How Starbucks and WM made it easier to recycle plastic to-go cups

An estimated three-quarters of Starbucks’ sales are for cold beverages, almost all of which are served in plastic cups containing food-grade polypropylene. 

The national coffeehouse wants more customers to recycle those containers when they’re finished sipping their drink, but polypropylene recycling rates have historically been low compared with other plastics — less than 8 percent compared with around 30 percent for plastic bottles made of polyethylene terephthalate (PET), according to industry research.

Starbucks is pushing to change that narrative with several like-minded collaborators: WM, the biggest U.S. waste and recycling services company; certification organization How2Recycle; and two industry-led coalitions, The Recycling Partnership and NextGen Consortium, managed by investor Closed Loop Partners’ Center for the Circular Economy.

Since last August, representatives from these organizations have met with cities and communities across the U.S. to build awareness, with Starbucks often leading the outreach and conversations. 

As a result of those efforts, polypropylene cups can now carry the “widely recyclable” label from How2Recycle. That means they can be recycled through curbside pickup or drop-off programs used by more than 60 percent of U.S. households. That’s an increase of 14 percentage points in the past four years alone.

“The missing piece was that municipalities, cities and towns across the U.S. had not realized that, in fact, for this particular format, there is access and so that wasn’t formally being communicated as part of their programs to households or at the community level,” said Marika McCauley Sine, who leads sustainability at Starbucks.

Historically, food-grade polypropylene hasn’t been considered as valuable to recyclers as other plastics. It has also been tough to process, because it’s often contaminated with food and drink, said Thalia Bofiliou, senior investment analyst for plastics with research firm Planet Tracker. 

“Many of the original systems were designed around PET and a few other core polymers like high-density polyethylene, so polypropylene has come into mature recycling markets quite late,” she said. 

More companies, however, are looking to source recycled polypropylene that can be downcycled and turned into plastic paint containers or garden planters, among other applications, said WM Chief Sustainability Officer Tara Hemmer.   

“We, of course, are having conversations with other brands to educate them about the How2Recycle designation and that this material will be widely recyclable,” she said.

More than 90 percent of WM’s facilities can handle polypropylene, and that number will reach 100 percent by mid-2026, she said. The company has invested $1.4 billion since 2022 in sorting-automation technologies at close to 40 facilities across North America. Its polypropylene recycling rates have already increased by 1.5 times.

“What we know is that people will recycle more if recycling is easy, and if they believe more materials can go in the bin and actually get recycled,” Hemmer said.

Another motivator is extended producer responsibility (EPR) laws — coming into effect in Oregon, Maine, Colorado and California and being considered in at least a dozen more states — that make businesses responsible for footing the bill for better recycling infrastructure. 

High-quality recycled polypropylene needs more development before it can be used by Starbucks for food-grade applications, McCauley Sine said, but the company is investing in improvements.

“Part of the effort is increasing access, and increasing the sorting and processing of cups, which serves to bolster and enhance,” she said. “That’s when the likelihood of having that kind of high-quality, food-grade recycled content starts coming through, and everyone from Starbucks to all the other users of this type of plastic can then capitalize on it.” 

Starbucks is researching many ways to decrease dependence on virgin plastic, including encouraging customers to embrace reusable cups.

The coffeehouse chain has already reduced the overall amount of plastic used in cold cups by 10 percent to 20 percent, depending on the format.

Starbucks’ goal is to make 100 percent of its customer-facing packaging reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2030. As of its 2024 environmental update, it had achieved 27 percent.  

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3 agricultural initiatives to shore up food supply chains

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

Last year, a slew of extreme weather events disrupted agricultural operations, some costing hundreds of billions in damages and financial hardship to farmers and ranchers. Uncertainty loomed amid evolving global regulations and trade policy, and consumer scrutiny of food companies intensified over everything from their ingredients to pricing and product availability.

But as we start off 2026, there is one key resolution food companies can set this year to help navigate supply chain shocks and economic hurdles — and seize new opportunities: Invest in the resilience of their agricultural suppliers.

Resilient and sustainable agricultural projects are needed for the industry and its farmers to stay in business. Our research found that companies face around $253 billion in losses each year because ecosystems are declining, leaving them unable to perform environmental services that farms depend on to be productive The impacts of climate change, pollution, and other forces driving nature loss are harming their ability to maintain the quality and health of soil and water sources. 

The upfront costs and risks of trying out new practices have been big barriers to farmers implementing next generation agriculture methods, such as crop monitoring technology and nutrient management systems. But companies across the industry are seeing these roadblocks as strategic entry points to help farmers in their supply chains make the shift to sustainable agricultural approaches. And, in the process, they’re unlocking real business benefits by ensuring their suppliers will be around in the long run.  

By funding initiatives aimed at conserving water and restoring soil quality, for example, companies can mitigate escalating climate and nature risk while contributing to greater stability across the food industry. That’s because these efforts offer valuable pathways to discover new innovations and test emerging practices in the field. 

All of which are necessary to protect corporate bottom lines and the industry’s future by transforming how food is grown and livestock is raised. With government-backed programs in flux, the role that companies can play in financing resilient agriculture on farms has become even more essential.

For food companies ready to commit to agricultural resiliency in 2026, here’s a look at three existing initiatives that are reaping positive returns for farmers, their investees, and the industry

Soil and Water Outcomes Fund

In a comprehensive program that pools investments and resources from multiple companies including Cargill, McCormick, Ingredion and Coca-Cola, the Soil and Water Outcomes Fund goes beyond simply cost sharing investments with suppliers. Instead, it provides  financial incentives to farmers interested in row crop conservation practices, such as cover cropping and no-tillage, that can improve soil health and reduce erosion. 

Notably, the independent fund also equips participants with extensive technical support and tools, including carbon accounting and advising services, to help foster successful outcomes. Since 2020, 1.7 million acres of farmland across 21 states have been enrolled in the program, and over $55 million in payments have gone to farmers, with an average payout of $33 per acre. In terms of climate impact, 1.4 million metric tons of greenhouse gas equivalents have been cut by participating farmers, equating to removing 304,000 cars from the road for a year, according to the fund. 

Practical Farmers of Iowa

Another approach companies are taking is to focus on specific levers for cutting risks. Funded by PepsiCo and a USDA Advancing Markets for Producers grant, Practical Farmers of Iowa offers a free-for-participation program to farmers that pays for deploying known methods for driving down nitrogen in soil. 

These range from crop rotation, manure application and incorporating livestock grazing into farming systems. Farmers are guaranteed $5 for every acre where nitrogen is reduced and if production yields decrease alongside nitrogen rates, farmers can receive an additional $30 per acre. Practical Farmers of Iowa’s most recent analysis of its network members found the majority of farmers saved money by lowering their nitrogen usage, even if their output dropped. 

Sustainable Dairy PA 

Sustainable Dairy PA is a pilot project backed by The Hershey Co. and Land O’Lakes, its highest volume dairy supplier, that concentrates on going deep locally. The two companies are partnering with the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay on a  three-year project to help the e surrounding region’s dairy farmers slash  greenhouse gas emissions and improve  water quality. Hershey has committed $300,000 to its local suppliers to fund a range of sustainable farming solutions, from planting riparian buffers that prevent soil erosion and improve wildlife habitats to installing animal waste storage systems. So far, more than 3,000 trees have been planted alongside streams, saving 850 pounds of phosphorus and almost 4,000 pounds of nitrogen from entering Chesapeake Bay waterways. 

These examples demonstrate that corporate investments can pay dividends in successfully encouraging more sustainable practices in their supply chain. But for that to happen, more companies on a larger scale need to participate to effectively safeguard farmers, ranchers and the industry that depends on their resilience — the very food companies that buy from them. 

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To get consumers to engage on sustainability, focus on health

If health is the new wealth, data show that could be the best way for brands to engage more with consumers.

According to Trellis data partner GlobeScan’s recent research on healthy and sustainable living, health is now the strongest driver of sustainable behavior change. The desire to be healthier isn’t just compatible with sustainability; it’s the main reason people are open to making more environmentally-friendly choices. When sustainability is positioned as a way to achieve better health, it becomes relevant, actionable and personally meaningful.

Results show that a majority of consumers are motivated by the promise of improved well-being. Only a small fraction (7 percent) are interested in sustainability alone, meaning almost everyone who says they’d like to live a more sustainable lifestyle also claims that they’d like to live in a healthier way. Additional insights from the research support the notion that the most effective engagement strategies for sustainability are those that lead with health and well-being, making the benefits of sustainable choices immediate and relatable.

What this means

For brands, NGOs and governments, the data reveal a strategic opportunity: health isn’t just an added benefit for sustainability but instead may be the primary motivator for sustainable lifestyle changes. With 65 percent of consumers expressing a desire to be both healthier and more sustainable, organizations can anchor their sustainability messages in tangible direct benefits to physical and mental health. By leading with health, organizations can cut through skepticism, apathy and sustainability-related fatigue to reach disengaged audiences and achieve behavior change at scale.

Based on a survey of nearly 32,000 people in the general public conducted July — August 2025.

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2 steps CSOs can take regarding Scope 2’s greenhouse gas protocol

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

There are two days left for CSOs everywhere to provide their from-the-market perspectives on the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHGP) Scope 2 proposed changes.

While all the changes are important to understand, the biggest debate centers on whether the market-based method (MBM) of accounting should require companies to match their clean energy procurements to their energy use on an hourly basis (instead of annually) and within much smaller market boundaries (instead of national boundaries).

I’ve been working on voluntary clean energy procurement for 25 years, and it’s always been clear to me that large energy buyers need to focus their efforts on energy procurement that decarbonizes the whole grid, not just their own buildings.  

The vast majority of market experts and energy users oppose the GHGP’s proposed change that would make hourly and location matching mandatory because it could raise household energy prices by 26 percent, will raise clean energy prices for companies so much that it could kill voluntary clean energy procurement, and could drive greenhouse gas emissions up, not down, and quite substantially. In fact, one study found that removing market boundaries for corporate clean energy procurement could save 1.7 billion tonnes of CO2 over 15 years and drive $85 billion of investment into developing economies. 

Step 1: Advocate for not changing definitions

Your first step is to oppose GHGP’s proposed changes to the definition and purpose of Market Based Method accounting (starts on page 6).  If you’re short on time, questions 18 through 22 can be your only area for comment. 

Today’s definitions of the location-based method (LBM) and MBM are clear and have underpinned clean energy markets for over a decade. The GHGP was thoughtful, intentional and elegant more than a decade ago when it distinguished between the GHG emissions associated with a company’s electricity use (in the LBM) and the emissions associated with a company’s energy procurement (in MBM). 

GHGP was right in creating those two lenses then, and it shouldn’t blur them together now. That’s because organizations are often shackled when trying to change the electricity their facilities consume, yet they have much more regulatory and market freedom to use their purchasing power to drive clean energy projects elsewhere — and often on dirtier grids.  

For a decade, large energy users have been able to aggregate their facilities’ energy use over large geographies on an annual timescale to provide large, credit-worthy contracts to clean energy project developers, resulting in 200 gigawatts of new clean energy capacity added to global grids. Likewise, even “unbundled Renewable Energy Certificate” procurement can induce and incentivize new clean energy projects to get built or existing projects to keep generating. The power of markets is a real thing.

The GHGP now proposes changing the MBM definition to “specify temporal correlation and deliverability requirements for matching the underlying electricity to the reporter’s consumption.” This proposed change that would require hourly and location matching of procurement-to-load would be a fundamental shift in the GHGP’s historic definitional separation between the LBM and MBM. 

There simply is no expert consensus that tighter alignment between the time and location of energy procurement to energy use is the most effective method for incentivizing real-world carbon-reducing decisions and rigorously measuring carbon impact of decisions. If anything, a tighter alignment is expected to decelerate clean energy transition. 

Step 2: Oppose mandatory hourly and locational matching

Proponents of the time and location matching proposal assert that better alignment of procurement to use would increase accuracy of accounting (it doesn’t — grid physics just don’t work that way) and would reduce inaccurate claims about “using” carbon-free power (it might do that, but there are better ways). 

The simplistic argument goes like this: “It’s obviously not credible for a company to use energy at night and buy solar power during the day and then say they’re using clean energy.” However, there’s an even simpler solution: don’t use the market-based method GHG accounting as a basis for clean-energy usage marketing claims. Let’s not fix a marketing claim problem with an accounting “solution.”

The atmosphere doesn’t  care if an energy consumer buys carbon-free power matched to their buildings’ location and time of electricity use — the atmosphere cares that energy consumers are using their buying power to accelerate deployment of carbon-free electricity. 

The detailed proposed changes to MBM are described in pages 19 through 46. It looks like a lot but it really boils down to this: choose a handful of questions in Section 5 and simply request and reiterate that GHGP should not make hourly and locational matching mandatory, and instead should make it optional.  

A simple verb change stating that hourly matching should follow an optional ‘may’ rather than a required ‘shall’ approach will send a strong message.

Simply put, GHGP got it right the first time. When it comes to deploying renewable and carbon-free energy projects, markets matter — and they matter a lot.  

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Rolls-Royce Holdings nabs its first chief sustainability officer

After spending nearly five years as BP’s first chief sustainability officer, Ivanka Mamic is becoming the first CSO and global head of government relations at Rolls-Royce Holdings.

“As someone with a strong interest in enduring, mission-driven companies, I am proud to join this iconic British organization and be part of a team focused on excellence and innovation to drive real-world solutions to complex challenges,” Mamic posted on LinkedIn in early January.

Unlike the oil giant, which did a recent U-turn on low-carbon energy, Rolls-Royce appears committed to embed its climate goals across its strategies, products and research and development. It also ties success on sustainability metrics to managers’ compensation.

The aerospace and engineering firm — not to be confused with BMW subsidiary Rolls-Royce Motor Cars — maintains a 2050 target for net zero within its own operations. In the near term, it aims for a 46 percent drop in those climate emissions by 2030 over a 2019 baseline. The company has committed its goals to the Science-based Targets initiative, which has not validated them.

More than 170 people have commented favorably on Mamic’s LinkedIn post.”A pivotal appointment at a time when industrial decarbonization, transparency and operational accountability matter more than ever,” wrote Neno Duplan, founder and CEO of Locus Technologies.

Mamic is the first person with her exact title at Rolls-Royce. Previously, Rachel Everard served as head of sustainability from 2019 until 2025, when she joined Great Britain’s Rail Safety and Standards Board.

Rolls-Royce, which makes engines for jets including the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, has explored sustainable aviation fuels and ultra-efficient engines. The company has also explored efficiencies and hydrogen-readiness for its military aircraft engines and other power systems. Rolls-Royce is also working on small modular reactors, which the U.K. has chosen for its next generation of nuclear plants.

Rolls-Royce, with major hubs in Asia, Europe and North America, sources components and materials globally.

Work at BP

Mamic led BP’s corporate sustainability agenda while it was grappling with the realignment of fossil fuel investments and its decarbonization goals.

When Mamic became the senior vice president and CSO at BP in March 2021, the company was publicly committed to reaching net zero by 2050 under CEO Bernard Looney. However, Looney left in September 2023 after failing to disclose a personal relationship with a colleague.

The former “beyond petroleum” corporation rethought its commitment to sustainability under the next CEO, Murray Auchincloss. In 2024, BP let go of Anja-Isabel Dotzenrath, its low-carbon energy leader, and in 2025 it pushed out Strategy & Sustainability Chief Giulia Chierchia and downgraded its clean energy commitments while getting set to expand oil production.

Highlights from Mamic’s tenure included a 38 percent drop in Scope 1 and 2 emissions over 2019 levels, according to its 2024 sustainability report. The company also reduced freshwater use by 17 percent in 2024 against a 2020 baseline.

Mamic’s path

Mamic, a Cambridge philosophy Ph.D., remains in London for the new role.

Early in her career, she spent more than 15 years at the International Labour Organization as a CSR and environment specialist. That included ensuring standards across supply chains in East Asia and piloting a Green Jobs in Asia program.

After that, she joined Target. In five years, Mamic transitioned from director of responsible sourcing to vice president of global sourcing and responsibility, overseeing social compliance, environmental performance and supply chain transparency.

She now brings her experience to Rolls-Royce at a moment of rising geopolitical tensions and decarbonization pressures.

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Ollie’s Chief Impact Officer Mia Davis joins a ‘climate-curated’ skincare label

Mia Davis built a reputation leading the “clean beauty” movement at Beautycounter and Credo Beauty.  After a two-year detour as chief impact officer at dog food brand Ollie, she’s returning to the beauty industry at the small “climate-curated” skincare label Atmosphera.

As it plans to expand to the U.S., the Alberta-based brand has brought on Davis alongside three new executive leaders from her Rolodex.

Davis said she will be setting the “roadmap to sustainability” foundation for Atmosphera, which tailors products according to its customers’ local weather conditions.

“If you’re sourcing safe, responsible ingredients from the start, you’re already talking about climate, whether you label it that way or not,” she told Trellis. “I am grateful to be joining a team that is investing in corporate responsibility during this critically important time in the U.S. and for the planet.”

Executive team

Davis became Atmosphera’s chief impact officer Jan. 20, following new co-CEOs Christi Hucks and Katya Johnson, who joined on Jan. 13. On Jan. 27, Chief Operating Officer Steve Raack, former COO of Beautycounter, came onboard.

“We always knew we wanted Mia,” said Atmosphera Founder Katelyn Rousselle. “There was no other candidate.”

One week in, from her Massachusetts office, Davis is engaging with ChemForward, a nonprofit that helps companies find safer alternatives to questionable chemicals. “We will be incorporating ingredients that are safe, science-backed and sourced responsibly,” she said.

She also signed up the company to participate in the Pact Collective, which she was instrumental in launching in 2021. The nonprofit collects otherwise-hard-to-recycle used beauty care containers from bins at Nordstrom Rack and other retail stores. Participants include L’Oréal, Sephora, Ulta Beauty and L’Occitane en Provence.

From advocacy to business

Davis has expressed that business should not shy away from policy advocacy. She spent many years as an advocate for product transparency and safety.

The Clark University graduate holds a master’s degree in international development, community and the environment and a bachelor’s in geography. On campus, Davis engaged in environmental and corporate-reform groups.

Her early professional roles included working on the Detox Nalgene Campaign for Environment America. She continued rallying against bisphenol-A (BPA) and other plastic chemicals at the Workgroup for Safe Markets and then Clean Water Action.

By 2007, Davis narrowed her niche when she became organizing director of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, part of the Breast Cancer Fund.

In 2012, she leaped to the business side, becoming startup Beautycounter’s first employee after founder Gregg Renfrew. For five years as head of mission, health and the environment, Davis attracted attention for a unique chemical policy and for piloting the Chemical Footprint Project there. The pioneering “clean beauty” brand expanded to $100 million in sales by 2016. (After a bankruptcy and several-year hiatus, Beautycounter emerged last year with a new name, Counter.)

Then, in 2017 Davis moved over to retailer Credo Beauty as vice president of sustainability impact. There, she launched the Credo Clean Standard, considered one of the strongest safer-chemistry policies in the industry. She also advanced sustainable packaging guidelines and the Credo for Change mentorship program, as well as auditing emissions to set business climate goals.

As chief impact officer at “human-grade” dog food brand Ollie for less than two years, Davis launched zero-waste programs and clean-ingredient standards, advancing responsible sourcing and environmental-contamination testing.

“When I entered this industry about 15 years ago, through the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, and then Beautycounter, and then Credo, it was a very different space,” Davis said. “Together, these brands and many others, have changed the narrative, and I’m really proud of that.”

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How Oatly takes the steam out of its industrial emissions

Swedish alternative dairy maker Oatly is among thousands of companies with a 100 percent renewable electricity goal. It is one of the few — alongside Mars, PepsiCo and Procter & Gamble — to explicitly outline plans for thermal heat in that commitment.

Oatly’s commitment, updated in May 2025, is to source 100 percent of its energy including electricity and thermal heat from renewable sources in Europe by 2030. The company gave itself five additional years to meet that goal in North America, because there are fewer options in the region.

Energy accounted for 16 percent of Oatly’s carbon footprint in 2024, its latest reporting year. It hasn’t set absolute greenhouse gas reduction goals. Rather, its target is to reach a 40 percent cut by 2030 in climate emissions per liter of product. 

“Our decarbonization strategy includes a couple of very simple steps,” said Erin Augustine, vice president of global sustainability at Oatly. “The first is energy efficiency everywhere. Use less electricity, use less steam, use less heat all across the board and make sure our processes are operating efficiently. We need to make operational improvements before we even get to capital improvements.”

Eliminate steam where possible

Close to 75 percent of the energy used in factories operated by Oatly and its production partners in 2024 came from natural gas and other fossil fuels used to generate steam and hot water for processing oats and keeping equipment clean. Between 2020 and 2024, Oatly expanded from three factories to six, including two in the U.S.

Most of these processes require temperatures at or below 200 degrees Celsius, or 392 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s fairly typical for food companies, according to data from the U.S. Department of Energy. 

Oatly sourced 38 percent of the energy it uses from renewable alternatives in 2024; 11 percent of that amount was for thermal processes, according to its 2024 sustainability metrics. The thermal figure includes biofuels used by some suppliers, along with biomethane certificates that Oatly buys to match energy consumed by its plant in Landskrona, Sweden.  

Those strategies are a stop-gap, however, while Oatly evaluates ways to reengineer its processes to rely less on boilers that use natural gas. 

These are board-level decisions. Each factory has an annual energy reduction target and is expected to measure progress monthly. Assessments are ongoing at all of the company’s manufacturing facilities, and Augustine’s team is closely aligned with the global engineering and supply chain teams.

“We work closely with the various functions within our sustainable operations team to develop the operational strategy and the accountability and [how to] embed all the decisions into our processes so that we can make progress on our targets and meet our targets,” she said. (Before being named to her current rule last July, Augustine was focused on supply chain sustainability.)

One strategy Oatly plans to encourage across all of its factories, including those of its suppliers, is better use of waste heat and hot water to redirect more thermal energy to places it’s needed. For example, Oatly’s facility in Millville, New Jersey, installed heat exchangers to recycle waste heat, which reduces natural gas consumption required for steam. 

“The first step in our strategy is to identify all those processes and find other ways to get the heat,” Augustine said. “Once we’ve done all the de-steaming we can, then our intention is to generate steam differently.” 

For the next phase of its plan, Oatly is evaluating industrial heat pumps, which can turn waste heat into higher temperature resources, and boilers that run on electricity, biomass or natural gas alternatives. “Start with heat pumps and heat exchangers,” she said. “That is the nearest available technology that is working for food processing companies.”

Whiskey maker Diageo uses electric boilers at some of its distilleries, but many systems Oatly is studying aren’t widely adopted. For example, industrial heat pumps accounted for just 2 percent of the global heat pump market in 2021, according to research firm Energy Innovation.   

Oatly’s Landskrona factory installed hybrid equipment that can run on biomass but switch to natural gas if necessary. But the availability of cheap natural gas in the U.S. makes heat pumps and electric boilers more difficult to justify, especially when equipment is relatively new, Augustine said.  

Oatly will share more details on how it’s reckoning with industrial heat in a GreenBiz 26 session that also includes Johnson & Johnson and Suntory.

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A landmark sustainability study was wrong. Correcting it took two years

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

For a long time, I resisted the accumulating evidence that our institutions for curating trustworthy science were failing. I believed our academic gatekeepers were quietly doing their jobs.

That belief ended when I attempted to replicate an extraordinarily influential article: “The Impact of Corporate Sustainability on Organizational Processes and Performance,” which appeared in a prestigious journal, Management Science by Robert Eccles, Ioannis Ioannou and George Serafeim. The paper, which posits that sustainable companies have outperformed the stock market by roughly 40 percent each year for 20 years has been cited more than 6,000 times — by Wall Street executives, top government officials, and even a former U.S. Vice President.

When I tried to replicate it, I found serious flaws and misrepresentations:

  • A key result labeled as statistically significant was not
  • The analytical method didn’t work as described
  • Critical statistical tests were omitted
  • No matter what I tried, I couldn’t replicate the results

I thought correcting the record would be easy. The authors work at highly reputed institutions and the article appeared in a prestigious journal.

But I was wrong.

Encountering barrier after barrier

Following academic etiquette, I contacted the authors and kept them informed as my replication proceeded. They never responded to more than half a dozen emails.

I submitted a comment (a short paper) to Management Science about the errors, but it was rejected. Reviewers objected to the “tone” of my submission and found it impudent that I was challenging such an important paper. Authors, one wrote to me, are granted “discretion” in conducting their work, and therefore “inclined to turn down any invitation to review a revision” unless it was accompanied by a note from the original authors.

Having no luck with the journal, I turned to the scholarly community for advice, asking colleagues to help encourage the authors to engage. I argued that the best course—for them and for the field—was to correct the mistakes. Doing so would elevate, not diminish, their scholarly standing. Few people responded. Those who did offered excuses. One internationally-respected, chaired professor was refreshingly honest: “I’m too much of a coward.” He articulated what many scholars quietly believe: it’s more harmful to one’s career to try to correct a flawed—or even fraudulent—study than to be the one who published it.

Going beyond normal channels

I decided to go public about some of the article’s errors—a step so unusual that I feared it might end my ability to publish future work.

I posted on LinkedIn that a key finding labeled as statistically significant was, in fact, not. Within days, Management Science published a correction from the authors acknowledging the error and attributing it to a “typo.” They claimed they had meant to write “not significant” but had omitted the word “not”.

Convinced that the paper’s reported method was fraudulent, I also submitted complaints to two research-integrity offices. Soon after they received my complaint, the authors admitted they had indeed misreported their analysis. Again, they blamed poor editing. There had been two studies, they said, and the false description belonged to an “exploratory” study that was later removed to satisfy length requirements — except that the sentences describing its matching process were inadvertently left behind.

They didn’t explain that this rendered their results uninterpretable. Nor did they submit a correction to Management Science.

That is where things stand today.  Their paper continues to mislead thousands of people a year.

Social science needs reform

I now believe our systems for curating trustworthy science are broken. Both individual- and system-level changes are necessary.

As individuals, we can:

  • Stop citing single studies as definitive. They aren’t. Check whether studies you read and cite have been replicated
  • Tell colleagues to stop when they behave unethically
  • Support replication and encourage others to do it, too

Most of all, we need to exercise critical thinking. A close reading of this study should’ve raised red flags: key tests are missing, variables were unusual and the headline claim was implausible. We were told that sustainable companies outperformed the stock market by roughly 40 percent per year for 20 years. Such an extraordinary finding requires careful, credible evidence. That evidence was missing.

But the result was highly desirable, so our hopes overcame our judgment. It’s a reminder that, in the words of Nobel laureate Richard Feynman: “The first principal [of science] is not to fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.”

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Stripe, Shopify and Google accelerate progress toward zero-emissions lime

Decarbonizing the emission-intensive process used to produce lime, a key ingredient in steel, iron, agriculture and other industries, has the potential to avoid or remove gigatons of greenhouse gas emissions annually. That goal moved closer to reality over the past week as three startups working to achieve it took significant steps forward.

Using $2 million in backing from Stripe, Shopify and Google, two European startups will accelerate research and development as they gear up to commercialize zero-carbon processes for lime production. And an Israeli startup announced plans to construct a second pilot facility as it too scales.

Lime’s natural ability to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere can be leveraged to capture carbon in ocean waters and at desalination plants. There are also plans to decarbonize maritime transport by using lime to capture CO2 from ships’ exhausts. And if used in steel production or as a soil additive in agriculture, low-carbon lime would cut emissions from both sectors.

High-emissions production

Conventional production involves heating limestone (calcium carbonate) at high temperatures — generated by burning fossil fuels — to produce lime (calcium oxide). The reaction and burning of fuels release around 0.8 metric tons of CO2 (tCO2) for every ton of lime, which more than outweighs any capture that takes place once the lime is utilized. A low or zero-emissions alternative could tip the balance the other way.

Leilac, a U.K. startup that received research money from the tech companies, has developed a method for capturing the CO2 created during the reaction and heating process using renewable sources. The funding — which was channeled through Frontier, a coalition of carbon removal buyers — will be shared with SaltX, a Swedish startup that uses a plasma torch to power the reaction and also captures the carbon released. 

A third startup in the race, Israel’s CarbonBlue, said this week that it planned to build a second demonstration plant. Rather than starting with limestone, the company uses renewable energy to transform calcium-rich waste from the steel and construction industries into lime. 

Impact of commercialization

All three companies have plans to build commercial-scale lime production facilities in the next few years. If they can produce lime at prices competitive with conventional methods, or at least within reach of buyers willing to pay a premium, the output from the plants could help drive carbon removal schemes that rely on lime. 

They could also help change the emissions equation for industries that use lime as an input. A 2024 study from South Pole, an environmental consultancy, looked at the potential impact of low-carbon lime on the European iron and steel industries. Using carbon capture and renewable energy during lime production, together with methods to increase the absorption of CO2 by lime after production, could transform lime’s contribution from emissions of 6.0 million tCO2 to removals of 5.8 million tCO2.

“Lime production is a hard to abate sector,” said Oscar Rueda, a former principal consultant at South Pole and co-author of the report, “but it has the potential to turn into a net negative sector.”

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How Natural Fiber Welding will use its second chance

On Jan. 14, investors rescued Natural Fiber Welding from the edge of bankruptcy. The startup’s narrowed focus — from a stable of offerings to a single product that’s ready to sell — reflects both the promise and tough economics of building sustainable materials.

Natural Fiber Welding had grown since 2015 to become a darling in the congested space of next-generation materials innovators. The company raised $224 million from Peoria, Illinois, far from the venture capital in-crowd.

Brand insiders and materials science nerds praised its alternatives to fossil-fuel materials used in fashion, cars and furniture. NFW’s Mirum plant “leather” appeared in Stella McCartney bags, Allbirds sneakers and watch straps for IWC Schaffhausen.

In its first eight years, Natural Fiber Welding ballooned from 12 employees to 320, running a 175,000 square-foot plant.

“Our recipes work inside everybody’s factories, and that means we can have an impact at the biggest scale, at the scale of billions of people,” founder Luke Haverhals said in a video in September 2024 that announced NFW as an Earthshot Prize finalist. The previous March, the startup had raised $23.7 million, a hopeful sign after two layoffs in 2023.

Last-hour rescue

By the end of 2024, however, the company let go of another 91 workers.

After a decade of building new materials and brand partnerships, NFW hit a wall.

“We had put a lot of eggs in a basket for BMW and for a consumer electronics company, and those did not come to fruition in a timely way,” NFW Chief Scientist Aaron Amstutz said of attempts to deliver Mirum at scale. In 2022, NFW’s biggest chunk of funding, $85 million, involved BMW iVentures and Ralph Lauren.

Amstutz continued. “You’re a startup, you have burn, you have lots of employees, and so you look at the books and you say, ‘Okay, it’s not working. We can’t raise money against continuing to push the timeline out.’”

In early September 2025, CEO Steve Zika announced a plan for an “orderly wind down of operations.”

“NFW’s story reflects a broader pattern we see across sustainable materials,” noted Katrin Ley, managing director at Fashion for Good of Amsterdam, “leading technology with genuine potential, but navigating the gap between proof-of-concept and commercial scale, and facing cost-premiums along the way.”

“We all kind of expected it,” said Amstutz. “We were literally three hours away — we were planning on filing bankruptcy on Friday afternoon.”

But Zika asked the team to wait for the weekend. “‘I think there’s a few people sniffing around that might be interested,’” Amstutz recounted Zika saying.

That Saturday, investors called.

Months later, on Jan. 14 Provest Equity Partners with CTW Venture Partners announced an undisclosed investment NFW.

Suhas Uppalapati, managing partner of Provest Equity Partners, praised the startup’s “breakthrough science paired with real industrial relevance.” He became NFW’s new chairman, a role formerly held by Zika.

Meanwhile, escaping bankruptcy allowed NFW to keep its equipment and intellectual property. “That continuity is helpful,” Amstutz said. “We’ve got these other materials, other technologies, but we’re figuring out how we can do it lean, mean and profitable along the way. We need to bring a whole bunch of people back.”

Biobased soles

Sneakers by Bared Footwear of Australia, which has used Pliant in its outsoles for two years. Credit: Bared Footwear

New focus

Moving forward, Natural Fiber Welding is focusing on its most profitable offering, Pliant. The outsole material grew out of a request in 2020 from Eric Liedtke, CEO and co-founder of Unless Collective, to help make an all-natural lifestyle shoe.

Losing Pliant would have been a “huge step backwards” for Bared Footwear, according to its Founder and CEO Anna Baird. Pliant “aligns perfectly with our mission to create shoes that will one day break down without leaving behind microplastics,” she said, praising its performance and durability.

Pliant is made with the same “natural fiber welding” process behind the company’s first creation, Clarus, a natural-fiber alternative to polyester or nylon. The technology fuses natural fibers or polymers — tree rubber, in the case of Pliant — using heat and pressure, without fossil-fuel-based binders or glues.

“We have figured out how to vulcanize rubber without using those nasty petrochemical accelerators,” Amstutz said. “My shelves are full of health supplements and vitamins and plant extracts, and we’ve limited ourselves to those ingredients.”

From lifestyle to performance shoes?

Overseas partners in Vietnam will mold the Pliant compound later this year to be used for outsoles in shoes that will sell in 2027.

Amstutz is also developing a compound for the performance-shoe market..

“Right before this, I was molding in our lab,” he said in a video call.

With hundreds of millions of shoes made and discarded every year, soles are a focus of brands and retailers who are trying to reduce their materials emissions. The nonprofit Fashion for Good is leading the Next Stride collaboration with Adidas, Target and Zalando to understand the impacts of sole biomaterials and close pricing gaps with conventional options.

The $26 billion market for shoe sole materials in 2024 could reach $40 billion by 2032, according to Data Bridge research. Global Growth Insights projects 11 percent annual growth in “sustainable” footwear sales from 2024 to 2033.

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