Hello Reader,
We're watching (in horror) from a distance as our former home city faces a major climate catastrophe, with category 2 Cyclone Alfred bearing down. For context, the area is roughly the same distance as London to Paris, or LA to Las Vegas, or New York to Boston.
Through all of this, we once again see examples of community spirit, with citizens pulling together to check on neighbours, helping to fill sand bags for themselves and others, and preparing their houses for expected flood inundation. It's tools down while the work that needs to be done is done.
While natural disasters aren't unusual, this particular cyclone is unusual in that cyclones don't typically occur this far south. They don't usually make landfall at such intensity. They don't usually vary speeds like they're taking a breath before walking out on stage to perform.
Despite this being unusual, it isn't unexpected.
Perhaps that's the takeaway: There is no such thing as 'usual' any more. But with an honest look, we already know what we can expect.
If the "1-in-100" year events start to take place every 2-3 years, the game most certainly has changed. As leaders, we need to confront how we must also change if we're to build future-proof businesses.
- What does it mean to do business in the context of increased climate uncertainty?
- What is the work that needs to be done right now?
- What new risks present themselves?
- What are our shareholders' expectations of how we're addressing these risks?
- What new opportunities present themselves?
- How will our customers' needs change in this context?
- What will we be in the business of in 5 years' time?
We're sending our thoughts to clients, colleagues, friends and family in South-East Queensland and Northern New South Wales.
All hands on deck πͺ
Melissa
Business Reimagined
βZeroCo are an Australian-based businesses that sells refillable home and body care products, and they're on a mission to "untrash the planet." This disruptive brand has reimagined how everyday essentials reach our homes by creating a closed-loop system: durable, reusable dispensers made from recovered ocean plastic paired with compostable refill pouches. Their approach eliminates single-use plastic while enabling the active removing of existing waste from the environment. What sets ZeroCo apart isn't merely their products but their transparent, action-oriented approach to sustainability that brings consumers along as partners in environmental restoration rather than just customers.
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π ROI & Impact:
ZeroCo has successfully:
- Diverted over 2.3 million single-use plastic bottles from landfills and oceans
- Conducted large-scale ocean and river clean-ups, removing tons of plastic waste from marine environments
- Built a community of over 250,000 households committed to reducing plastic waste
- Created education programs that help consumers understand plastic pollution's systemic nature
- Established a business model proving that environmental purpose and profitability can coexist and reinforce each other
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π Transferrable Ideas:
ZeroCo's success offers several key lessons for organisations looking to embed purpose:
- Problem-Solution Alignment: Their business model is designed to address the problem they're trying to solve. Every sale actively prevents new plastic waste while funding cleanup of existing pollution.
- Invitational Purpose: Rather than shaming consumers, ZeroCo invites participation in a movement, making customers feel like change agents rather than just shoppers.
- Closed-Loop Thinking: By designing a complete circular system from the start, they've created operational efficiency alongside environmental benefits.
- Transparent Progress Tracking: They openly share both successes and challenges, building credibility and allowing customers to see their direct impact.
- Education as Marketing: By helping customers understand the wider plastic crisis, they've created brand loyalty based on shared values rather than just product performance.
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π Minimum Viable Adaptation:
- One Product Line Redesign: Start with redesigning a single product line with circularity principles
- Transparent Impact Reporting: Begin measuring and publicly reporting your environmental footprint
- Customer Education: Create content that helps customers understand the broader context of sustainability challenges related to your industry
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π€ The Cynical Critical Next Questions:
The path to a truly regenerative economy requires reimagining how we define value, growth, and purpose in business itself.
- Consumption Paradox: How might they resolve the tension between growth targets and planetary boundaries? Can revenue growth be decoupled from resource consumption?
- Beyond Products: Could they shift from selling products to stewarding materials through service models where they retain ownership of resources indefinitely?
- System Change: How might ZeroCo influence policy and infrastructure to transform waste systems rather than just creating better products within the existing paradigm?
- Regenerative Impact: Can they move beyond "less harm" to actively regenerating ecosystems through their core business activities?
- Post-Growth Success: What would success look like if measured not by sales volume but by total environmental impact reduction and community wellbeing?
Signals & Noise
Spainβs economy has outpaced many advanced nations, growing by 3.2% in 2024. This success is largely driven by two key factors: a welcoming immigration policy that has expanded the workforce and increased consumer demand, and a strong push for renewable energy. This has lowered costs and improved business competitiveness. This approach demonstrates how strategic investments in people and sustainability can drive positive economic outcomes.
Signal Strength: π²π²π²π² (4/5)
Why it's a Signal:
- It's evidence that fear and burying your head in the sand doesn't work.
- It shows how long term thinking leads to resilience.
- It demonstrates how a suite of activities can have a cumulative impact.
The Insight: Spain offers a great example for businesses: resilience and competitiveness come from strategic, interconnected investments. Your workforce fuels innovation and efficiency. Sustainable energy can reduce operational risks and costs. But don't stop at these two.A business isnβt just about isolated strategies but how all elements interact as a system. Spainβs economic success highlights the power of interconnected decision-making and how it brings long-term resilience.
Questions for Leaders:
- Are you making decisions that will still serve you five or ten years from now?
- How are you investing? How do these initiates impact or aid other business factors?
- What are other (not) doing that could be opportunities for you?
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At COP16 in Rome, governments rolled out their first global plan to fund biodiversity conservation, aiming to close a massive $700 billion annual funding gap. The agreement sets up a framework for financial institutions to align with nature goals, reform subsidies, and track their conservation investments. While this might seem like a breakthrough, it's just one piece of a much bigger puzzle that could be argued still doesn't address the fundamental drivers of biodiversity collapse.
Signal Strength: π²π²π³ (2.5/5)
Why it's Noise:
- On the surface, financing biodiversity initiatives sounds like a good thing (and it is essential), however, it represents an incremental policy approach that works within existing economic frameworks rather than fundamentally reimagining our relationship with natural systems.
- The focus on financial mechanisms risks reducing biodiversity to monetary metrics, potentially reinforcing the same extractive mindset that created the crisis.
- Like many global agreements, it may suffer from weak enforcement mechanisms and allow countries and businesses to claim progress through minimal compliance rather than transformative action.
Watch Out For:
- Financial institutions using their participation as a shield against deeper scrutiny while continuing environmentally harmful investments in other areas.
- The creation of complex biodiversity "accounting" systems that consume resources without addressing root causes of ecological destruction.
- A shift in focus from direct protection of ecosystems to commodification of nature that could actually accelerate harmful extraction of natural resources.
The Real Signal to Watch:
- Businesses that are fundamentally restructuring their operations around ecological boundaries rather than simply adding sustainability calculations to existing practices.
- Initiatives that address the underlying growth imperative and consumption patterns driving biodiversity loss, rather than attempting to make existing systems "less harmful"
- Governance approaches that incorporate indigenous and local knowledge systems that have successfully stewarded biodiversity for generations.
What We're Reading
The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible, by Charles Eisenstein (2013). This one has been on my to-read list for a while, and as the title might hint at, it's about re-engaging the 'humanity' in each of us and the realisation that everything is connected.
I'm early into this one, but a key quote has already been sitting with me: "What we do to others we do to ourselves". In the context of business and the way we operate, this seems a pertinent thought to ponder.
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