It’s a horrible, horrible industry. But I feel that if they try—and I’ve worked with fast fashion companies before, trying to get them to think differently, particularly around their factory work—they can make progress. They’re still going to be on the very unsustainable end of the spectrum, but they can tip slightly toward doing better.

H&M is a good example. We all know the others—Zara, Shein—just absolutely horrendous. But H&M stands out because there’s this clear mismatch between what needs to happen and what they’re trying to make happen.

We didn’t get into this in the video section, but I spent most of my career in China, in and out of more factories than I care to remember, working on worker betterment programs and labor rights issues. Back in 2014, the average H&M worker in a Chinese factory was working about 100 hours a week. And the company said, “Well, that’s an improvement from where we were five years ago.” Sure, it’s an improvement—but Chinese labor law caps the workweek at 60 hours. So it’s still illegal. There’s a massive gap between what’s considered “progress” and what would actually count as genuine progress.

That’s the kind of disconnect we’re dealing with—and it makes it very difficult to find companies that are truly doing the right thing, aside from a few that everyone already knows.

You’ve got Patagonia—everybody knows them. Ben & Jerry’s is another. Then there’s Unilever, which is often put up as this poster child of sustainability—but that’s very questionable.

So, are there other companies doing good work? Yeah, I’m sure there are, but they’re not really shouting about it the way they should be, to encourage others to follow suit. We're still relying on these traditional, well-worn examples of “the good companies.”

It’s much easier to talk about all the companies doing bad because, frankly, they don’t care. They’re not even trying to do better—and they’re pretty proud of that.

Even outside the obviously unsustainable sectors like oil, gas, mining, and defense, you still have major players whose leadership is just blatantly unethical. One of the books I’m working on right now is called Eat the Rich: Exposing the Not-So-Ethical Behavior of the 1%. In it, I dig into these billionaires who run major companies and how flagrantly they disregard any sense of accountability. They don’t even bother pretending to care anymore because they know most consumers will just believe whatever they say.

Bezos is obviously at the top of that list. Elon Musk too. These are the poster children for the other end of the spectrum—where the damage is paired with shamelessness.

Everything we do operates in a land of gray. Take Tesla—has it done great things in normalizing the use of EVs? Absolutely. Without Tesla getting the cab off the ranks, so to speak, we wouldn’t see every major car company in the world now offering some form of electric vehicle.

Are EVs perfect? No, of course not. But what Tesla did was spark an incremental shift—everything is about incremental change. It got companies thinking: “If I can’t differentiate with an EV anymore, what’s next?”

For example, there’s a company in China called Chery that now produces cars that run on salt. That kind of leap wouldn’t have happened if Elon Musk hadn’t started the conversation around EVs.

One luxury multinational car company—whose Chief Sustainability Officer I know well—is already planning for a post-EV world. They’ve launched their electric vehicles, they’re making money, but they’re asking themselves: “What’s the next step?” And now they’re seriously considering divesting from cars altogether and focusing on public transportation infrastructure.

These aren’t academic hypotheticals. These are real conversations happening in corporate boardrooms: “How do we stop making luxury cars and start building metro systems?” And while Elon Musk's image may be debatable now, it’s undeniable that he helped trigger that initial momentum.

The military is a really interesting case. Just because I can talk about something doesn’t mean I’m doing anything about it—and that’s the case with institutions like the U.S. Department of Defense.

The U.S. military is by far the biggest single polluter in the world, considered as an organization. But how do they get away with that? During the Kyoto Protocol negotiations, they lobbied to have military emissions excluded from national carbon accounting. And they succeeded. That’s why military pollution doesn’t show up in any country's CO₂ metrics today.

They frequently publish excellent reports about how bad things are—climate risk assessments, etc.—but they don’t follow up with meaningful change. Now, if they did begin to shift toward more sustainable practices, they could potentially have an outsized impact—like, stop dropping a few bombs, and that’s a bigger environmental win than any of us buying organic lettuce.

But here’s the dilemma: can the military ever be considered socially sustainable when its core function is violence? I struggle with that. Environmentally, maybe they could reduce harm—but socially, they're still killing people.

So do we give them the space to greenwash a little now, in the hope that it eventually becomes real progress? I don’t know. But we certainly can’t be talking about “socially responsible, environmentally friendly bombs.” If they’re doing anything positive, they’re still creating both the disease and the supposed cure. There’s no world in which that becomes a net positive.

It’s an interesting question, because it gets pretty complex—it’s almost like stepping into the Matrix. You have to consider the industry they’re in, the size of the organization, and where they are on their sustainability journey. Are they just starting out, or have they been doing this for 30 years? All of that influences both the conversation we should be having with them, and what we reasonably expect of them.

Take a highly polluting industry, for example. Say you’re dealing with an Indonesian oil company. If they completely change the way they operate, that’s a monumental shift—and they deserve recognition for it. Now contrast that with a company in a less harmful sector, like med-tech. If they make a similar shift, people tend to see it as just keeping up with the times, not as something groundbreaking.

So context matters. The same applies to companies just starting their sustainability journey. There’s a typical trajectory: they start with basic waste management, maybe introduce recycling or do a charity fun run. Then they evolve—maybe get into strategic philanthropy. Later, they’ll examine their logistics and supply chains. At the most advanced stage, they start tying executive pay to sustainability KPIs.

We need to identify where a company is on its sustainability journey in order to advise them on what they should be doing. As consultants, that’s our job—to help them figure that out in a strategic and realistic way.

A key part of that process is materiality. We encourage companies to focus on what’s most material to their business. Out of the 100 possible sustainability initiatives they could be doing, the mistake many companies make is thinking they have to do all of them at once—and that’s simply not the case.

Instead, we guide them to consult their internal and external stakeholders, look at market trends, and assess their industry landscape. The goal is to ask: Where can we actually make the biggest impact—for our business and for society or the planet? Then, they choose two or three key issues—maybe more if they’re ambitious—and focus on those for the next five years.

That’s enough. They report on progress, evaluate where they need to improve, and when the time is right—five years down the line, for instance—they consider adding more priorities. It’s about strategic focus, not trying to solve everything at once.

Especially from a business perspective—where dollars and cents matter so much—framing sustainability in terms of tangible benefits really helps get the CFO and other power brokers on board. When they realize it's not just an expense but potentially a value driver, they’re much more likely to support sustainability initiatives.

From there, you can shift the conversation toward the long-term net positive impacts on the business. We now have a wealth of evidence showing that companies that embed ESG principles into their core operations consistently outperform their peers—often by a wide margin.

For example, companies with strong ESG practices tend to attract and retain top talent more effectively. They also see increased employee productivity and innovation. I think it was a recent Deloitte report that found purpose-led companies—however we define that—have around 50% more innovative employees. That’s not just an HR win; it directly affects a company’s capacity to evolve, adapt, and grow.

So while there’s an ethical imperative, there’s also a very practical one: sustainability strengthens the business itself. It boosts culture, builds resilience, and unlocks competitive advantages.

Yeah, that's pretty much it. The democratization of sustainability is something we don’t talk about nearly enough. We’ve seen democratization in tech, in transportation—Uber, for example—but not in this space. And I think we absolutely need it, because there is a hierarchy and a real elitism in sustainability.

And that elitism isn’t necessarily imposed by outsiders looking in—it often comes from within the sustainability bubble. We've created our own internal elite: you're considered legitimate if you're an academic, if you're vegan, or if you’re an activist on the front lines.

Now, am I discounting the hard work those groups do? Absolutely not. Everyone's contribution matters. But what I am saying is: the work they do is no more or less important than what the three of us are doing right now—through this podcast, through sharing information—or the work others do in consulting or advocacy roles. We’re all living on the same rock, sewing this tapestry together.

So there shouldn’t be elitism in this space. But of course, saying that is a lot easier than actually dismantling it. It’s deeply entrenched.

In my book Sustainability for the Rest of Us, there’s actually a chapter called "Don’t Be a Dick"—and it’s all about how we’ve created this elitism within sustainability, and why we need to move away from it.

Because if we've made this space confusing and exclusive for ourselves, how on earth are we supposed to encourage others to join? How will they even know where the on-ramp is?

Should I become an academic? Should I be vegan? Nobody wants to be vegan—more power to those who are, and apologies if either of you are—but let’s be honest, that’s a lot of work. Should I give up flying internationally? Should I give up my smartphone and go live on a farm practicing regenerative agriculture?

People don’t know what they’re “supposed” to do. We’ve made the space unnecessarily fraught, and that’s the last thing we should be doing—especially when, at the end of the day, we’re all fighting the same fight.