Insights from the Ground at GreenBiz26

Chris Peterson: Hello and welcome to Activating Sustainability. I’m your host, Chris Peterson. We’re recording this episode after GreenBiz 2026 in Phoenix, Arizona, the annual gathering that brings together some of the most influential voices in sustainability. This year’s event drew more than 2,500 corporate sustainability professionals with nearly 80% at manager level or above and half representing companies with revenues over a billion dollars.

Over three days, sustainability leaders shared insights across more than 300 sessions, covering everything from decarbonization and disclosure to supply chains, nature, change management, and the fast evolving role of AI. Anthesis was proud to have a strong presence this year with 15 delegates, our own stand, and three hosted sessions designed to spark dialogue and practical action.

These included ‘The New Rules of Communication’ led by Freya Williams and Gabriela Wheatley, exploring storytelling as an antidote to fear-based silence, which is something you’ll hear a lot about in the kind reflects from our participants. ‘Rising Expectations’, a private dinner hosted by our CEO Dr. Matt Bell, examining how stakeholder pressure is redefining sustainability leadership. And ‘Hugging the Bear,’ a breakfast session unpacking our latest report on ESG communications, led by Anabel Stam and Betsy Hickman. To give you a sense of what resonated most of the event, we asked our colleagues on the ground to share the trends and conversations that stood out to them.

Chris Peterson: To start us off, we turn to Anthesis, CEO, Matt Bell, who reflects on the atmosphere at GreenBiz this year. A space defined by connection and the kinds of exchanges that accelerate progress.

Dr. Matthew Bell: So we are here at GreenBiz 2026 in Phoenix, Arizona. And it’s been a hustling, bustling couple of days,

which has really been quite profound in the context of how many people are really engaging with the thought leadership that Anthesis is producing around the sentiment on the language of sustainability. Hugging the Bear,

our latest piece of thought leadership is really showing organizations that words matter when you’re communicating not just to other businesses, but to consumers alike. It’s a powerful reminder that sustainability, when used well is genuinely delivering commercial and sustainable outcomes.

Chris Peterson: 2025 was a stressful year, sometimes frustrating and disconcerting for the sustainability sector. For a lot of chief sustainability officers. It was a confusing time, so in front of such uncertainty, what does 2026 have waiting for us? What does it mean to be A CSO this year? How can we achieve tangible and meaningful impact? Here is what Becky Willan, global Business Line Lead and founder of the Given Agency had to say about it.

Becky Willan: So one of the biggest themes that I’ve heard about a green business year is about the changing role of the CSO. You know, there is a huge shift, away from sustainability teams just delivering their own programs to influencing decision making across the organization. A much bigger focus on having the right tools to influence, to evaluate business impact, to align sustainability much more closely with corporate strategy.

I think what I would love to have seen more of is a really practical how, like how do we equip sustainability teams to be change makers in their organizations? And that’s something that I would love to be involved in shaping for next year.

Chris Peterson: The challenges are not going away, and we must adapt our strategies to make sustainability land the way we need it to. Public concerns have shifted. Investors are not paying enough attention, and we need to make sustainability relevant. Brett Trainor, Associate Director, explains what she’s seeing at the GreenBiz event.

Brett Trainor: Some trends in what I’ve been hearing from a lot of different companies and clients at GreenBiz has been related to how strategy and target setting isn’t necessarily the hard part anymore. And we really heard this from panelists who represents sustainability at Crocs, who said that embedding and change is actually the hard thing, and that’s the thing that we don’t really do so well.

And so I think to me, when I think about change, it really lives in language. And if we want to integrate and embed sustainability and change the way our companies operate, a really great access point is changing our language. And I’ve heard not just from the Anthesis sessions around. Hugging the bear and making language more unifying, not polarizing, is the important in shifting the way we talk about sustainability.

To be a bit less obsessed with ourselves, a bit less obsessed with acronyms, and start to actually change the conversation in a way that the people who we want to connect to really understand and relate to. So that’s been probably the biggest theme that I’ve heard so far.

Chris Peterson: Language and communication is also something that Annabelle Stamm, managing Director of North America has emphasized as a key theme this year.

Anabelle Stamm: Yeah, I think GreenBiz has been excellent this year. Um, there’s definitely been some key themes in a number of different tracks. Some of the things that really stood out to me is the need around, communication and kind of bringing everybody together and really finding kind of centrist language that can help connect people during what is essentially a very highly polarized time.

Chris Peterson: Another big focus of this year and connected to this idea of making sustainability land with the right audience is making the business case for sustainability.

Betsy Hickman, global Lead for Nature, tells us what she took from this event.

Betsy Hickman: This week at GreenBiz has really focused on how do we as sustainability professionals make the business case? And one of the elements,

that I was so excited to see on the main stage is the fundamental importance of nature. As really an element of value protection for so many companies here, as we think about the opportunity for biodiversity, for water, connecting into the broader landscape, understanding that so many of our companies, our broader sectors depend upon nature, and really a growing recognition of the opportunity for collaboration, whether it’s in watersheds, supply sheds, to really drive impact and create opportunity.

Chris Peterson: To put this in perspective, global estimates value ecosystem services at around $33 trillion annually, underscoring nature’s material economic importance. And the World Economic Forum’s 2026 Global Risk Report identifies biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse as one of the most severe risks of the coming decade.

Nature isn’t just an environmental issue, it’s an economic one. Degrading. It comes with real material costs. Justin Imiola, Climate and Nature Growth Director, takes this a step further, highlighting the importance of embedding sustainability across every part of the business.

Justin Imolia: The theme I find most interesting here at GreenBiz this year is actually a collection of themes around ROI, the Scope 3 challenge, product sustainability. And I think what connects that most together is making sustainability real for the organization, not just sustainability for sustainability’s sake, but how do we tie it to the products, the systems, the services that the companies that we’re helping ultimately do and make and feel and breathe every day.

Chris Peterson: And while internal action is critical, external levers matter too.

Miki Rubio, Director of Carbon Products and Services, shares where he sees momentum building. From the evolution of carbon markets to renewed interest in renewable energy and sustainable aviation fuel.​

Miquel Rubio: This is the fourth year that I’m uh, being here in, GreenBiz is a great experience. Always. I can see that, this year maybe the carbon markets is not in the top of the discussions.

Okay, that we can see, but it’s still there, no? Because we are seeing that the typical carbon buyers or the corporates also are interested on that and for the reason we think that maybe the carbon markets is, uh, something that is moving away, but the companies want it.

Another thing that we are seeing is the increased interest on the renewal energy. We can see that the companies they have some concerns regarding what will happen with the Greenhouse gas protocol, not with the new revision, because depending on that, they will bet more for one instruments or another.

But all the companies are mentioned that they needed renewable energy and for the reason they are looking for what is the best options on that? The additionality RECs is one option that we are seeing because it’s not only purchase RECs, they are looking for more additionality REC, with, specific location with additional benefits could be, and good solution.

And also the PPAs is the thing that we are discussing with some of the, the companies. And at the end, some of the corporates that they are showing interest in the sustainable reaction well as well. That could be a good option for the future procurements for the, uh, for some of the corporates.

Chris Peterson: Finally, we close by looking ahead.

Honor Cowen, Retail Sector Lead, reflects on the role of AI, a topic impossible to ignore GreenBiz, and the many ways it’s beginning to reshape data, decision making, and the speed at which sustainability solutions can scale.

Honor Cowen: I am really excited to be here at GreenBiz for the second year in a row. We’ve had a lot of really active discussion. Our booth has been buzzing with clients and contacts and friends in the industry that we know, and it’s been really fun to chat to people over the last two days. I have particularly enjoyed also joining workshops and sessions, talks about AI.

Of course, it’s a massive buzzword, uh, in the industry, in the world in general. Um, there’s lots of cautious optimism. There’s lots of discussion also about the environmental, the social impact of AI, in our worlds, in the sustainability, space. How we can integrate it into the big, hairy, audacious goals that we have committed to over the next decade, out to 2050 of course. There are some really tangible, exciting examples coming in from the green claim marketing space where you can build your own AI bot that can do the first run of any marketing claim, using playbooks that have already been developed internally. Of course, there has to be some checking of those phrases or examples, by marketing teams, by also by the technical experts themselves behind it to make sure there’s no greenwashing with any of these claims. But I’m also really interested and excited to learn more about the other applications of AI, the, the hardware and the software applications that are also out there.

Like what does the landscape for AI and sustainability look like with regards to net zero goals, for example. I think that was a little bit missing from some of the sessions and I’m looking forward to finding out more.

Chris Peterson: The annual GreenBiz Event always provides a really unique and valuable opportunity to take a step back and reflect on the state of the industry. Clearly, we are in an interesting time as we are evolving from having a series of tailwinds, CSRD, embraced value, et cetera. They have now shifted to a number of headwinds of short-termism within C-suite organizations, number of regulatory challenges, et cetera. That are creating some genuine challenges for how we can make progress.

What provides me and my colleagues a lot of faith and energy for continuing to pursue these opportunities is the sense that we know we will prevail in the long term, and that we have the skills and capabilities as a broader sustainability community combining subject matter experts, practitioners, individuals on the ground and as the wider group to really execute on how we can deliver value for our organizations in the short term, while maintaining that momentum needed for us to be able to succeed in the long term.

Some of the resources that we’re excited to share includes the Hugging the Bear Report that you can find in the show notes. Which is really an opportunity to explore how do we avoid language being a barrier to that progress that we are pursuing. Along with that, we’re continually exploring how best to support our partners across the value chains to successfully navigate these moments and are really excited to embark on that journey with you.

Thank you for listening. You can always reach us at anthesisgroup.com for additional resources to contact us about the podcast or anything else that may be of interest to you as we go forward. Thanks again, take care.