Absolut’s paper bottle now comes with a paper cap, too

When Absolut sold a special edition vodka in paper bottles in the U.K. in the summer of 2023, the cap was aluminum because it is a difficult piece to reconfigure. Two years later, the spirit maker has successfully tested a paper lid.

The cap was introduced in real-world settings — bars — to make sure neither leaks nor degradation resulted from frequent screwing and unscrewing. Absolut also wanted to confirm that bartenders could grip the bottles easily.

“If it doesn’t work, you will hear about it,” said Eric Nat, director of packaging development at Absolut. “If it does, no one will comment.” That’s not quite true. The participating bartenders voiced approval for how quiet the bottles were when tossed into recycling bins, no small issue in busy establishments. 

Absolut is one of several consumer products companies — along with Carlsberg, Cola-Cola, L’Oreal and Procter & Gamble — that is collaborating with Paboco (the Paper Bottle Company) on paper-based alternatives to glass, aluminum and plastic containers. Paboco, which was created through a joint venture of European packaging companies, Sweden’s Billerud and Austria’s Alpla, is aiming to launch paper bottles at scale by the end of 2025.

Absolut’s interest in paper bottles is spurred by a desire to transition to lower-emissions materials and reduce plastic waste, according to Nat and another company executive involved with the project, Louise Palmstierna, director of future packaging. “We saw fiber technology as promising, because we knew that recycling needed to be part of the equation,” Palmstierna said. 

The concepts that Absolut is currently evaluating will eventually be shared with other brands of parent company, Pernod Ricard, seller of Glenlivet Scotch and Beefeater gin.

Absolut’s packaging team meets regularly with other brands that are experimenting with paper bottles. “We have different takes, but the same ambition,” Nat said. “The faster we can get to market, the faster we can get acceptance.”

Putting a lid on it

Absolut partnered with a Swedish startup, Blue Ocean Closures, to produce its paper cap. Blue Ocean and Paboco had released a paper bottle and cap in October 2024 that weighs less than 16 grams. (They didn’t disclose the capacity.) Both bottle and lid, which include a thin layer of plastic to protect against leaks, were designed to be suitable for paper recycling systems. The plastic weighs about 2 grams.

Wine bottles on a store shelf
The Collective Good wine collection at Target. Credit: Frugalpac

Pros and cons

Shifting entirely to biobased barriers for the bottle and cap is a priority, but it presents unique challenges. “Working with a spirit is tough,” Nat said. 

Here are four reasons why:

  • Alcohol content: Over time, alcohol stains paper — a significant branding consideration.
  • Shelf life: Bigger bottles can sit for a year or more, so packaging that outlasts such a timeframe is critical. For now, Absolut plans to use paper only for smaller quantities. 
  • Carbonation: The relevant brands in Pernod Richard’s portfolio will steer clear of paper bottles until there is more data on how barriers stand up to bubbles.
  • Flavor: Absolut is studying how the new packaging affects the taste of its flavored versions. 

Tradeoffs to consider

Sector interest in paper bottles mirrors a more global one, said David Linich, a PwC partner focused on decarbonization and sustainable operations. In the U.S., paper is recycled at a rate than glass — roughly 60 percent versus 31 percent. That said, the bottles could potentially introduce substances of concern, such as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (aka PFAS), in their leak-prevention barriers. “It’s not a clear and easy decision,” Linich said.

Most paper bottles remain available only in limited quantities. One notable exception is Target’s Collective Good wine collection, launched in April 2025. The initial release of four varietals arrived in 256,000 bottles provided by British company Frugalpac, which also makes them for Monterey Wine Co. Frugalpac’s bottles require consumers to separate a plastic pouch from the paper bottle; both are recyclable, in different bins.

Though the unique format of paper bottles offers important shelf differentiation, brands need to be “cognizant of greenwashing claims,” said Brad Kurzynowski, manager of fiber for the Sustainable Packaging Coalition. 

“The bottles are produced from a renewable resource and have an interesting recovery pathway,” Kurzynowski said. “But they are also replacing materials with relatively good recycling rates. There also needs to be consideration of something like lifecycle carbon footprint and how a heavier bottle might perform against something like a lightweight plastic bottle.”

Absolut has said little publicly about its ultimate commercialization plans. Still, it believe that paper bottles “introduce a new way for consumers to think differently,” said Palmstierna. 

“It’s about the right package for the right occasion,” she said. “You might buy a glass bottle for consumption over time, but if you’re hosting a party, paper is perfect,” “We want to change consumer behavior, and we can’t be alone to do that.” 

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It’s time for Apple to wield its influence on climate policy

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

Last week, Apple CEO Tim Cook presented President Donald Trump with a gold plaque and a promise to invest $100 billion in the United States. The move was good for his business and shareholders, to be sure. But given that Cook, and Apple, have historically professed to care about more than just business success (like climate change), now would be the perfect time for them to use their newly manufactured goodwill to tackle climate for the sake of business and society.

In its 2024 Environmental Progress Report Apple noted, “We owe it to our global community to rise to the challenge of climate change with all the innovation, empathy and commitment we can muster.”  

The company has made admirable steps toward greening its own operations by investing vast sums and leading the industry on those measures. It also left the U.S. Chamber of Commerce 16 years ago because of that trade group’s opposition to climate policy. 

But noble as these operational efforts are, they’re a category error — like turning the stove off as a way to stop a house fire.

In simple terms, Apple and Cook have followed the playbook of the rest of the giant, massively profitable and therefore highly influential tech industry — which is to do everything they can to appear to lead on climate, without actually doing the things required to solve the problem. Their work, viewed in isolation, seems worthy. But given the reality of the problem and the speed and scale of action required, it’s far from sufficient. 

Instead of driving change at a societal level, Apple has almost exclusively focused on its own impacts, calling for vague action on climate such as corporate or federal emissions targets, but almost never asking for federal regulation. The company has been virtually silent on specific policies, including during the Senate battle over the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which eventually passed — and during the recent legislative action to dismantle much of the IRA. 

Even in its much-lauded television ad that spoofed an “audit” by Mother Nature, the company never once mentioned public policy, focusing solely on operations. And yet, Cook hasn’t been entirely silent: He donated a million dollars to Trump’s inauguration, tacitly supporting the administration’s anti-climate-action policies.

Apple could really lead by deploying a different playbook: the one business has always used to drive change in society. That approach uses power, voice, lobbying force, political influence, money, marketing machinery and customers to create the right social, economic and legal incentives to drive desired outcomes. 

A different playbook

This successful corporate influence playbook has been in place since 1972. At that time, big businesses, offended by stringent legislation such as the Clean Air and Water Acts, National Environmental Policy Act, the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Civil and Voting Rights Acts, created the Business Roundtable specifically to wield political influence against regulation. It worked. Together with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, they stopped labor law reform, lowered taxes and turned public opinion against government intervention. (Who serves on the board of directors of the Business Roundtable now? Why, Tim Cook does.)

This history leads to a syllogism: business knows it can move the needle on issues it cares about; it says it cares about climate change; therefore it ought to act in ways that will help match the urgency of the crisis. 

But broadly, and specifically in the tech world, that hasn’t happened. Instead, companies have focused on reducing their own carbon footprints through actions such as energy efficiency, clean power purchases, funding for technology innovation and helping suppliers clean up their operations. They market products that help users and customers reduce emissions. But voluntary, small-scale actions can’t provide the speed and scale of market transformation needed. That requires far-sighted policy and regulation to steer the economy rapidly to a zero-carbon future. 

Yet when it comes to political pressure, an analysis by the nonprofit research firm InfluenceMap shows that big tech companies focused just 4 percent of their federal lobbying activities on climate. Like Apple, they rarely support specific policies — instead choosing to heavily market their own operational greening, leaving many with the (misleading) impression that what we need is simply for more companies to follow their lead. These actions give the government a pass; after all, if business is solving the problem, why bother with regulation?

Breaking a taboo

If Cook were to publish an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal pointing out that climate has become a business risk and that federal regulation (not just incentive-based legislation) is essential, it would change the corporate game. 

Because Apple is so admired, the move would galvanize other business leaders and silence elected officials tipping back into climate denial. Cook could single-handedly break the taboo against business advocating for regulation. Next, he could charge his company with reaching out to customers, asking for their help to pressure elected officials. (Most consumers care about climate change.) 

Cook could also:

  • Make public Apple’s climate lobbying (or lack thereof) now occurring behind closed doors and commit to allocating substantial lobbying dollars specifically to climate. 
  • Speak up to defend key EPA regulations under attack. (Ironically, while Cook met the President at the White House, Trump’s EPA was actively dismantling the foundation of American climate law, a rule called “the endangerment finding.”) At the state level, Apple could push for stronger climate policies and use its freshly announced investments as leverage. 
  • Use the company’s considerable global influence in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere it operates to help enact stronger climate regulations.

The Trump administration has flipped the calendar back more than 20 years, to an era when people didn’t even believe the planet was warming. With climate deniers running all federal divisions, and agencies either gutted or weaponized in support of fossil fuel expansion, we have limited tools in the climate fight. In the absence of government, corporations are one of the most powerful agents of change. And one of the most effective tools they have is their influence.

The ability to solve — or significantly move the needle on — a problem that condemns hundreds of millions of people to suffering carries with it the moral obligation to act. As one of the most successful and powerful corporations in the world, Apple has the leverage to change the state of play on climate in the U.S. At this particular moment in history, it could do even more by taking a stand for democracy itself, which would solve multiple problems at once — including ensuring the stable governance needed for successful business. How could it not? 

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Mega-scale forest carbon programs have major promise — and big challenges

Vast government-managed forest conservation programs are launching in the tropics, to limit deforestation and reduce corporate carbon emissions.

Unlike project-based programs, which impact limited parcels of land and are typically managed by private developers or NGOs, these “jurisdictional” programs, as they are known, cover emissions reductions across an entire country or state with standardized baselines, monitoring and safeguards.

By offering government-validated credits at such a massive scale, these programs aim to minimize such issues as leakage (when deforestation migrates) and double counting (when more than one entity uses the same credit to make a reduction claim) by providing a way to consider all land-use changes within the jurisdiction.

Implementation, however, has met with some skepticism. In Brazil, for instance, a public prosecutor is challenging one $180 million forest conservation program in the state of Pará. 

While the jurisdictional approach is relatively untested, proponents argue that outsized interventions like these are needed to combat today’s alarming scourge of deforestation, which releases large amounts of stored carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Inevitably, evaluating jurisdictional programs and the credits they offer will be a necessary art for business leaders engaging with voluntary carbon markets. 

“There’s a lot that can go wrong, especially when you’re working deep in forests with Indigenous groups and sometimes in contested territories,” said Barbara Haya, director of the Berkeley Carbon Trading Project. “You really need to know the program well before you can in good conscience give donations or buy these credits.”

What are jurisdictional forest programs?

Forest conservation is the largest source of carbon credits on the voluntary carbon market, accounting for about 25 percent of the inventory. But the current network of individual, disconnected projects has produced mixed results.

“Despite more than $3 billion in aid for REDD and close to a half billion carbon credits awarded over the last 20 years … deforestation is still continuing at an alarming rate,” found a study by the Berkeley Carbon Trading Project. REDD stands for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation. The framework helps countries value projects to address deforestation.

In expanding the project model to cover so much more territory, jurisdictional programs bring to bear more accurate measurements, more coordinated enforcement efforts and much farther-reaching solutions. Conventional projects average around 200,000 hectares. Jurisdictional programs often require a minimum area of 2.5 million hectares for certification; that’s about the size of Massachusetts.

Governments in Ecuador, Costa Rica, Ghana and Brazil have all set up jurisdictional programs. Generated carbon credits are owned by the state and sold directly to buyers through purchase agreements, or through other entities as determined by the government.

While many critics argue that jurisdictional programs don’t adequately compensate for corporate carbon emissions, most acknowledge that the system is an improvement over the fragmented project model.

Problems in Pará

The jurisdictional program being created by the Brazilian state of Pará covers an area about three times the size of California. The state has reached a deal with the LEAF Coalition, which represents companies like Amazon, Bayer and the Walmart Foundation, to purchase 12 million carbon credits at $15 each. 

The challenge filed by Brazil’s public prosecutor cites an illegal forward sale of credits and inadequate consultation with Indigenous groups, among other objections.

People working with the program counter that the process has only just begun, and no credits have been sold. Pará’s community consultation process, one of the largest in Brazil’s history, will help determine the benefit-sharing agreement. Project development is being allowed to continue while the lawsuit unfolds.

“I can’t overstate how challenging it is to involve so many people in such a huge place as Pará,” said José Octavio Passos, Brazilian Amazon director of The Nature Conservancy. “Sometimes, it takes three days by boat to get to people. It’s a very expensive, complex process that involves multiple communities that speak different languages.”

Due diligence essentials 

Here are some tips for navigating the new world of jurisdictional forest programs and the carbon credits market.

1. Check the certification

Accredited certification standards include ART TREES, Verra JNR and FCPF. Each attaches specific requirements to program approval.

ART TREES is the most widely used standard for jurisdictional programs. To be certified, programs must do annual monitoring with internal quality checks and submit monitoring reports for three years of the five-year certification period.

If a program is certified by an organization you don’t recognize, there are two things to look for: “One is whether the methodology has a CCP label by the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM),” said Gabriel Labbate, the UNEP’s head of the climate mitigation unit and the UN-REDD program. “I would also check with CORSIA, the carbon market for international aviation that undertakes an assessment of methodologies.”

Approval by these bodies is a strong initial indicator of a high-integrity program.

2. Review the independent audit

Before any credits can be issued, independent audits must verify that a program is adhering to its certification, its baseline measurements are accurate and emissions reductions are, in fact, occurring. Certification bodies also require adequate community consultations, which auditors will verify.

“The system will go through an audit process before it can issue credits,” said Octavio Passos. “In the case of Pará, an auditor will check all the specifications, particularly the safeguards and consultation process.” 

3. Understand local context

Different regions have different deforestation drivers, so the program must be tailored to address conditions on the ground in collaboration with local stakeholders.

Implemented properly, mega-scale programs can be a powerful tool that drives systems change not just for forest protection, but for human rights, as they bring added scrutiny to coverage areas.

“Jurisdictional REDD programs are government policy, really,” said Jamey Mulligan, head of carbon neutralization at Amazon. “It’s legal protection for the forest and enforcement of those protections. It’s better agricultural sector planning. It’s recognition of Indigenous rights. It’s all of those things.”

Understanding the local context is also important to avoid programs that enable or exacerbate social harms.

“If you have a country in which you see widespread human rights abuses in rural areas, that’s something I would look at,” said Labbate. “In these times, though, it would be very unlikely that Verra or ART TREES would allow any abuse to go forward.”

4. Take account of community involvement and benefit sharing

Jurisdictional programs must also determine what percentage of revenues goes to local communities and what percentage to the government, to manage the system as a whole.

For example, Acre, another state in Brazil with a jurisdictional program, recently announced that 72 percent of proceeds will go to Indigenous communities and other local groups.

Whatever the split, though, inclusion and deference to community opinion is key. 

“A high-quality program needs to ensure that inclusive participation mechanisms are in place from the earliest stages of design and that community governance structures are involved in overall decision-making,” said Josefina Braña Varela, vice president and deputy lead of forests at the World Wildlife Fund.

5. Know your risk vs. reward appetite

What happens in Pará will help determine the parameters and practices of future state- and country-wide projects. That said, some experts believe that confrontation and conflict, while inadvisable from a reputational risk standpoint, will be necessary parts of the process.

“You have to have tough conversations,” said Mulligan. “We can’t solve global deforestation without governments getting together with Indigenous peoples and local communities to work through the challenges: How are we going to work together? How are we going to share resources? What are our respective roles? These are the conversations that need to be had.”

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New carbon credits put focus on electronics recycling and reuse

Old computers, mobile phones, data center servers and other electronics make up the world’s fastest growing waste stream —62 billion kilograms in 2022. Less than one-quarter of it is collected and processed into some sort of second life, according to the 2024 Global E-Waste Monitor. 

A small, four-year-old U.K. consulting firm has created a new type of carbon credit it hopes will change that.

Written by Bloom ESG, the methodology assigns greenhouse gas emissions reduction values to processes such as mining discarded electronics for rare earth minerals, disassembling them for their component parts or sprucing them up to sell as refurbished gear. 

Dynamic Lifecycle Innovations, a technology and electronics recycler with facilities in Wisconsin and Tennessee, bought the first 300,000 verified carbon credits issued under the new scheme. Those credits represent emissions avoided as a result of Dynamic Lifecycle’s operations in 2023.

Bloom ESG’s methodology uses the ISO 14064 standard for greenhouse gas accounting from the International Organization for Standardization. The credits are considered insets, rather than offsets, as they measure an activity’s impact within a company’s supply chain or operations, said Sebastian Foot, co-founder of Bloom ESG.

”If we can put a focus on increasing the reuse of electronics, there is a credible benefit we can receive as a result,” Foot said.

More buyers sought

Dynamic Lifecycle can retire the credits for its own ESG-related accounting and disclosures, or trade the credits to equipment manufacturers or corporations to use for their own claims.

“Everything tells us that this should work, and the market should receive it well,” said Curt Greeno, president of Dynamic Lifecycle.

Bloom ESG is courting other recyclers and IT asset managers to create a trading registry for the credits by the end of 2025. Participating companies will pay an annual licensing cost plus fees related to credit issuance and retirement, Foot said.

Companies investing in strategies that give a second life to computers usually do so to reduce costs and create new value for their business, said Michael Leitl, executive director of circular economy strategy firm Indeed Innovation. Two examples are Deutsche Telekom and Cisco, which offer financing methods for their products that encourage customers to return them as they age. “By controlling the secondhand market, they can keep the quality high and guarantee that their brand is not damaged,” he said. 

The new registry will help to communicate the value of these activities, but Leitl cautioned companies to be careful about how they use the credits to make their claims. “It’s really a discussion between the sustainability department and the general business manager,” he said. 

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Corporate chameleons: The evolution of the CSO

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

Ask anyone who’s been a CEO, CFO or any other variety of C-suite executive and they’ll tell you the roles today are very different from what they were 20 years ago. Different challenges demand different skills, experiences and aptitudes, and the role of chief sustainability officer is no exception. For one, in most companies the role didn’t exist 20 years ago, and in the past two decades it’s tumbled, twisted and catapulted to a seat at the table.

What started as a nice-to-have, feel-good role for many companies has now, in some cases, become a strategic pillar of their core business endeavors. And the position continues to evolve, shaped by mounting environmental pressures, shifting stakeholder expectations and an increasingly complex political and regulatory landscape.

Acting like chameleons

CSOs, at their core, are masters of resilience. In today’s geopolitical landscape defined by increasing volatility and uncertainty, they adapt to whatever the moment demands like chameleons. When the spotlight calls, they become compelling storytellers, championing their company’s vision. When discretion is needed, they work behind the scenes, quietly building coalitions and forging consensus.

Dave Stangis, a veteran CSO, offered a particularly insightful perspective in Weinreb Group’s 2025 CSO Report: “CSO leadership is like Aikido: It takes the right mix of art and science. Ten years ago, the CSO needed a 50/50 split to establish the position. These days, the demands of the role have shifted to more like 75 percent art and 25 percent science.”

John Davies, president of the Trellis Network, often speaks of the CSO role as chief translation officer, given different functions speak different “languages”: financial executives most often speak in terms of risk mitigation and return on investment, while operations leaders focus on efficiency gains and process improvements and human resources professionals consider talent attraction and retention.

The artful CSO learns to speak all these languages, crafting arguments that resonate with each audience while maintaining consistency in the underlying message. This requires not just analytical skills but emotional intelligence, cultural sensitivity and a deep understanding of organizational dynamics.

The most effective CSOs become organizational anthropologists, studying the formal and informal power structures within their companies to identify the most effective pathways for driving change. But there are easy tricks to get started on this path. For example, Microsoft’s Jim Hanna asks leaders two questions: “What keeps you up at night and what are you incentivized on?”

According to Weinreb Group’s 2025 CSO Report, CSO’s top key attributes are: corporate chameleon aligning with a diverse set of internal and external stakeholders; operating at both the big-picture and general levels; and systems thinking.

Maintaining core identity

The chameleon analogy is particularly powerful because it highlights a crucial distinction: While a chameleon may change its color to suit the environment, it doesn’t change its fundamental nature. Similarly, the most effective CSOs and their teams maintain a consistent core identity and set of values while adapting their approach to different contexts and challenges. This balance between adaptability and authenticity is one of the most difficult aspects of sustainability leadership to master.

One critical step in this effort is to know thyself and which of the six corporate sustainability archetypes your company fits: Box checker; Risk reduction driven; Immediate returns driven; Brand and reputation driven; Purpose and impact driven or innovation driven.

Many CSOs went into their roles to drive societal impact and therefore skew towards purpose and impact as their default mode. This worked well when these programs were philanthropic and additive, but as they have become core to adding business value, this orientation can derail some. The CSO today has to be able to hold conflicting ideas in their head at the same time. A type of mental origami that is difficult to perfect.

Consider a story we once heard: Yvon Chouinard of Patagonia was challenged by his sales team on how they were to meet their ambitious sales targets when the company was promoting the limits of growth and anti-consumerism in its campaigns. He told them that holding that tension and finding ways to manage it was the job and walked away — leaving the team to find a way to achieve both. They did. Some version of this challenge is the one many CSOs face as ESG efforts become more business-integrated and aligned.

CSOs who understand the complexity of the moment, varying points of view, experiences and incentives, and mold themselves to their reality while staying true to their fundamental purpose will be best suited to deliver on the conviction that business can and must be a force for positive change in the world and do well in the process.

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State AGs demand information about SBTi’s new net-zero guidelines for financial firms

The attorneys general of 23 states want details about the Science Based Targets initiative’s new net-zero guidance for financial institutions, suggesting that it violates antitrust laws by attempting to “squeeze important American industries into eliminating carbon dioxide production by some future date.”  

The request, coordinated by Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird, is outlined in an Aug. 8 letter to SBTi CEO David Kennedy. “Net-zero programs are unrealistic and harm both American agriculture and industry,” the attorneys general write. “Making net zero a goal actively harms Americans, creates risks for energy independence and increases the cost of food.” 

The letter doesn’t have the same legal teeth as the subpoenas sent to SBTi and CDP in late July by Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, but it is the next step in a coordinated anti-ESG campaign against financial institutions that have spoken publicly about cutting back investments in fossil fuels companies. 

“Interestingly, the letter does not invoke the Iowa AG’s statutory subpoena authority and is instead presented as an informal request from each of the state AGs for certain documents and information,” said Roy Prather, principal at law firm Beveridge & Diamond. “Failing or refusing to provide the information does not carry the same risk of penalties that is associated with the Florida AG’s subpoenas, but it is certainly an escalation with respect to attention and scope.”

States represented by the letter include Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming.

The attorneys general have demanded a response before Sept. 8. SBTi declined to comment.

Financial institutions under pressure

The attacks on banks, insurers and other financial institutions with climate goals started about two years ago but ramped up once President Donald Trump took office in January. At least 18 states have enacted laws that make it possible to sue banks and others over their environmental, social and governance strategies.   

Many banks and asset managers, hoping to placate particularly aggressive states, have already exited high-profile industry net-zero campaigns that started in the 2020 timeframe — such as the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative and the Net Zero Insurance Alliance, both now defunct. 

The trigger for this latest investigation was SBTi’s July publication of the net-zero standard for financial companies. The framework was tested by about 30 companies. SBTi said 135 have committed to following it, and the AGs want those names. SBTi’s commitment dashboard shows that the vast majority of those committed to using the net-zero framework come from outside the U.S.

“SBTi and the financial institutions that commit to its standards risk violating federal and state antitrust laws as well as state consumer protection laws,” the letter said. “Some economic arrangements are illegal because they are unfair or unreasonably harmful to competition; the ‘good intentions’ behind them are irrelevant.”

While anti-ESG investigations have muzzled companies and prompted backpedaling by many of the largest financial institutions, so far, only one has turned into an actual antitrust complaint. 

That case, led by Texas, accuses BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard, as members of Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative and the Climate Action 100+, of conspiring to force coal companies to reduce production. A federal judge largely denied a motion for dismissal Aug. 1, which means the case is still very much alive.

Editor’s note: This story was updated to add details about the geographic origin of most companies currently committed to SBTi’s net-zero framework for the financial industry.

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IKEA’s biggest retailer funds Chinese food packaging recycler

Ingka Group is backing Shanghai-based plastics recycler Re-mall as part of a planned $1.16 billion investment in companies that can help IKEA’s largest retailer meet its goals of repurposing and reusing more materials in the products it sells.

The move is Ingka’s first in support of a circular economy infrastructure company in China, one of the world’s largest markets for plastic waste. 

Re-mall, founded in 2015, specializes in producing high-quality post-consumer recycled propylene from food packaging, which is notoriously difficult to process because of the organic residue left on it. Its production facility is in Jiangxi province, a hub for plastic waste streams from Shanghai and Guangzhou.

The plastic pellets and materials Re-mall creates can be used in many different products, including toys, tableware, cosmetics packaging and woven textiles. The company is building closed-loop relationships with its biggest customers — collecting materials from those brands before feeding recycled materials back into their supply chains. 

“Re-mall’s strong supplier network and partnerships with leading Chinese food delivery service providers are already allowing it to create impact at scale in the local recycling market,” said Lukas Visser, head of circular economy investments at Ingka Group.

Ingka’s backing — the amount of which is undisclosed — is characterized as growth capital that will expand its commercial capacity.

Orchid plant in front a a window
Re-mall’s production facility in Jiangxi province has access to plastic waste streams from Shanghai and Guangzhou.
Source: Ingka Group

The bigger picture

Ingka’s climate transition strategy includes cutting the carbon footprint of product end of use, which accounted for 1.6 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions in 2024 — 7 percent of the total. 

The absolute amount is down 15 percent from 2016, the year Ingka uses as the baseline for its goal of halving emissions by 2030. Ingka also intends to become “fully circular” by the end of the decade.  

Ingka Investments announced its $1.16 billion (1 billion euros) investment plan in January. Re-mall is the fourth publicly disclosed company in its portfolio. The others, all European, are:

  • RetourMatras, a mattress recycler that processed more than 1 million mattresses in four facilities in 2024, avoiding an estimated 90,000 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions (tCO2e). RetourMatras sells recycled material to customers such as IKEA to use in new production. 
  • Morssinkhof Rymoplast, which handles high-density polyethylene, low-density polyethylene, polyethylene terephthalate and polypropylene plastics. Ingka acquired a 17 percent stake, helping to double Morssinkhof’s capacity.
  • Next Generation Group, which provides equipment to the plastics recycling industry. 

In its latest environmental progress report, Ingka estimated that these ventures have so far recycled approximately 1.9 million metric tons of materials, avoiding 5 million metric tCO2e.

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4 hot startups aim to keep AI data centers cool

One fact often lost in coverage of the enormous electricity appetite of artificial intelligence data centers: At least one-third of the power goes toward keeping the servers, networking gear, hard drives and other gadgets from overheating.

Yet, the market for data center cooling technologies is poised to double over the next seven years, reaching a projected $42.5 billion by 2032. The category includes both massive chillers that air condition entire data center halls to newer technologies that directly cool servers and equipment racks. And with growth in the latter segment expected to quadruple by 2033, dozens of companies are vying for that created revenue, including leaders in entire data center cooling that have been around for decades, such as CooIIT Systems, Boyd Corp. and Motivair.

As the market matures, innovation is heating up around an option known as direct-to-chip cooling, which involves installing a cold plate on top of central processing or graphics processing chips. Essentially, these technologies command servers to run cooler on their own, thus breaking the current reliance on more traditional center-cooling approaches that are notorious water guzzlers.

As sustainability teams continue to collaborate with counterparts in information technology on direct-to-chip cooling options, their work will increasingly shape decisions about the sorts of servers companies buy for their digital operations. For sustainability professionals who want to stay abreast of this industry trend, here are four startups with direct-to-chip offerings that have attracted notable funding and corporate support since 2020. 

Accelsius

Austin, Texas

Backstory: Founded in June 2022 by Innventure, using intellectual property originally developed by Nokia’s Bell Labs. Accelsius is commercializing a product called NeuCool, touting a industry-leading cooling capacity for NVIDIA chips that enables more equipment to be squeezed into data center racks.

Funding: $24 million Series A round in November 2024, led by Innventure; Accelsius already generates revenue. 

Key Alliances: Accelsius has a relationship with the world’s largest data center co-location company, Equinix. It also contributes to a U.S. Department of Energy program for cooler chips.

Alloy Enterprises

Burlington, Massachusetts

Backstory: Created in early 2020 to 3-D print EV parts and other components, Alloy jumped into direct-to-chip cooling in June. Spurred by inquiries from data center customers, it now produces customized copper parts that meet compatibility requirements of ASHRA, a big data center standards setter.      

Funding: $50 million in capital, including $40 million from such investors as Lockheed Martin and Robert Downey Jr.’s Footprint Coalition. 

Key Alliances: None disclosed.

JetCool

Littleton, Massachusetts

Backstory: Spun out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2019, the company’s first product integrates with PowerEdge servers from Dell Technologies. JetCool is working on a design with new owner, contract manufacturer Flex, that is compliant with servers built to Open Compute Project specifications.

Funding: $17 million in Series A funding in October 2023, led by Bosch Ventures, bringing total backing to $20 million; acquired by Flex in November 2024.  

Key Alliances: Dell, DuPont (which sells its products in Taiwan and Singapore) and Eaton (another sales partner).

Nexalus

Cork, Ireland

Backstory: Born in 2019 from research at Dublin’s Trinity College, Nexalus remains closely tied to the university. Its cooling technology has applications for data centers, gaming and the automotive sector — specifically, Formula 1 racing teams.   

Funding: Nexalus is backed by Science Foundation Ireland, Enterprise Ireland and the Connect Research Center; it also has raised $10 million from private investors.

Key Alliances: Dell, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Intel are collaborating with Nexalus on data center integrations.

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Dow and Amazon take a big chance on a small nuclear reactor

When Dow decommissions the natural gas turbines at its Seadrift, Texas, plastics manufacturing site later this decade, it plans to switch on a first-of-its-kind small nuclear plant instead.

The project, awaiting a construction permit from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that was requested in March, is backed by up to $1.2 billion from the Department of Energy’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program. Advanced gas-cooled nuclear technology from X-energy that operates at higher temperatures than legacy equipment will provide the industrial steam Dow needs for plastic pellet production.

Dow owns or contracts services from dozens of gas turbines and other combined heat and power systems across its petrochemical manufacturing footprint. Several years ago, it began evaluating the potential of small modular reactors to help reach its goal of reducing emissions by 5 million metric tons annually by 2030, according to an executive who anaylzes Dow’s capital investments in energy systems.

“Don’t discount the possibility of nuclear,” said Kreshka Young, North America business director for energy and climate at Dow. “There are a huge amount of benefits. It provides clean, firm power, and the cost can be very competitive. I would recommend that people not be afraid to look at it.”

High hopes for small nuclear

X-energy’s technology classifies as a small modular reactor — that is, one with a capacity of less than 300 megawatts. The current pipeline of such reactors is more than 47 gigawatts, which will require an investment of at least $360 billion, according to research firm Wood Mackenzie. 

Dow’s installation will initially include four X-energy base modules, which have a capacity of about 80 megawatts. The ability to stack the units was important for reliability, Young said. Dow also found the compact size of X-energy’s system — about the dimensions of a gas turbine — appealing. The project is subject to ongoing review and ongoing government funding. “We take a very measured approach to this,” Young said, referring to Dow’s energy investments. “We are not in a situation to write blank checks.” 

Small modular reactors are attractive because the timeline for building them is more predictable and cost-effective than legacy nuclear project development, said Alison Hahn, technical adviser for new nuclear technologies at the Nuclear Energy Institute. That’s because components can be constructed on an assembly line, enabling developers to standardize design and manage several processes in parallel, Hahn said.   

The three largest artificial intelligence and cloud computing companies — Amazon, Google and Microsoft — are all considering advanced nuclear to power their data centers. Amazon was part of a $500 million funding round for X-energy in October 2024, which was increased to $700 million in February. 

“X-energy provides an impactful solution to a critical challenge — and the support Amazon, Dow and other major corporations have provided underscores its potential and merit,” said Ken Griffin, founder and CEO of lead investor Citadel, when the initial funding was announced.

Amazon is looking to deploy up to 5 gigawatts of X-energy’s technology by 2039, starting with a four-unit, 320-megawatt project in central Washington that is being developed by Energy Northwest. The plan calls for the installation to be tripled over time.

The Dow project, however, is likely to be online first — as early as 2028, if project timelines stay on schedule. Its construction permit could be approved within 18 months, thanks to a new executive order by the Trump administration. After construction is complete, Dow and X-energy will need to apply for an operating license. 

The Amazon and Dow commitments atop X-energy’s DOE funding will give backers the confidence to finance X-energy’s manufacturing and supply chain ramp-up as well as the workforce training that will be needed to support operations, said Hahn. 

“Building out that order book allows you to confidently invest,” she said.   

X-energy’s innovation: the ‘pebble bed’

What makes X-energy’s offering unique is the tristructural-isotropic (a.k.a TRISO) fuel used by its reactors — poppy seed-size particles of uranium clumped into billiard-size balls and spread out in a pebble bed. Helium is pumped through the pebbles, and heat is extracted for steam generation. TerraPower, which raised $650 million in June from investors including Bill Gates and NVDIA’s venture arm, uses a similar design.

X-energy’s reactors operate at temperatures higher than lava’s, making them appropriate for energy-intensive processes such as hydrogen production or petroleum refining. The design is explicitly meant to prevent meltdowns.

X-energy will manufacture its TRISO fuel at a facility it’s building in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The company, which employs about 600 people, is based in Rockville, Maryland. 

The spent pebbles in X-energy’s reactors can be replaced by new ones on a daily basis, so shut down is not necessary, said Harlan Bowers, senior vice president and director for the Dow project. 

“We see that as an advantage,” Bowers said, “but it does pose some additional challenges for the regulator, because most fuels are not moving, so there are some statistical aspects to calculating reactivity within that core. That means there are new techniques that the NRC will have to use to evaluate our safety case and ultimately approve our design.”    

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6,000 garments and over $1M in sales: How to tell if a resale program is successful

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

Brands tend to get lots of kudos and fanfare when they launch a resale program. For some, this is the completion of the goal — the box is checked and teams will move on to their next marketing strategy task. 

But for others brands that are implementing resale as a circularity tactic within their sustainability strategy, the real work is just beginning. 

With consumer adoption of secondhand on the rise, the sustainability narrative — and goals — of brand-led resale need to evolve to focus on achieving growth and scale. This is because resale programs aren’t actually generating sustainability benefits for the brands behind them until they’ve scaled to a level that results in brands replacing some revenue from the production of new things from the revenue generated by selling the same things multiple times. 

Here are the key milestones on a pathway to scaling a resale program that can generate brand, financial and environmental benefits:

  1. Consistently grow resale sales and inventory supply year-over-year 
  2. Achieve resale program profitability
  3. Incrementally displace the production of new products with the revenue from resale without affecting overall net sales 

When the third milestone is accomplished, a brand can rightly claim that their resale program is generating the sustainability benefits of circularity because it’s disconnecting revenue creation from the consumption of finite resources and production of waste and pollution.

Designed to scale

For brands that are serious about leveraging resale to create growth and impact, three things need to be top of mind:

  1. Program Design (branding, user experience, pricing and incentives, assortment and integration into existing sales channels and returns processes): Great resale program design creates a seamless and frictionless user experience that’s comparable to shopping new and that introduces and/or creates a deeper connection to the main brand. 
  1. Operational Design (warehousing and fulfillment, transportation and shipping, integration into existing systems and processes): Margins are a critical output of the operational design of a resale program, and tradeoffs of vertically integrating a program versus the lighter lift of outsourcing operations should be deeply considered.
  1. Investment to Scale (marketing and PR, innovation and experimentation): Brands need to be ready to leverage their marketing prowess and budgets to build resale awareness and invest in new channel experimentation and expansion. 

Every brand is different — and that uniqueness should carry into the design of its resale program. The point is to meet customers where they are in the resale ecosystem and then take them farther. An illustrative example of how this works is Hand-Me-DÔEN by fashion retailer DÔEN.

Hand-Me-DÔEN is a community-sourced resale program where customers join the resale community by selling their DÔEN garments directly to the brand via a trade-in platform and shipping them to the company’s warehouse near Los Angeles. 

Trade-in is offered daily, but resale drops are only offered quarterly for a few days. Trade-in participants earn early access to shop the pre-loved assortment before it opens to the public. For anyone who is a DÔEN fan, early access means a lot. Every quarter is a fresh start and people have to regain their early access through trade-in again. 

Reflecting on the list above, several factors can be credited with contributing to the success of DÔEN’s resale program:

Program Design: The program increases brand access by bringing new customers to DÔEN without brand dilution. The strategic cadence of resale drops mitigates potential inventory supply challenges. Trade-in is simple and transparent — pricing for trade-in is 50 percent of what the brand can resell the item for, which is presented in the customer’s virtual closet that shows all their past DÔEN purchases.

Operational Design: Vertically integrating Hand-Me-DÔEN’s operations in the retailer’s warehouse allows for total control of assortment and planning and flexible staffing that can ramp up and down as needed.

Investment to Scale: Building the resale program on DÔEN’s main website allows people to use the same e-commerce platform and shopping cart to purchase new and used items together — all in a familiar space. 

In the first year of the program, which started in 2022, over 6,000 preloved garments were sold and the brand accepted 98 percent of the nearly 9,000 garments received from customers through trade-in.

Also in year one, nearly 20 percent of resale purchases came from new customers and the program was financially profitable, with over $1 million in sales. Importantly, this was achieved without including the incremental income derived from customers using the gift cards they’re issued through trade-in in the resale P&L. In the second year, the program grew 11 percent. 

DÔEN has achieved resale growth and profitability — the first two milestones on the way to achieving sustainability benefits for the brand through circularity — but it has not yet displaced production of new products. For a brand that’s barely a decade old, resale inventory supply is relatively limited. “We want to have a robust re-commerce program in 10 to 15 years,” says president Holly Soroca. “We’re building up the groundwork now to set this up to be a long-term part of our business.”

Looking forward

Given current economic conditions and tariff chaos, there may be no better time for brands to harness the now-normalized consumer behavior of shopping secondhand and commit to building and scaling profitable resale programs. When organizations recognize the brand value of resale, they become intentional about program design and “their resale programs are not just on-brand, they are actually brand-accretive in that they embody the brand so well and speak to customers so completely, that they raise the brand up in the eyes of consumers,” notes Brendan Condit, Director of Circular Business Models at Anthesis. 

This is the type of resale program that has the ability to scale economically. What they avoid is a “set it and forget” approach, as characterized by Peter Whitcomb, CEO of Tersus Solutions, who adds: “To thrive, a branded resale program requires constant investment and nurturing. If done well, the most successful brands have seen many years of steady and profitable growth.” These years of steady growth aimed at resale revenue targets will enable brands to displace the production of new things with the revenue of selling used things — and make good on the sustainability promise of resale.

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