The baseline use of plant-based milk prior to instituting oat milk as the default was 16.6%. That jumped to 51.9% when baristas informed guests oat milk was the default option.
"The specific barrier is capital," says Lisa George, global head of the Macquarie Group Foundation. "Without access to capital, it's very hard to get social mobility and educational mobility in life."
"Planning a sustainable wedding starts with prioritising what's important to you and shutting out the consumerist noise. That way, from the get-go you have a guiding principle that informs each decision."
At a young age, I learned quickly how oil wealth and power could burn the land while people struggled. I saw heat rise off the streets, the Nile strained, and the air thickened with injustice. In my teenage years, through Aotearoa, being on the edge of the Pacific, I felt the ocean breathing heavy, swallowing the shores of islands that have done the least to cause this harm.
Multinational firms are under rising pressure-from investors, regulators, and employees-to demonstrate positive societal impact in the places where they do business. With ESG-focused institutional investments projected to reach nearly $34 trillion this year and roughly 90% of large U.S. companies now disclosing ESG reports, these pressures are now a central part of corporate strategy.
The European Central Bank said Friday it had fined French bank Credit Agricole €7.55 million ($9 million) for failing to properly identify climate change-related risks that could affect its balance sheet. "Credit Agricole did not sufficiently assess the materiality of its climate-related and environmental risks" by a deadline set after an investigation in 2024, the ECB said in a statement, adding the bank was late by "75 full days".
When Obvious Ventures launched 12 years ago with a focus on "world positive" companies, the idea was a contrarian bet: that startups tackling climate, health, and economic resilience could deliver big returns, not just feel-good impact. Founded by Twitter cofounder Ev Williams and others, the firm backed companies like Beyond Meat, the AI drug discovery company Recursion Pharmaceuticals, and Diamond Foundry, which makes sustainable lab-grown diamonds.
"Ironically, many if not most of these 'sustainability' projects remain disassociated from companies' core procurement strategies, meaning the coffee produced from these projects is not necessarily bought by the companies involved, or only in minimal quantities," the paper states. "And for the coffee that is purchased, prices do not factor into the project design, despite the fact that price is the single variable impacting farmer income that is in the direct control of companies."
Tech companies are conflating traditional artificial intelligence with generative AI when claiming the energy-hungry technology could help avert climate breakdown, according to a report. Most claims that AI can help avert climate breakdown refer to machine learning and not the energy-hungry chatbots and image generation tools driving the sector's explosive growth of gas-guzzling datacentres, the analysis of 154 statements found.
BP ( NYSE: BP) just confirmed what many already suspected: Big Oil's renewable energy pivot was an expensive mistake. The British oil giant took a $5.4 billion write-down on its green energy portfolio in 2025, including $3.5 billion on solar developer Lightsource bp and renewable natural gas producer Archaea. The company suspended share buybacks entirely to shore up its balance sheet while CEO Carol Howle emphasized a return to BP's "distinctive opportunity set in upstream business."
Then she read an article in this newspaper, just over eight years ago, and discovered that fossil fuel companies had ploughed more than $180bn (130bn) into plastic plants in the US since 2010. It was a kick in the teeth, says Gardiner. You're telling me that while I am beating myself up because I forgot to bring my water bottle, all these huge oil companies are pouring billions She looks appalled. It was just such a shock.
