey said. “They touch and feel [waste] every day. It makes the concept tangible in a way that metric tons of carbon does not.” 

Creative ways to eliminate single-use plastic

Plastic packaging makes up REI’s biggest waste stream, and Dempsey outlined the ways that the retailer drives down plastic use across its operations and gets rid of what winds up in its facilities:

Trex partnership 

REI’s relationship with Virginia-based wood alternative manufacturer has turned 2.5 million pounds of polyethylene plastic film into decking. REI gets paid for sending the baled material to Trex; it won’t say how much.

Packaging policy

REI’s private-label apparel is rolled and bundled with raffia ties that can be composted. It asks brands to eliminate single-use packages and charges a $0.01, per-unit fee for anything that doesn’t comply. One sticking point of this policy is that it requires changes to distribution center processes to protect products from becoming soiled.

“A lot of it comes down to simply cleanliness of conveyor belts that are moving the product around within your distribution center, making sure that your staff understands why it’s not in plastic and really what the intention is there,” Dempsey said. 

The fee goes toward the extra back-end work required to bale different types of plastic so that REI can send it out to be more readily recycled. “What we really want to do is work with these brand partners to design that plastic out of the system,” Dempsey said.

New best practices

Some REI facilities use the Total Resource Use and Efficiency (TRUE) certification program created by the U.S. Green Building Council, which recognizes processes that contribute to zero waste. Three distribution centers are certified, and a fourth is awaiting recognition.

Circular economy boosters

In 2024, REI sold almost 1.4 million items through its Re/Supply program, which markets used gear. The business has doubled since 2019. The most popular items are backpacks, sleeping bags and tents. Camping items represent approximately 20 percent of REI’s overall sales.

The resale business reduces waste at a product’s end-of-use stage. The company estimates that the emissions associated with preparing these items for resale are about half of those associated with the production of a new edition.

“Keeping gear in use longer is the best thing you can do, both from a climate standpoint and then obviously from a waste standpoint,” Dempsey said.

Recent additions to REI’s takeback program include an initiative to collect and recycle electric bicycle batteries. The retailer collects other items that are hard to process, such as bike tires and tubes, and it’s prioritizing refillable fuel canisters. 

REI is also sourcing more recycled materials for its products: approximately 52 percent of the polyester and 45 percent of the nylon it sources, according to the brand’s latest impact report. And it’s making some running apparel from a new material made by LanzaTech, which turns industrial waste gases, including carbon dioxide, into low-carbon yarn.

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Google’s latest purchase of carbon credits targets a subset of greenhouse gases that is attracting increasing attention: super-pollutants that make an outsized if short-lived contribution to global warming.

The tech giant announced today that it had contracted for credits generated by projects that will eliminate 25,000 tons of methane and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) by 2030. Because the two gases trap heat more effectively than carbon dioxide, the impact of the credits over 100 years will be equivalent to eliminating 1 million tons of CO₂, the company noted.

“We’re focusing these two deals on eliminating super-pollutants because at the highest level, it is scientifically the right thing to do,” said Randy Spock, Google’s carbon credits and removals lead.

One tranche of credits will come from work with HVAC systems in Indonesia, where Recoolit, the project developer, will pay technicians to safely destroy HFCs from home ventilation systems. A second project, developed by the non-profit Cool Effect, will help fund the installation of methane destruction equipment at a landfill in Cuiabá, Brazil.

New credit type

The purchases are a first foray by Google into the mitigation of super-pollutants. The company spent $100 million in 2024 on contracts for 790,000 tons of CO₂, with a focus on biochar, enhanced rock weathering, direct air capture and reforestation — all projects that capture the gas from the atmosphere.

Super-pollutants pose a particular kind of problem, as they do not fit neatly into existing emissions accounting systems that compare the warming impact of different gases to CO₂ over a 100-year period. Using that metric, the warming impact of methane is roughly 30 times greater than CO₂. But that’s in part because most emitted methane leaves the atmosphere within a decade or so. Measured over a 20-year time frame, methane’s impact is around 80 times that of CO₂. The emphasis on 100-year accounting means the contribution of methane and other super-pollutants to near-term warming is undervalued in mitigation strategies.

That appears to be changing. The Global Heat Reduction Initiative, a spin-off from SCS Global Services, a standards-setter and certifier of environmental projects, is promoting a more holistic form of emissions accounting that considers the near-term warming caused by methane and other gases. The initiative recently delivered its first customer report.

Tailored approach

In Google’s case, the company is considering how to tailor its credit purchases to compensate for both the short- and long-lived emissions it’s responsible for. “We have to acknowledge that we have both kinds of emissions in our footprint, and we need to address both,” said Spock. 

In the company’s 2024 sustainability report, Google disclosed around 700 tons of methane emissions and 28 tons of HFCs in Scopes 1 and 2. The bulk of its emissions, though, were in Scope 3, which it did not break down by gas type.

Projects devoted to destroying HFCs are a relatively new idea, and none are yet registered with major carbon market standard setters, noted Ciska Terblanche, director of technologies for research and analytics at Calyx Global, an independent rater of carbon credits. Calyx has, however, issued high ratings for some similar projects focused on destroying ozone-depleting substances. “We believe this project type can generate high quality credits, particularly in developing countries,” Terblanche added. 

Spock said that third-party verification was a requirement of the deal and would be in place before credits were generated by the projects.

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Ann Tracy has championed strategies that marry efficiency and environmental goals for most of her three-decade career with Colgate-Palmolive — across the toothpaste market leader’s manufacturing, customer service, logistics and supply chain. 

Today, her job is to position Colgate-Palmolive’s net-zero agenda as a catalyst for innovation and commercial growth.

“The new era we’re entering into for sustainability is really doubling down now on the business case, on the value creation aspect,” Tracy said in the latest episode of Climate Pioneers.

When Tracy was named Colgate-Palmolive’s first chief sustainability officer in February 2020 she reported to the supply chain organization. In 2022, however, her team was made part of the growth and strategy team, which manages the commercial side of the business. 

With that shift, the $20 billion company began to consider emissions and plastic reduction commitments as components of its growth plan. A key mantra of its CEO: “We can do anything, but we can’t do everything.” Tracy is part of two dozen senior leaders who make decisions about what matters.

“I think that allows me to make sure that sustainability remains built into the decisions that we’re making,” she said. “Not to say there aren’t tradeoffs and it’s not tough, particularly in this environment. But I think that’s important.”

Stay the course

Colgate-Palmolive’s energy efficiency measures, for example, have had a big impact on expenses — a savings of at least $1 billion in electricity costs since it began measuring this impact almost 20 years ago, according to Tracy. “For us, that’s a significant number,” she said. “It’s a significant number for anyone.” 

She noted three successful tactics:

• A program that allocates at least 5 percent of manufacturing capital expenditures for energy reduction, water conservation and waste management measures.
• The Energy Treasure Hunt initiative, which sends 30 to 50 people to sites with the goal of identifying improvement opportunities; 2,500 projects were surfaced through 2023.
• A team dedicated to creating tools and resources that scale successful reduction measures so they can be used in multiple locations.

Colgate-Palmolive’s commitment, validated by the Science Based Targets initiative, is to be net zero by 2040 — making it one of the few consumer products companies with an approved commitment. Short-term goals coming due in 2025 include a 20 percent emissions reduction for its own operations and for purchased energy (Scope 1 and 2), and a 20 percent cut in the footprint for purchased goods and services (Scope 4). 

The baseline year for both targets is 2020. It’s unclear whether Colgate-Palmolive will deliver — its emissions increased slightly in 2023, compared with 2022. “We are learning that our journey will not likely follow a strictly linear path,” the company said in its 2024 climate transition plan.

The same is true of the company’s plastic reduction targets; Colgate-Palmolive had aimed to make all of its packaging recyclable, reusable or compostable by the end of 2025. As of Dec. 31, 2023, it had managed about 90 percent.

Still, Tracy isn’t wavering about where the company will land at the end of 2025 and whether it needs to adjust its 2030 priorities. “We are staying true to our targets,” she said. “We are not announcing any dial-backs.”

Colgate-Palmolive is aiming for a 42 percent emissions reduction by 2030 for both its own operations and purchased goods and services.

Swords versus shields

Colgate-Palmolive divides its climate, nature and waste management commitments into two categories: “shields,” which are compliance-driven, and “swords,” which center on potential for corporate value creation. 

“Shields are the thing we have to get down because of taxes, fees, reputational risk, regulations,” Tracy explained. “Swords are where we want to lead. We’re pretty choiceful about where we want to lead.”

As an example of the latter, Tracy pointed to Colgate-Palmolive’s zero-waste strategy, which commits the company to manufacturing all of its products at sites certified under the U.S. Green Building Council’s Total Resource Use and Efficiency (TRUE) initiative by the end of 2025.

The TRUE certification requires that sites divert at least 90 percent of waste from landfills or incineration. By the end of 2023, 80 percent of Colgate-Palmolive’s manufacturing facilities had earned the designation.  

“We’re not that great at putting hard numbers against it,” Tracy said, “but the amount of money that saves across all sites that are becoming certified is significant.”

Colgate-Palmolive’s introduction of a recyclable, squeezable toothpaste tube in 2019 — which started as a plastics-reduction goal — is another strategy that both reinforces the brand’s value as an innovator in toothpaste and cuts production-related emissions and water consumption.

The single-material design is now used for more than 90 percent of its toothpaste brands, reducing emissions related to materials production by 26 percent per tube. Raw materials add up to more than half of Colgate-Palmolive’s product design and procurement emissions. “If you think about the fact that we make close to 10 billion tubes every year, that’s a lot of carbon benefit,” Tracy said.

The design is also used by Colgate-Palmolive rivals, because the company opted to share its recipe. The idea is to convince recyclers to boost recycling rates for this packaging — about 20 billion toothpaste tubes made out of multi-layered plastic are thrown out annually. Colgate-Palmolive accounts for almost half of that.

Proceed with ambition — and caution

As Colgate-Palmolive’s team takes stock of its 2025 progress, Tracy said the company’s focus will be on choosing “ambitious but achievable” pathways to reach the 2030 goals. “We’re doubling down on the targets that have to have value drivers or that have to drive value creation,” she said.

Tracy acknowledged the headwinds faced by corporate sustainability professionals amid the changing rules of the Trump administration, but said Colgate-Palmolive’s investors are still interested in seeing progress against its climate goals. 

“Like all companies, we’re being careful about the narrative,” she said. “We’re being careful about what we say — we have to be — but I think, internally, we still are staying the course.” 

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