Despite greenhushing trends pushing sustainability efforts out of the spotlight at many major brands and agencies, there are countless marketing professionals, entrepreneurs, tech leaders and activists that refuse to let climate concerns fall off the agenda.
ADWEEK’s Sustainability Stars were compiled through a process that included internal and external nominations and was free and open to everyone. These leaders are pioneering new ways of doing business, educating to prevent greenwashing, building carbon reduction tools, revamping supply chains and championing stories of climate solutions, policy and optimism.
As the industry moves beyond this era of eerie green silence, it will be these leaders who have laid the necessary groundwork for a new way of working.
Sofi Khwaja, co-founder, CEO, Thesus Outdoor
Over a decade ago, Sofia Khwaja and her husband, Nicolas Horekens, left their jobs at the United Nations to start footwear company Thesus Outdoor. The two met while working with refugee populations and found their way into entrepreneurship as a way to address the inequality that fuels conflict. They landed on footwear because it’s essential—we all need shoes—and operates within one of the most exploitative industries.
“It became for us a product or category that we could deconstruct to help understand how a system can improve and be used for regeneration as opposed to exploitation,” Khwaja told ADWEEK.
Working directly with farmers to source materials like natural rubber and incorporating recycled materials including old car dashboards and recovered ocean plastics, Thesus has sold more than $3 million worth of its trademarked Weekend Boot, removing 25,000 pounds of plastic from oceans and landfill. This year, on the company’s 10th anniversary, Khwaja made the decision to open source all of the intellectual property associated with the Weekend Boot—sharing supplier and sourcing information with anyone interested in scaling the model. “We’re handing you 10 years’ worth of systems thinking. Now let’s work together to improve it,” she said. —Kathryn Lundstrom
Caitlin Leibert, vice president of sustainability, Whole Foods Market
Whole Foods Market’s mission has always been to “nourish people and the planet.” In early 2023, it unveiled “Growing With Purpose,” a 10-year blueprint to help it fulfill this higher purpose, with vp of sustainability Caitlin Leibert leading the charge.
Starting from the bottom up, Whole Foods has expanded sustainable sourcing programs. This includes bringing its “Sourced for Good” certification—which promotes environmental stewardship where crops are grown—into the coffee aisle of 500 stores. It’s also built on its commitment to organic agriculture via a “Pollinator Policy,” which encourages fresh produce and floral suppliers to phase out certain pesticides to support honeybees, wasps and butterflies. In an effort to cut 50% of food waste by 2030, the brand expanded its in-store waste diversion programs.
“I am happy to report that as of the end of 2023, nearly 85% of our stores have active organic diversion programs, and 99% have active recycling programs,” Leibert said. “Our ultimate goal is to implement meaningful organic diversion and recycling programs in every store.”
Food donation also significantly impacted waste reduction, with Whole Foods donating 28 million meals through 1,000 food reduction partner programs in 2023. —Rebecca Stewart
Sarah Paiji Yoo, co-founder, CEO, Blueland
With Blueland, Sarah Paiji Yoo offers people a rare choice in today’s consumer goods economy: affordable cleaning and personal care products with no single-use plastics. Paiji Yoo founded the company in 2018 alongside her Harvard Business School classmate John Mascari to create the refillable system that they couldn’t find anywhere else.
The brand’s first offerings were dehydrated cleaning solutions sold in tablet form, with an optional refillable spray bottle for each product. It’s now expanded to laundry, personal care and dishwashing products, with around 10 more launching by 2025. After raising $55 million in capital in the early days, Blueland turned a profit in 2022 and has continued to build on that profitability in the years since, with over 75% gross margins and over 45% contribution margins. At an average annual growth rate of 250% and $100 million in sales over the last three years, Blueland doesn’t plan to raise any more capital.
Beyond the business itself, Paiji Yoo has also been a leader in pushing for plastic reduction in the CPG category. Blueland partners with nonprofits like Plastic Oceans International and Beyond Plastics to research the environmental impact of dissolvable plastics used in many laundry and dishwashing products. —Kathryn Lundstrom
Luke Purdy, director of sustainability, Wieden+Kennedy
Last year, Wieden+Kennedy became one of the first global advertising agency networks to achieve B Corp certification. Luke Purdy helped the agency launch a sustainability hub with resources for all employees, which includes guidance on crafting effective environmental communications and avoiding greenwashing, adopting greener production practices and approaching business travel more responsibly.
The greener production process was launched in Amsterdam and is now being adopted by other offices across the network. The guidelines cover all aspects from preproduction to delivery, ensuring W+K takes every action possible to reduce waste. Upon reconciliation and carbon reporting of a shoot, it also offsets a portion of the emissions generated by the production. In Q1 of 2024 alone, it has offset over 280 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions.
“We are finding that clients are increasingly asking for things like company emissions, science-based targets, and generally want to know what we’re doing to reduce our impact. Our goal in all of this is to behave responsibly and evolve our practices to generate the least amount of emissions while creating the most impactful work,” said Purdy.
Wieden+Kennedy’s sustainability plans include tracking and reducing emissions. Operationally, the agency continues to reduce its carbon footprint, down 30% across Scope 1 and 2. According to Purdy, the agency strives to be the best partner to clients current and new who are looking to make a positive impact. —Kyle O’Brien
Shyla Raghav, chief climate officer, Time
Few legacy publishers have embraced and invested in climate reporting efforts quite like Time. In just the last two years, the news publisher has launched Time CO2, the Time Earth Awards list, the Time100 Climate list and the Time CO2 Leadership Brief newsletter. Shyla Raghav, who joined the company in conjunction with those efforts, has been so critical to their stewardship that she was promoted to the chief climate officer role in September. With a background in climate policy and finance, Raghav is blending her expertise with Time’s reach to make the work of reversing climate change both more viable and visible.
Under her tenure, Time has seen significant commercial growth in its climate coverage: In 2023, 20% of the advertising dollars spent with Time went toward its sustainability coverage and businesses. The publisher has also embodied many of the sustainable practices it covers in its reporting, using key partnerships and measurement activities to better track the carbon impact of its advertising campaigns and make more responsible decisions. As a woman of color, Raghav has also worked to highlight the ways in which the climate crisis disproportionately affects marginalized communities across the world. Using the Time platform, she has amplified the efforts of a diverse range of leaders as they work to combat climate change. —Mark Stenberg
James Reinhart, co-founder, CEO, ThredUp
ThredUp, which CEO James Reinhart co-founded in 2009, has been one of the loudest voices in the online secondhand movement. The platform—the largest of its kind—uses marketing messages and annual resale reports to connect fast fashion to the climate crisis, urging its customers to “think secondhand first.” In the last 15 years, ThredUp has, by its count, processed more than 172 million secondhand items, prevented more than 666 million pounds of carbon emissions, saved 7 billion gallons of water and saved 1.3 billion kilowatts of energy.
In 2018, the company began its “resale-as-a-service” offering, partnering with apparel companies to power the logistical backend of a secondhand store for individual brands, building a revenue stream for those partners that effectively decouples profit from resource extraction for a chunk of their businesses. Over 50 brands now have a ThredUp-powered branded resale offering, including J.Crew, Kate Spade, Madewell, Reformation and TOMS.
Reinhart has pushed for broader change within the fashion industry, endorsing legislation like the New York Fashion Act and the Americas Act, both of which push for a more transparent and circular apparel industry. ThredUp is also a founding member of the American Circular Textiles policy group. —Kathryn Lundstrom
Eric Shih, chief operating officer, Cedara
Like many of Cedara’s exec team, Eric Shih worked at ad platform Teads before joining his former colleagues in February 2023 as chief operating officer at Cedara.
“Cedara is leading the way in decarbonizing supply chains through data and automation, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to reunite with one of the strongest teams I’ve worked with in my career,” he said at the time.
Founded in 2021, Cedara measures the carbon emissions for businesses and develops a path to net zero, at a time when, (if we’re being optimistic), the advertising industry is finally transitioning from a year of sustainability talk to a year of action. Over half of Fortune 1000 companies have set net zero or emissions reduction targets. But the overwhelming amount of brands’ carbon emissions come from their suppliers. Cedara helps brands and their agencies move beyond campaign optimization to vendor optimization.
As brands navigate a trifecta of government, industry and corporate sustainability mandates, Cedara helps address these new reporting realities and provides data throughout the media supply chain to help make an impact on the industry’s carbon footprint.
“If I’m succeeding in my role and increasing revenue, then more and more companies … are providing more transparency on the carbon footprint across the media supply chain,” Shih said. —Lucinda Southern
Tory Stephens, climate fiction creative manager, brand community partnerships manger, Grist
The work of reporting on climate change can trend toward the mundane, requiring a steady drumbeat of policy, technology and scientific coverage. In part to inject a new, more imaginative kind of climate writing into the conversation, in 2020 the climate nonprofit publisher Grist launched its fiction project, Imagine 2200. Imagine 2200 invites writers to submit short stories that envision a future where humanity overcomes climate challenges, and in doing so brings such a future that much closer to reality. Stephens, who oversees the venture, has fielded submissions from more than 100 countries and published 36 winners since Imagine 2200 launched.
The project serves a crucial purpose, providing a platform for people from diverse backgrounds to picture a future powered by clean energy, environmental responsibility and social justice. The power of these sessions lies in the collective exchange of ideas, which are captured and chronicled in Afterglow, the printed anthology of the project. Stephens has also struck partnerships with groups like Aspen Ideas: Climate and TED Countdown, expanding the visibility of Imagine 2200, whose writing has now attracted hundreds of thousands of readers. —Mark Stenberg
Lucy von Sturmer, initiator, Creatives for Climate
Creatives for Climate began as a way for Lucy von Sturmer, founder of strategic communications and consulting firm The Humblebrag, to connect and collaborate with activists within the marketing industry around climate action. Growing out of a 2019 Creatives for Climate summit, von Sturmer launched an online community hub and collaboration platform following the event. The group formalized as an NGO in 2022.
With more than 30,000 followers across platforms, over 3,500 members on the hub and eight local chapters around the world, Creatives for Climate offers free trainings and webinars on greenwashing and climate communications. In the last year, it also launched an Ethical Agency Alliance with 11 initial members to pioneer higher standards within the industry. Through a greenwashing-themed in-person activation at Cannes last year and a partnership with the Fossil Fuel Nonproliferation Treaty at COP28, the group has demanded climate remain top of mind for marketers.
“The creative industries have been selling us lifestyles of consumption and building legitimacy for the world’s worst polluters for decades, but their potential to drive widespread positive change is unparalleled,” von Sturmer told ADWEEK. “Our plan is to bridge that gap.” —Kathryn Lundstrom
