Joe had always shown up for our local meetup of sustainability professionals. He volunteered for panels, served on committees and never missed a gathering. One night after a networking event, we were chatting as we stacked chairs and he said, “Man, I really needed this tonight. It’s been so hard since I got laid off.” I was shocked — wasn’t a job search something he should’ve mentioned during the networking hour? 

He didn’t see it that way. He had shown up that evening to spend time with friends, and he didn’t want them to think that he was using them to get a job. I gently reminded him that we would all be thrilled to help him, and with his permission I spread the word that he was looking. Dozens of people reached out with leads, introductions and referrals, and within two months he started a new job working with one of our members.  

As a job search coach, I hear stories like this every day. In the age of online applications and AI-generated cover letters, some job seekers can go weeks without talking to an actual person. We’re all so busy and distracted that many of us have forgotten what our communities can do for us. People such as Joe are so focused on the joy of belonging that they don’t tap into the group’s collective knowledge and extended network. Others are so out of practice with connection that they don’t think to reach out to their communities when they’re job searching and miss out on both emotional support and professional opportunities.

One study found that loneliness can be a significant contributing factor to unemployment, so your job search can get a boost from the mental and physical benefits of joining virtually any community; however, professionally focused ones can take you even further. They allow you to benefit from the knowledge and experience of the collective group to help you build your skills, improve your job search approach, discover opportunities and secure referrals. 

Getting started

Here’s how you can do your part to be an active, engaged member in a community:

• Sign up for the newsletter and actually read it
• Show up to online forums, webinars and in-person events 
• Say yes to requests for volunteers, outreach support or donations
• Share your knowledge, your time and your stories. Mentor someone, contribute to discussions and participate on panels
• Support community leaders because many communities are run by volunteers with shoestring budgets

Whether your goal is to boost your job search or improve your mental health, finding a group of people that you’ll enjoy digging deep with is a necessity. Below are several examples of communities that can support you in your journey. 

Training and job search communities

• Climatebase: Mobilizing talent for a climate-positive world. 
• MCJ Collective: Tech and industry leaders who are building, working for or advising on solutions to address the impacts of climate change. 
• OnePointFive Academy: Helping individuals and organizations build key technical skills to drive change and succeed in the green economy.
• #OpenDoorClimate: A community of climate professionals making themselves available to chat with climate career seekers. 
• Terra.do: Getting 100 million people to work directly on climate in this decade.
• Voiz Academy: Launching climate careers from an ecosystem of training, community and job search support.
• Work On Climate: Making climate work mainstream.

Professional networking communities

• inClimate: A curated community of climate professionals, founders and investors across Europe and beyond. 
• The International Society of Sustainability Professionals: Providing the community, training and tools needed to create sustainable change.
• Net Impact: Inspiring and equipping emerging leaders to build a more just and sustainable world.
• Reconsidered Change Hub: Supporting sustainable business professionals with both the “what” and the “how” of becoming a more effective agent of positive change. 
• The Trellis Network: Exclusive in-person and virtual meetings with open, candid discussions put on by the company behind this website. 
• There are also dozens of professional networks supporting specialist areas such as green buildings or sustainable finance.

Climate advocacy communities

• Citizens’ Climate Lobby: Empowering everyday people to work together on climate policy.
• Climate Reality Project: Advocating for action at the local, state and federal levels.
• ClimateVoice: Mobilizing the voice of the workforce to urge companies to go “all in” on climate policy.
• The Sierra Club: Amplifying the power of millions of members and supporters to defend everyone’s right to a healthy world.
• Soapbox Project: Creating joyful community spaces to heal our climate anxiety and loneliness through connection, learning and action.

Local, personal and lifestyle communities

Most of the above organizations are nationwide and some are even global. Don’t forget to look in your own backyard for the people who care about the same things that you do. 

• Green Drinks: An organic, self-organizing network of local groups hosting informal monthly meetups. 
• Local chapters of sports groups such as the Road Runners Club of America or the Global Pickleball Network or groups that get people into nature such as the Sierra Club.
• Your city, county, or state’s sustainable business networks or green business programs.
• Your school’s alumni association.

The post Looking for a job? Find your community first appeared first on Trellis.

Consumer products companies and retailers are redesigning packaging as state regulations in California, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota and Oregon take aim at single-use plastic in the form of fees on brands and retailers.

It’s a big potential liability: 225,000 tons of single-use packaging is used per day for everything from food and beverages to laundry detergent to shampoo, according to estimates by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 

That has inspired dozens of reusable packaging trials such as the citywide test of reusable cups in Petaluma, California; Chilean startup Algramo’s refillable container program; and TerraCycle’s Loop program, discontinued in the U.S. but still available in France and Japan.

Regulations make reusable containers more feasible

“The hottest reason for companies to do this is complying with regulation,” said Carolina Lobel, senior director of the Center for the Circular Economy with investment firm Closed Loop Partners. “They will prioritize where they have to do it because of a mandate.”

The rationale is straightforward: Sustainability teams will find it easier to justify upfront investments when finance teams consider them against the expense of non-compliance.

Moving to reusable containers or packaging also requires investments in manufacturing changes, reverse logistics and container wash systems, among other things, according to an analysis of the reuse model by the Center for the Circular Economy and the U.S. Plastics Pact, a trade group also studying the issue.

Brands and retailers should assess these factors when considering reusable packaging: 

• Environmental benefits, including durability, weight and how many times the packaging can be used before it must be recycled. Dispensing candy in a steel container, for example, doesn’t make as much sense as switching a laundry detergent bottle. 
• Consumer acceptance, including the frequency with which an item is purchased and how the redesign might affect other dynamics, such as product safety.
• Operational alignment, such as whether a category uses standardized formats and how existing back-of-house infrastructure can be used to support it. 

“It makes sense to activate around markets where reuse already happens,” said Anita Schwartz, founder and principal of Circularity Consulting. Many grocery stores, for example, have washing facilities to support preparation for hot food or salad bars. The same goes for the catering operations on corporate campuses, Schwartz said.

Source: DeliverZero

Where reuse makes sense in the near term

With that in mind, the Closed Loop Partners and U.S. Plastics Pact analysis identifies five consumer product categories where reusable packaging is best suited for near-term adoption. All are sold in grocery retailers or convenience stores, which often have active, ongoing relationships with specific customers.

“The first mover should be at the retailer level,” said Schwartz. “You’re going to have frequency of return happening.” 

Prepared foods

Environmental benefits: A reusable salad bowl used at least two times has less of an impact than the single-used edition.

Consumer acceptance: Items are consumed quickly, and purchases in salad bars and delicatessens are frequent.

Operational alignment: Packaged on site — often by consumers at a salad or hot food bar — which reduces logistical overhead; repeat customers are more likely to return containers.

Example: DeliverZero, which offers reusable containers to restaurants, is piloting this model at Whole Foods stores in Denver and throughout Colorado. 

Fresh produce

Environmental benefits: Unclear, although reusable containers that preserve cut vegetables longer than thin-plastic film could help reduce food spoilage and waste.

Consumer acceptance: Vegetables are bought frequently because of their shelf life, making it more likely for consumers to bring back packaging. Reusable packaging could also be important at the distribution level.

Operational alignment: Processes tend to be local and manual, making it simpler to optimize materials without significant adjustments.   

Example: Fresh Del Monte uses reusable plastic containers to transport bananas. 

Beverages (including milk, juice and alcohol)

Environmental benefits: Reusable bottles made of polyethylene terephthalate plastic are heavier than the single-use alternative, so it takes at least two return cycles for them to have a lower impact.

Consumer acceptance: Many consumers are familiar with bottle return schemes and refill models, such as those for local dairies.

Operational alignment: It may be possible to use existing collection points that offer small fees for returning cans or bottles. Existing dairy wash and refill infrastructure offer potential for other beverages, including fresh juice, beverage concentrates or wine.   

Example: Startup Olyns, installing reverse vending machines in California, uses artificial intelligence to sort many types of containers for recycling; they could be used for reusable bottles or cups in the future.

Home care items (especially detergents)

Environmental benefits: Some bottles, such as the ones for laundry detergent, are already reusable. Redesigning for durability would increase weight, but reusing the container at least four times would translate into a 50 percent emissions reduction.

Consumer acceptance: Consumers and businesses are less concerned about safety protocols compared with containers for food and beverage categories.  

Operational alignment: Items such as detergents or spray cleansers come in fairly standard shapes, which is important for scale.

Example: U.K. grocer Ocado uses a durable plastic, refillable container for delivering detergent. 

Personal care products (especially shampoo, lotions and soaps)

Environmental benefits: Items are purchased frequently as containers are emptied, and many are already made of durable glass or plastic.

Consumer acceptance: Perfume or hand soap are often displayed on containers; consumers are more open to attractive designs that are durable and refillable.

Operational alignment: Packages already designed to handle multiple uses; they would fit easily into existing collection and wash systems.

Example: Kiehl’s and Body Shop are two brands that offer refillable bottles for their products.

[Gain insights to move beyond incremental action and accelerate the shift to a circular economy at Circularity, April 29-May 1, Denver, CO.]

The post Reusable packaging: 5 categories where it makes sense appeared first on Trellis.

Are some materials fundamentally unsustainable? In the past, most companies working with challenging or hard-to-recycle materials would’ve said yes, believing their material would overcome known obstacles eventually.

Today, the tides are turning. Notable materials like plastic are meeting a “no more chances” attitude from design professionals. As part of the Sustainable Packaging Coalition’s second-annual Trends Report, which launches next month, we’re seeing a clear trend in which the design and sustainable packaging industries are abandoning their past neutrality on materials.  

How certain materials fell out of favor

When companies began to work on sustainability projects in earnest several decades ago, most took a “material agnostic” approach. They focused on the “job” that packaging needed to do and tried to select a material that balanced sustainability with efficiency and cost. This led to a system that prioritized functional, aesthetic, and performance requirements over material sustainability.  

In 2025, this is a decidedly less popular strategy. While fossil-fuel plastic might seem like the only material facing this pushback, take a closer look and you’ll see this trend playing out for certain fibers and bioplastics, too. 

Let’s start with plastic. Public perception paired with U.S. and international packaging policies, global plastic treaty discussions, and innovations in alternative materials have permanently changed the plastics conversation. Although the global plastics treaty stalled and is awaiting future negotiations as of August, last year a coalition of nations took notable positions on plastics. This included members of the EU, South Korea, Canada, Rwanda, Peru, and — fleetingly but meaningfully — the U.S, where the federal government is now advancing markedly pro-plastic policies. These countries pushed for international caps on plastic production and the elimination of certain harmful chemicals used in plastic manufacturing — all decidedly “non-agnostic” positions. 

What about paper? Although we’re seeing a boom in paper-based packaging innovation (in 2024, one trend we saw was the “paperization of everything”), the “tree-free” movement is also noteworthy. A number of smaller brands, often makers of products like toilet paper, paper towels and disposable food serviceware, have started to lean on alternative fibers like bamboo to tell a story about how their products help save trees and prevent deforestation. This messaging plays into certain assumptions — often misconceptions — about the sustainability of alternative fibers, yet it also signals a vocal move away from one material towards others. 

Companies set material-specific goals

Fed up with threats of microplastics, deforestation or the ongoing challenges with recycling, companies are setting material-specific goals and touting their work to moving away from certain materials. Some recent examples include:

• Google’s goal to eliminate plastic packaging for new consumer electronics products by 2025. Last year, the tech behemoth made news by open-sourcing its plastic-free guide and sharing its learnings and products with peer companies. The company is already 99 percent of the way to its goal, and the redesigns have catalyzed other sustainability wins — packaging weight and volume have been reduced by at least 50 percent. 
• Amazon removed 95 percent of its plastic air pillows as part of its multi-year effort to remove plastic delivery packaging from North American fulfillment centers, replacing them with paper filler made from 100 percent recycled content. This amounted to the company’s largest plastic packaging reduction effort in North America and will avoid nearly 15 billion plastic air pillows annually. 
• Japanese multinational pharmaceutical company Takeda set and exceeded a 50 percent sustainable paper packaging goal, asking their suppliers to pursue Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification while also exploring how to reduce paper inserts by transitioning to digital product information leaflets. 
• Unilever has shared its efforts to “transition from hard-to-recycle plastics into paper with a compostable barrier” and replace plastics “with an alternative material in the future.” 

Approaching materials with a new mindset

Companies — and people — are approaching materials in a new way, setting boundaries around what kind of materials they want to work or interact with. Every material comes with sustainability and performance trade-offs. Some companies — often inspired by consumer pressure — are now saying, “I prefer a material with these trade-offs, not those.”

This shift is similar to other kinds of environmentally conscious mindset shifts, like people opting to eat less meat in favor of plant-based alternatives. When people choose fake meat, for example, they’re opting into current trade-offs such as synthetic ingredients or higher costs, and opting out of higher carbon footprints or ethical issues with animal products. 

In packaging, this shift is prompting more companies to draw a line in the sand for their portfolio. Instead of attempting to resolve long-standing challenges and never-ending trade-offs for a wide range of materials, companies can lean into a smaller set of issues for a handful of materials they prefer. 

So maybe the future of sustainable packaging boils down to narrowing your focus on material choices that help you determine which sustainability battles are worth fighting for.

The post Companies abandon material-agnostic approach to sustainable packaging appeared first on Trellis.

Corporate energy buyers bought 21.7 gigawatts of renewable energy in 2024, an annual record that boosted additions to the U.S. electric grid from such transactions to 100 gigawatts since 2014. That’s according to the Clean Energy Buyers Association’s 2024 Deal Tracker.

For context, 1 gigawatt of electricity can support 750,000 U.S. households for one year. 

Just shy of three percent of all renewable generation on the U.S. grid is attributable to some sort of corporate transaction, according to CEBA. The analysis considers publicly reported deals that are at least 20 megawatts in capacity; at least 235 companies have announced deals since 2014. 

Companies negotiate voluntary power purchase agreements and other sorts of contracts with utilities for clean energy so they can use them to reach renewable energy goals and claim greenhouse gas emissions reductions. This practice has become more popular over the past five years.

Key takeaways from CEBA’s latest analysis:

• The Sun rules: Solar power accounted for the vast majority of the 2024 purchases — 73 percent — despite ongoing permitting and grid interconnection delays.
• Nuclear surprises: Companies procured 1.5 gigawatts from nuclear facilities, about 6.7 percent of total (compared with 7.7 percent for wind). Nuclear energy wasn’t even mentioned in the 2023 Deal Tracker summary. Both Microsoft and Amazon have signed high-profile deals in the past 12 months.
• Batteries bloom: There was a 300 percent increase in capacity during 2024, accounting for 7.7 percent of capacity added.
• Geothermal firsts: Google’s 115-megawatt contract with Fervo in Nevada made the list. It uses a new type of tariff to insulate other customers from the cost of investing in an emerging technology.
• Interest continues to grow: 20 new companies finalized a deal in 2024, fewer than the 28 in 2023 but still notable growth.
• Half the contracted capacity is operational: 54 gigawatts have been switched on.

What’s ahead

While the Trump administration’s policies favor fossil fuels over renewable generation, clean electricity capacity continues to grow rapidly along with overall global energy demand. The world’s energy appetite surged 2.2 percent in 2024, faster than the average demand growth of 1.3 percent between 2013 and 2023.

Low-emissions generation sources covered most of the capacity increases last year, according to the International Energy Agency. Total worldwide capacity is now around 700 gigawatts. Nuclear power capacity reached its fifth highest level in the past five decades, IEA reported.

Tech companies building out massive data centers for artificial intelligence are at the center of this controversial growth. While CEBA’s report doesn’t disclose or discuss specific companies, Amazon was the single-biggest corporate buyer in 2024 — for the fifth year in a row. 

The tech company has invested in 600 projects to date, including ones in states like Louisiana and Mississippi that have proportions of high-emitting fossil fuels as generation sources. In the latter state, projects backed by Amazon account for 24 percent of solar electricity on the grid.

The post Record year for corporate clean energy as contracts reach 100 gigawatts appeared first on Trellis.

A new United Nations mechanism for validating high-quality carbon credits has announced its first approval, but carbon experts aren’t celebrating. The inaugural project is seen by many as flawed, and its inclusion highlights a challenge to the mechanism’s integrity goals.

Plans for the Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism (PACM) were finalized last November at the COP negotiations in Azerbaijan, allowing project developers to begin applying for PACM approval. A quality label backed by the UN could be a welcome addition to the carbon market, where many buyers lack the resources to undertake the due diligence necessary to identify high-quality credits. In some cases, companies have been publicly named as purchasers of “junk” credits that generate little or no climate benefit. 

Following a meeting of the PACM supervisory body last month in Bhutan, we know now the first project to receive the mechanism’s approval: A Myanmar-based scheme that distributes fuel-efficient stoves to communities that cook using wood fires. Switching to improved stoves reduces the quantity of wood the recipients use, reducing deforestation and emissions.

What’s considered sustainable?

The general principle behind cookstove projects is generally considered sound, but the specific project that the PACM approved is not. Calyx Global, an independent rater of carbon credits, last week ranked the project in Tier 3, the lowest of its categories. 

One of the problems with the methodology the project follows is what’s called “non-renewable biomass,” explained Calyx Co-Founder Donna Lee. When estimating climate benefits, project developers must account for wood that will grow back and so should be considered sustainable. Under the methodology used in Myanmar, this estimate was left up to project developers, who had an incentive to downplay the amount of sustainable harvesting in order to maximize the purported impact of the stoves.

The methodology, which was developed by the non-profit Gold Standard, was also rejected this month by the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market, another important arbiter of carbon market quality.

This inauspicious start stems from a compromise made as countries haggled over plans for the PACM. China, India and other nations successfully lobbied for credits generated under a previous UN-based scheme, known as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), be allowed to apply for PACM approval. The transition window closes at the end of this year, when new and much more stringent rules will be introduced, said Lambert Schneider, a climate policy expert at the Oeko-Institut in Germany and a member of the group crafting the rules. “I’m very confident that such a project wouldn’t pass the new rules,” he added, referring to the Myanmar cookstove credits.

Better baselines

Schneider hopes that the PACM will insist on tough rules governing baselines, for example. To estimate the quality of emissions that a project avoids or remove, developers develop a baseline to compare it to. Many standard-setters allow a “business as usual” approach, in which the impact of the project is compared to the status quo. Schneider is pushing for PACM to insist on a “downward adjustment,” which factors in ongoing changes in the region where the project is based, such as the decarbonization of the grid. He’s also advocating for project developers to be required to apply for credits before they start work, rather than retroactively identifying projects that might qualify for credits.

Yet large quantities of low-quality credits may gain PACM approval before those rules get implemented. More than 1,000 CDM projects have applied for PACM status. Large-scale renewable energy projects dominate the list, according to a 2025 analysis by the NewClimate Institute in Germany. Many of these projects would have been completed without carbon credit funding, meaning they lack what’s known in carbon markets as “additionality.” 

Schneider estimates that low-integrity credits representing hundreds of millions of tons of carbon dioxide could eventually be approved in this way. If they do, he added, buyers should scrutinize the label on PACM credits to determine whether the project was a transfer from the CDM or approved under the new rules.

That kind of due diligence is always worthwhile due to the wide variability in carbon credit quality. Almost all cookstove projects rated by Calyx fall into Tier 2 and 3, for example, but Lee noted that the concept as a whole is not flawed. Indeed, if the problems with the non-renewable biomass estimate were addressed, the majority would shift into Tier 1 and 2. “They can be good projects that have really wonderful sustainable development benefits to women and children and human health,” she said.

The post New UN carbon credit mechanism okays first credits — and highlights flaws  appeared first on Trellis.