Net Zero was not the problem. The way we tried to deliver it was. The ambition was right; we just misunderstood the task and over complicated the response. The goal was never a world with no carbon. It was a world where we understand where carbon is produced, reduce what we can, optimise what remains and pay properly for the balance.
We ignored the fact that, for the world to migrate to a lower-carbon environment, the main thing that needs to change is consumer behaviour. Governments focused on decarbonising power grids, which is critical, but without optimising demand the task becomes almost unachievable. Optimising demand pivots around reducing consumption and waste.
Instead, too much of the debate became consultant-led, conference-driven and detached from the supply chains, products and consumers that determine environmental impact.
The practical answer is carbon optimisation, not carbon elimination. Companies need to understand their supply chains beyond compliance files, work with suppliers rather than simply demand reports, design products that last longer and prepare for regulation that will force transparency. Consumers need clearer product information and may need to accept that a lower-carbon future will sometimes cost more.
None of this is easy, but it is not as complex as we have made it. With the right framework, better data and the willingness to act, meaningful progress can be made quickly.
The 2030 and 2050 goals are unlikely to be achieved, but this shouldn’t mean we stop and give up. If we take stock and adjust the approach, we will find that meaningful, tangible and auditable progress is achievable at a much lower cost than we anticipate today — and with significantly broader benefits than just environmental metrics.
Net Zero has failed – not officially, of course, because that would be too embarrassing for the institutions that build the narrative, but in practical terms, Net Zero has lost much of the support it once had.
Starbucks is the latest company to step back from the environmental commitments it made in 2020. When a brand that put the environment close to the centre of its strategy starts prioritising cost reduction and revenue protection, it tells us something important: the current version of Net Zero is over.
Net Zero has failed because we globally got confused about what it was trying to achieve and then executed the wrong strategy. We did what we do best: put complicated frameworks, reporting requirements and regulation in place, and expected the world to deliver. It didn’t.
Even with positive action being taken by some, global fossil CO2 emissions were projected to reach a record 38.1 billion tonnes in 2025, according to the Global Carbon Project. The direction of travel is still wrong – even after nearly 10 years of global conferences on Climate Change. The irony is incredible.
It also became too much of a closed conversation. Governments, consultants, financial institutions, industry bodies and corporate leaders spent years talking to each other in language that most people did not connect with.
Net Zero became a conference circuit, a reporting exercise and, in too many cases, a way to look progressive without changing the operating model.
With the acceleration of AI and other power-hungry technologies, combined with the general lack of progress, current Net Zero timelines are no longer credible.
The International Energy Agency expects global electricity demand from data centres to more than double by 2030. If that forecast is understated, as it easily could be, the pressure on grids and natural resources will be even greater.
We also need to take the emotion out of it. Whether you believe Net Zero is real, exaggerated or some form of conspiracy theory, two facts remain.
First, global waste production is rising significantly. The World Bank’s What a Waste 2.0 report estimates that the world generated around 2.01 billion tonnes of municipal solid waste annually and that this could rise to 3.40 billion tonnes by 2050 if we do not change course. The OECD has also projected that global plastic waste could almost triple by 2060 without stronger policy action.
Second, the world’s natural resources are finite. UNEP’s Global Resources Outlook 2024 warned that resource extraction could rise by 60% by 2060 from 2020 levels without urgent action.
Those two issues alone are enough to tell us the current model cannot continue.
Not many people really understood what Net Zero was about. The key word was “net” and most people focused on the “zero”.
We heard the Paris Agreement headlines around a 45% reduction by 2030 and Net Zero by 2050, and we set off to deliver.
We appointed heads of department, built teams, hired consultants and started the hype machine. What we failed to do was step back and ask a simple question: “How does this affect my company, and how do I contribute in a way that actually changes something?”
We also failed to ask ourselves more difficult questions such as “If I am to implement change, what else should I consider evaluating at the same time?” and “Where do I want my business to be in five years’ time? Where are my gaps and what needs to change to close these?” We saw this as an environmental exercise that was being mandated on us rather than a golden opportunity to reposition our businesses for success in the future.
The final Net Zero destination was never a world where no carbon is produced. That is not realistic. The destination was a world where we identify where carbon is produced, optimise it properly and then “net” out what remains through credible, verified carbon mitigation actions.
If we fail to optimise efficiently, the cost will show up somewhere: lower product margins, higher consumer prices or a growing market for carbon mitigation that starts to look like an asset class.
We ended up talking about carbon production in terms of scopes. This was useful because it allowed us to direct resources to the right buckets.
Scope 1 covered emissions directly within our control, such as fuel used on site. Scope 2 covered emissions linked to purchased electricity, heat or cooling. Scope 3 covered the rest: the emissions embedded in the products and services we buy, make, move and sell.
For many companies, this latter bucket was the real issue and it was where the bulk of the emissions were created.
Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions are largely about reduction and, where possible, elimination. Where was carbon produced, and how can I avoid it or at least optimise it?
There were multiple commercial benefits that made this easier to justify. With unstable power costs in recent years, consuming less power reduces operating costs. Energy-efficient lighting, upgraded cooling systems and better building controls are relatively contained decisions with known impacts that can be easily measured after implementation.
You didn’t need a rocket scientist to make a material reduction in direct emissions. The challenge many companies face was that, while this was good work, it did not move the needle overall because the bulk of the emissions were sitting in the supply chain.
Take any of the popular consumer brand’s supply chain and you will find the same pattern: they are highly optimised for cost and speed. The supplier that can produce at the lowest unit price and meet the delivery requirement normally wins the contract. Where that supplier is located has often been treated as secondary, because historically it was not seen as commercially relevant.
The supply chain then does exactly what it was designed to do, but the lack of geographical consideration can weigh heavily on transport emissions, resilience and responsiveness. In a world of tariffs, geopolitical tension, climate disruption and sudden border closures, that matters far more than it did before.
Corporates have three significant challenges with Scope 3:
In a world where stability is no longer predictable, rigid supply chains that lack detailed data are difficult to change. Today’s world needs supply chains that are agile and responsive to global events, and where change can be evaluated and executed quickly. Most companies would agree that they are far away from that model.
Many corporates are also under the illusion that the work they have completed for Know Your Supplier is the basis for an environmental review. It is not.
These data sets are vastly different. To understand impact properly, you need the location of the manufacturing site, the equipment used, the infrastructure involved, how machines are powered, how goods are transported between the various stages of the supply chain and vitally, where the input materials are sourced.
This level of data was never required in the previous compliance studies.
Nobody Knows Your Business Like You Do
A trap most companies fell into was to treat this as a separate environmental programme and bring in specialists to manage the process.
Not only is this expensive, but it also often overlooks the fact that no one knows the supply chain like the business itself. External consultants may offer useful support, but generic advice will not always capture the nuances of why decisions were made, how the chain evolved or where change is genuinely possible, and where change is considered what is the expected impact of that change together with its cost. Only a business expert would be able to answer these questions directly.
With the right supporting framework, reference data and visualisation tools, most companies can execute a supply-chain discovery journey without handing the process to external consultants.
There may be moments when specialist support is useful, but the ownership of the exercise must sit inside the business. If teams are created for this, it is critical that they are resourced with business experts, not project managers. The team needs to be able to identify, analyse, test and recommend change without asking the wider business for every decision.
While it is the government’s responsibility to invest in and decarbonise national power supplies, we must also review what we are consuming and why.
If we do not reduce unnecessary demand and optimise what remains, governments will always be chasing the next level of power consumption. For technologies like solar and wind, there is a physical limit to the amount that can be deployed.
These physical limitations underline the need for governments to have an honest conversation about nuclear and other large-scale, long-term infrastructure solutions.
France has already shown what this can deliver, with clear benefits from its nuclear strategy in its carbon per kilowatt-hour figures compared with many of its neighbours.
Norway is another example of taking advantage of a country’s landscape. Most of its power is generated from hydro sources, placing Norway near the top of the cleanest power grids in the world. Not all countries will have the landscape to copy the Norwegian model, but many will have options available if long-term planning can be agreed now.
Reviewing power consumption is not complex, but it is critical. Suppliers will often be extracting maximum value from the plant and equipment they already have, which means aged equipment may be operating beyond its expected and economic life. Replacing those machines could have an immediate impact on the power consumed during the manufacture of a company’s goods. Technology has advanced so much in the last twenty years that power consumption levels can be radically improved over legacy equipment.
Supply chain owners can play a constructive role: not just asking for data, but helping suppliers access finance, longer-term commitments or commercial certainty to justify the investment.
This is where slogans and dashboards are not enough. Manufacturers cannot be told to decarbonise and then left alone to fund new equipment, cleaner power, process redesign and supply-chain reconfiguration.
If buyers want lower-carbon goods, they need to help create the commercial conditions that make those changes possible.
Manufacturers have been moving towards closed product designs for years. Take most modern mobile phones. These products are not easily serviceable, and a common reason given is that opening the case compromises waterproofing.
That may be true for some products, but it does not explain why the battery in a laptop is hard-wired internally when the product was never waterproof in the first place.
The only plausible reason is that the manufacturer wants to own and control the process. The result is that many products never reach their maximum useful life before being disposed of.
Manufacturers must be pushed towards more serviceable designs and require them to support authorised local repair ecosystems with tools, parts and training where they do not want to own the process themselves. This would reduce waste, extend product life and support local employment.
Brands will resist this because making products last longer could be detrimental to future sales, but it is a critical component in reducing waste. If a product lasts twice as long, fewer units need to be manufactured and fewer products need to be disposed of. Brands will also be concerned about increasing consumer prices, and that is a valid concern, but it needs to be addressed as part of a wider consumer education and confidence piece. When consumers know that goods will last longer but cost more, and have confidence in what they are being told, this should no longer be a concern.
Experience-led design can create unique and lasting impressions of a product. Many global brands are very good at this, and they now apply experience-led thinking across the full product journey, including the packaging.
There is nothing wrong with great design. The problem is when packaging is designed to create a moment of theatre that lasts a few seconds, but then becomes waste almost immediately. Premium boxes, layered inserts, plastic wraps, magnetic closures and decorative materials may improve the unboxing experience, but they often add little functional value once the product is in the consumer’s hand.
Packaging should be designed around three tests: does it protect the product, can it be reused or recycled in the market where it is sold, and is it proportionate to the product inside? If the answer is no, then it is not premium design. It is unnecessary waste dressed up as brand experience.
If we are honest with ourselves and look in the back of our cupboards and wardrobes, we will almost certainly find products we bought but never used to their fullest potential, if at all, and clothes we had forgotten we owned.
We need a global mindset shift in how we consume. We should be asking: what am I buying, why am I buying it, do I really need it, how long will I use it, how long will it last and how will it be disposed of at end of life? If every product carried this information clearly, consumers could make real choices about what is right for them – and if they are honest with themselves about whether they really need it, we could collectively make meaningful progress.
Apparel is one of the most pollutive industries, and we are in a phase of “fast fashion” where clothing is designed for a season or designed to last a specified time.
We can do better by making clothes more durable, easier to repair, more resilient to stain removal treatments and made from materials that last considerably longer than they do today. This will inevitably increase costs, but if we consider the lifetime cost of ownership, we may find that it is cheaper to buy better once than to buy cheap often. This “fast fashion” concept must also carry appropriate penalties for the additional environmental costs it creates over more traditional product lines.
We must move away from the consumer mindset of “it was only 10 dollars so it doesn’t matter if it gets thrown away”.
Regulation so far has focused too heavily on reporting. That may sound sensible, but for many companies it creates a problem: they are being asked to report data they do not yet have, from suppliers they do not properly understand the requirements, across supply chains they have never fully mapped. Reporting without the ability to verify or act on the data is not progress.
It is paperwork – and most likely, meaningless paperwork.
Where regulation can play a meaningful role is in forcing progress, not just disclosure.
Regulators should require companies to reach defined levels of supply-chain knowledge, product transparency and measurable reduction over time. The obligation should be staged: first map the supply chain, then verify the data, then publish the information consumers and investors need, and finally demonstrate year-on-year improvement.
The first regulatory requirement should be a minimum supply-chain knowledge standard. Companies above a certain size, or selling into regulated consumer markets, should be required to identify the production locations, key material flows, energy sources, transport routes and end-of-life characteristics behind their products.
If a company cannot explain how a product is made, moved, powered, repaired and disposed of, it should not be able to claim environmental progress, and if this is not actioned within a certain timeframe then sales or other restrictions could be imposed.
The second requirement should be independent verification. Environmental data should not depend on marketing claims or self-certification alone. If brands want consumers to trust the information, then the data must be subject to audit, evidence and challenge. False, incomplete or misleading environmental claims should carry meaningful penalties, not just reputational embarrassment.
Regulators should also make the consequences visible. A product with verified data should carry a standard QR code where consumers can access more information. A product with missing data should carry a clearly distinguishable warning QR code and an environmental surcharge.
A product designed so it cannot be repaired, opened, recycled locally or responsibly disposed of should face tougher treatment.
Manufacturers should also be forced to provide statements on the expected lifespan of products, so consumers have a clear indication of how long each product is expected to last and can compare products to make an informed choice. A further extension would be to support a consumer-led reporting tool that allows consumers to upload evidence of repairability, actual life before disposal, the number of repairs the product went through and how the product was disposed of. This real-world evidence can help consumers understand whether the manufacturer’s expected lifetime statement is accurate.
That is how regulation changes behaviour: it changes the economics and makes poor design visible at the point of purchase.
There should also be positive incentives. Regulators can encourage progress by offering faster approvals, procurement preference, tax credits or access to transition finance for companies that can demonstrate verified reductions, open repairability, supplier support and lower transport intensity.
The stick matters, but the carrot matters too. If we want companies and suppliers to move quickly, we need to reward the ones that do.
Supply chains are complex, and any change needs careful consideration.
If companies evaluate environmental impact in isolation, they will miss much of the value. The same work that helps reduce carbon can also reduce transport cost, expose concentration risk, improve responsiveness and make the chain more resilient.
Since the evolution of cost-and-speed optimised models, the world has changed significantly and a much wider risk profile needs to be considered.
Take the COVID period as an example. If you had asked companies whether they had planned for China closing its borders for an extended period, you would probably have been laughed at — but it happened.
It exposed the blind spots corporates create around events that “can never happen”. Contingency planning must consider country concentration, transport dependency, supplier concentration, tariffs, political stability and environmental impact together.
Companies should be reviewing their supply chains against the following criteria:
They should also be considering where the pressure sits within the supply chain and whether that pressure can be relieved to make the whole chain more efficient. Too much pressure is sitting on the supplier in many supply chains. Buyers will justify this as protecting consumer pricing, but the fact remains that supply chains must be profitable to exist in the long term and to create reliable and dependable product supply. Without this, buyers will likely carry an unnecessary administration overhead that is ultimately factored into consumer pricing.
Buyers operating extended payment terms with financing tools like Supply Chain Finance have further compounded the pressure within the supply chain. This needs a critical rethink to determine if those decisions still feel right in the future-state model. Financial regulation is also starting to focus on the off-balance-sheet risks created by these programmes, indicating a shift in mood around these financing tools that should be carefully considered by companies operating them.
Supplier collaboration is going to be a critical success factor in this whole process.
Getting consumers to buy into the story is critical. The amount of misinformation out there has served only to confuse and damage confidence. There is also a lack of consistency in how environmental data is collected and presented, and too often the data fails to stand up to scrutiny. If consumers are going to change behaviour, the information they are given must be robust, accurate and easy to understand.
With authoritative information about the environmental impact of products, getting that information to consumers in a simple way is paramount. QR codes on products would allow consumers to scan and understand the product they are holding in their hands. They would also create longevity of information because the code could be scanned throughout the product’s life to access repair options, spare-part procurement, service centres and end-of-life plans.
These QR codes should be enforced through regulation, and any product that cannot meet the requirement should print the QR code on the product in a bright red colour so consumers are aware that the information is missing. If this regulation is put in now, it will force large brands to react quickly because no one will want a red QR code on their products.
There is no reason why any suitable property with a roof should be built without considering solar panels. The cost of this technology has continued to fall over time, and it has been proven to add value in many markets. If rooftop solar were deployed more widely, it would reduce the burden on national power supplies and help create a distributed power generation network that feeds excess power back into the grid.
This is more applicable in countries dominated by smaller dwellings with roofs, but tower blocks with unused roof space and coastal towns with wind potential should also be part of the conversation.
Governments should be seeing this as a bridge to reducing the size of the national grid that they need to decarbonise and encourage action through financial incentives. The cost of these incentives should be aligned to the cost of decarbonisation so it is cost neutral to the government but expedites implementation.
Nothing meaningful is going to happen by 2030 if we continue on the current path. If anything, the amount of carbon we produce is likely to increase further as demand for energy, data processing, manufacturing and consumption continues to rise.
Companies should be given 3 years from 2027 to 2030 to achieve a prescribed level of knowledge about their supply chains and produce a statement on what they produce today and a commitment on what they will reduce between 2030 and 2035.
While this is five years longer than the original timeline, it would give everyone a solid base to work from and should achieve results faster than today’s broken approach.
This will produce an answer that is more practical than many people think. The solution is not another slogan or another conference. It is carbon optimisation: mapping the chain, understanding the data, supporting suppliers, helping consumers make better choices and creating regulation that forces progress rather than paperwork.
One weakness in the current approach is that we still do not really know how realistic Net Zero is, or who needs to contribute what level of savings to achieve it. By taking this approach, we can calculate for the first time what future carbon production could look like and how close the world is to achieving its original goal. We would also be able to identify the leaders and laggards more clearly and apply new regulation or other controls where they are needed most.
Doing nothing is not a neutral option. It may feel safer in the short term because it avoids difficult conversations with suppliers, avoids new data requirements and avoids cost today. The risk simply accumulates elsewhere in the business.
The first risk is regulatory. If governments move towards mandatory product transparency, verified environmental data, repairability rules or visible consumer warnings, companies that have not mapped their supply chains will be starting from behind. They will not just have a reporting problem. They will have an operating problem.
The second risk is commercial. Buyers, investors and consumers are all becoming less tolerant of vague claims. A brand that cannot explain where its products are made, how they move, what they cost environmentally and how they are repaired or disposed of will look increasingly exposed. In time, weak visibility will become a competitive disadvantage.
The third risk is operational. A supply chain optimised only for cost and speed may already be carrying hidden fragility: too much country concentration, too much dependency on a single supplier, too much unnecessary transport and too little understanding of where the real pressure points sit. If disruption comes, the companies that have not done the work will discover the problem when it is too late to respond calmly.
The final risk is financial. Poor visibility makes it harder to access transition finance, harder to justify supplier investment and harder to prioritise the actions that reduce cost and carbon at the same time. Companies may end up spending more later because they avoided spending intelligently now.
This is why the early movers will have an advantage. They will know their supply chains better, have stronger supplier conversations, respond more easily to regulation and make better investment decisions. Doing nothing may feel cheaper today, but it is likely to be the most expensive option in the long run.
The other version of doing nothing is to ignore the issue completely, but we have already uncovered core and valid reasons for making supply-chain changes outside the environmental scope. If other companies make these changes first, the risk is being left behind.
We need a hard reset and a practical pathway to success. That does not mean stopping all activity. It means stopping activity that creates reporting without progress and focusing instead on the actions that give companies visibility, control and a credible route to carbon optimisation.
The first job for corporates is to stop treating this as an environmental side project. It is a supply-chain optimisation exercise. The business must own it, because the business understands the commercial logic, supplier history and operating compromises that created the current model.
Business ownership means the work should sit in the core business, not be managed as a project by a disconnected sustainability team unless that team includes the right business expertise.
Until this map is complete, companies should be careful about jumping too quickly into large transformation programmes. The first decision gate is visibility. Without it, every later decision is built on assumption.
Once the map is in place, the next phase is to analyse movement between each stage of the chain. Visualising the transport map makes it easier to identify circular flows, unnecessary hand-offs, expensive air routes and opportunities to nearshore supply around key suppliers. This is often the highest-value starting point because it can reduce carbon, cost, complexity and delay at the same time.
We should not discount the fact that suppliers often have multiple manufacturing sites and may have options available if the requirements are explained properly. Some may also be considering relocation, but need clearer buyer commitments to support such moves.
Suppliers should not see this only as another reporting burden. They need this data too. Their own customers, lenders and regulators will increasingly ask similar questions, so participating early gives them a chance to shape the conversation rather than react to it later.
The opportunity is to use the process to build a better investment case. If a supplier can show that new equipment, renewable power, process redesign or transport changes will reduce energy use, carbon and operating risk, buyers are more likely to support longer-term commitments, transition finance or shared improvement plans.
The relationship has to change from “send me a report” to “let’s understand the problem and improve the chain together”. That is where real progress starts.
Consumers do not need to become environmental experts, but they do need better information and a different set of questions. Before buying, we should ask: do I need it, how long will it last, can it be repaired, how was it made, where was it made and how will it be disposed of?
If brands are forced to provide this information through credible product QR codes, consumers will be able to compare products in store and online with more confidence. Some will still choose price, and that is reality, but others will choose durability, repairability and lower impact if the information is clear and trusted.
Regulators need to stop focusing only on the reporting of impact and start forcing companies to gather the right data, verify it and change behaviour.
The framework should be clear: minimum supply-chain knowledge standards, independent verification, visible consumer warnings where data is missing, financial penalties for poor transparency or poor design, repairability and end-of-life rules, and incentives for companies that can prove real reductions.
If companies were given 12 months’ notice that products without verified environmental data would carry a visible warning mark, many would move quickly. No serious brand will want a red QR code on its products.
The first 12 months should not be about solving everything. They should be about creating control. A company should be able to map its priority suppliers, identify the main data gaps, understand the highest-risk supplier and transport nodes, agree the first supplier engagement plan and define the first wave of optimisation actions.
That is enough to change the conversation. It moves the business from ambition to evidence, from reporting to action and from vague environmental commitments to practical supply-chain improvement. It will not deliver carbon neutrality in a year, but it will prove that progress is possible and that the task is not as complicated as we made it.
It also means being honest about price. For too long we have behaved as though the lowest price is the only price that matters, while ignoring the environmental and operational cost sitting behind it. Once that cost becomes visible, the conversation changes. Companies make better decisions, consumers make more informed choices, suppliers get a clearer signal and regulators can act against real data rather than ambition statements.
This is the exact problem statement that Zero Pro was created to solve: the gap between ambition and execution. If the challenge is supply-chain visibility, supplier collaboration, verified product data and practical carbon optimisation and connecting consumers to data, then a solution must make those things easier for companies to do themselves. Zero Pro achieves this.
Zero Pro gives buyers and suppliers a structured framework to start the discovery journey without turning the whole exercise into another expensive consulting project. It helps companies move beyond supplier lists and compliance files into the operational data that matters: where products are made, how materials move, what documents support the flow, where risk sits and where the best optimisation opportunities exist.
It provides digital vaults to collect trade documentation, supplier evidence, contracts and supporting records in one place. This matters because the data required for carbon optimisation will not come from a traditional Know Your Supplier file. It comes from the movement of goods, the structure of the chain and the evidence behind each stage.
It visualises the supply chain so companies can see exactly what they do and how they do it. For many management teams, this will be the first time they have seen the full chain in a way that exposes transport intensity, supplier concentration, country concentration, duplication, unnecessary movement and the points where real change can be made.
It then turns that visibility into action. Zero Pro automates analytics and helps teams build implementation plans focused on the changes that add value: reducing carbon, shortening transport routes, improving resilience, supporting suppliers, preparing for regulation and identifying where investment can produce measurable progress.
The point is not to create another reporting burden. It is to give companies the confidence to act. Buyers need a practical way to ask the right questions, suppliers need a practical way to respond, and both sides need a shared view of the data so the conversation moves from blame and burden to collaboration and improvement.
Zero Pro also provides the infrastructure to connect product QR codes to certified and verified views of a company’s supply-chain data. If regulators move in this direction, companies will need a credible way to evidence what sits behind the claim. If consumers are going to trust the information, the data has to be structured, accessible and capable of being challenged.
That is the opportunity. Zero Pro is not trying to replace what companies already know about their business. It is designed to help them unlock it, organise it and use it to make better decisions. With the right framework, companies can start making visible progress quickly: not perfectly, and not without trade-offs, but quickly enough to prove that carbon optimisation is achievable when the business owns the process.
We do not need another global conference full of empty promises to start doing this. We do not need the United Nations to drive every step of this change. We should be doing it because it is the right thing to do, and because the commercial, operational and environmental reasons are already clear. Reducing unnecessary power consumption, reducing waste and extending the useful life of products are not complicated ideas.
They are basic responsibilities in a world where natural resources are finite and demand keeps rising.
The answer is not perfection, and it is not blind carbon elimination. It is disciplined carbon optimisation: understand the chain, reduce what can be reduced, redesign what should be redesigned and pay properly for what remains. Every consumer action drives deep supply-chain impacts we rarely see and can therefore never fully appreciate. A purchase is not just a payment at the till or a click online. It is a signal that triggers production, transport, packaging, energy use, waste and disposal somewhere else in the world.
That is why consumers must be connected to the impact properly. If people can see the power, waste, repairability and end-of-life implications of what they are buying, they can make educated and informed decisions. Some will still choose the lowest price, but many will make different choices if the information is trusted, visible and easy to understand.
Sir David Attenborough closed his COP26 address with a line that still matters: “In my lifetime, I’ve witnessed a terrible decline. In yours, you could and should witness a wonderful recovery.” He was partly right. The people in that room had the ability to help change the future, but they were never the only people with power. The real power sits with consumers. Every purchase, every replacement cycle, every product kept, repaired or thrown away sends a signal deep into the supply chain. If consumer behaviour changes, companies will follow. If consumers demand products that last longer, can be repaired, are properly labelled and carry a lower environmental impact, sustainable and systemic change becomes unavoidable.
What has been missing is not capability. It is willingness. The companies that simplify the problem, own the data and act first will be in a stronger position commercially, operationally and environmentally. The companies that wait will eventually be forced to respond on someone else’s timeline. We have the power to deliver meaningful progress, but only if we want to. And that is the question we should all be asking now: do we want to make progress, or do we just want to keep talking about it?
Want to be part of the group that leads this market with better control, reduced cost and a clearer view of what is achievable? Contact us at hello@zeropro.co.