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U.S. carbon removal industry in turmoil as federal support remains uncertain

Will President Trump’s administration continue to fund the carbon removal industry, a sector that previously enjoyed bipartisan support?

Recent signs are not encouraging.

Many of the officials who were overseeing removals work at the Department of Energy left earlier this year. A key deadline for a $35 million removals competition passed this week without an update. And one company that’s expecting funds from the DOE has cancelled a project and started laying off employees, Trellis has learned.

The changes concern two initiatives that are pillars of what was considered a bipartisan approach to boosting carbon removal under the previous administration. The larger of the two by far is the Regional Direct Air Capture Hubs program. In March of last year, contracts that could eventually exceed $1 billion were awarded to companies working to build hubs in Louisiana and Texas. The three companies behind the Louisiana hub — Battelle, Climeworks and Heirloom — received an initial award of $50 million.

Media reports have questioned whether the remaining monies will be paid. Three sources close to the matter told Reuters in March that the DOE was considering scrapping the hubs program. The department described the comments as “speculation,” but uncertainties around the funding stream appear to have impacted Heirloom, the smallest of the companies involved.

Capture departures

Founded in 2020, Heirloom captures carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by reacting the gas with calcium hydroxide, commonly known as “lime.” The company completed a $150 million investment round in December and has contracts with a United Airlines venture fund, Microsoft and others.

One carbon capture facility planned by the company has been cancelled and multiple staff members have left over the past six months, including the manager of the cancelled project, according to an employee who left the company during that period and spoke anonymously because they remain involved in the industry.

The former employee said that uncertainty around the future of the hubs was the reason for some of the layoffs. A review of LinkedIn profiles confirms that at least 10 technical staff have departed since December.

Heirloom declined to comment on the cancelled project or the departure of specific staff. “As we scale our operations, Heirloom continues to adapt to meet the demands of a rapidly evolving industry,” said Scott Coriell, the company’s head of PR and content. “That includes making strategic changes to our team — letting go some employees while hiring for new roles essential to executing our priorities.”

Climeworks told Trellis that the uncertainties around the DOE funding have not resulted in any layoffs. Battelle did not return a request for comment.

Purchase prize

The second impacted initiative is a $35 million purchasing prize, announced in 2022, to be awarded to carbon removal companies that supply credits to the government. The 10 winners of the latest round of judging were due to be announced May 7, according to the project timeline. Officials at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which oversees the prize, did not return a request for comment on when, or if, an announcement was forthcoming.

As with the capture hubs, it’s possible that the competition has been impacted by cuts, including layoffs at the laboratory, rather than a decision by senior staff to discontinue the projects. Many in the carbon removal industry remain confident that tax credits for carbon removal, another key means of government support for the industry, retain the bipartisan backing needed to survive attempts by the Trump administration to cut them.

Yet the nascent carbon removal industry remains heavily reliant on government support and lags behind where it needs to be in order to provide the gigatons of removal that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says will be necessary by 2050.

The prize is “one of the first instances, if not the first instance, of government procurement of carbon dioxide removal credits” and was designed to provide “much-needed support to early and growing carbon removal companies,” said Grant Faber, a manager of the direct air capture hubs program who left the department in March.

As with many federal projects, the future of the prize and the hubs will be determined in part by lobbying from the industry, as well as the elected officials who represent the state and districts where the projects are located.

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News

Colorado company powers secondhand sales for Lululemon, The North Face and Patagonia

Key takeaways

Tersus enables major fashion brands to scale their resale and repair programs through innovative, low-impact cleaning and logistics services.
Its liquid CO2 cleaning technology reduces waste and preserves product quality, keeping apparel in circulation longer.
Investing in circular infrastructure helps brands find new revenue streams while meeting consumer demand and satisfying emerging regulations.

Tersus Solutions sorts, cleans and ships clothing and shoes for the branded resale storefronts of about three dozen companies, including The North Face, Patagonia, Dr Martens and Eileen Fisher. Items by Lululemon, its latest partner, are quickly filling up the company’s distribution center at its headquarters in Englewood, Colorado.

The secret ingredient in its high-pressure washing machines is carbon dioxide, which it recaptures and recirculates for future cleaning cycles. This low-impact, nearly waterless way of spiffing up used merchandise has enabled Tersus to become a linchpin in the emerging circular economy for outdoor brands and contemporary fashion.

“This is how a brand can disrupt itself,” said CEO Peter Whitcomb. “You already made a product, now get more use out of it. It’s an annuity.”

Online resale grew by 23 percent last year and could reach $40 billion in the U.S. by 2029, according to the ThredUp 2025 Resale Report released in March. In 2019 only a handful of brands ran resale storefronts. Now it’s more than 160.

Luke Fowler, director of repairs and upcycling, shows how Tersus Solutions has labeled a yellow Dinali jacket from The North Face to track its way through cleaning and distribution. — *Luke Fowler, director of repairs and upcycling, shows how Tersus Solutions has labeled a Dinali jacket from The North Face to track it through cleaning and distribution.*

Tersus is poised to ride that growth wave, especially if the White House’s erratic tariff actions drive more shoppers to secondhand. The company also expects the 25,000 repairs it handles annually to climb quickly. One nudge is California’s extended producer responsibility legislation, which in July 2026 begins requiring apparel companies to take action on products after their end of use. Trending right-to-repair legislation may provide another boost.

“There are all these different ways in which they are becoming the hub for the future of circularity,” said Nancy Rhodes, co-founder and CEO of New York startup Alternew. Her company announced on April 23 a partnership with Tersus to test how the two can use tailors across the U.S.

E-commerce resale programs — such as The North Face Renewed and Dr Martens Rewair — make up a small fraction of brands’ overall sales. And brands like them because rather than cannibalizing sales of new items secondhand listings attract budget-hampered consumers to brands they otherwise couldn’t afford.

Tersus’s three businesses include secondhand cleaning, repairs and shipping for brands; decontaminating chemical-laden firefighting gear for fire departments; and recycling down, which it sells to brands or wholesalers. The company turns over more than 90 percent of what it processes in a given month.

*Bagged up garments enter a liquid CO2 washing machine at Tersus Solutions.*

“Zero things we touch go to landfill,” said Whitcomb, noting that items that it can’t rescue or remake wind up donated or recycled. Tersus recently expanded its space for sorting, cleaning and shipping to roughly 100,000 square feet.

The back story

As the head of circular commerce at REI before the COVID pandemic, Whitcomb needed to clean 100,000 sleeping bags for the brand’s rental program. He contacted Steve Madsen, who had developed a novel method of dry cleaning that he spun into Tersus Solutions in 2009. Masden had built relationships with outdoor brands including the Worn Wear resale program that launched in 2012 for Patagonia, Tersus’s biggest outside investor.

After a stint leading partnerships with San Francisco-based reverse logistics company Trove, Whitcomb joined Tersus as president in 2021.

Tersus Solutions only photographs garments that are either missing a photo or have unique features or damage that differ from what's in the database. — *Tersus Solutions photographs garments that are either missing a brand photo or have unique features or damage.*

Tersus handles apparel and footwear mostly from consumer returns. That includes new-condition items rejected for size or color. “Someone wore these, but they still have the tag,” Whitcomb said, holding up sneakers, connected at an unwalkable distance by a tag. “This is a common use case.”

Other incoming merchandise includes older clothes and shoes that people returned to a brand’s take-back program in exchange for store credit. Tersus also repairs goods damaged while under warranty.

Over the past six months, more companies have been asking about repair options. That’s a massive shift, according to Tersus.

Tersus Solutions has a specialized business serving three fire departments. It cleans firefighters' uniforms of toxic chemicals, which are taken away in 55 gallon drums for hazardous waste disposal. — *Tersus Solutions has a specialized business serving fire departments. It rids uniforms of toxic chemicals, which are taken away for hazardous waste disposal.*

The material flow

Delivered via truck, row after row of boxes packed with returns from from multiple brands occupy Tersus’ plant floor.

“We see all sorts of weird stuff,” Whitcomb said, like trucked shipments contaminated by mold or garlic. Tersus lays out rancid-smelling items in the sunshine before bringing them indoors, piece by piece.

Each product’s path through Tersus starts when a staff member inspects, identifies and grades its condition, logging details into computers running Archive or Trove software. They add a bar code tag to the inside of the garment for tracking purposes.

*Sewers at Tersus Solutions in Englewood, Colorado.*

Digital product passports that assign unique identifiers to new products might eventually eliminate this manual labor, but Whitcomb doesn’t expect that to happen soon. That’s because Tersus sometimes processes items that are a decade or two old. Some may cycle through more than once, he noted.

Goods eventually land next door in the fulfillment center for shipping. Tersus ships out tens of thousands of products each month.

The technology

Tersus tosses nearly all apparel and shoes, bag by bag, into its liquid CO2 cleaning machines, about 100 pounds at a time. It neither uses traditional dry cleaning chemicals, such as the recently banned perchloroethylene, nor the solvents used by “green” dry cleaning shops.

A colorful The North Face Remade jacket shows off the fact that it was refashioned from parts of secondhand jackets. — *A jacket from The North Face Remade flaunts that it was refashioned from parts of secondhand jackets.*

Madsen, Tersus founder and chief technology officer, invented a low-waste cleaning system. The CO2 machines look like regular laundry equipment on steroids, with their innards exposed on the sides. As internal pressure builds to up to 950 pounds per square inch, the CO2 gas liquifies. The machines run at close to room temperature. The original prototype, from 2011, still runs daily.

The washing drum jostles the garments gently. This preserves garment colors and water repellent coatings, and sheds minimal microfibers, according to Madsen, who added that stains and oils come off easily come off. At the end of the cleaning, pressure comes down, returning the CO2 to gas form. Items come out cool and dry.

The company reuses 96 percent of the CO2 and captures microfibers and chemicals such as per- and polyfluoroalkyls (PFAS).

After cleaning, the photography lab occasionally documents clothes with unique features or flaws.

The distribution center at Tersus Solutions was formerly a kitty litter factory. Tersus bought a Zamboni machine to remove the fine dust from the floor. — *The distribution center at Tersus Solutions was formerly a kitty litter factory. Tersus bought a Zamboni to remove the fine dust from the floor.*

The North Face, 20 minutes away in Denver, occupies a special corner of the Tersus plant. Here, the outdoor brand’s Remade creations, such as jackets with mismatched sleeves and bodice, emerge from melding imperfect garments. “Five years ago, those would have gone to an incinerator,” Whitcomb said.

This differs from mundane repairs that restore apparel to like-new condition. A refurbished shirt, for example, might feature Tersus’s own sewing thread, or an industry-standard YKK zipper instead of one with a branded pull.

Average repair time is 13 minutes. Tersus sends repair data, which can reveal failure patterns in garment production, to customers.

Once an item is ready to ship, a staffer wraps a branded paper “belly band” around it and slips it into a plastic mailer. The return address is Tersus Solutions.

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News

Tylenol maker Kenvue integrates sustainability into product design process

Key takeaways

Replacement for Pamela Gill-Alabaster, the storied departing head of global sustainability, signals key strategy shift.
Kenvue plans to prioritize the embedding of sustainability metrics during R&D.
Gill-Alabaster’s advice for sustainability leaders: “Stay grounded in data and leverage it as a strategic advantage.”

Send news about sustainability leadership roles, promotions and departures to [email protected].

Kenvue’s global head of ESG and sustainability, Pamela Gill-Alabaster — who established the Tylenol maker’s sustainability strategy after it split with Johnson & Johnson — is stepping down in June to “enjoy a bit of life” and consider her next role.

Upon her departure, Kenvue will fold responsibility for sustainability strategy into the R&D and operations division.

Jennifer Duran, previously vice president of product resilience and sustainability for Kenvue, will become group head of sustainability. She spent 16 years at British consumer products company Reckitt, where she designed its product sustainability strategy and chaired the ingredients steering committee.

“Kenvue is taking the next step to more deeply integrate sustainability at the heart of where we design and produce our products,” the company said through a spokeswoman.

Gill-Alabaster joined Kenvue in December 2022 after two years as senior vice president and global head of sustainability and social impact for toymaker Mattel.

Busy tenure

Kenvue, which reported revenue of $15.5 billion in 2024, was previously the consumer healthcare division of Johnson & Johnson, selling brands including Tylenol, Listerine, Band-Aid and Neutrogena. It was spun off as an independent company in August 2023.

Gill-Alabaster oversaw the validation of Kenvue’s science-based targets for emissions reductions and the publication of its first sustainability report. The company doesn’t have a net-zero target, but its short-term commitments include reducing absolute emissions for Scope 1 and 2 by 42 percent by 2030 and convincing suppliers representing about two-thirds of this Scope 3 emission to set reduction goals.

Gill-Alabaster also set policies for sustainable sourcing and introduced the company’s first refillable packaging formats.

Over 40 years in the corporate sector, Gill-Alabaster worked in corporate social responsibility programs at Revlon, the Estée Lauder Companies and L’Oréal. She teaches an ESG strategy course in Columbia University’s Master of Sustainability Management program. Gill-Alabaster was recognized with a Women in Sustainability Leadership award in 2022 but intends to take on another position after some time off.

“Having begun my career as a marketer, I want to continue working at the intersection of brand, purpose and impact, creating values-based campaigns, programs and platforms that move people and markets toward positive change,” Gill-Alabaster said.

Gill-Alabaster believes there is much reason to be hopeful about the future of the profession. “My advice is to stay relentlessly focused on materiality and the issues that matter most to your business and stakeholders with emphasis on managing risk, building resilience and unlocking growth,” she said. “Make sure you stay grounded in data and leverage it as a strategic advantage. This is a moment for clarity, focus and perseverance.”

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News

How to effectively respond to environmental rollbacks

Key takeaways

The sustainability community hasn’t responded well to the Trump administration’s full-court press on eviscerating sustainability due to a lack of innovative thinking.
Part of the reason is because the sustainability agenda is too complex and confusing for consumers and voters to understand and support.
A sustainability strategy reset with innovative solutions is critical for future success, including the ability to show what successful sustainability looks like, bring grassroots organizing to the national level, and build a new narrative that broadens public support.

The Trump administration began its second term with a bang that the sustainability community was ill-prepared to meet. Despite plenty of advance notice of Donald Trump’s plans to eviscerate environmental, energy and budget initiatives, sustainability professionals were caught off guard. Several factors explain the poorly organized and inept response by sustainability advocates:

There was no compelling narrative that presented a coherent, unified message of the previous administration’s sustainability initiatives. Rather, the Biden administration and stakeholder communities focused on implementing discrete policy initiatives such as increasing the number of electric vehicle charging stations and upping regulatory controls of greenhouse gas emissions that take years to reap benefits. Consumers and voters saw few near-term benefits, leaving many of them receptive to Trump’s counter-arguments about combating inflation and advancing living standards.
Collaboration within the sustainability community was balkanized and focused largely on advancing too many issues at once such as ESG, expanded reporting, decarbonization and infrastructure improvements. No broader effort was undertaken to engage the public on benefits of sustainability initiatives, much less anticipate how to respond to the agenda of a second Trump administration.
Tactics employed by environmental NGOs and their allies in response to Trump’s “flood the zone” initiatives were too traditional and limited for such a dramatic steamrolling of policy and agency shutdowns. These include lawsuits, fundraising appeals, letter writing and petitions, op-eds and other activities in the communications tool box. While useful, they weren’t sufficient to deter the Trump administration’s determination to advance its agenda.
The sustainability agenda is too complex and confusing and contains too many second-tier issues to resonate with the broader public. Between intricate reporting schemes and initiatives that lack specific goals, metrics and timelines, it’s difficult to assess whether meaningful results are achieved.

From ineptitude to innovation

Over the past few decades, the sustainability community has prioritized playing an insiders’ policy-driven game. While victories have been achieved, this strategy has created major vulnerabilities — namely that a large percentage of the electorate doesn’t understand the sustainability agenda. To push back against the current steamrolling, we need a more innovative strategy. Here are three ways to move beyond doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results:

Identify what successful sustainability looks like. In a recent paper by Systemiq, Jeremy Oppenheim argues that the sustainability movement needs “shock therapy” that focuses on “the promise of a better life, and an abundant, thriving and safe home for all.” At the same time, sustainability needs to provide “a practical contribution to near-term political priorities” by pulling climate out of the culture wars. To do this, sustainability leaders need to present a new national face for the movement that humanizes and refames how people can benefit from a more sustainable world via jobs, better health and overall prosperity. The public understands the significance of competition but hasn’t heard sustainability initiatives referenced in the context of improving U.S. infrastructure, for example.
Expand grassroots capabilities to the national level to engage more effectively. Many of today’s sustainability leaders weren’t around for the last successful time grassroots efforts really succeeded at a nationallevel: in the 1960s, with lobbying efforts to abate air and water pollution via federal clean air and clean water legislation. It’s now time for a sustainability strategy to build from the increasingly successful efforts that are already occurring at the grassroots level. And there are signs that the nation is ready: Post-November election results in Florida, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin and the large Hands Off turnout around the nation have demonstrated that local voices are ready to mobilize on behalf of mainstream causes at a level beyond what’s in their backyard.
Adopt a new sustainability vocabulary that fits the modern era. Expanding the sustainability agenda’s base of supporters will require a much broader coalition beyond the many elites that currently drive its policy agenda. And these new alliances will require a new language to encompass the range of more diverse interests represented. Terms such as “sustainability,” “ESG,” and “DEI,” that are poorly understood by consumers and voters and vulnerable to political exploitation need to be rethought in favor of language that is more accessible and commands broader public understanding and support.

Trying to limit Trump’s environmental rollbacks plays a useful role, but for a longer-lasting effect on the field of sustainability, leaders need to regroup, initiate a strategy reset and establish more goals for evaluating success. After all, it’s not as if trends in climate change, biodiversity, plastic waste and other major challenges were improving even pre-Trump.

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News

EU simplifies reporting requirements for deforestation regulation

Key takeaways

The scale back relaxes the rules for companies importing specific commodities into the bloc.
The change is a result of corporate lobbying that claimed the initial standards were expensive and burdensome.
The regulation is the latest of many to be diluted around the globe.

The European Union walked back mandates placed on commodities that were meant to mitigate the impact of associated deforestation, following a growing global trend of corporate climate disclosure simplifications.

On April 16, the European Commission released amendments documenting the simplification of the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR). A response to the estimated 15 billion trees cut down each year for commercial usage, EUDR mandates that companies ensure that their products do not originate from land that had experienced deforestation or forest degradation since Dec. 31, 2020.

EUDR, along with the EU’s Corporate Responsibility Sustainability Directive (CSRD) and Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence (CSDDD), positioned the EU as a leading global enforcer of corporate sustainability reporting.

The recent changes include the identification of products and by-products as in or out of scope, the clarification that all waste and second-hand products are not within scope of EUDR, and the distinction that packing material and containers for sale are in scope, while packing material and containers used to ship products can be excluded from all reporting.

Additionally, companies now only need submit due diligence reports once a year, and can resubmit previous reports for reimported goods.

Products within scope of EUDR include cattle, coca, coffee, palm oil and rubber, among others.

Why did EUDR scale back?

A shift towards the right in parliament, plus lobbying from impacted industries, triggered the changes.

“Many companies still lack the capabilities needed to meet the law’s specific requirements,” said Pierre-Francois Thaler, co-founder and co-CEO of EcoVadis, “and their suppliers often aren’t equipped to gather or report the necessary data.”

These capabilities include supply chain tracing and data-system connectivity, according to Thaler.

Noncompliance risks losing access to the EU market, fines and legal action, and potential reputation damage. A September 2022 poll found that 73 percent of European consumers tend to avoid brands linked to deforestation.

Deregulating trends

The EUDR easing follows recent scale backs of the CSRD and CSDD. In March, the EU released its Omnibus package, proposing weaker mandates than were in the original versions. All three amendments are being received with mixed results.

On the one hand: “The EU is recalibrating several sustainability regulations to make implementation more practical and achievable at scale,” said Thaler. Back in 2024, 28 trade associations sent an open letter to the European Commission urging the body to delay the implementation of EUDR. But others do not agree.

On the other hand: “Reducing the reporting requirements from every batch to merely once a year is the pendulum swinging extremely from one side to the other, raising concerns about how effective monitoring and enforcement can still be,” said Antonie Fountain, director of the VOICE Network.

[Join more than 5,000 professionals at Trellis Impact 25 — the center of gravity for doers and leaders focused on action and results, Oct. 28-30, San Jose.]

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News

ChargePoint taps recycling exec to build sustainability program

Key takeaways

Mike Schwartz is the company’s first formal hire responsible for ESG issues.
His job will include helping customers use data in their own emissions accounting.

Send news about sustainability leadership roles, promotions and departures to [email protected].

ChargePoint, which operates one of the world’s largest electric vehicle charging networks, named former recycling executive Mike Schwartz to be its first director of sustainability.

Schwartz reports to ChargePoint’s senior vice president of operations. He’s responsible for building the company’s corporate sustainability function, starting with conducting ChargePoint’s first materiality assessment and creating baseline measures of its current practices related to environmental, social and governance issues.

In addition, Schwartz will be the publicly traded company’s primary contact for investors and other stakeholders, including commercial customers. In that role he will help companies collect data that they can apply toward their emissions reductions goals for transportation and logistics.

“By building out our sustainability program and the heavily demanding reporting that will come with it, we’ll enable our corporate customers to accurately and precisely report the actual and avoided emissions from their electric fleets,” Schwartz said.

Despite policy headwinds faced by electric vehicles under President Trump’s administration, the company plans to install hundreds of ultrafast charging stations this year at strategic locations across the U.S., in collaboration with General Motors. As of July 2024, ChargePoint supported more than 1 million charging parts in Europe and North America.

Like many other EV industry companies, however, post-election economic conditions have not been kind. ChargePoint reported $417.1 million in revenue for its fiscal year ended Jan. 31, off 18 percent from $506.6 million. The company’s stock price closed at $0.51 on May 5, near its 52-week low.

Schwartz was most recently manager of ESG reporting for Republic Services, a $16 billion company that manages 74 recycling centers and 18,000 waste hauling trucks. His previous roles also include a three-and-a-half-year stint in consulting with ESG ratings firm EcoVadis.

[Connect with more than 3,500 professionals decarbonizing and future-proofing their organizations and supply chains through climate technologies at VERGE, Oct. 28-30, San Jose.]

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News

Benchmarking effort reveals food industry’s leaders and laggards

Key takeaways

The industry is making solid progress on core disclosure and target-setting measures.
Forward-looking companies are setting targets for methane and quantifying the impact of reduction strategies.
Retailers tend to score more poorly than food brands.

The latest food-industry benchmarking exercise from the non-profit Ceres provides an opportunity for companies in the sector to figure out if they’re a leader, laggard or somewhere in between.

The organization looked at 50 of the largest food and agriculture companies in North America, assessing each on their emissions targets and disclosures. Companies that achieved threshold scores for disclosure and target-setting were then assessed for other indicators, including procurement strategy and customer engagement.

Table stakes

The two core indicators covering targets and disclosure can be seen as table stakes in discussions of climate commitments.

On the disclosure side, the Ceres team looked at three metrics: published data for Scope 3 emissions from goods and services, agriculture and land-use change. For targets, the metrics were whether Scope 3 data was included and if the target was aligned with 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming. An overview reveals:

32 of the 50 companies achieved at least partial success on the two indicators.
Nine companies achieved all five metrics: Campbell’s, Danone, General Mills, Hershey, McDonald’s, Mondelez International, Nestlé, Starbucks and Yum! Brands.
Eight companies did not hit any of the five metrics: BJ’s Wholesale Holdings, Bloomin’ Brands, Darden Restaurants, Flowers Food, Kroger, Loblaw Companies, Performance Food Group and Texas Roadhouse.

Beyond the basics

When Ceres first benchmarked food and ag firms in 2021, “barely any companies were disclosing Scope 3,” said Carolyn Ching, who directs the organization’s research on food and forests. As Scope 3 disclosure has become more common, Ceres has added metrics to its exercise to capture more advanced steps that leaders are taking:

Climate scenario analyses aligned with 1.5 C of warming help identify risk and opportunities in the transition toward a more resilient food system, Ceres argues. Archer-Daniel Midlands, Compass Group and Post Holdings are among 16 companies that have conducted such analyses.
Emissions of methane and nitrous oxide — from livestock and fertilizer, respectively — are a particular problem in food and ag. Three companies have recognized this by setting gas-specific targets: Nestlé and Danone for methane, Campbell’s for nitrous oxide.
Quantifying the expected impact of specific reduction strategies allows companies to manage risk and create value, the report suggests. Amid the five companies that have done so, “General Mills stands out with its Climate Action Transition Plan that discloses reduction amounts by category and provides implementation timelines,” according to the report.

Sector trends

The Ceres team did not rank companies across all the metrics, arguing that do so would involve attaching arbitrary weights to the indicators. But broad trends can be discerned from the data. They include:

Half of the 18 companies that were not ranked on the additional measures — because they did not score highly enough on the basic disclosure and targets indicators — were retailers.
Food brands tended to rank higher. Ching suggests this may be because retailers work with a broad set of products, while food brands are closer to agricultural producers and more able to drive down supply chain emissions.
The sector as a whole continues to perform poorly on some disclosure metrics. Not a single company has committed to aligning its capital and operating expenditure with its emissions reduction targets, and no company has fully disclosed its progress for addressing emissions from acquisitions and divestments.

[Join a vibrant community of leaders and innovators driving cutting-edge tools, business strategies, and partnerships to protect and regenerate nature at Bloom, Oct. 28-30, San Jose.]

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News

‘I feel like I’m 11 years old again’: Sustainability professionals respond to 100 days of Trump

If you’re feeling discouraged, frustrated, uncertain or disheartened, you are hardly alone. Last Wednesday, the 100^th day of the Trump administration, we asked the Trellis community how their feelings about working in corporate sustainability have changed over the past year. More than three-quarters (76 percent) of the 244 readers who responded reported that their feelings have become more negative.

“I’m proud and determined but angry and frustrated at how much harder and confusing things have become,” one reader replied to our invitation to explain their response. “We have important work to do, and we collectively don’t have time to slow down and be distracted by dealing with the chaos.”

For some, the changes in government policy spurred powerful emotional reactions.

“I feel like I’m 11 years old again, trying to navigate shaky waters as my parents were constantly fighting,” said a corporate social responsibility reporting manager in Arizona. “I just want to do my job and make the world a place we all deserve to live in.”

Others pointed to financial and career insecurity.

“I’m always in suspense, waiting for the next executive order to stab another knife in the work I’ve dedicated my life to,” wrote one consultant. “I feel constantly under pressure from clients asking how to deal with the new administration’s actions.”

‘More determined than ever’

Of readers who reported more positive (10 percent) or neutral (14 percent) feelings about sustainability work, many described growing resolve in the face of a hostile environment.

“I’m more determined than ever to make sustainable changes and help the movement,” said Dawna Mirante, owner of Refill Mercantile. “We need to counter what the other side is doing, and I’m up for it.” (The respondents were invited, but not required, to publish their names with their comments.)

Others reported feeling better because businesses are adopting a more realistic balance between economic and environmental goals.

“I feel like this is an opportunity to reset — to move away from the often-empty slogans and wish casting (and greenwashing) to try to identify sustainability opportunities that make actual business sense,” said Alan Scheller-Wolf, a professor of operations management at the Tepper School of Business of Carnegie Mellon University.

Many more readers, however, said they were deeply disturbed by the administration’s choice to emphasize increased fossil fuel production over mitigating climate change.

“I love working in sustainability and feeling a sense of purpose from my work, but now I feel so much anxiety that all of the progress and hard work will be undone due to short-sighted and misinformed policy choices,” said a typical comment. “I worry that we will no longer be able to prevent major climate catastrophe.”

The great unraveling

Readers also told us that many companies they work for and do business with have slowed or abandoned their efforts to reduce their climate impact, reacting to uncertain economic prospects and the broader backlash against the ESG movement as well as the administration’s change in environmental policy.

“The uncertainty and tariff policy of the Trump administration is causing my company to pull back resources — people and spending,” wrote one sustainability manager. “It feels like many things I’ve been working on are unraveling or becoming inconsequential.”

The experience of working at companies that are scaling back their sustainability efforts evoked many emotions from readers: Anger and disappointment at their leaders, as well as fear for their own job security.

“As we see the politicization of climate change, the financial outflows to sustainability, growing greenhushing and the flip-flopping of CEOs to cozy up to the president and Elon Musk, it makes me feel like my job and the entire practice is at risk,” one reader wrote.

Even those working at companies that have maintained their sustainability efforts report having lost the respect, cooperation and resources they need to do their jobs.

“Corporate sustainability has been an uphill paddle ever since I started 25 years ago,” one professional wrote. “I had been excited that we had finally built legitimacy and momentum, but now I feel like there are forces deliberately trying to sink the boat. “

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News

Google CSO Kate Brandt: ‘We need to expand how we’re talking about this’

The tech giant’s chief sustainability officer reflects on how she’ll make the most of this critical time, drawing upon the two decades she’s been working to advance sustainability, in the debut episode of Two Steps Forward, a biweekly podcast.

Plus, we answer the question: Why are creative people more optimistic?

Soon to celebrate 10 years at Google — preceded by sustainability leadership roles at the White House and Defense Department — Kate Brandt talked with my co-host Solitaire Townsend, co-founder and “chief solutionist” at Futerra, and me in a wide-ranging conversation about this moment in sustainable business and the role of technology in accelerating sustainability goals.

“I think we’re certainly facing some crosswinds, but I remain really optimistic,” she said.

Among the key opportunities she pointed out:

The role of tech — and AI

“I’ve been so privileged to sit inside of a technology company and to work on this issue for nearly a decade,” Brandt said. “And look at how far we’ve come. Look at the advances we’ve made in energy. We now have advanced nuclear, advanced geothermal, massive scaling of wind and solar. Costs have come down dramatically. So, I remain very focused, and I think we need to keep going.”

It’s not just energy tech. Not surprisingly, artificial intelligence is high on Brandt’s and her company’s agenda as a means of tackling thorny sustainability challenges. She referred to AI’s “superpowers”: synthesizing, analyzing, optimizing and predicting vast amounts of information.

One promising application she cited is in the condensation trails — “contrails” — of aircraft, which represent about 1 percent of greenhouse emissions, according to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

“We’ve done work with American Airlines and Breakthrough Energy to use AI to better understand why is that actually happening,” she explained. “It’s a combination of factors. It’s elevation, it’s time of day, it’s temperature. And then we did 70 test flights with American and with very small incremental AI recommended changes, really just in altitude, they were able to reduce contrails by more than half. That’s the kind of thing that’s getting me excited.”

The power of communicating more effectively

Beyond technology, Brandt said, is the key role of communicating about sustainability. “We could do a better job of not only preaching to the converted and talking to people who think in terms of CO2e — which is like a very, very small percent of people, although I love us and I’m one of them — but really talking in a much more inclusive way about why are we doing this. What’s at stake here? When we’re looking at cities and traffic lights, can we make air quality better so my neighbor’s kid with asthma can be more healthy?

“We need to expand how we’re talking about this. We need to really lean into why this is meaningful, not just for those of us who already really care about the planet and the environment but for literally every single human being. So that’s what I want to work on.”

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News

Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr.: Let’s turn ‘cancer alley’ into opportunity alley

“I’m excited for this moment,” Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr., president and CEO of the Hip Hop Caucus, an advocacy group that works for racial, economic and climate justice, told us right off the bat. “It’s a tough moment, but I’m excited for it,” he said, citing the group’s 20-year history of harnessing culture and storytelling to “shape our political experience.”

In this episode of the Two Steps Forward podcast, Yearwood reflected on his organization’s journey leveraging culture to address major social and environmental challenges, particularly those impacting frontline communities.

Plus, we talk about how the music industry is stepping up to embrace sustainability.

Founded just before Hurricane Katrina, the nonprofit Hip Hop Caucus was built on the premise that the hip hop generation is uniquely positioned to drive change by combining cultural expression with political engagement. For example, the group’s “Think 100%” campaign aims to raise awareness of how pollution disproportionately impacts Black, Brown, Indigenous and underserved communities, particularly in so-called “Cancer Alley,” the 85-mile stretch of communities along the banks of the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, where communities exist side by side with some 200 fossil fuel and petrochemical operations.

Music to inform and inspire

Yearwood emphasized that the caucus was initially focused on promoting democracy and voter turnout among young people, but its mission quickly expanded to encompass a wide range of issues, including climate justice, economic justice and civil rights. The organization uses music, art and storytelling as powerful tools to inform, inspire and mobilize communities.

Yearwood described how music has informed social change, from gospel to bluegrass to rock ‘n’ roll. Critically, he explained the distinction between political and cultural conversations, noting that while politics can create divisions, culture has the power to build bridges.

“Our rallies would have like eight people,” he told my co-host Solitaire Townsend and me. “But then when we had these artists show up like LL Cool J,” and suddenly the venues would be packed. “So that was really the lightbulb moment,” how artists and celebrities can spread environmental messages to audiences of color. The group maintains a stable of two dozen or so “artivists” who help educate audiences.

How companies can show up right now

Which brought us to business, communications and storytelling. For Yearwood, storytelling is as critical to business success as almost anything else.

“If you’re a business and you’re not a good storyteller, you won’t be a good business,” he said. “That’s sales 101. You can’t sell anything if you can’t explain why somebody actually needs what you’re trying to sell. So being a great storyteller is essential.”

“We have focused on folks being revolutionary in the climate space, which is fine. But what we really need now in the business space to be solutionary,” he told us. “I believe that we can take a community like Cancer Alley and turn it into Opportunity Alley using that same area to create different types of businesses,” such as in the renewable sector.

“There’s many, many things that can be done that we can create opportunities for people that don’t mean that they’re getting sick or worse, dying at a very young age.”

On joy and love

Yearwood also talked about the relationship between creativity and optimism. He posited that creative individuals are more likely to be optimistic because they can envision alternative futures and solutions. He noted that while businesses may not use these terms explicitly, they still aim to connect with people on an emotional level.

Whether selling a product or advocating for change, the most effective communications tap into universal human desires for connection, satisfaction, and meaning, he said. “Through culture, creativity and authentic storytelling, both [activist] movements and businesses can inspire action and build a better future.”

Subscribe to Two Steps Forward here, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

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