This week we sit down with Olly Lawder, a strategist and storyteller with extensive experience in sustainability communications. We trace the arc of sustainability communication from its origins in corporate philanthropy and early CSR, through the rise of ambitious net zero targets and "rock star CEOs," to the more cautious and compliance-driven moment we find ourselves in today. Along the way, we ask an uncomfortable question: did the movement win over the corporate world while losing voters and consumers?

Olly has spent 20 years helping major global brands figure out how to make sustainable choices genuinely desirable, not as a moral duty, but as something people actually want. The closer sustainability gets to the real reason someone buys something, the more powerful it becomes. Nobody buys a perfume for the recycled packaging. But if the sustainably sourced vanilla makes it smell more complex, more unique, more seductive?

We dig into why terms like "net zero" and "degrowth" leave people cold, what the fossil fuel industry understands about communications that the sustainability movement still doesn't, and why the pendulum will eventually have to swing back, because none of the fundamental problems have gone away.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In our latest episode of What is to be Done, we sat down with Steve Rocco, co-founder of the Arketa Institute, to talk about one of the most fundamental challenges of our time: the gap between modern science and the economic theories that still govern our financial systems. What makes Steve's perspective particularly striking is where it comes from. He has spent his career inside the financial system, from trading desks at Bank of America and Goldman Sachs to impact investing, green bonds and private placements. It is precisely that experience, he argues, that made the contradictions impossible to ignore.

His argument is straightforward but radical. The neoclassical economics that dominates our institutions, business schools and financial markets was built before much of what we now know about the biosphere and planetary boundaries. Ecological economics offers a different framework, one where the economy exists within nature, not alongside it.

A central theme in the conversation is the concept of multi-capital, the idea that wealth cannot be reduced to financial capital alone. Social capital, natural capital and community are not soft add-ons but fundamental components of a functioning and sustainable economy. The episode also digs into what a post-growth pension system might look like in practice. Steve makes the case that pension funds are not just a financial instrument but a political one, and potentially a powerful lever for change. Pensioners sit on boards of trustees. They are also voters. That combination, he argues, is deeply underestimated.

The episode does not offer easy answers, but it reframes the question in a way that feels both urgent and, oddly, hopeful.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

While the rest of the world debates whether to take sustainability seriously, Japan is quietly getting on with it. In this episode, your co-host Sasja takes centre stage. Based part-time in Tokyo, where he manages Japan's first domestically-run mid-cap impact fund, Sasja brings four years of on-the-ground experience to one of the world's most underreported sustainability stories. We explore the physical reality of climate change hitting Japan right now, why Japanese companies are building ESG equity stories that outpace Europe, and what a warming world means for the one thing no politician wants to talk about: mass migration.

The future won't wait. Neither should you.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Joel and Carolina explore the green transition from a growth perspective. From China's record-breaking solar installations to India's emergence as a global scaling platform for climate technologies, the shift toward a cleaner economy is accelerating, just not where most people are looking. We also dig into why Western economies remain stuck in fossil fuel dependency despite the obvious strategic and economic case for renewables, and what it will take to break free from legacy thinking.

At the heart of the conversation is the idea of regenerative business, moving beyond ESG checklists and "doing less harm" toward business models that actively restore ecological, social, and economic systems. We look at real companies already doing this: from flooring to offshore wind to space-based Earth observation. We also discuss the potential of more accurate and precise metrics for impact and fewer but sharper KPI's for business transformation.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this session we explore the idea of Shared Value. It is easy to assume that corporations have always existed exclusively to maximize returns for shareholders. But historically that was not always the case. In the nineteenth century many U.S. states required companies to demonstrate a societal benefit in order to obtain limited liability.

Over time this view shifted. A famous turning point came in 1919 when the Dodge brothers sued Henry Ford after he chose to reinvest profits in higher wages and community development rather than maximizing dividends. The court ruled that a corporation should be run primarily for the profit of its shareholders. Decades later this idea became deeply influential through the work of Milton Friedman.

But as globalization expanded and environmental and social challenges became more visible, alternative ideas began to re-emerge. In 2006, Michael E. Porter introduced the concept of Creating Shared Value: the idea that companies can strengthen their competitiveness by understanding and expanding the value they create for society.

Nearly twenty years later, however, the practical challenge remains. Many companies say sustainability is integrated into their strategy, yet in practice it often sits in a silo. Financial performance and sustainability metrics are reported side by side, but rarely is there a serious attempt to understand how they actually influence one another.

If sustainable business development is to become possible, companies need better ways to connect impact with financial performance.

To explore how this can be done in practice, we invited Marc Pfitzer, a global strategy advisor since 30 + years, with several articles on todays subject published in the Harvard Business Review and he also lecture at the Stockholm School of Economics.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this third episode on labour rights, What Is To Be Done? meets two entrepreneurs attempting to address one of the most persistent challenges of globalization: how to ensure that human rights are actually respected in global supply chains, not just monitored on paper. Shameek Ghosh, founder of TrusTrace, and Erika Wennerström, CEO of Quizrr, represent two complementary approaches to the problem. TrusTrace focuses on traceability and data transparency, helping companies understand where products originate and under what conditions they are produced. Quizrr works from another angle, developing digital training programs aimed at workers and management across supply chains, with the ambition to turn social sustainability into something measurable, operational, and scalable.

The conversation explores what increasingly appears to be a paradigm shift within social compliance. Traditional audit systems are being questioned for their limited effectiveness and fragmented nature, while new regulatory requirements and rising business risks are pushing sustainability from a voluntary initiative toward a core strategic concern. Both guests argue that meaningful change requires more than control mechanisms. It demands transparency about risks, but also investments in people, knowledge, and organizational learning.

We discuss how responsibility for sustainability is gradually moving beyond specialized sustainability teams and becoming integrated into core business functions, how regulation and market expectations are reshaping corporate incentives, and why leading companies often act as experimental laboratories whose practices spread across industries through shared standards and network effects.

The episode paints a picture of a field in transition, moving from compliance toward impact, from verification toward improvement, and from isolated interventions toward systemic change. Rather than asking whether supply chains can be monitored more efficiently, the discussion turns to a deeper question: how can global production systems be redesigned so that respect for labour rights becomes embedded in how business is actually done?

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In our first session on labour rights, we focused on global supply chains. In the second session, we shift to a more European perspective. The right to organise and to engage in collective bargaining has been fundamental to the construction of Europe’s welfare states and a core element of the social contract between the state, capital, and citizens. These rights were even written into the peace treaties signed in Versailles at the end of the First World War. They have functioned as key democratic institutions and could potentially be powerful tools for securing a socially stable transition to a regenerative economy.

And yet, the prevailing sense is that workers’ rights are in retreat rather than advancing. One clear example is Tesla’s global anti-union policies. In Sweden, Tesla has refused to sign a collective bargaining agreement, a stance that is highly unusual for companies operating in the country, including American ones. As a result, IF Metall has been in conflict with Tesla since October 2023, making it the longest strike in Sweden in over 100 years.

For this second session on labour rights, we have invited Aleksandar Zuza from IF Metall to help us unpack and better understand the conflict with Tesla.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.