The Responsible Edge Podcast

Some businesses may be protecting models that no longer have a viable future. EdenLab founder Leo Rayman calls them "zombie companies". Charlie Martin speaks with Leo about why climate resilience may not be enough for industries facing structural change. They discuss the financing of domestic solar installations, the limits of economic evidence and a food industry conference where almost...

Kelly Harrison and Sebastian Wood on Aviva's warning that around 115,000 new homes are set to be built in flood zones. This week on The Responsible Edge, why the harder question is how homes are designed rather than only where, why cooling demand is a bigger electricity problem than data centres, and how alpha puts a financial value on building better so long-term investors can finally see it. Spo...

In May 2025, Kenya suspended Rainforest Alliance tea certifications. The audit costs were falling on factories and farmers, while UK buyers who required the seal were not funding it. Zahra Afshar, General Counsel at Ahmad Tea, joins Charlie Martin to examine the structural problem and what one brand decided to do about it. She explains how certification has become a compliance exercise that serves...

Chris Pratt on the CBS article naming rage bait marketing as the dominant communication tactic of 2025 and asking what it really costs. This week on The Responsible Edge , why algorithmically-amplified outrage is pushing climate discourse to the fringes, why the CIPR’s 2026 State of the Profession found 52 percent of PR practitioners are pulling back from taking public positions, and why green hus...

Can a business invest in its community and still leave people worse off? In this episode of The Responsible Edge, Charlie speaks with Thomas Abuhanian Neto, co-founder of Social Impact in Brazil, about the gap between corporate good intentions and genuine social impact. Drawing on examples of poorly designed initiatives, they explore why listening to communities matters, how conventional measures...

Philippa Hann on the Ethico article arguing that most misconduct is committed by ordinary people, not calculating bad actors. This week on The Responsible Edge, why good people know when they are crossing a line and rationalise it anyway, why ethics training misses the moments that matter, and how Paradigm Norton is building an emotionally healthy firm to catch problems early. Sponsored by truMRK....

Andrew Horsfall on a 2026 Entrepreneur article arguing radical transparency is the new competitive advantage, written by the CEO of an online reputation management firm, with no data to back the claim. This week on The Responsible Edge, why risk mitigation drives disclosure more than trust-building does, and whether the correlation between transparency and commercial trust outcomes has ever actual...

Andy Last and Gareth Brown on the Anti-Greenwash Charter's 2026 roundtable with nine purpose-led brands. This week on The Responsible Edge, how responsible sustainability communication builds commercial trust, why precision creates competitive advantage, and how the Charter and truMRK make independent verification achievable today. Sponsored by truMRK. New episodes every week. In the summer of...

Benjamin Thiele-Long on the PA Future article arguing ESG investing has a governance problem. This week on The Responsible Edge, why the G is not the poor cousin of ESG but its precondition, why "may be" and "can" are doing the wrong work in an argument that should commit, and what it means to move ESG from the bottom line to the top. Sponsored by truMRK. New episodes every wee...

Aimee Rawlins on the trust crisis Onora O'Neill predicted in 2002 and the Reuters and Edelman data confirming it has arrived. This week on The Responsible Edge, why fake news is now a feeling as much as a fact, what local news deserts are doing to communities, and why giving the NLRB enforcement teeth is one structural response to an accountability system that cannot act. Sponsored by truMRK....

Timothy Clement on why construction social value has become a procurement game fifteen years after the Social Value Act. This week on The Responsible Edge, why hitting the targets and missing the community are not in contradiction, and what a three-year post-completion evaluation would change. Sponsored by truMRK. New episodes every week. A June 2026 article by Darcie Lattin of Watson, published i...

Matt Bourn on the Fortune case for a Chief Trust Officer, written by Edelman's U.S. Head of Corporate Reputation. This week on The Responsible Edge, why the diagnosis of trust as unowned across the C-suite is accurate, why a new C-suite role may not fix it, and what the shift from the attention economy to the trust economy actually requires. Sponsored by truMRK. New episodes every week. A May...

Dr Leeya Hendricks on the Lippincott CMO Outlook 2026 and the gap between what marketing leaders know they should do and what they are actually doing. This week on The Responsible Edge, why the short-term credibility trade-off is costing CMOs something harder to recover than a quarterly target. Sponsored by truMRK. New episodes every week. A global study of more than five hundred CMOs, conducted b...

A 2025 Korn Ferry report finds that the Chief Sustainability Officer role is becoming one of the most strategic positions in the enterprise. Sixty-two percent of executives surveyed plan to increase sustainability budgets. The shift is real. So is the nuance underneath it. In this episode of The Responsible Edge, host Charlie Martin speaks with Katja Tuomola, Head of Sustainability and Marketing C...

Harriet Hodgson-Grove on the accounting profession's role in the UK's £105 billion net zero economy. This week on The Responsible Edge, why accountants are uniquely placed to unlock SME decarbonisation, and how embedding carbon reporting in standard practice could transform the journey to 2030. Sponsored by truMRK. New episodes every week. The UK's net zero economy has grown to £105 bi...

In April 2026, Scotiabank and Royal Bank of Canada both withdrew their 2030 interim financed emissions reduction targets. Scotiabank went further, retiring its 2050 net zero goal entirely. Both cited changing policy assumptions, reduced data availability, and an investment environment in which climate commitments are no longer being demanded with the same force. In this episode of The Responsible...

As of April 2026, twenty-eight jurisdictions have adopted the ISSB's sustainability disclosure standards. A further twelve are planning to. South Korea, Japan, and the United Kingdom have each issued domestic versions. The S&P Global report tracking this progress is detailed, comprehensive, and authoritative. It does not mention GRI once. In this episode of The Responsible Edge, host Charl...

During the May 2026 heatwave, a familiar set of narratives circulated across European platforms. Heatwaves have always existed. Scientists manipulate data. The media exaggerates. The claims were recycled. The infrastructure distributing them was not improvised. In this episode of The Responsible Edge, host Charlie Martin speaks with Sara Rego, founder of Mossy, Managing Director of BeTrue, and a r...

Remote work expanded access to talent. It reduced geographic barriers and gave organisations new flexibility. But did it also create a new problem? In this episode of The Responsible Edge, Christopher Carter, CEO of Approyo, discusses the hidden trade-off inside hybrid work. After building teams across the United States, United Kingdom, India and Brazil, Christopher argues that distributed workfor...

A 2026 report, After Service: The Hidden Costs of Britain's Military on its Veterans, documents a specific failure. The legal commitments made to service leavers exist. At the transition point, they break down. Ten percent of service leavers struggle to find employment in year one. A further fifteen percent need meaningful support in the first two years. In this episode of The Responsible Edge...

China is the world's largest carbon emitter and its largest producer of solar panels, electric vehicles, and battery storage. Those facts are not a paradox. From a Chinese cultural and political perspective, they are entirely consistent. In this episode of The Responsible Edge, host Charlie Martin speaks with Paul Gladston, Judith Nielsen Chair Professor of Contemporary Art at the University o...

The energy transition has a materials problem most corporate sustainability reports do not address. Wind turbines, electric vehicles, and grid-scale batteries require cobalt, lithium, and nickel extracted from mines. The governance architecture sitting between those mines and the finished product is, in most supply chains, structurally incomplete. In this episode of The Responsible Edge, host Char...

Greenpeace has called out the International Olympic Committee for accepting sponsorship from Eni, the Italian fossil fuel company, for the 2026 Winter Games. The charge is precise: a company contributing to global warming is funding an event whose future depends on snow and ice. In this episode of The Responsible Edge, host Charlie Martin uses that story as the starting point for a broader convers...

Research suggests forty percent of stressed senior leaders are currently considering stepping down. That figure arrives as organisations face climate risk, AI disruption, and shifting workforce expectations simultaneously. The leadership most needed is the leadership most at risk. In this episode of The Responsible Edge, host Charlie Martin speaks with Adrian Ferraro, founder of The Bioasis, an of...

Climate communication has a problem that more data will not fix. Research from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication shows that 72 percent of Americans believe global warming is happening, but only 45 percent expect it to harm them personally. Scientific consensus messaging, the most common communication tool, can entrench scepticism rather than reduce it, particularly among those with...