Hello 🖐,

I wanted to share with you some personal tea: I am taking a break from publishing The Green Tea as I have some projects that I need to focus on in the next few months.

Among them, and related to writing, I will be exploring human-wildlife 🐘 relationships in different parts of the world. Our relationship with wildlife has become highly complex and I am eager to tell those stories as nature becomes more at risk.

If you are a subscriber, you will continue to get access to the archive and databases, but you won’t be billed while The Green Tea is paused.

Although there is no Top 10 source like The Green Tea (of course 😉), if you need an aggregated source for business sustainability news, one option is the G&A Sustainability Highlights newsletter which is published bi-weekly and provides a list of news across several categories and sources.

I am still a strong believer in the role of business in creating a better and more sustainable future and look forward to hearing about your successes in innovating and taking action.

Thank you for your readership.

Warm regards / saludos,

Julio 

Welcome back 🖐,

We have a lot to cover in this maxi edition green-tea drinkers or, should I say, sinister people? (as the new US Energy Secretary might affectionately refer to you... 🙄). Here are The Green Tea's Top actionable, innovation, and hot sustainability stories this week!

New to The Green Tea🍵 ? Subscribe or Upgrade here

Latest Trends & Strategy

1. (G&A) Despite all the chaos, according to this survey, most CEOs see sustainability as an opportunity, not an additional cost. However, there are important regional differences among the USA, Europe and China. read here

2. (Trellis) And in a very complex and evolving environment, this report shares how to set a sustainability strategy for 2025 that could stand the test of time. read here

3-4. (Trellis/Sustainable Brands) USA politicians my want to divide and polarize by demonizing words like climate change but there might be more common ground among the population than we think: survey finds stark contrast in Republican and Democrat climate views, but there is one important area of common ground: depletion of natural resources. And another survey shows that US voters support policies that reduce single-use plastics.

With plastic straws back in the Federal government, I couldn’t help imagining a White House intern going rogue… (but seriously, paper, plastic or whatever material, why are we still using straws? Let’s drop the straw)

Better than a Google search or ChatGPT? Yep

Relevant sustainability information and resources are hard to find on searches or AI chatbots. Now you can find what you are looking for in one of these two extensive The Green Tea sustainability databases (learn more here).

• Database: Articles📚 - 17,000+ business sustainability articles (best practices, innovation, startups, and more) to help you advance your career and sustainability programs.

  • 1 month access / I-Can-Expense-It tier access

• Database: Resources🛠 - 700+ business sustainability resources (reports, market research, tools, trainings, and more) for more in-depth upskilling, knowledge or step-by-step how-to information.

  • 1 month access / I-Can-Expense-It tier access

Purchase 1 month access above or access them once you have a “I-Can-Expense-It” subscription.

Taking Action

4. (Trellis) Big brands join forces to tackle small plastic waste. read here

5. (Trellis) Microsoft pivots on renewable energy: company will invest more in “long-term, higher-impact” carbon removal projects, clean electricity procurement and emerging technologies to reduce operational emissions. read here

On the Social (War) Front…

6. The Wall Street Journal shares some data analysis on the impact of DEI among S&P500 companies. Their conclusion is that DEI policies have not helped much in changing the overall labor force in those companies. However, this analysis could be misleading as it is only from 2020 to 2023 which is not very long in hiring terms. It would have been helpful to see the info on just new hires which would have probably shown a more significant impact on diverse hiring than this data seems to suggest.

Regardless, some companies seem to have made little or no progress at all (one example of this in the article is Meta) which suggests their previous support of DEI and their dropping of it now were purely performative.

Source: Wall Street Journal (U.S. Labor Department and DiversIQ)

7-8. While the heat has been on companies implementing DEI policies (labeled as woke and/or leftist), some companies (or their CEOs) have gone to the extreme in their support of far-right policies and they are also paying a price particularly when these views (or actions) are not aligned with their customer base.

The most obvious example so far has been Tesla which has seen precipitous sales drops in the US (-12% in California versus 2023 in a slightly growing EV market) and particularly in Europe (e.g. in Germany, -60% in January versus 2023, in an EV market growing +54%). This is likely elicited by Musk’s more recent views and apparent Nazi nods (how could we forget about the salute and his closeness with AfD) and his inevitable association with Tesla cars.

The numbers are shocking although not totally surprising given the leanings of the company’s customer base. If they persist, these levels of sales drops could put Tesla in a precarious financial position given the car industry high fixed costs and that this side of the business is the majority of the current Tesla operations. The irony is that this is a company that used to acknowledge the clear dangers of climate change and was a pioneer in EVs, but it is hard to tell what the company stands for now.

Remember your customers are watching 👀 particularly if you go toxic on them.

Green Innovation

9. (ESG Today) Entrepreneurial motivation: if a 16 year-old can do this, imagine what you could do! Carbon removal startup founded by 16-year old raises $3.5 million to eliminate 1.5 million tons of CO2. read here

10. (ESG Today) Cleantech startup MacroCycle raises $6.5 million to “upcycle” plastic waste into new products. read here

Reporting and Regulatory Corner

+. (NYTimes) As predicted by The Green Tea months ago, SEC moves to kill climate disclosure rule. read here

+. (G&A) EU pledges “far-reaching simplification” in sustainability reporting. read here

+. (ESG Today) However, not everyone is happy with the potential EU reporting changes: €6.6 trillion investor group warns against rolling back EU sustainability reporting regulations. read here

+. (ESG Today) And SBTi pushes back timeline for new corporate Net Zero standard. read here

A Changing World…

+. (Reuters) Meanwhile, January extended a run of extraordinary heat, in which 18 of the last 19 months saw an average global temperature of more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times. read here

+. (Financial Times) At a time when the USA has become an unreliable partner on climate with policies that are polar opposites every few years, it seems like a China-Europe climate partnership could be the most viable way forward for continued global action. The USA president wants to be king, but it is a shame that he is abdicating leadership in green technology which will be a key ingredient in the economy of the future and determining what kind of planet we live on.

What did you think of this edition of The Green Tea?

🍵🍵🍵🍵🍵  the tea was hot!

🍵🍵🍵 it was ok

🍵 not so good

Warm regards / saludos,

Julio 

Welcome back and happy new year! 🖐,

On this edition, some potentially huge good news for sustainability and the forbidDEIn word might be mentioned a few times…oops 💅! Here are The Green Tea's Top actionable, innovation, and hot sustainability stories this week!

New to The Green Tea🍵 ? Subscribe or Upgrade here

Green Innovation

1. You heard it here first? AI in general is not something that would typically fall under green innovation but a development that shook the AI world (Nvidia stock dropped 17% from it on Monday), could be the best sustainability news for this entire year. The gargantuan ongoing buildup of energy-consuming data centers with energy-intensive chips was one of the factors offsetting global gains from green energy production and other green initiatives.

However, this week, news of the high performance of an AI model developed by Chinese company DeepSeek showed that a powerful AI model could be developed and ran on significantly less energy and less powerful chips. The dust is still settling on how they did it, but if the early indications are true, the projections of AI’s energy consumption could drop significantly and with that would also come a significant drop in future global emissions (possibly several percentage points of projected global emissions).

Big Tech AI executives caught off-guard by DeepSeek’s AI-assumptions-shattering model...

2. Innovation and strong value props will be critical in the new sustainability climate that we are entering so I wanted to share several startups receiving big funding paychecks recently to pull through their innovations:

- Amogy raises $56 Million to advance carbon-free power solutions for hard-to-abate industries. read here

- BeZero Carbon raises $32 Million to expand carbon credit rating platform into new markets. read here

- NatureMetrics raises $25 Million to scale biodiversity monitoring and reporting platform. read here

Better than a Google search or ChatGPT? Yep

Relevant sustainability information and resources are hard to find on searches or AI chatbots. Now you can find what you are looking for in one of these two extensive The Green Tea sustainability databases (learn more here).

• Database: Articles📚 - 17,000+ business sustainability articles (best practices, innovation, startups, and more) to help you advance your career and sustainability programs.

  • 1 month access / I-Can-Expense-It tier access

• Database: Resources🛠 - 700+ business sustainability resources (reports, market research, tools, trainings, and more) for more in-depth upskilling, knowledge or step-by-step how-to information.

  • 1 month access / I-Can-Expense-It tier access

Purchase 1 month access above or access them once you have a “I-Can-Expense-It” subscription.

On the Social Front…

3. When I named this section “on the social front”, I did not imagine that this aspect of sustainability would become a “war front”, but it seems like that is where we are… The tug of war between big corporates dropping their DEI initiatives (Target, Meta, Amazon, McDonald’s) and those holding strong (Apple, Costco) continues.

4. However, the stakes are getting higher, as the US government is exterminating any trace of DEI in its ranks and has threatened the private sector with possible legal action against "egregious and discriminatory DEI practitioners", whatever that means. ‘Each agency would have to identify up to nine "potential civil compliance investigations of publicly traded corporations, large non-profit corporations or associations, foundations with assets of $500 million or more, state and local bar and medical associations, and institutions of higher education with endowments over $1 billion.’ read here

5. It seems like DEI will continue to be a hot topic as the list above comes out in ~120 days, when we will likely learn what actions the government will take against those on the list (of course, also intended as a warning to everyone else not on the list…). At least, it seems like companies’ behaviors and actions around climate are insulated from DEI voluntary pullbacks and government action: we see that with Amazon which it is pulling back on DEI, but saying that “its green plans won’t change.”

Taking Action

6. Google signs largest-ever biochar carbon removal purchase deals. read here

7. Shell, Microsoft top list of top carbon credit buyers in 2024. read here

8. Vodafone: Cutting Scope 3 Emissions in Advertising. read here

Reporting and Regulatory Corner

9. China releases first corporate sustainability disclosure standards. read here

10. 80% of global financial regulators aligned with ISSB, TCFD recommendations. read here

A Changing World…

+. As expected, the news out of Washington for sustainability have not been good. The list is long: the USA is dropping out (again) from the Paris Agreement, ruled out the sale of new wind leases, and took a number of other measures. Now the climate action is left to US individual states (24 committed to the Paris Agreement goals), Europe (it has said that it is moving forward as planned), China, and others. Talking about China, it shared that it broke its own record in installing renewable power (added ~277 gigawatts of solar last year, surpassing the previous year’s record of 217 gigawatts) - I will leave you with that bit of good news.

What did you think of this edition of The Green Tea?

🍵🍵🍵🍵🍵  the tea was hot!

🍵🍵🍵 it was ok

🍵 not so good

Warm regards / saludos,

Julio 

Welcome back and happy new year! 🖐,

2025 is shaping to be a complex and eventful year. Just like some of you going under cover with your sustainability efforts, this is a maxi tea 🍵 edition under the guise of a normal one. Here are The Green Tea's Top actionable, innovation, and hot sustainability stories this week!

New to The Green Tea? Subscribe here

Latest Trends & Strategy

1. Whether to avoid lawsuits, to position themselves to get more (or not lose) government business, from a void of true values, to go stealth green, from a lack of brain oxygen from too many jiujitsu chokeholds, or else, we continue to see the reverberations of the election results and anti-ESG efforts. More financial companies are exiting climate alliances (Citi/BofA, Blackrock) and CEOs are axing or changing policies (CEOs, Meta). But one company bucked the trend very publicly and received significant coverage for it: Costco stood its ground and restated the business case for DEI. read here

With and without words, what Costco is telling its harassers….

Taking Action

2. Wherever you stand on the developments above, a lot of recent articles focus on how to handle the moment we are in:

-(WSJ) Be like Dolly Parton (“the country music star rarely voices her personal politics, even though she has supported gay rights, Covid-19 vaccine research and other philanthropic efforts. ‘Everybody loves Dolly Parton and no one knows what she stands for’”). read here

-(G&A) Instead of walking back ESG commitments, brand them. read here

-(WSJ) Focus on the benefits of green without focusing on green message (“You’re going to need a lot of power. Instead of touting projects as ‘clean and affordable,’ renewable [energy] firms highlight their projects’ ability to meet energy needs”). read here

-(Trellis/Sust Brands) Restate the business case with “head and heart” approach or with “cheaper now, more expensive later”. read here and here

3. (Trellis) While most companies seem to be staying the course, another story that seemed to get a lot of coverage was Walmart announcing that it will miss its interim emission targets, which highlights that emissions reductions will likely be a bumpy road ahead. read here

4. (Trellis) Regardless of that, Walmart has managed to reduce the carbon intensity of its growth. And here are two other examples of how companies are pursuing significant growth paired up with emissions reductions (Mars, Aldi).

Green Innovation

5. (Crunchbase) Cleantech funding fell in 2024 but there were some bright spots and big dollars for these startups. read here

Reporting and Regulatory Corner

6. (ESG Today) And because keeping track of reporting deadlines is becoming a full-time job, here is a calendar to help you with that. read here

7-8-9. Also from the reporting front:

-California to give companies an extra year before fully enforcing new climate reporting rules. read here

-EU adopts new rules requiring 100% recyclable packaging by 2030. read here

-The European Financial Reporting Advisory Group (EFRAG) announced the release of its voluntary sustainability reporting standard for non-listed SMEs (VSME), to enable small companies to report on ESG issues in a simplified and consistent way. read here

A Changing World…

We started the year with news that I think we all expected to be the case: 2024 was the hottest year in recent history and global temperatures exceeded 1.5 Celsius above the pre-industrial era for the first time. And more voices are joining around the message that the global crisis around climate, water and biodiversity must be addressed together or risk trying to fix one and aggravating the other. The signs of interconnectedness are everywhere around the world, a theme shared in previous editions. The unknowns of the connections are beyond existing human knowledge and therefore the risks from the consequences of not doing enough are a Pandora box and, likely, very high.

What did you think of this edition of The Green Tea?

🍵🍵🍵🍵🍵  the tea was hot!

🍵🍵🍵 it was ok

🍵 not so good

Warm regards / saludos,

Julio 

Welcome back🖐,

This is the last edition of 2024! Wishing you a relaxing holiday/Christmas season and hoping we can accelerate businesses transition to a greener future from a walk to a trot in 2025.

As this edition was coming together, the tea 🍵 felt a bit grinchy with an extra dose of heavy topics, but that is the state of world affairs. Here are The …

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Welcome back🖐,

It was good to have a week with interesting and innovative green business activity to sip into 🍵 after another COP that did not fully deliver 🙄... Here are The Green Tea's Top actionable, innovation, and hot sustainability stories this week!

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Welcome back🖐,

You probably have had your share of content on what the upcoming orange era will mean for the sustainability world, and we covered some of it in the last edition.  Therefore, I will not go there on this edition, but there is still a lot to sip into this week 🍵.  Here are The Green Tea's Top actionable, innovation, and hot sustainability …

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Welcome back🖐,

There is a lot to catch up on and sip into 🍵.  Here are The Green Tea's Top actionable, innovation, and hot sustainability stories this week!

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Hi🖐,

I thought you would find useful this set of curated sustainability resources to help you sharpen your skills 🚀 and keep up with the latest trends📈 in business sustainability:

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Welcome back🖐,

We are going with a “grande” 🍵 serving because there is too much to cover and keep you up to speed on.  Here are The Green Tea's Top actionable, innovation, and hot sustainability stories this week!

Read more

Hi🖐,

I thought you would find useful this set of curated sustainability resources to help you sharpen your skills 🚀 and keep up with the latest trends📈 in business sustainability:

Read more

Welcome back🖐,

Here are The Green Tea's Top actionable, innovation, and hot sustainability stories this week! 🚀

Read more

Hi🖐,

I thought you would find useful this set of curated sustainability resources to help you sharpen your skills 🚀 and keep up with the latest trends📈 in business sustainability.  I will share resources like these periodically.  Feel free to share feedback on what would be most useful to you!

Read more

Welcome back🖐,

Here are The Green Tea's Top actionable, innovation, and hot sustainability stories this week! 🚀

Read more

Welcome back🖐,

Here are The Green Tea's Top actionable, innovation, and hot sustainability stories this week! 🚀

Read more

Welcome back🖐,

Here are The Green Tea's Top actionable, innovation, and hot sustainability stories this week! 🚀

Read more

Welcome back🖐,

Here are The Green Tea's Top actionable, innovation, and hot sustainability stories this week! 🚀

Read more

Welcome back🖐,

Here are The Green Tea's Top actionable, innovation, and hot sustainability stories this week! 🚀

Read more

Welcome back🖐,

Here are The Green Tea's Top actionable, innovation, and hot sustainability stories this week! 🚀

Read more

Welcome back🖐,

This week in sustainability, new research on sustainability data and reporting and tools to address pain points, major companies joining efforts to decarbonize supply chains, material innovation to reduce object temperature, major companies still getting Fs on plastic, a key break-through for nature, and much more…

Here are The Green Tea's…

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