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Interview
How should businesses balance sustainability goals with ongoing cost pressures, especially in today’ s economic climate? The sustainability versus cost framing is increasingly a false choice. The suppliers best positioned to weather disruption tend to be the same ones managing their emissions well, not just because of lower carbon exposure, but because the discipline of understanding your emissions means you understand your business. Better processes, clearer visibility into risk, stronger supplier relationships. Resilience and low carbon tend to go hand in hand, companies are just starting to realize it.
The ones pulling ahead are embedding sustainability into commercial decisions, not treating it as a parallel exercise. When you do that, the business case takes care of itself, more stable input costs, less regulatory exposure, fewer supply chain surprises. This does not only make a climate case, but also a procurement one.
The practical starting point is to focus where the commercial and sustainability cases already align and build from there.
Looking ahead, how do you expect regulation and reporting requirements around supply chain emissions to evolve over the next three-to-five years? At the corporate inventory level, CSRD is already driving significant change in Europe, and as large buyers face stricter obligations, those requirements will cascade down supply chains. In food and beverage specifically, we’ ll see increasing alignment around product carbon footprints, with standards like PACT and TfS shaping what acceptable data looks like, and EU programs such as Digital Product Passports, CBAM( for fertilizers) and PPWR( for packaging waste regulation) setting the stage for mandatory reporting.
Companies who invest now in accessing primary supply chain data and building audit-ready reporting infrastructure will be well positioned to stay ahead of these developments, as well as future potential emissions reduction mandates. Those who still rely on spendbased estimates and annual surveys will find themselves significantly exposed: the time to build the foundation is now, not when the regulation lands.
If you could give one piece of practical advice to supply chain leaders in the food industry who are just starting their decarbonization journey, what would it be? Creating a heatmap is a good place to start. Map your emissions hotspots, identify the suppliers who represent the majority of your footprint, and focus your energy there first. You’ ll learn more from one structured pilot with those suppliers than from six months of scoping exercises.
Progress comes from being directionally correct and action-oriented, not from waiting until the data is perfect or the strategy is fully formed. The suppliers, the regulators, and the climate aren’ t waiting. ■
Sam Stark www. greenprojecttech. com
Founded in 2020 by former Goldman Sachs strategist Sam Stark, Green Project was created to help decarbonize global supply chains and give businesses practical tools to measure, manage, and reduce their environmental impact. The company delivers end-to-end decarbonization through scalable supplier engagement and action, verified data, and renewable energy procurement, enabling companies and their suppliers to operationalize climate action together.
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