In this episode, Solitaire Townsend joins the Sustainable Intelligence podcast reflect on how sustainability principles have remained constant over decades, even as language and strategies have evolved.
Solitaire is a renowned sustainability expert who works with the world’s most influential organizations to activate positive and optimistic change. Her ‘solutionist’ vision of solving climate change is desperately needed in our gloomy world. She is Co-founder & Chief Solutionist at Futerra (Edie’s 2023 Consultancy of the Year) and Trustee of the Solutions Union. In 2023, she was named both a ‘Leader of the Year’ at Adweek’s Sustainability Awards and UNGC’s ‘Sustainable Development Goals Pioneer’ for the UK. She was also named by Vogue Business as one of their 100 Innovators for 2023.
Solitaire distinguishes between managerial sustainability (risk and compliance) and entrepreneurial sustainability (innovation and growth), arguing businesses must embrace both to thrive and emphasizing the opportunity in sustainability as a competitive advantage, not just a compliance burden. She further critiques generic sustainability strategies and urges companies to tailor their approach, tell better stories, and focus on enabling consumers to live better lives through sustainable choices.
About Sustainable Intelligence
Novata’s Sustainable Intelligence podcast brings honest, forward-thinking conversations about sustainability in the private markets. From carbon accounting to turning data into impact, each episode explores how investors and business leaders are tackling real challenges, meeting rising regulations, and building long-term value. Join us for expert insights, practical strategies, and authentic dialogue that empower action and progress in the evolving sustainability landscape. Listen to more episodes on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
Conversation with Solitaire Townsend (Transcript)
Ella Williamson: Welcome to Sustainable Intelligence, where we discuss all things sustainability for the private markets. I’m Ella Williamson, and I’m thrilled to be your host. Today, I’m joined by the incredible Solitaire Townsend, a true powerhouse in sustainability. As Co-founder and Chief Solutionist at Futerra and trustee of the Solutions Union, she spent decades helping the world’s most influential organizations drive real optimistic change.
Solitaire and I actually met back in 2013 when I was lucky enough to be an intern at Futerra. Now over a decade later, we’re coming back full circle to talk all things sustainability again. Our topic today will focus on sustainability through the ages, what’s changed, and what the future holds. So Solitaire, with over 30 years in the field, how have the big sustainability challenges and conversations evolved?
Solitaire Townsend: It’s a great question, Ella, and what I would say is that the, sort of, waves on the top of the sea change a lot, but the deep tides underneath them don’t change very much at all. The same principles of what we were trying to achieve 30 years ago, we’re still trying to achieve now. Trying to work out how to make sure that our capital systems where a great deal of the thinking and the planning and Adam Smith at the early days of the Victorian industrial revolution were laid down, not understanding that there were going to be some environmental limits to what was planned and how do we add in that extra element around limits. The limits to growth were only ever labor and capital, but we also got an environmental limit to growth as well. And that doesn’t mean that we can’t grow. It means we need to work within and understand those limits. So, those principles are still the same. And of course, social equity, the fact that if you want to have a vibrant, large consumer base and a healthy, educated, productive employee base, you need people to be healthy and educated and productive. And that goes across the entire world, that poverty is not sustainable within our economies.
How that manifests over the years, there’s lots of different language. When environmental issues were the domain of an energy manager, somebody sort of sitting within the facilities and now it’s a Chief Sustainability Officer through the years of CSR and now into ESG. This whole drive to make sure that what we’re doing we can keep doing, and that what we’re doing is an enhancement for ourselves, our businesses, the communities within which we work, the customers which we serve, and the planet which we all travel on, that doesn’t change. So the language, the sophistication, the understanding of the issues, the science all develops and evolves, but the key principles of what we’re trying to achieve, they stay the same.
Ella: Interesting. So I love the way that you talked about the same principles actually applying, but what we are doing and how we are doing it and who’s actually doing it is the thing that’s changing. So if we can go back to what you were saying in your last piece there about over the years, terminology being around CSR, ESG, and now business resilience seems to be the buzzword of 2025. What do you think these shifts tell us about how businesses are approaching sustainability today?
Solitaire: So I think there’s always been a tension between the businesses that are trying to think about doing the right thing in a sort of, being good corporate citizen, doing the right thing for society, versus the businesses who think about this in a more commercial way around the fact that they can do this in an entrepreneurial way. And so I break it down to say that your business needs two ways of looking at this. It needs managerial sustainability, which is very much what business resilience is around. Managerial sustainability is going, have we got our risks under control? Are we thinking about our compliance? Are we ensuring that we are aligned with where the markets are changing? It’s a very risk-based, very resilience-based focus, managerial sustainability, and it involves a great deal of understanding the detail, the nuance, the compliance, the architecture, the goals, and the rules of sustainability.
The other way of thinking about sustainability is very entrepreneurial, so it’s thinking about commercializing sustainability. So if you’ve got business resilience on one side, you’ve got commercializing sustainability on the other, and that’s about how can we meet consumer needs as they grow and change? How can we see sustainability as an innovation driver, as a driver of growth in new markets of relationships, of new products, of new services. And that’s something which I feel that has been lost a little bit in the ESG debate. The whole ESG debate has become business resilience, which is great and that’s fantastic, and that’s very much around a sort of do less bad and manage risk agenda. But the “do more good and see sustainability as a driver of innovation” got lost over the last couple of years.
And I’m beginning to see it as people are looking at things, such as some of the directives from the EU around packaging, are rather than seeing them as a problem going, packaging is a significant cost on my business, is there a way that I can innovate and delight my consumer with a breakthrough in packaging or within refills or recharges, et cetera?
And a great example of that is something which Chanel is doing. So Chanel fragrance and beauty, they do some extremely high-end, incredibly effective moisturizers, for example. But those are very large, heavy gloss pots, very significant. And actually the packaging is a significant burden on the company and on the product cost. It’s very expensive to transport. It’s very expensive to manufacture. And what they realize is that it’s also a challenge for the consumer because it means when she travels, she can’t take her most favorite moisturizer with her because there’s no way anyone is gonna carry one of those great big hunks of glass in their carry-on when they’re traveling without checked baggage. And so they created a beautiful golden recharge pot that you can take out of the glass and you can put back into the glass. And it turned out consumers loved it, absolutely adored it, and paid almost the same amount for it as they paid for the original product. And so this is where something which might have felt like a constraint, “Oh, what are we gonna do? We are a luxury brand. Our consumers expect these very significant, very beautiful glass packaging,” and actually they managed to turn it into a huge consumer benefit whereby thinking innovatively, rather than panicking about what the environmental constraints were, they turned a boundary into a benefit. So this is my big ask, would be to make sure that when you’re thinking about business resilience, when you’re thinking about how ESG can become business resilience, don’t stay purely in the realm of the manager. Also, think about the entrepreneur, not least because as we know, the confederation of British industry has just told us that the green economy is outgrowing the rest of our economy, and that’s the entrepreneurial side of the green economy.
Ella: Thank you so much for that, Solitaire. That was fascinating. So it’s about companies really rethinking sustainability from both the managerial side, which has had so much focus in recent years, but also giving more time to the entrepreneurship, driving innovation, and thinking differently.
In your career and at Futerra, you’ve worked with many different organizations, from startups all the way through to massive global corporations. What would you say are some of the most effective sustainability strategies you’ve seen? And also if you feel comfortable sharing on the flip side, are there any common mistakes that businesses should avoid that you see often?
Solitaire: Oh, I’m happy to share the mistakes. I might not name names, but I’m happy to share the mistakes. Of the sustainability strategies that I’ve seen, I actually think that all of this is currently in flux in a really big way. One of the companies that we do a great deal of work with is Google. And we’ve worked with Google over the time of its changing strategies. And like all companies, Google was very focused on how to reduce its operational footprint, how to manage its footprint, how to manage its risk. It has a lot of data centers, it has a lot of spaces and really needing to apply solutions. But what they discovered in doing that was that they had solutions which might be of use to others. And so this is, this movement from the managerial to the entrepreneurial sustainability, their strategy is now, it’s got three parts. Only one of those parts is about getting their own house in order. The rest of what Google does is around empowering individuals and is around serving societal issues and thinking about how their products and services can help others that, particularly their cloud customers, reduce their own footprint. Now this is monetizable. This is an entrepreneurial agenda. So I think for me, what I’m seeing is I’m much more interested in what’s in your climate transition action plan, where you should be thinking not just about how you respond to challenges, but also how you are bringing solutions? Much more interested in that than I am in your CSRD, which tends to be very backwards looking. Where I see people doing this very well is when they are aware that as a business, they may have solutions to some of these crises that we face, and they can sell those solutions. So those are some of the best strategies that I see.
What I see again and again in my strategies is almost off the shelf, a strategy where you wouldn’t know what the company that produces that strategy does as a business. Where it’s like, yes, we have an energy and a HR and a supply chain, literally anybody strategies. Those are the ones which you’re gonna really struggle to get senior management excited about, where you’re going to struggle to push through, where there’s almost no advantage or opportunity for the business within it. And again, we live in a very changing times, radically changing times. Changing times bring significant opportunities. There’s also going to be a lot of disappointed consumers out there because whilst we are aware that there are some changes in the demographics of who cares about sustainability and who doesn’t, one of the things which we do know is that higher income women have always cared about sustainability and, in fact, social issues as well. And as people begin to dial down some of what they talk about on some of this, some of the most desirable consumers on the planet are being left without people communicating to them and offering what they need. So what I would say is this is absolutely a time to make sure that you’re managing your risk, but also a time to think about taking some risks, some considered careful risk as the opportunities are going to be significant, particularly with consumer groups who are feeling underserved at the moment.
Ella: I haven’t heard anyone talk about managing risks, but also taking risks. And I think that’s such an important piece. Sustainability is not a one-size-fits-all strategy or agenda. And therefore businesses really need to think how it’s gonna move the needle for them and their customers.
Solitaire: A hundred percent. Any business that doesn’t take any risks at all will not exist. Managing risk does not mean only reducing it. It means taking considered strategic decisions about where you’re gonna place bets and where you’re gonna dial down your risk.
And on sustainability, it needs to be exactly the same. You need to identify the topics where you’re gonna dial down your risk, particularly some of your perhaps policy or political exposure at the moment, and also decide where you’re gonna dial up some of your risk because the rewards are worth it.
Ella: Absolutely. Thank you so much for that context. I know from both working with you back at Futerra, but also in all you do across LinkedIn and all of the great talks you give, a big part of your messaging is around joy, adaptability, and celebrating sustainability. How do you bring that mantra into when you are helping businesses move away from those kind of fear-based narratives and embrace sustainability with optimism?
Solitaire: So I’ve done a lot of sessions recently where I’ve been asked in to talk to boards, to top 200ss, around sustainability by sustainability teams who are a bit worried that things are getting wobbly internally. And one of my great joys is to go into a board or to a top 200 group and, almost as if I was the high priestess of sustainability, live and breathe this, I was there when the old magic was laid down. I was there in the early days whilst we were going through. I helped write some of the SDGs. My commitment to this is absolute. And what I do is I go in and I don’t tell anybody off. Don’t tell anybody that what they’re doing is bad, that they deserve to feel guilty. These are just people doing their job and bringing that opportunity agenda and thinking about how can we change our messaging? How can we change our product? How can we change our strategy in order to dial up where the opportunities are as something which feels very refreshing in a lot of businesses to use commercial language, which again, often people feel that they don’t have permission to use when it comes to sustainability.
Almost this idea that you have to stay within this sort of quite doom-mongery, guilt-ridden, and duty mindset, which again, if that works for you, fine, but I’ve never found a large business where everybody is motivated by that terminology. So bringing in some breakthrough innovation, showing where people are outperforming, showing where margin can be made, identifying the places where the green economy is radically outperforming the old economy and challenging people to identify how they’re going to be part of that is one of the most exciting parts of my job.
Ella: And that piece you said about challenging people’s mindset and actually not finger pointing. This is about moving forward and creating a positive environment for everyone to thrive and the business to thrive when it comes to sustainability.
Solitaire: I am not gonna do a talk like that inside an oil company. I think 10, 15 years ago there was a big chance that many of them were gonna make this pivot. They’ve made their decision that they’re not going to, but that is one small part of the economy. There are, most businesses have the vast majority of the sectors, eve. really heavy emitting sectors like cement and aerospace, et cetera. They have so much innovation potential. They are being disrupted, including by climate change. Climate change is increasing air turbulence, et cetera. So there is a requirement for them to innovate and sustainability can help them find those benefits.
Once you start talking about, how do we find the benefits and advantages for our customers and consumers out of this? Where can we get the competitive advantage? How can we make sustainability a competitive issue rather than a compliance issue? Suddenly, about 50% of the room who was looking grumpy, suddenly perk up because that’s what they’re good at. And whilst we definitely desperately need the compliance and risk people to be managing that for our business, we also need the commercial, the strategic, the marketing, the R&D, the innovation teams to see their role as part of this as well.
Ella: One thing I’d love to know from you to finish on is, based on the 30 fantastic years you’ve already had in sustainability, looking ahead at the next decade, where do you see the biggest shifts happening?
Solitaire: So I feel like we’ve got a lot of this right? I feel like we increasingly know what the technological need is, and in fact, we have a lot of the technology is being driven and led, we have a sense of what we need as a policy architecture and we can live with them. What we can’t, we increasingly have got a clear sense of what the financial flows need to be and where they need to go.
All we’re missing is the story. Vast majority of the public still seem to think that sustainability, that doing right by the planet means some sort of sacrifice, which of course is not true. All the evidence shows that a sustainable lifestyle and a sustainable system means that you’ll be healthier, you’ll live longer, you’ll have less anxiety, you’ll get a better night’s sleep. All these things around how we eat, how we travel, our homes, we’ll have less indoor air pollution, our kids will have more energy. All of these kinds of topics. Getting that story right around sustainability at a national level being an economic advantage and a competitive advantage, and at a personal level, being a really significant benefit to my everyday life, that’s a truth that I want to be out there a lot more.
I sometimes think that we need to make sure that the future of the planet is not just in the hands of the environmentalists who sometimes like a bit of a sacrifice message, they get off on it. I’m realizing the actual truth of this, which is this is a very significant advantage. In fact, almost everything which we have to do because of environmental issues we should want to do because of social benefits. And I think that’s just something which the evidence shows that we have examples of, even in our own lives, of how we feel when we do these things. And yet it’s just not a story being told.
So I’m doing a great deal of work with social media creators, TikTok,and YouTube with my clients. We’re working with TV and film companies, and with artists and with marketers, crucially, to think about how we can be exciting, visionary, and benefit-led in all the stories that we’re telling and corporates have a great opportunity to do that, to stop ego marketing. If I get one more brief that says we wanna get more credit for what we’ve done, I’m gonna scream. So stop ego marketing. Stop trying to tell the world about what you’ve done, and instead enable your consumer to live a better life through sustainability.
Ella: I absolutely adore that. I think that everyone should go away who’s listened to this podcast today and think about what their sustainability story is and how they can help drive that narrative. It has been so fantastic catching up with you again, hearing your wisdom and all the energy that you bring to the sustainability space.
To everyone listening, thank you so much for tuning in, and until next time, let’s keep building sustainable intelligence together. Find out more at novata.com.
