Seeding hope for sustainable business in 2024

CONFIRMATION THAT 2023 was the hottest year on record will surprise no one who has been following the climate and sustainability space. Fresh statistics appear in my inbox on a near-daily basis showing the increasingly devastating impact of global warming.

The latest, from Munich Re, shows that overall losses from natural disasters, many of them climate-change related, amounted to $250 billion last year, causing 74,000 people to lose their lives. Though 85% of the fatalities were from devastating earthquakes in Turkey and Syria, 76% of financial losses were related to extreme weather events.

The litany of bad news can have a debilitating effect, inhibiting rather than prompting action, which is why in Ethical Corporation magazine we try to shine a light on some of the best practice in sustainable business, without shying away from the difficult context that those businesses that are trying to do the right thing are operating in.

Before publishing our first issue of the year next month, ?on the health and climate nexus, it’s worth reflecting on what we covered in the magazine in 2023, highlighting some of the standout articles.

LAST YEAR OUR FIRST ISSUE tackled the multi-faced challenges thrown up by the just transition agenda. While climate justice can sound fluffy in comparison to the hard data and metrics behind mitigating CO2 emissions, after decades of myopically focusing on cutting carbon, companies and policymakers are now waking up to what human rights and community activists have been warning for years: it’s the people, stupid. And it’s also the impact on biodiversity and nature.

In one article Angeli Mehta looked at the reskilling challenge, of ensuring that workers are not left behind in the transition from fossil fuels to clean-energy based economies, while Mark Hillsdon reported on how safeguarding the livelihoods of coastal communities is key to unlocking the potential of marine-based climate solutions like preserving mangroves.

2023 WAS A BUMPY YEAR for the climate tech startup sector, with the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in March, combined with the volatile geopolitical landscape due to the war in Ukraine and high inflation rates. But as we reported in our May issue, the fundamentals for the sector remain strong.

Catherine Early reported on how generous tax credits in the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act are boosting companies working on sustainable aviation fuels, while Angeli Mehta looked at how startups providing decarbonisation solutions to the shipping industry were striking partnerships to help their technologies scale.

Meanwhile, Mark Hillsdon profiled some of the leading companies in the wider field of nature tech, which has seen a wave of venture capital cash in the last two years. You can download the entire issue by clicking here.

IN 2023 THERE WAS progress in tortuous negotiations towards reaching a global agreement on tackling plastic waste, a process that will continue this year.

?Our summer issue did a deep dive into the issue, looking at the agenda for sustainable business across the entire value chain. Among our coverage, Angeli Mehta explained the Wild West environment that surrounds plastics recycling and why, despite all the pledges to use more recycled material, it still only makes up a tiny fraction of new plastics manufacture.

Meanwhile Sarah LaBrecque explained how the automotive industry is the biggest contributor to the microplastics crisis through wear and tear of tyres. While the industry is belatedly moving to address the environmental impacts of tyre dust, one elephant in the room is the fact that electric vehicles, whose tyres can wear out up to 50% faster than conventional cars, is exacerbating the problem.

GIVEN THE USE of plastics in the production of synthetic textiles, there’s a lot of cross-over between plastic waste and our next issue, on sustainability in the fashion industry.

While brands have trumpeted their efforts to substitute virgin polyester with recycled PET from plastic bottles, textile to textile recycling only accounts for 1%-2% of all recycling in Europe.

As Angeli Mehta reported, the apparel industry is in competition with the drinks bottle industry, where the plastic could be recycled many more times. She dug deep into the challenges brands such as Adidas and Inditex face as they try to move away from using PET and virgin cotton and scale up the use of recycled threads. And while resale is all the rage these days, as Amy Brown reported, fashion brands aren't making a dent in the mountains of textile waste they generate.

CARBON REMOVALS has only recently entered the sustainable business lexicon, shorthand for a suite of exotic technologies to remove carbon from the atmosphere such as direct air capture, extreme rock weathering, biochar and biomass burials.

The technologies are novel, poorly understood, and controversial, yet they are attracting serious investment by leading corporate players and governments in North America and Europe. In our autumn issue we focused on the burgeoning market for carbon removals, and why it is dividing the sustainable business community.

?As Mike Scott reported, critics’ main concern is that carbon removals will lend a fig-leaf to companies determined to carry on business as usual, a suspicion confirmed for many when Occidental Petroleum bought DAC firm Carbon Engineering, and announced its intention to produce “net-zero oil”.

And as Oliver Balch discovered, with the influential Science Based Targets initiative among the naysayers, it’s far from clear what role purchases of carbon removals certificates should play in a net-zero strategy.

Mark Hillsdon, meanwhile, reported on a suite of carbon removals technologies that are locking up CO2 in concrete, and dug into extreme rock weathering, a technology that is generating a lot of investor interest for its ability to both sequester carbon in oceans and return nutrients to tired soils.

To read these articles and many more, click here to download the entire issue.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE has taken the world by storm in the last few years, with the companies that are at its forefront the loudest to warn of the risks of letting the technology race ahead of human capacity to control it.

Used appropriately and wisely, however, AI-enabled technologies have the potential to help humans unlock solutions to the hugely complex challenges we face as we strive to avoid the most dangerous impacts of climate change and biodiversity loss.

We ended 2023 by looking at how AI is being applied in?a wide range of sectors, from decarbonising heavy industry to fighting wildfires, to protecting the oceans, exploring the opportunities for the new AI-enabled technologies, as well as their downsides and limitations.

Among the pieces we published was Ben Payton’s report on how AI is helping power energy systems in an age of renewables. He also looked into the environmental impact of AI’s own massive power demand, and how this is being managed by companies like Microsoft.

Meanwhile, Catherine Early looked at how city transport authorities are venturing into the use of AI to better manage traffic, charge electric vehicles and wean city-dwellers from their cars onto public transport.? You can download the digital pdf here.

Along with editing the magazine, I also commission articles from our journalists and guest commentators for the Insight Insight section of Reuters.com's sustainability website.

I'll be highlighting all our newly published content and other interesting news and views on sustainable business in my biweekly newsletter. You can look out for the next one in two weeks' time, including all the latest developments from Davos. Stay well