How companies can support Indigenous communities in carbon markets

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

We might forget it, but it’s true: By absorbing carbon from the atmosphere, the world’s forests and oceans shield us from the consequences of our emissions.

Indigenous peoples have long known this and have managed their land for generations by protecting and restoring the world’s natural carbon sinks to mitigate the environmental crisis. 

As more companies wake up to this fact, they’re recognizing the need to develop nature-based projects and programs on ancestral lands with the input of the community. So much so that key features of inclusive nature-based projects and programs are emerging, providing pathways for companies to promote equitable engagement.

Prioritizing community engagement 

It’s estimated that 54 percent of the world’s intact forests are on Indigenous lands storing vast carbon stocks. For generations, people from these communities have used their extensive land management expertise to restore and replenish the environment. 

It’s obvious, but I think it needs saying: The best nature-based projects and programs are those which invite people with the deepest knowledge of a local environment to the decision-making table. Without their expertise, initiatives are more likely to fail. And if Indigenous peoples and traditional and local communities are excluded, projects will face social and reputational risks, too.

When these communities are properly included, the outcomes are stronger and longer-lasting. Programs can only endure if local people feel a genuine sense of ownership and see clear benefits tied to their development priorities.

For example, I recently spoke with colleagues at Silvania’s Race to Belem campaign, who are working with the Brazilian state of Tocantins to establish a state-level effort to curb deforestation. They made it clear that the involvement of Indigenous peoples, local communities and smallholder farmers was critical for success. They’ve discussed proposed revenue sharing and spending with those communities and the program will invest a percentage of its profits in sustainable livelihoods.

Community credentials count

Corporate buyers increasingly deploy internal teams and third-party experts to assess project integrity and flag risks. But up-front diligence is only part of the picture.

While early assessments often focus on the technical quality of emissions reductions and carbon accounting, buyers are placing a growing emphasis on a project or program’s social credentials — how it engages communities, protects rights and shares revenues. After contracts are signed, however, oversight often relies on developer reports or informal feedback. That’s not a reliable basis for managing risk or ensuring accountability.

In response, some companies are beginning to use tools from human rights and supply chain audits in carbon projects and programs. For example, companies such as Microsoft and Salesforce have started including third-party verification, stakeholder engagement and safeguards for Indigenous rights in their carbon credit investment agreements. These approaches reflect a growing understanding that durable, high-integrity outcomes require independent, ongoing oversight, particularly when it comes to community engagement and revenue sharing.

Many corporate buyers would welcome clearer and more consistent reporting formats for nature-based projects and programs. They want transparency around how revenues are distributed, how communities can raise grievances and how developers respond to concerns. Tools such as Beyond Alliance’s Common App are emerging to combat these challenges by prompting developers to disclose such project details. 

An ethical guide for companies

As expectations rise, initiatives such as Beyond Alliance are helping shape what good looks like and setting higher standards for social integrity and buyer responsibility. Alongside this, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development’s Buyer’s Guide offers a practical framework for companies procuring nature-based carbon credits from projects and programs that work equitably with Indigenous peoples and local communities. It’s built on two core principles: do no harm; and deliver benefits.

​​Project developers also play a pivotal role. Their approach to co-design, governance and long-term revenue sharing often determines whether these principles are upheld in practice.

Do no harm: First, companies should look for nature-based carbon projects and programs that demonstrate they have gained free, prior, informed consent from affected communities through dialogue using interpreters when necessary. Companies should engage in transparent, culturally appropriate communications with local people. Nature-based initiatives should also recognize local people’s land and resource rights. In fact, the best projects and programs help to consolidate and enforce these rights.

To ensure no harm, companies should check that nature-based initiatives regularly monitor the social impacts of their work. This means having proper safeguards and grievance mechanisms in place which local people can use to express opinions and raise concerns. It’s also important to submit projects and programs to local oversight institutions that may be aligned with activities on the ground. 

Deliver benefits: The best projects and programs consider local people as active participants rather than beneficiaries of carbon revenue. Companies can look for programs and projects that invest in local capacity building and leadership opportunities. For example, the Brazilian state of Acre just completed widespread consultations that led to the decision to channel 72 percent of the proceeds from one nature-based program to communities. 

Engagement is foundational to success

Engaging Indigenous people, traditional and local communities isn’t a formality; it’s foundational. Without involving the people with the best expertise, nature-based projects will lose out. They simply cannot be as successful.

The good news is that the tools to facilitate inclusion already exist. Now it’s time for companies to use their influence and push for better terms for Indigenous peoples, traditional and local communities.

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Publication of sustainability reports has dropped by half this year

Just 432 large U.S. companies filed sustainability reports during the first half of 2025, a sharp drop from the 831 that did so during the same period last year. 

The finding comes from an analysis of the 3,000 largest U.S. companies (by revenue) carried out by The Conference Board, a business-oriented think tank, and its data partner, ESGAUGE. Companies that published sustainability reports in the first half of 2024 but have not done so this year include Adobe, Citigroup, General Motors, Mastercard and Uber, according to the board’s analysis. 

The organization described the trend as a “strategic recalibration” of corporate ESG priorities rather than a wholesale retreat from sustainability reporting.

“There’s been such a shift this year in the U.S.,” said Andrew Jones, principal researcher at the board’s Governance and Sustainability Center. “The new administration has a very different kind of mandate when it comes to climate change and environmental issues and DEI. That’s introduced new risk dynamics.”

Previous studies by the Conference Board concerning company thinking on sustainability provide details of that new dynamics, added Jones. A survey published of 125 executives working on ESG, published in May, found that many are reframing how they communicate ESG issues and adding additional layers of review.

Source: Sustainability Under Scrutiny: Corporate ESG in an Uncertain Policy Environment, The Conference Board, May 2025

Concerns about ESG communication are particularly strong when it comes to climate; another question from the same survey revealed that this topic topped the list of issue areas that executives expected to attract scrutiny.

Source: Sustainability Under Scrutiny: Corporate ESG in an Uncertain Policy Environment, The Conference Board, May 2025

In addition to the situation in the U.S., companies may also have changed plans due to uncertainties around the future of the European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive.

Jones said the low number of reports likely reflects delays in publication rather than an abandonment.

“I think a lot of these companies will file sustainability reports,” he said. “They’re seeing where the environment goes. Perhaps they’re looking at some of their peers and competitors, and seeing what they do, particularly how they approach the DEI issue.”

Trellis contacted 10 companies that are late in filing their reports, including those named above, and will update this story when they respond.

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Why HP now lets its sales partners offer refurbished equipment

HP Inc. is encouraging its third-party sales partners to sell refurbished versions of its personal computers and printers by compensating them at the same rate they would receive for new products.

The initiative was created to support HP Renew Solutions, a business unit formed in November 2023 to expand sales of HP Certified Refurbished technology. These are products returned to HP by commercial customers when leases expire or during technology upgrade cycles, reconditioned with fresh components and offered for resale. 

Effective immediately, any HP sales partner authorized to sell HP products can also represent the secondhand editions. They were previously only sold through HP’s direct sales representatives. 

HP’s third-party sales channel drives approximately 85 percent of the company’s annual revenue, according to past company statements. The company reported $54 billion in sales for the fiscal year ended Oct. 31, 2024.

“Leaving the channel out of this would have been myopic,” said Claudia Contreras, vice president of HP Renew Solutions.

More buyers want secondhand products

HP’s program is similar to one offered by networking gear manufacturer Cisco for its remanufactured equipment. Cisco’s original program has been available for nearly three decades, but Cisco introduced a circularity promotion in January 2024 to make it more lucrative for partners to sell remanufactured gear. Cisco’s indirect sales channel accounts for close to 90 percent of its revenue.

Customer interest in refurbished options covered by HP guarantees about quality — important for erasing a potential stigma against reused computers and information technology — convinced the company to turn HP Renew Solutions into a standalone business initiative with undisclosed revenue goals. 

HP’s pledge is for 75 percent of its product and packaging content, by weight, to come from recycled, renewable or reused materials or components by 2030.

“We want to make sure that we are participating not just in the first life of these products but also in the second life,” Contreras said.

The portfolio of refurbished products available for resale to commercial customers varies depending on the region, she said. 

Certain personal computers are available in France, Spain, U.K. and U.S. One example is a refurbished version of HP’s EliteBook laptop computer that has a carbon footprint that is 60 percent lower than the original edition, she estimated. (The percentage varies depending on the product.) More recently, refurbished printers can be included as part of managed services contracts in the U.S. and European Union.

“If you are a company that is making bold and public claims about reducing emissions, this offers a very measurable way to lower the impact of your IT assets,” Contreras said. 

Sustainability metrics as deal closers

The new program supporting refurbished products is an extension of initiatives HP started offering in 2020 in response to commercial customer requests for more information about the energy consumption and carbon footprint metrics associated with HP’s products.

HP’s ability to offer information about sustainability as part of sales discussions translated into more than $1 billion in sales in fiscal 2020 and 2021. The company didn’t disclose data for 2023, the latest year for which an HP environmental information is available. Its next report is due in several weeks.

HP created the Amplify Impact certification in 2021 for sales partners that use sustainability metrics to close deals. More than half of HP certified partners have completed that training. HP declined to disclose how many partners are part of the overall Amplify program, citing competitive reasons, but past reports put the number around 10,000.

Compensating HP partners equally for new and certified refurbished products allows salespeople to focus on customer needs, said Mary Beth Walker, vice president and head of global partner experience and engagement at HP.

“We made a collective decision that in markets where HP Renew Solutions are available, we would equally incentivize all partners to equip customers working to adopt greater circularity,” she said.

Creating a level playing field was helpful, said Prashant Singh, vice president at HP partner End Point Solutions. “As a solutions integrator, we focus on helping clients get more from their device investments — not just at the point of purchase but throughout the entire lifecycle,” Singh said. “The flexibility and support to sell HP Certified Refurbished devices has been essential for keeping our clients productive even when budgets are tight.” 

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Satellite data reveals emissions hotspots in automotive supply chains

Scope 3 emissions can pose what seems like an intractable problem. To make cuts, companies must work with supply-chain partners. But what if an emissions hotspot lies deep within a supply chain? Going beyond direct contacts to find suppliers’ suppliers is often impractical.

Satellite data can help provide the necessary visibility, a case study of auto-sector emissions from steel and aluminum facilities suggests. 

To peer into automotive supply chains, Climate TRACE, a coalition of organizations that uses remote sensing to track emissions from millions of facilities globally, teamed up with TASA Analytics, a company that helps businesses model supply chains. At the request of a major automaker, the two organizations plugged Climate TRACE data on steel and aluminum facilities into TASA models of automotive supply chains. The findings revealed significant variation in emissions across facilities and countries.

‘Clear as day’

In the case of steel production, satellite readings of heat emitted from facilities can be used to track the output of blast furnaces, which use forms of coal to convert iron ore to steel. 

“There are indicators of emitting activity that we can see from space in the satellite data really easily,” said David Younan-Montgomery, director of partnerships at WattTime, an environmental nonprofit that helped establish Climate TRACE. “They show up clear as day.”

Another technology, the electric arc furnace, produces lower emissions-intensity steel, particularly when powered by electricity from renewable sources. By using government data on the carbon intensity of grids, Climate TRACE can estimate emissions from this alternative production process, as well as emissions from aluminum plants.

Four-fold variation in emissions

When added to TASA’s models, which simulate the structure of supply chains in specific countries and industries, the data revealed significant opportunities for emissions savings. At a country level, for instance, the study showed that the average electric arc furnace in the U.S. generates less than 1 metric ton of carbon dioxide for every ton of crude steel; the figure for a blast furnace in India is close to 4 tons. 

The team also found that refining aluminum at specific facilities in Brazil and smelting it in Canada created slightly more than 5 tons of CO2 for every ton of the metal; a pathway in India produced more than three times as much.

The models extend to the facility level and can be used to estimate embodied emissions in specific automotive components, revealing differences that can guide emissions strategy. For one component studied by TASA, the embodied carbon varied by a factor of almost four depending on which U.S. steel mill was used.

That level of granularity is potentially a huge improvement on traditional “spend-based” Scope 3 accounting, in which emissions are calculated using the total spent on goods and an emissions factor that averages the performance of all production within a country or region. 

Armed with both country and facility data, the automaker can now use information on its supply chain to consider how to “take this big hot spot that permeates through the whole supply chain and begin to identify where in that system you can intervene,” said Timothy Smith, co-founder of TASA Analytics and professor of sustainable systems management at the University of Minnesota.

Climate TRACE has previously announced collaborations with Tesla and Polestar, but the automaker involved in this study asked not to be named.

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No, corporate sustainability is not dying

With all due respect to Samuel Langhorne Clemens, the death of corporate sustainability has been wildly exaggerated.

In recent months, a steady stream of essays and hot takes have trumpeted a downward spiral of the sustainability era in business. Bloomberg declared, “Big Business Is Abandoning Its Climate Goals” while the Harvard Business Review offered that “Corporate Sustainability Is in Crisis.” A venture capital blog asked, “Is Corporate Sustainability Dead?”

Meanwhile, self-appointed watchdogs and critics on social media weigh in daily with their own bill of particulars: stalled progress, lowered ambition, missed targets, greenwashing, greenhushing, hypocrisy. Pushback and constructive criticism are welcome, of course, but these pundits seem almost giddy and gloating in pointing out the shortcomings they see.

Together, they make a compelling case that corporate sustainability is circling the drain.

Except, it isn’t.

Against the tide

To be sure, there’s a kernel of truth in the headlines. Walmart and Coca-Cola are among several big companies acknowledging they’ll miss key climate emissions targets, while some other firms’ goals have simply “lost their meaning.” Banking giants such as Citigroup and Goldman Sachs have exited international net-zero finance groups. Anti-ESG backlash, especially in the U.S., remains real and ferocious. Several of the world’s most powerful companies, including some sustainability leaders, are pumping millions into trade associations actively obstructing climate policy.

But to declare corporate sustainability dead — or even dying — is to fundamentally misunderstand both the movement and the moment.

What we’re witnessing is a recalibration — an evolution of terminology, tone and tactics in response to a complex and pugnacious political and economic environment. Sustainability isn’t fading away. It’s simply gotten smarter, quieter, more embedded and, in many respects, more effective.

“There’s more rigor, more skepticism, much better data and a sharper focus on results than there was five or 10 years ago,” noted Jeffrey Hogue, CSO at Levi Strauss & Co, in a recent LinkedIn post. “It’s become clear that real progress requires committed, consistent work that prioritizes impact, addresses the real-world implications of our operations and aligns with long-term business strategies.”

Even so-called “greenhushing” — companies keeping mum about their sustainability efforts to thwart criticism — misses the point. As another chief sustainability officer told me, “We’re talking less, but we’re doing more.” The real work is happening away from the klieg lights of public scrutiny: integrating sustainability into core strategy and focusing on risk management, supply-chain resilience and operational excellence.

A hero’s journey

Why is the doom-loop meme so compelling? As the cognitive linguist George Lakoff tells us, our perspectives are shaped by mental structures — frames — that help us make sense of complexity. The idea that big business is fundamentally about greed, and that sustainability initiatives are essentially a fig leaf, is a comfortable frame that fits with public skepticism about capitalism itself. It’s a deep story, to borrow sociologist Arlie Hochschild’s phrase, about what’s gone wrong in society and who’s to blame.

It’s also a story that’s easy to tell from the cheap seats. Critics from across the political spectrum seem to love tossing brickbats at companies for perceived sustainability missteps, often without acknowledging the sheer scale and difficulty of what’s being attempted: Decarbonize and detoxify supply chains, eliminate plastic waste, create circular material flows — all without affecting profits? That’s a hero’s journey, replete with the requisite dragons: shrinking budgets, shifting regulations, sclerotic bureaucracies and the ever-present specter of blowback.

Doing the hard work has never been harder.

What the data show

Here’s what the headlines don’t say: Most companies are not abandoning climate action. According to PwC’s 2025 State of Decarbonization report, while 16 percent are reducing their commitments, 37 percent are strengthening them. The number of firms setting climate targets is nine times higher than five years ago.

Moreover, the doom-loop meme represents a largely U.S.-centric view. A growing number of Asian businesses are embedding sustainability into core operations, driven by stricter regulations and investor expectations, according to India-based credibl. China plans to introduce carbon footprint accounting rules and standards for key industrial products, according to Reuters. Similarly, Latin American companies are increasingly integrating sustainability into their strategies and operations. 

While the U.S. obsesses over the perceived horror of “woke” corporations, the rest of the world is quietly getting on with the work of building a low-carbon economy. Outside the U.S., ESG might as well stand for Economics, Security and Geopolitics.

Resting in peace

In recent months, some longtime observers have been asking: What parts of the corporate sustainability agenda should we be hospicing?

Yes, hospicing — that’s their word.

The notion that parts of a CSO’s remit should be laid to rest may be unsettling, but it’s worth pondering, Justin Adams, co-founder of the Ostara Collective, a multidisciplinary group seeking to “build a holistic vision for our evolving economies,” told me recently.

“One of the mistakes we have made in the sustainability world is believing either that the system is naturally going to change or that people are motivated to want the type of change that is needed,” said Adams, whose résumé includes stints at BP, the World Economic Forum and The Nature Conservancy. “We’re just doing what we’ve always done for 30 or 40 years, which clearly is not working.”

Voluntary certifications and reporting frameworks that don’t drive real change? Let them go, says Adams. So should anything else that doesn’t contribute to a positive impact.

“What matters now is materiality — focusing on the issues that truly move the needle for both business and society,” he said. What stands to emerge is a more mature, honest and impactful approach.

Progress, not perfection

To Adams’ point, the pace of change is way too slow. Several sectors — chemicals, food and ag, and apparel, among others — seem unwilling or unable to embrace sustainability beyond pilot projects and small-ball initiatives. The systemic conventions undergirding all companies — quarterly reporting, the short shelf life of CEOs, investor expectations of never-ending growth — aren’t exactly going away. 

So, let’s not confuse recalibration with retreat. The forces that sparked corporate sustainability are here to stay and becoming ever more urgent. The real story isn’t about the demise of sustainability but about its messy, necessary evolution. The work is hard, the journey long and the stakes couldn’t be higher.

But the direction of travel is clear — and it isn’t backwards.

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Why future CSOs must aim for transformation, not mere progress

The Two Steps Forward podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and other platforms — and, of course, via Trellis. Episodes publish every other Tuesday.

Raz Godelnik, an associate professor of strategic design and management at Parsons School of Design Strategies, explores sustainable business models. In his writings on Medium, he weighs in on topics central to the profession of sustainability.

His graduate-level class on sustainable business models has been a mainstay for nearly a decade at Parsons. On the most recent episode of the Two Steps Forward podcast with me and my co-host, Solitaire Townsend, Godelnik offered five lessons garnered from teaching this class.

“You need to operate on different levels,” said Godelnik. “You need to meet people where they are. And meeting people where they are many times means that you don’t lead with sustainability. You actually lead with other priorities that people actually care more about.”

Also in this episode, Soli and I discuss the current state of the sustainability profession, and why it continues to flourish globally, flying in the face of a common misconception that corporate sustainability is dying (the topic of my recent essay on Trellis).

Thinking in systems

Godelnik’s critique of current corporate efforts calls for moving beyond incrementalism and into systems-level transformation that prioritizes values over profits. “We’re living in an era where, for the most part, what we’re doing is tweaking the system rather than transforming the system,” he told us. “I call it sustainability as usual … grounded in the prioritization of profit maximization and growth, mostly short-term growth.”

He urged companies and designers to focus on radical innovation that reimagines systems, rather than making marginal improvements within flawed ones.

“The fundamentals haven’t changed,” Godelnik said. “What has changed is the political environment … It’s also important to zoom out and to look into the regulatory environment, to look into social norms, to look into the market incentives.”

Less auditing, more strategy

Godelnik described how external conditions — regulation, social pressure, policy — can accelerate or impede corporate sustainability, often more than internal ambition. This distinction reflects a concern that compliance is crowding out creativity. True progress will require investment in bold, entrepreneurial approaches, he said.

“There’s a lot of managerial sustainability going on, not much entrepreneurial … They’re spending more money with auditing firms than on innovation and strategic activity and business model work.”

Ultimately, Godelnik’s goal as an educator is to empower future professionals to act decisively, experiment boldly, and retain clarity on the difference between incremental and radical change.

“What is really critical is how to instill in them a sense of agency … Even if these are just small ways of experimenting with change, if they will be doing it, that would be great.”

The Two Steps Forward podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and other platforms — and, of course, via Trellis. Episodes publish every other Tuesday.

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How H&M and Coach are shifting success metrics to scale circular business

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

In a world where business decisions are ultimately based on revenue, sales and profits, circular business models are often siloed in sustainability strategies. To mitigate this reality, many fashion businesses are shifting their success metrics to provide clear, quantifiable evidence of how these models unlock resilience and competitiveness.

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s latest project — The Fashion ReModel — is working with leading brands, from high-street to high-end, on what it will take to implement circular business models at scale and begin to make the economics work, while also targeting key intervention points to improve commercial viability.

One year into the project, insights reveal which success metrics are most effective for building a compelling business case that drives internal buy-in and brings stakeholders on board.

Establish a revenue-based ambition for circular business models

Resale, rental, repair and remaking models enable businesses to offer new services, providing multiple revenue streams from one product. At the same time, costs can be reduced due to savings from better resource productivity and risk reduction. What the industry is missing is a meaningful metric to demonstrate the contribution of these models to a business’ overall revenue.

Participants of The Fashion ReModel are working towards their own revenue ambitions to increase the percentage of their total revenue derived from circular business models. By using gross percentage revenue, these brands and retailers have moved the success of circular business models into the core of their businesses, with a clear metric to monitor and align around.

H&M Group, for example, has invested in resale models to create additional growth. In 2024, resell sales represented 0.6 percent of H&M Group’s total turnover, up from 0.3 percent in 2022. Contributing to this growth is Sellpy, Europe’s largest secondhand clothing peer-to-peer platform. Sellpy has significantly increased its revenue contribution to H&M, doubling its share since 2022.

Identify new ways to articulate value — starting with customer benefits

In today’s linear system, the profit margins of circular business models can appear lower when compared like-for-like with linear models. The Fashion ReModel partnered with the NYU Stern Center for Sustainable Business to identify several benefits areas that showcase how circular models can drive business resilience in ways businesses aren’t currently tracking.

One of the critical areas identified is customer benefits. Circular business models offer an opportunity to diversify the relationship with the customer — improving loyalty, engagement and acquisition. Businesses can rethink their customer experiences, designing touchpoints beyond a single product sale.

Arc’teryx, for example, is capitalizing on this opportunity to tap into new customer bases. Its platform for resale and repair services, ReBIRD, has doubled its business year-on-year. Customers can visit ReBIRD Service Centers in stores to assess, wash or repair their product, keeping clothing in the loop and out of landfill.

Quantify the climate mitigation opportunity

With over 500 textiles, apparel, and footwear companies committed to science-based targets or commitments, circular business models offer an opportunity to deliver and demonstrate progress on ambitions by displacing upstream production and keeping products in use for longer, thereby cutting emissions.

Some organizations participating in The Fashion ReModel are using a combination of climate metrics to quantify this impact and further strengthen the business case. Absolute emissions, in particular, is the only metric able to evidence whether businesses are on track to meet decarbonization ambitions.

Take Coach’s Soho denim bag, a product that has been both commercially successful and lowered carbon emissions. It was created by two brands with a long history of reuse and repair. Tapestry (the parent company of Coach) partnered with Bank & Vogue (Canada’s largest secondhand clothing trader) to demonstrate how remaking products out of post-consumer existing denim has a lower environmental impact.

To quantify this, Tapestry commissioned a life-cycle assessment which found that Bank & Vogue’s repurposed denim has up to an 80 percent reduction in GHG emissions compared with conventional first-use denim. With this data, Tapestry can show this product’s ability to help meet its ambitious goal to achieve net-zero GHG emissions by 2050.

A starting point to make the economics work

The journey to scaling circular business models in the fashion industry begins with individual business action. But to make these business models the norm, broader collaborative action is required both within organizations and beyond.

To transform vision into value, increased financing and investment are needed across key areas such as marketing and infrastructure to collect, sort and redistribute merchandise. Businesses can also drive alignment on emissions reporting and measurement frameworks, such as by supporting the GHG Protocol with its revisions to better reflect business activity aligned with the transition to a circular economy. Lastly, businesses must inform an ambitious policy agenda to create industry-wide alignment around critical policies to make the economics work.

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How Credo Beauty created new plastic from tiny bits of packaging

Less than 10 percent of single-use plastic is recycled, most of it bottles and jugs. That rate is far lower — close to zero, in fact — for smaller bits and pieces of packaging such as bottle caps, straws and coffee pods. 

In the cosmetics industry, for example, few of the 120 billion units of lotion pumps, mascara wands and other components made each year are recycled, according to the Pact Collective. 

The San Francisco nonprofit has gathered 140 cosmetics makers and retailers — including Sephora, Ulta Beauty and L’Oréal — to attack small-format plastic waste. Pact maintains more than 3,300 bins for spent makeup jars, lids and applicators at North American stores including Nordstrom Rack and Saks Fifth Avenue.

To further its mission, the collective created something new from nearly 232 tons of detritus it has collected since 2022. Last year, as its collection volumes tripled, the organization transformed piles of plastics into a novel resin.

Credo Beauty, a founding member of Pact, then used that resin, called NewMatter, to create recyclable pumps for its moisturizer bottles. Those pumps usually blend several types of plastic with a metal coil, which prevents its recycling. Credo, however, used a single material — polypropylene — to make it easier to recycle later. Now that it has cracked this challenge, Pact seeks to encourage investors and infrastructure builders to support systems to collect, sort and recycle more small-format plastics.

“As the first beauty retailer to co-create a recycled resin from hard-to-recycle empties, we saw an opportunity to show circularity at work,” said Christina Ross, head of science and impact at Credo Beauty, a founding member of the Pact Collective. “This pump became a proof point and we can’t wait to see what brands do with the material next.”

Banding together

As international negotiations continue on a global plastics treaty, Pact isn’t the only corporate collaboration trying to keep packaging components out of landfills and incinerators. In February, the Consortium for Small Formats launched with backing from L’Oréal Groupe, Kraft Heinz and P&G. Individual brands’ efforts at circular packaging include refill programs from the likes of Kiehl’s and customer collection programs run by nonprofit Terracycle for Sephora and MAC.

Members of the U.S. Plastics Pact, meanwhile, have focused on sweeping benchmarks for reducing the proliferation of petroleum-based plastics, but their 2025 and 2030 deadlines are slipping out of reach.

“We are taking a different angle,” said Pact Collective Executive Director Carly Snider. “We’re collecting this material and then proving that it has value.” The initial heavy lift shows that certain cosmetics plastics can be integrated into municipal recycling systems, she added. “I’m hopeful that we can have this case study to show that this material has value, and therefore it’s worth the investment to your infrastructure for us to collect this material curbside.”

A Pact collection bin at a Nordstrom Rack store in Skokie, Illinois. Credit: Trellis Group / Elsa Wenzel

Pact’s June 26 impact report described how Credo’s custom pump, announced in September, fit into a busy year of scaling up recycling. Ninety-eight percent of the paper, glass and metal collected by Pact has been recycled. So has 70 percent of sorted, clean plastics.

Retail collection bins are core to Pact’s mission to grow as a household name for consumers, three-quarters of whom care about sustainable packaging, according to the nonprofit. Pact also collected 88,959 pounds of industrial waste of returns and expired or damaged goods last year.

The making of the NewMatter pump

“We used NewMatter resin for the pump because we wanted to show that beauty packaging can be made from beauty waste,” said Ross of Credo. “No one had ever made a high-functioning component from post-consumer beauty packaging before, so we knew the road wouldn’t be easy but also that it mattered.”

The journey to make the recycled pump started as Pact’s consumer-and-industrial packaging streams shipped to a plant in Lake Zurich, Illinois. After being sorted into 14 categories, the would-be trash was sent to mechanical recycling partners. 

Next, the plastic recycler shredded and turned the waste into pellets.

The recycler required some 40,000 pounds of incoming material, which Pact’s collections alone did not reach. Therefore, Credo’s fully polypropylene pump blended 84 percent of material from Pact’s collection bins with ocean-bound plastic gathered by hand in Malaysia. The remaining 16 percent is virgin polypropylene. “It took a lot of work with them to figure out ways that we can get this material in there,” Snider said. “This is a really high value source of plastic.”

One pound of plastic waste stays out of landfills or oceans for every 38 pumps that Credo makes, according to Pact.

Next steps

Beyond the pump, Pact also turned recycled high-density polyethylene into soap dishes with Terrazzo-like flecks in them. “It’s really creating a way that customers can hold circularity in their hands,” Snider said. “It’s not this abstract thing.”

Credo is exploring where else it can use NewMatter resin, such as closures and other components that tend to be hard to recycle.

“Now that the infrastructure is set up to use take-backs on a more circular level, we need to continue to create a demand for post-consumer beauty-grade materials,” Ross said. That includes exploring how extended producer responsibility regulations cropping up in multiple states can help brands to advance innovative packaging, she added.

“You’re missing a huge piece of the puzzle here by just sending this to the landfill and not being able to sell it again,” Snider, of Pact, said.

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9 in 10 experts say it’s time to rethink the sustainability agenda

If you think the current sustainability agenda isn’t working, you’re in good company.

A recent survey of more than 800 sustainability experts across 72 countries conducted by Trellis data partner GlobeScan, in conjunction with the ERM Sustainability Institute and Volans, reveals a pivotal inflection point in the evolution of the global sustainability agenda. In 2030 — the year we’re supposed to have achieved the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals — sustainability professionals say a major recalibration will be needed.

When asked how they feel about the current state of the sustainability agenda, 56 percent of sustainability professionals said the current approach must be radically revised. Another 37 percent said the existing strategy needs to be modestly revised and 6 percent said the current approach works well as is.

What this means

Survey results show experts overwhelmingly agree that the current approach is no longer fit for purpose. With more than 90 percent calling for change — and more than half demanding a radical overhaul — we find ourselves at a pivotal moment with significant openness to new approaches to sustainability. This presents an opportunity for new ideas and innovation to take sustainability to the next level.

Based on a survey of 844 sustainability experts in 72 countries in April and May 2025.

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Why Walmart’s first CSO thinks sustainability leaders should ‘live with operations’

Former Walmart CEO Lee Scott asked Andy Ruben to lead the retailer’s environmental strategy three times before he reluctantly agreed to become its first corporate social responsibility and sustainability chief in October 2004. 

Ruben, who supported Scott’s strategic planning work, had been angling for a traditional role with profit and loss responsibility, but his boss was insistent that a strategic thinker was the best person to lead Walmart’s first concerted push to address environmental and social concerns. 

Scott’s motivation: addressing a crisis in consumer trust and responding to growing criticisms about Walmart’s environmental and labor practices as the retailer’s revenue edged close to the $285 billion mark. “This was about how Walmart would make use of scale,” recalled Ruben, now the founder of resale startup Trove, during the latest episode of the Climate Pioneers interview series. “It wasn’t about solving for phthalates.”

One year after Ruben stepped in, Walmart announced three simple goals with no end date: to be supplied with 100 percent renewable electricity, to eliminate all operational waste and to sell products that aren’t a drag on planetary resources. 

“As we looked at those early years, it was essentially finding innovation anywhere in the business for decision makers and profit and loss owners to do things that would work for customers,” he said. “Society was viewed as the biggest, longest term, broadest way to think about strategy.” This thinking was later foundational in Ruben’s decision to leave Walmart to found one of the first startups focused on “recommerce,” or the resale of secondhand goods.

Lesson: Speak the language of front-line managers

During his three-year tenure as Walmart’s sustainability chief, Ruben learned to be as “bilingual” as possible in conversations with division heads and front-line store operations managers — i.e., asking about their business concerns, hearing about their frustrations. 

By doing so, Ruben was able to connect the dots between Walmart’s initiative to shrink the shelf space it used for laundry detergent and early design initiatives to reduce volumes of water into more concentrated product formulas.

“It wasn’t about trying to achieve a climate goal,” he said. “It was understanding environmental and social topics as the broadest form of strategy and leveraging that as innovators.”

Likewise, this thinking can help organizations course-correct quickly if an idea doesn’t work. Ruben cited the example of a program he later tried as head of Walmart’s private label group to shrink the size of cereal boxes — saving on packaging materials. That effort didn’t move the needle in the way Ruben anticipated. 

“I was so naive,” he said. “I thought, ‘I’ll just take these great sustainability learnings and we’ll just put them into the products and supply chains.’” 

What Ruben didn’t account for was the broader systemic changes required for a new box design to catch on more broadly across the product category. “You couldn’t avoid the model that we were in, and you had to face that,” he said.

His advice for new CSOs who don’t have a background in operations: “Live with operations. I think the understanding of why things are the way they are, and what people need short term and longer term to achieve their businesses and be successful, is so essential to building longer-term thinking … into current business.”

Another tip: When an idea is rejected, ask why. “Every time someone says no, there’s something behind that. Don’t miss the opportunity to understand that.”

Big idea: Help brands resell used products

Ruben’s private-label experience illustrated the limits of corporate sustainability initiatives focused mainly on improved eco-efficiency, so he stepped outside of the system in 2012 to create Yerdle, a marketplace that let consumers trade household items ranging from electronics to clothing.  

The venture grew to more than 1 million members — validating consumer interest in secondhand goods — but “self-inflicted” missteps and lackluster interest from brands prompted a reset four years later. That’s when Ruben seized on the idea of offering a way for companies to start their own resale businesses rather than letting others control that narrative. Early supporters: Eileen Fisher, Patagonia and REI. The company is now known as Trove.

“We pivoted to take the capabilities we had and allow the brands to leverage the capabilities to compete in this new way,” he said.

From a sustainability standpoint, extending the life of apparel and other items by allowing them to find a second home is a feel-good story but it’s not the top reason most consumers buy secondhand. Reducing consumption is often the third consideration after brand value and whether the item is available quickly. That’s OK with Ruben. 

“I’m good with it being first, second, third, fourth or fifth in order,” he said. “What I really want to see happen is I want to see us change the way we work. When you think about the way we operate from the sky, making hundreds of billions of new items every year and then going through all of the sourcing, production, movement [of goods] only to bury them nine months later back in the ground, it is kind of idiocy.”

Resale accelerant? Trump’s tariff crisis

Uncertainty over the sales impact of President Donald Trump’s tariff strategy — consumer confidence has slipped across many indexes since January — could serve as a nudge for companies to more tightly integrate circular economy strategies with core business initiatives, Ruben said. 

“I don’t think they’re the sole driver,” he observed, “but they’re an accelerant.”

Before Trump’s tariff talk sent chills through the retail and consumer products sectors, multiple market forecasts called for growth of 10-12 percent in 2025. Another indicator published in early July predicted sales of $65 billion in the U.S. alone.

The ultimate goal of Trove’s business model is to help companies erase the value judgement between whether something is new or used, which will be crucial for helping circular economy initiatives find a place within corporations that isn’t viewed as a side hustle.

Product take-back and trade-in programs won’t truly make an impact until sales of those used items start eating into sales of new ones. 

“The key metric is when you bring back an item, if that item gets sold to someone and displaces some new sales growth dollars, you’re good,” Ruben said. 

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