Two years into the Climate Collaborative’s work, the natural products industry truly feels energized. I felt this palpably a few weeks ago at Climate Day, from the way people stood up one after the other to commit to climate action during the session to the sea of commitments companies proudly displayed at their booths to the tenor of people’s remarks throughout the day.
Climate Day marked the two-year anniversary of the Collaborative’s launch, and wow, we’ve come a long way. In just two years, 360 companies have made over 1,300 commitments to act on climate—an average of one company committing every two days.
As companies tackle this tough issue on their own, it’s truly a gift to be able to meet up in person at Expo West every spring to learn from each other, make new connections and deepen our commitments to this work. Last Tuesday, more than 500 industry leaders and a world-class roster of speakers gathered to address some of the biggest climate challenges facing the industry—from unlocking consumer engagement to innovating to scalable solutions, fostering CEO leadership and going deeper in our agricultural supply chains to sequester carbon.
Themes
While the industry may not yet be re-setting their corporate missions en masse, I saw a few really hopeful themes emerge in the panels over the course of the day:
We’re seeking progress not perfection, and scary, audacious goals are one way to get us there. General Mills started out the day with an incredibly ambitious commitment to shift one million acres to regenerative agriculture.
We need to break out of silos. Within our companies, we need to work collaboratively across teams on climate goal-setting and implementation and to connect climate to the mission and goals of our companies. We also need to remain inclusive and collaborative as an industry to work together to tackle the common challenges we face, and exponentially increase our potential impact. Our Resourcing Action panel showed that every company struggles to prioritize action, but if we start working together, it can become a lot easier.
Value chain engagement will