Sustainable Business Podcast by Innovation Forum

As regulatory pressure mounts and supply chain scrutiny intensifies, leading brands in food, beverage, and apparel are uncovering the business value by looking beyond high-level carbon inventories to understand and act on granular, product-level emissions data measurement.

At the same time, overlapping standards and fragmented data are leaving many sustainability teams unsure where to start and how to prioritise action.

This webinar unpacked what 'product footprinting at scale' really means in practice: how companies are overcoming data and methodology challenges, how different sectors are approaching standard-setting and data exchange, and what business value organisations are unlocking in moving from pilot programmes to enterprise-wide implementation.

We discussed:

• How evolving product footprint frameworks and customer requirements are reshaping expectations for teams in sustainability, product, and procurement
• The practical bottlenecks: navigating uncertainty, making the business case, and systematising and scaling product-level emissions data and tools
• What’s needed in terms of governance, tools, and internal alignment to move from LCA and PCF pilots to portfolio‑wide implementation
• How companies are turning product-level emissions data into action – from PCF, and Scope 3 decarbonisation to regulatory readiness and product innovation.

Andrew Coburn, founder and chair at Risilience, talks with Innovation Forum's Ian Welsh about the coming super El Niño and agricultural and financial shocks it can bring to global food supply chains. They discuss latest findings on case studies, such as crop losses at $39-375 billion, with rice, wheat, coffee and palm oil all exposed. 

This week: James Stokes, director of business development at Lestari Capital, talks with Innovation Forum's Ian Welsh about financing nature-based solutions and ecosystem services. They discuss why nature-based investment cases lean on risk prevention rather than a positive return story, and why shifting that imbalance depends on making nature as investable as any other asset class.

 

And, food systems exploit more workers than any other sector globally; PepsiCo's farmers protect its potato supply; major fashion coalition to fund textile waste management in Ghana; and, Australia’s high court blocks coal mine expansion, in the news digest with Babette Pagès.

 

Host: Ian Welsh

This week: Tory Hoffmeister, senior manager, sustainable sourcing, climate and water lead, Colgate-Palmolive, Matthias Maase, director global sustainability care chemicals, BASF, Francesco Davila Alotto, global environmental sustainability senior manager, Givaudan and Alexandra Florea, head of sustainability, Medik8, join Ian Welsh in an extract from a recent Innovation Forum webinar to talk about how the personal care sector is focusing on supply chain scope 3 emissions.  

Plus: critical minerals’ governance gaps; Türkiye’s climate COP31 ambitions; recycled polyester commitments from Primark; and, new UK food waste standards, in the news digest with Babette Pagès. 

Host: Ian Welsh  

For the full scope 3 webinar recording click here.

Anna Pierce, director of sustainability at Tate & Lyle, and Anastasia Volkova, co-founder and CEO at Regrow, talk with Innovation Forum's Ian Welsh about building resilient agricultural supply chains. They discuss why Tate & Lyle brought its regenerative agriculture programme to France after drought disrupted its corn supply, and how data such as drops in yield variability, can be a catalyst for scaling beyond pilot projects.

This week: From 2027, EV and industrial batteries will need verified data on carbon footprint, material composition and supply chain due diligence in the EU. To discuss the challenges, Anna Fleming from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, Jeroen Hoff, Connect Bus, and Ilya Gasparishvili from Honeywell Technologies, joined Innovation Forum's Ian Welsh on a recent webinar. The panel discussed whether critical mineral value chains are ready to deliver.

Plus: consumer concern about sustainability rises for the first time in three years, according to Bain & Company; dry weather in Côte d'Ivoire threatens cocoa supply; El Niño could push 50 million more people into acute hunger; MacroCycle signs a deal with Meta to fund its first PET recycling plant; and, adaptation finance still trails mitigation despite better ways to measure resilience, in the news digest with Babette Pagès.

Host: Ian Welsh 

Charlotte Bande, managing director and global food and beverage sector lead at Quantis, talks with Innovation Forum's Ian Welsh about climate risk in food supply chains following this summer's Northern Hemisphere heatwave. They discuss why extreme weather events are leaving less time for recovery, why low-volume commodities such as vanilla can carry high business risk, and how traceability and procurement involvement can support supply chain resilience.

The EU Battery Regulation is raising the bar.

From 2027, battery passports will be mandatory for EV and industrial batteries, requiring verified data on carbon footprint, material composition and supply chain due diligence across the full value chain. For an industry where data is fragmented, supply chains span dozens of jurisdictions and transparency stops well short of the mine, the question is no longer whether to comply. It is whether compliance is actually possible.

The challenge is structural. Miners, processors, traders, manufacturers and buyers all hold different pieces of the data puzzle, with limited incentive to share it and significant barriers to doing so. Meeting the regulation's requirements demands a level of cross-chain coordination that the sector has never achieved at scale.

This webinar brought together voices from across the value chain to explore what it will actually take to get there.

What we discussed:

• What the next phase of the EU Battery Regulation requires and where the sector currently falls short
• The data gaps and coordination challenges that sit between the mine and a compliant battery passport
• How companies across the value chain are building the systems and partnerships to meet their obligations
• Where the battery passport creates genuine supply chain value beyond compliance

This week: Andrew Coburn, chair and founder at climate experts Risilience, talks with Innovation Forum's Ian Welsh about the coming super El Niño and its threat to global food supply chains. They discuss new research putting crop losses at up to $375bn, with rice, wheat, coffee and palm oil among the commodities exposed, and why agri-sector companies need to be acting now.

And, fossil fuel emissions set to fall in 2026 amid Hormuz crisis; PaperFlex consortium launched for paper-based packaging; Avantium and Klöckner Pentaplast partner on plant-based polymer; and, plastic pollution costs Vietnamese fishers a fifth of revenue, in the news digest.

Host: Ian Welsh

Join Risilience, Innovation Forum and industry peers in London on 20 October to explore how market leaders are leveraging advanced analytics to translate complex climate and nature risks into the metrics that matter most: ROI, capital allocation, and value protection. Register your interest here.

Mobeen Chughtai, group head of ESG and corporate communications at Soorty Enterprises, talks with Innovation Forum's Niamh Campbell at the recent Sustainable Apparel and Textiles Conference USA, in a follow-up to their earlier conversation. Mobeen describes a simulation exercise he ran giving brands, regulators and vendors a supplier's real budget and legislative pressures to work through. They discuss what it revealed including how a 'sustainability premium' is really just an unfunded cost shift. They also talk about how suppliers are now managing a second product that is compliance data, with no shared system to plug into.