Sustainable Business Podcast by Innovation Forum

This week: Pakistan-based denim garments manufacturer Soorty Enterprises’ head of ESG, Mobeen Chughtai, talks with Niamh Campbell, Innovation Forum's head of portfolio, apparel and textiles, about some of the challenges facing sector factories and suppliers that buyers at brands need to know about. They talk about digital product passports, development of renewably powered factories and what productive relationships can look like.

Plus: Amazon deforestation slows, again; New Zealand’s modern slavery regulation on track; and, who pays for climate change impacts, including Nepal’s catastrophic flooding, in the news digest. 

Host: Ian Welsh

Julia Kirschner, impact and innovation director at ArmedAngels talks with Innovation Forum's Niamh Campbell about where circularity actually begins: with brands' design decisions, not raw materials. They discuss how ArmedAngels audited its 2026 collection and found 58% alignment with its own circular design principles.

This week: Charlotte Bande, managing director and global food and beverage sector lead at Quantis, talks with Ian Welsh about the mounting pressure on food supply chains from compounding climate shocks. They discuss why low-volume commodities like vanilla can carry outsized business risk, and why procurement teams still resist change when full traceability isn't in place.

And, new study finds little measurable forest benefit from corporate zero-deforestation pledges; a Vietnamese cocoa processor turns waste pods into biochar and clean energy, halving drying time; and, Egypt develops a $278 million project to turn sugarcane waste into bioethanol, in the news digest with Babette Pagès.

Host: Diana Kim

Click here for more information on the Climate Resilience Innovation Forum (2-3 December 2026, New York City).

Pauline God, industry and policy expert at TrusTrace, talks with Ian Welsh about the state of play on digital product passports in apparel. They discuss the gap between mandatory infrastructure and still-voluntary product obligations and the four biggest lessons from DPP pilots running since 2021. They also talk about why choosing item-level serialisation over batch-level data determines whether a brand can support resale, repair and other circular business models later.

This week: Cory Connors, host of the Sustainable Packaging Podcast presented by Atlantic Packaging, and Matt Saunders, managing partner at New Earth Ventures, talk with Ian Welsh about where sustainable packaging is actually heading. They discuss the shift to monomaterials and paper-based formats under EPR and PPWR pressure, and how AI is starting to reshape packaging design, procurement and testing.

Plus: West Africa's cocoa sector struggles to meet incoming EU deforestation rules; scientists and the timber industry clash over proposed changes to the GHG Protocol's forest carbon accounting; agrofuel production is squeezing food security in northern South America; and, the US pushes for exemptions from the EU's CSRD and CSDDD, in the news digest with Babette Pagès.

Host: Diana Kim

Secure your place to meet in Chicago for the Sustainable Packaging Innovation Forum USA (October 27-28, 2026).

Mobeen Chughtai, group head of ESG and corporate communications at Soorty Enterprises, talks with Innovation Forum’s Niamh Campbell about how sustainability requirements are increasingly being reframed as non-negotiable compliance. They discuss why standardised brand guidance fails to account for supplier context, and the end-of-life emissions data brands ask suppliers to report but rarely share themselves.

This week: Highlights of webinar panel discussion when Olga Antonovskaya from BHP, Jessica Wan from Redwheel, Societe Generale’s Marie Gerbier and Eirini Konstantinou from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, joined Innovation Forum’s Ian Welsh to talk about what it takes for finance to back critical minerals at scale. 

Plus: Diageo plastic bottle safety concerns in India; SE Asia’s electric grid ongoing fragility; seep IP protection tightened in China; land restoration focus at UN desertification COP; and, big brand cotton from Brazil linked with forced labour, in the news digest.

If you want to listen to the full critical minerals webinar, click here.

Mari-Lou Dupont, senior vice president for social compliance at the Fair Labor Association, talks with Ian Welsh at Innovation Forum's Sustainable Apparel and Textiles event in Amsterdam about worker wellbeing in the apparel sector. They discuss why low unionisation remains the biggest underlying risk to wages and working conditions and why most brands are still stuck measuring living wage gaps rather than closing them. They also discuss what it will take to build the trust needed for suppliers to share real costing data.

This week: Innovation Forum apparel portfolio lead Niamh Campbell spoke with Julia Kirschner, impact and innovation director at fashion brand Armedangels, in New York recently about how to enable a circular approach at scale in the sector. And Ian Welsh spoke with Eduardo Alvarez, plastics and packaging expert at Dow in Amsterdam earlier this year about what can drive circularity in packaging. 

Plus: UK's continued success in cutting single-use plastic bags, EU digital product passport roll-out continues, why off-shore wind farms could help develop new aquatic food supply chains, and new palm oil finance links with deforestation, in the news digest with Babette Pages. 

Host: Ian Welsh

Marco Rosso, global head of sustainability and corporate affairs at Syngenta Biologicals and Seed Care, talks with Ian Welsh at Innovation Forum's food and beverage conference about the shifting economics of farming. They discuss why the number of farmers in the Netherlands has halved in 25 years, and the mix of income, land access and perception driving that decline. They also talk about why no single technology can substitute for a crop-by-crop, farmer-led approach.