Sustainable Business Podcast by Innovation Forum

This week: Niels Wielaard founder and CEO of Satelligence talks about how greater traceability can help brands and traders take the lessons learned in one supply chain and apply it across commodities, and how the barriers to tracking from farm to mill to finished product are changing. Plus, in the news digest: serious human rights risks for Chinese cotton; big brands call for traders to do more to...

Low famer incomes, human rights abuses and environmental degradation still plague smallholder-based supply chains of soft commodities and other agricultural products. For the past nine months, Innovation Forum’s Innovation Accelerator project has been running an action research project to understand why. This webinar was held to launch the initial findings of the research, which has explored a wid...

This week: Victoria Crawford, manager of the Investment Partnership Network at Just Rural Transition, discusses some of the steps necessary to enable investment in sustainable commodity supply chains, why collaboration is essential and how blended finance involving public and private funding can help. Plus: Nestlé’s big plans for net zero; Sweden tops sustainable competitivity index (again); new U...

Ying Xuen Hoe, project manager, Proforest Southeast Asia, Rashyid Redza bin Anwarudin, head, group sustainability, Sime Darby Plantation, and Olivier Tichit, director sustainable supply chains, Musim Mas, discuss with Ian Welsh how the Accountability Framework initiative is helping the palm oil sector in southeast Asia. They talk about why a number of tools are necessary to achieve sustainability...

Collection and recycling of material plays a vital part in enabling a circular economy and is an inherently complex challenge to tackle. The problem is particularly acute in developing countries where lack of proper infrastructure and waste management processes stall the progress. This webinar brought together a diverse group of stakeholders to shed some light on the challenges and the solutions t...

Olivier Tichit, director for sustainable supply chains at integrated palm oil business Musim Mas, talks with Ian Welsh about the characteristics of successful landscape approaches that work for the palm oil sector. Tichit argues that key elements are to have everyone involved, strong commitment from all stakeholders and an acceptance that time is necessary for the challenges to be met.     Musim M...

This week: David Horlock from the British Standards Institute talks about how to develop sustainability standards for red meat. He argues that, despite the sector’s reputation, red meat can be part a sustainable food production system, but it depends on how it’s produced. And, a preview of the results of Innovation Forum’s research into developing resilience in smallholder farming communities with...

Tato Bigio, CEO of UBQ Materials Israel, talks with Ian Welsh about UBQ’s process that creates material – that can be used as a substitute for plastic made from petrochemicals – from household waste destined for landfill. UBQ’s material currently is used in the production of durable plastic materials in the automotive, construction and retail sectors. Bigio argues that it competes well with tradit...

This week: Emily Kunen, global responsible sourcing lead for palm oil and seafood at Nestlé, Sandra Doig, head of sustainability at Grupo Palmas and Marianne Marinet, programmes director for the Earthworm Foundation, talk with Innovation Forum’s Toby Webb about how they have collaborated to create a more sustainable landscape in Peru. Plus: new food sector report from CDP; Vodafone tightens net-ze...

Joe Franses, vice-president sustainability, Coca-Cola European Partners talks with Ian Welsh about the company’s plastics targets, the challenges getting to real scale, and the need for better collection infrastructure. Franses highlights the difficulties of finding recycled feedstock of the right quality and then turning that into food-grade materials, particularly when there are economic incenti...

This week: Tato Bigio, CEO of UBQ Materials Israel, explains how waste destined for landfill can be converted into new thermoplastic material that can take the place of traditional plastics in potentially thousands of products. He says that the thermoplastic is competitive on price, significantly cuts emissions and outperforms traditional plastic on a full lifecycle analysis basis. Plus, in the ne...

Felicitas Weber, Know the Chain project lead at the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, talks with Ian Welsh about the latest food and beverage sector forced labour benchmark. The topline conclusion is that progress to get to grips with exploitation of workers remains slow. While there is perhaps some inevitable distraction from ensuring business continuity in challenging times, Weber argue...

This week: Olivier Tichit, director for sustainable supply chains at Musim Mas, talks about the essential elements required for a successful landscape approach. He argues that the starting points have to be involving all stakeholders, commitment from all parties and time. Plus: why the global food system needs radical change; Biden’s climate commitment; McDonald’s to launch plant-based burgers in...

Renata Nogueira, South America sustainability manager for Cargill, and Gonzalo La Cruz, managing director, Solidaridad South America, talk with Ian Welsh about how to protect native vegetation under pressure from commodity crops, including in Brazil’s Cerrado biome.  They discuss the need for solutions that bring benefits to local producers – in Paraguay and Colombia – and argue that when all bene...

John Grant, writer of the new book Greener Marketing, talks with Innovation Forum’s Toby Webb about how marketing has adapted in the past decade. They discuss why the era of radical millennials, demanding better more sustainable behaviour from companies and their brands and being ever-more suspicious of greenwashing, means there is a need for market disruptions led by marketing that is evolving an...

Tom Griffiths, coordinator of the responsible finance programme at the Forest Peoples Programme, talks about why there has been a disconnect between how business approaches human rights and environmental issues. Plus: the positive impacts of a switch to plant-based proteins; more calls for the US to re-join the Paris accord; GSK joins the net-zero party; and, AB InBev’s new blockchain pilot for be...

Rainforest Alliance’s Mauricio Galindo, WWF’s Camila Cammaert and Laura Rojas Salazar, ONF Andina’s Luz Andrea Silva, and Forest Peoples Programme’s Tom Griffiths talk with Ian Welsh about how the Accountability Framework initiative is helping companies in South America in general, and Colombia in particular develop more sustainable supply chains. They discuss the need to protect forests and other...

This week: Joe Franses, vice-president for sustainability at Coca-Cola European Partners, discusses how the brand will achieve its goals of 100% recycled or renewable materials in all of its plastic bottles. He talks about the economic challenges in recycled materials costs versus virgin feedstock when oil prices are so low, and argues that the sector must look beyond this to real circularity in i...

Janina Grabs from ETH Zurich and Sophia Carodenuto from the University of Victoria discuss with Ian Welsh their research into why commodity traders – large and small – remain largely invisible from a consumer perspective despite their importance in commodity supply chains. They argue that because of their close relationship with farmers, traders have a key role in helping brands deliver on their d...

This week: The new food and beverage sector forced labour and human rights issues benchmark from Know the Chain is analysed by the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre’s Felicitas Weber. The meat sector in particular is in the spotlight, not least because of stresses from dealing with the pandemic’s challenges, while Tesco and Unilever score highest. Plus: Oxfam highlights shortfalls in clima...

Peter Stanbury and Ian Welsh discuss some of the initial insights from Innovation Forum’s action research group that’s examining the challenges facing smallholder farms and their communities. The sheer scale of the issues remains enormous – with vast scope for sharing lessons-learned between supply chains to make them more resilient. Stanbury argues the case for significantly more, smarter, collab...

This week: Renata Nogueira, South America sustainability manager for Cargill, and Gonzalo La Cruz, managing director, Solidaridad South America, discuss how to drive forward more sustainable commodity supply chains in Paraguay, Colombia and Brazil, and some of the challenges for buyers with zero deforestation commitments. Plus: IEA push for low-emission energy post pandemic; the greenhouse gas ris...

Gotz Martin, head of sustainability implementation at Golden Agri-Resources, and Ian Welsh summarise some of the discussion points from a recent Innovation Forum workshop. They talk about the incentives that can work to help empower smallholder farmers, enabling them to increase farm incomes without clearing new land. Martin outlines some of the challenges around payments for ecosystem services, a...

As apparel brands work to implement sustainability commitments across their supply chains, access to the right data is key. Collecting and utilising this data in an effective, efficient manner ensures brands can drive supply chain improvements, whilst promoting greater transparency, enabling broader industry collaboration and evidencing their hard work to consumers. In this webinar, at a crucial m...

This week: Janina Grabs from ETH Zurich and Sophia Carodenuto from the University of Victoria talk about their research into how commodity trader companies are influencing and helping deliver brand supply chain commitments. They discuss how the relationship between brands, traders and growers is evolving. Plus: Mars goes 100% zero-deforestation; more bad news for ocean floor plastic pollution; Ald...