COP30: Can business save the planet again?

This is a particularly stressful time to work in sustainability. The world is facing a daunting list of existential threats. However, these often require long-term focus – something that political leaders have struggled to maintain in the midst of another turbulent year.

There has been some progress—for example, China’s emissions have finally flattened and should now start reducing—but the situation has not been helped by Donald Trump rolling back the sustainability agenda in the US.

And climate change is just one of seven ‘planetary boundaries’ – safe limits on our environmental impact – that we have already crossed. Soil health, land use, ocean acidification, biodiversity loss, fresh water degradation, and pollution are all critical.

These environmental issues cannot be separated from the social challenges we face.

The roots of the COVID-19 pandemic lay in our dysfunctional relationship with nature and, along with the Ukraine war, it has hit the poorest the hardest. And when populations struggle, their support for right-wing populism increases, further weakening our collective commitment to sustainability.

Against that backdrop, it is tempting for businesses to give up, quietly backslide on net-zero and social commitments alike, and hope no-one will notice.

Yet it is clear that we cannot sit back and leave governments to find solutions. If we are prepared to tackle the issue head on, the past offers some hope.

After all, business has already helped to save the world once – during the ozone crisis – and that success holds valuable lessons on how we can do so again.

How businesses helped to solve the ozone crisis

By 1974, it was evident that refrigerants were damaging the ozone layer which protects all life from harmful the sun's ultraviolet rays. Over the next decade, that damage became critical.

The simple story that many remember is that the world made an agreement – the Montreal Protocol – in 1987, which fixed the problem. But that’s only half true.

Politicians are understandably reluctant to introduce regulations that could severely damage their economies. They only signed off on this protocol because firms told them the ozone-damaging chemicals – Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in particular – could be replaced by other ones, called Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs).

The problem was that HFCs, while not ozone depleting, are exceptionally powerful contributors to global warming. The world’s single greatest climate mitigation project came from solving that problem.

Politicians signed off on the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal protocol in 2016, agreeing to reduce the production and consumption of HFCs. This will save an estimated 0.4 degree increase in global warming by the end of the century. That’s similar to the saving if overnight, the world stopped all flying, switched all heating to heat pumps, and switched all cars to electric vehicles (EVs).

But the politicians only signed it because the likes of Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Unilever, and McDonalds told them it would do no economic harm.

Developing an alternative to HFCs

These unlikely bedfellows decided that if change was inevitable, it was better to get ahead of the curve because, as the biggest polluters, they would be hardest hit by regulation.

So, in 2004, they formed a coalition called Refrigerants, Naturally! They even roped in the UN Environment Programme and Greenpeace, an organisation they were used to fighting rather than co-operating with.

And it was Greenpeace that sourced a technical solution, called Greenfreeze. The national governmental organisation's (NGO’s) Ozone Project Director, János Maté, told us that “had Greenpeace decided to patent the technology, and even if Greenpeace only had one dollar per unit as a royalty fee, Greenpeace would have received a billion dollars”. The firms developed and scaled the technology until they were satisfied that, if they moved together, none of them would suffer.

Then they lobbied the regulators to ban HFCs as they were in a position to move faster than other firms who had not been involved and reap the benefits.

The story of Refrigerants, Naturally! is just one of eight that we studied in depth with Emma Macdonald of the University of Strathclyde.

Archive documents and 54 interviews with those involved revealed some common lessons for business leaders seeking to drive the sustainability agenda.

1. Collaborate to innovate

No single actor has the power to save the planet on their own, just as no one organisation had all the answers to the challenges posed by the ozone layer.

The business leaders we spoke to commonly reported that their most successful ventures – for their firms as well as for social and environmental sustainability – resulted from collaborations with NGOs and other organisations.

These collaborations allow us to solve thorny problems by pooling skillsets and resources.

For example, UK retailer M&S wanted to reduce its environmental impact in terms of clothes being thrown away at the end of their life.

However, it had no expertise in end-of-life clothes, so it turned to Oxfam.

The international development agency did possess that competence through its sorting facilities, its shops to resell high-quality clothes, and its network to recycle or safely dispose of the rest.

Together, they formed a collaboration called Shwopping, now rebranded Another Life.

If customers brought a bag of clothes containing at least one M&S item to either an Oxfam or M&S store, they received a £5 voucher off their next M&S purchase.

M&S reduced its environmental footprint, Oxfam received sellable clothes to fund its development work, and both gained revenue-generating footfall through their stores. This triple-bottom-line solution was only possible once both firms began brainstorming together.

2. Unite through values

For a publicly traded corporation to gain the expertise required for a sustainability initiative, it may need to team up with an NGO or government agency motivated by relevant social issues, and another that is passionate about the environment.

A key challenge is how these organisations can work together despite having different priorities and values.

At the very least, partners need to develop ‘value framing’ skills, learning to see the partnership through each other’s eyes to ensure innovations create value for each of them.

To aid with that, M&S and Oxfam staff immersed themselves in each other’s worlds. For example, M&S representatives volunteered in Oxfam’s sorting facilities.

At their best, these collaborations synthesise their values into a common worldview that shape what matters to project participants from all partners and how they behave.

Academically, we call this common worldview an ‘engagement logic’. In Refrigerants Naturally! this logic meant that for everyone involved, both the environmental goals and the firms’ commercial goals both mattered.

The collaboration became so intense that in one meeting, a Coca-Cola representative told his Pepsi counterpart that he would share everything he knew except the formula for Coke!

3. Scale up

Collaborations have several crucial roles in sustainable innovation. The first is to co-create solutions that deliver one pillar of the triple bottom line – social, environmental, or financial value – without damaging the other two.

The second is to prove that these innovations can be scaled for mass adoption.

The collaboration between M&S and Oxfam achieved the first aim, but only partly achieved the second. In the view of one of the managing directors involved, the partnership missed an opportunity to involve more NGOs and more retailers using online channels.

That opportunity is now being filled by others such as online marketplaces Vinted and Vestiaire. Only in the last year has M&S extended the scope of Another Life to include repairs (with repair service SOJO) and online sales (with eBay and resale partner Reskinned).

Unilever and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) were more successful at scaling their collaboration on the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), which was set up after calamitous declines in fish populations in the 1990s threatened the viability of major Unilever brands such as Birds Eye.

MSC set out to convene scientists, NGOs, retailers, manufacturers, and policymakers to define and implement more sustainable fishing standards.

Not only does MSC certification now cover 17 per cent of all wild marine catches, it also provides a vehicle for regulators to discuss standards and how to square the circle between commercial and environmental goals.

4. Embed system change

As these cases illustrate, the journey may start with firms putting their own house in order, but that is not where it ends.

Ultimately, progress towards a sustainable future depends on whole systems – such as fishing, clothing, and refrigeration – transforming to more sustainable configurations.

It’s best to view business collaborations as a bridge towards that transformed system, not just as a way of helping individual firms in the present.

Sustainability collaborations can help the participants to imagine what that future system might look like.

As that vision is realised, firms can position themselves to succeed in that sustainable future.

Further reading:

A messy mix: How will the global energy transition unfold?

From conflict to progress: A blueprint for sustainability success

Why firms need to start measuring Scope 3 emissions now

Governments cannot rely on pension funds to tackle climate change

Hugh Wilson is Professor of Marketing. He teaches Creating Sustainable Organisations on the Global Online MBA, Global Online MBA (London), Executive MBA, and Executive MBA (London). He also teaches Succeeding in a Sustainable Future and Critical Issues in Marketing on the MSc Marketing and Strategy.

Rosina Watson is Associate Professor of Sustainability at Cranfield School of Management and Head of the School's Sustainable Business Group.

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