🧠 From the pitch to the plate

Growing up in a football academy wasn’t just about chasing dreams of sport—it was training in discipline, self-awareness, and what Gina calls “foundational resilience.” That same mindset later fuelled her curiosity around nutrition during injury recovery, eventually setting her on a path from performance nutritionist to ESG leadership.

But what really sets Gina apart is her clarity on a core challenge in sustainable food: knowing what to do doesn’t mean we actually do it.

“There’s a huge gap between intention and behaviour. People say they care—but the label on the sandwich rarely drives their choice.”

Cue the research.

🧪 The carbon-labelling study that stopped us in our tracks

Gina joined us to dissect a study in Science Direct that examined whether carbon labels on sandwiches influenced consumer choices. The results were sobering:

• 69% of people said they valued carbon labels

• Only 27% said it influenced their purchase

The implication? We’re walking into shops with good intentions, but walking out with a BLT.

Why? The study points to a lack of understanding of carbon labels, information overload, and competing priorities like cost and convenience.

“It’s like giving people a nutrition label in a language they don’t speak—and then expecting them to change their habits.”

This “action gap” isn’t new, but Gina believes it’s fixable—with the right internal tools and a behavioural nudge or two.

♻️ From sticker to system: How Aramark re-engineered food labelling

Here’s where the Rory Sutherland part kicks in.

What if carbon labelling isn’t just a sticker for the consumer, but a lever for chefs?

At Aramark, carbon data is now embedded into recipe systems, allowing teams to analyse high-impact meals and reformulate them at the source—quietly shifting sustainability without asking customers to make heroic choices.

This means:

• A chef uploads a new dish, and the carbon score auto-generates

• Recipes can be tweaked behind the scenes to lower carbon impacts

• Communication is handed over to other chefs, not a corporate team

“Chefs want to hear from chefs. They don’t want someone from corporate coming in telling them to cut beef.”

It’s a brilliantly behavioural move. Aramark doesn’t wait for customers to get fluent in carbon labelling—they engineer better choices upstream and make the sustainable option the easy one.

🧑‍🏫 Playing games, sparking conversations

That doesn’t mean the customer gets ignored. Gina and her team have launched a range of engagement tools, including…

🎮 Play Your Carbon Right – A sandwich-themed take on Play Your Cards Right, where users guess whether a meal is higher or lower in carbon than the last

📱 QR codes at points of sale – Linking to full carbon impact explanations

🥇 “A-Rated Dish of the Day” – Turning carbon labels into something people can aspire to, not just tolerate

“It’s about sparking curiosity, not guilting people into change.”

🪴 The big opportunity? Feeding 250,000 people… better

With Aramark serving over a quarter of a million meals daily in the UK alone, the stakes are high. Around 70% of their carbon footprint comes from food purchasing, especially animal-based ingredients.

That’s why Gina’s work is focused not just on reformulating dishes, but on sourcing regenerative produce, rethinking waste, and supporting smaller, sustainable suppliers across the value chain.

“We’re not perfect. No one is. But the scale of the opportunity in food is massive.”

Her ultimate goal? To embed ESG in every commercial decision by default—so it’s no longer a bolt-on, but a reflex.

✨ Final thought: ESG shouldn’t be exceptional

In her “magic wand” moment, Gina didn’t ask for a shiny new label or global policy breakthrough. She asked for something much simpler:

“I’d want ESG to be factored into every decision—automatically. Not an afterthought. Just part of how things are done.”

In a world of short-term targets and endless KPIs, it’s a radical idea cloaked in pragmatism.

And maybe, just maybe, that’s how change really happens: not with slogans, but with sandwiches.

Laura grew up in the shadow of deindustrialisation. Raised in a coal mining village in South Yorkshire, she witnessed first-hand how progress for some meant devastation for many. That early understanding of inequality and its deep social consequences shaped the trajectory of her career—and the powerful insights she shares today.

The Legacy We Haven’t Escaped: Outdated Organisational Thinking

From the late 19th century onwards, thinkers like Frederick Taylor and Max Weber helped craft the management models still dominating companies today:

• 📚 Scientific Management: Maximise efficiency by turning organisations into tightly-controlled machines.

• 🏢 Bureaucratic Structures: Standardise processes, create rigid hierarchies, and define success through productivity and control.

At the time, these ideas revolutionised business. But in today’s world, trying to solve systemic sustainability challenges with “scientific management” principles is like trying to fix a spaceship with Victorian plumbing.

“We’re using outdated ways of working to try and solve challenges that have never been solved before.”

The sustainability issues we face require creativity, imagination, and dynamic thinking—not rigid hierarchy and departmental silos.

Why Compliance Alone Won’t Save Us

Laura is clear: compliance is essential—but it’s not the end goal.

“We can’t compliance our way out of this.”

Organisations have rightly focused on building robust sustainability reporting, frameworks, and compliance mechanisms. But in doing so, many have squeezed out the very things that drive genuine change: innovation, experimentation, and human creativity.

Without making space for new thinking, compliance risks becoming a comfort blanket that lulls organisations into a false sense of progress.

Introducing the ‘Now Work’ Philosophy

Frustrated by outdated structures, Laura founded The Now Work, a new kind of business designed around modern sustainability needs.

Here’s what makes it different:

• 🌍 2,000-strong global network of sustainability experts across strategy, carbon accounting, creative storytelling, science, and systems thinking.

• 🚀 Flexible talent models: helping businesses “rent, borrow, or share” sustainability expertise.

• 🛠️ Built for agility, creativity, and real transformation—not just reporting and box-ticking.

It’s a glimpse into the future of organisational design: porous, flexible, human-centred, and impact-driven.

Rethinking Power: Why Shared Value Networks Matter

Laura also discussed the concept of Shared Value Networks (SVNs)—a radical rethink of how organisations could be structured.

Instead of all decision-making power sitting at the centre, SVNs operate at the edges, connecting companies with external stakeholders: NGOs, educators, citizens, and others. This creates a decentralised web of knowledge, co-creation, and collective intelligence.

Key ideas:

• ✨ Impact Coordinators: New leadership roles managing the interconnected networks.

• 🌱 Organic structures, intentionally designed for creativity and adaptability.

• 🤝 Genuine collaboration with external voices, not just tokenistic advisory boards.

Laura believes models like SVNs can unlock the creativity and stakeholder engagement needed for real systemic change.

“We need space for creativity. We’re not going to solve these challenges by staying rigidly inside traditional structures.”

The Real Risk: Losing the Next Generation

One of Laura’s most powerful warnings? That by focusing too much on compliance, companies risk discouraging the next wave of sustainability talent.

If the sustainability profession becomes seen as purely technical and compliance-led, we will miss out on the creative, passionate innovators needed to lead true transformation.

Laura’s Magic Wand: Tackling Wealth Inequality

If given a magic wand to change one thing in business, Laura’s choice was clear:

“I want businesses to take rising wealth inequality seriously. Without tackling inequality, we won’t build a society capable of creating a better future.”

Business can’t exist in a vacuum. A sustainable economy is impossible without social justice.

Final Thoughts: Building the Businesses We Need

Laura’s message is both a challenge and an opportunity:

• 🌟 Redesign your structures.

• 🌟 Build spaces for creativity.

• 🌟 Connect beyond your walls.

• 🌟 Tackle social issues, not just environmental ones.

In short: Stop trying to save the world with broken models.

In this episode of The Responsible Edge, Tozama joins host Charlie Martin to share her deeply personal and professional journey—from becoming a mother at 15 and putting herself through university, to leading sustainability for some of South Africa’s biggest companies. But this isn’t just a story of corporate ESG frameworks—it’s about how self-sufficiency and environmental stewardship can be taught, lived, and scaled to create true change.

🌍 Sustainability as Survival: Lessons from the Eastern Cape

Raised in the rural Eastern Cape, Tozama grew up in a household where sustainability wasn’t a lifestyle trend—it was survival.

“My mum would insist on a vegetable garden, on collecting rainwater, and on sorting waste… She didn’t know she was teaching ESG. It was just how we got by.”

After becoming a mother at 15, Tozama defied societal expectations by putting herself through university, working two jobs, and later funding her siblings’ education. This drive—to move beyond poverty—ultimately led her into corporate sustainability roles at organisations like Eskom and Lonmin, where she connected her upbringing with the professional world of ESG.

💡 Turning ESG from Buzzword to Behaviour

Tozama’s lightbulb moment came when she realised that the same sustainability habits she’d learned at home could be applied in boardrooms, communities, and entire industries.

“At first, ESG was just a buzzword. But when I looked closely, I realised—this is what we’ve been doing all along.”

In roles that spanned community development, local economic empowerment, and corporate sustainability compliance, she witnessed the direct link between environmental awareness and social mobility—particularly in mining communities where pollution, poverty, and unemployment intersect.

🧑‍🌾 Community Power: Farming, Waste & the Value of Self-Sufficiency

Tozama’s ethos is clear: when individuals take control of their resources, they unlock resilience—not just for themselves, but for entire communities.

“If you recycle your water, grow your own vegetables, and collect your own eggs, you don’t just reduce waste—you build dignity and independence.”

Through initiatives that encouraged schools to grow their own food and reuse recycled water, she saw how sustainability could alleviate poverty and empower marginalised groups.

🌱 The Kids Are the Key: Building a Climate-Conscious Generation

A key theme from the show—and the accompanying Vox article discussed—was the power of early intervention.

In South Africa’s Western Cape, the Climate Change Champs programme is teaching children to see environmental responsibility not just as a duty, but as an opportunity. From medicinal plants to waste recycling, these young minds are already identifying as future climate scientists and entrepreneurs.

“We need to start them young. Because when a child knows their waste has value, they’ll change their household, their school, their entire community.”

Tozama envisions a future where sustainability is taught alongside literacy and numeracy—and where children from rural communities can become green economy leaders.

🚨 Class & Climate: The Realities of Environmentalism in South Africa

One of the most powerful takeaways from the episode is Tozama’s breakdown of how environmentalism is perceived across different socio-economic groups in South Africa:

• For those in survival mode, sustainability feels like a luxury.

• For those in stable jobs, it’s about resource efficiency—saving water and lowering bills.

• For the wealthy, it’s something they often outsource.

This class-based perspective is critical in designing policies and funding strategies that are truly inclusive.

🤝 What Role Should the Global North Play?

The episode also tackled the often-uncomfortable question of how European or Global North institutions support sustainability efforts in the Global South.

Tozama’s view?

“If there’s someone willing to fund people becoming self-sustaining—who’s not trying to give handouts but to enable long-term change—that’s incredibly valuable. Especially in our villages, where poverty is visible in the air.”

But she’s also clear: support must be led by local insight, not imposed from afar.

✨ Magic Wand Moment: Make Ethics a Contractual Obligation

If handed a magic wand, Tozama would instil one change in the commercial world:

“Less greed, more compliance. If companies simply did what they committed to do—built the schools, delivered the jobs, protected the water—they would change lives.”

Her call is a potent reminder: ESG must be more than promises on paper. It must be monitored, enforced, and lived—especially in communities where corporate behaviour can make or break futures.

Final Thoughts

Tozama’s story is not just inspiring—it’s instructional.

It shows that real sustainability isn’t imposed from boardrooms or think tanks. It’s grown in vegetable gardens. It’s felt in the weight of a water bucket. It’s taught to children who turn recycling into purpose.

When ESG is grounded in personal experience and community wisdom, it becomes more than policy. It becomes a movement.

Rather than just reducing harm, she argues that companies should actively restore, replenish, and rethink their relationship with nature. But what does that actually look like in practice? This conversation dives into the principles of nature-first business, the power of storytelling, and why the most successful organisations of the future will be those that ask themselves: What would nature do?

🌍 Why Sustainability Isn’t Enough—We Need Regeneration

Many businesses now recognise the importance of sustainability, but sustaining the status quo isn’t enough—especially when nature is in decline. Nicky highlights that businesses need to shift their focus from merely mitigating damage to actively contributing to planetary health.

🔹 Moving beyond carbon – While net-zero targets dominate ESG discussions, biodiversity and nature loss are often overlooked.
🔹 Replenishing, not just reducing – Businesses need to restore ecosystems rather than just minimising their footprint.
🔹 Nature as a stakeholder – Just as companies consider shareholders and employees, they must account for nature in decision-making.

“We aren’t going to have businesses and an economy unless we look after the ecosystem within which we operate. Without nature, we don’t exist.”

🎶 How a Birds-Only Chart Hit Inspired Millions

One of Nicky’s most impactful projects was “Let Nature Sing”, a campaign she spearheaded at the RSPB. The goal? Get a track made entirely of birdsong into the UK music charts to remind people of the beauty—and fragility—of nature.

📢 Five million people heard birdsong in a single day.
🚆 It played in train stations, cathedrals, and public spaces across the country.
🎶 The track reached #11 in the UK charts—outperforming global pop stars!

“When people heard birdsong on their commute, they stopped and smiled. It sparked an emotional connection—because when people care, they want to protect.”

The success of this campaign wasn’t just about awareness—it was about engaging people emotionally. For businesses, this is a crucial lesson: winning hearts and minds is essential for driving real environmental action.

🌱 Three Ways Businesses Can Learn from Nature

If businesses started thinking more like nature, how would they change? Nicky suggests applying three core principles from the natural world:

1️⃣ Systems Thinking: Break Down Silos

Just as ecosystems thrive through interconnection, sustainability should not be siloed within a company. It must be embedded into:

✅ Operations – Sustainable supply chains, circular design
✅ Leadership – Decision-making that considers long-term ecological impact
✅ Culture – Employees empowered to champion environmental goals

“We need to stop thinking of sustainability as a ‘department’ and instead embed it across every function.”

2️⃣ Adaptation Over Perfection: Test, Learn, Iterate

Nature evolves through experimentation—and businesses must do the same.

🔄 Start small – Pilot nature-focused initiatives before scaling them.
📊 Measure impact – Track results and refine strategies.
💡 Stay flexible – Environmental challenges will shift, and so must businesses.

“If we wait for everything to be perfect before we act, we’ll never get started.”

3️⃣ Contribution Over Extraction: Give More Than You Take

Businesses need to stop asking, What can we take? and start asking, What can we give back? 🌍

🌿 Regenerative supply chains – Investing in biodiversity, soil health, and ethical sourcing.
🏡 Community-led projects – Supporting local environmental restoration efforts.
♻️ Product innovation – Designing waste-free, circular products.

“We need to flip the script. How can my business create a positive legacy rather than just extracting resources?”

🚀 Breaking Barriers: How Businesses Can Act Now

Many companies struggle not with why they should act, but how. Common roadblocks include:

❌ ESG fatigue – Sustainability feels like a compliance burden.
✅ Solution: Frame nature-first business as an opportunity for innovation, not just a requirement.

❌ Short-termism – Quarterly financial pressures stifle long-term environmental thinking.
✅ Solution: Shift focus from profit maximisation to sustainable wealth creation.

❌ Fear of greenwashing – Companies worry about backlash for imperfect sustainability efforts.
✅ Solution: Be transparent – share progress and challenges. Consumers value honesty.

“Transparency builds trust. No company is perfect, but honesty and action go a long way.”

✨ The Magic Wand: A Business Mindset Shift

If Nicky had a magic wand, she’d make every business leader ask nature for advice before making decisions:

✅ Would nature take without giving back? No.
✅ Would nature resist change? No.
✅ Would nature evolve, regenerate, and collaborate? Yes.

“Nature isn’t just something we protect—it’s something we’re part of. The businesses that embrace this will be the ones that thrive.”

🌿 Final Thought: Don’t Just Sustain—Regenerate

📌 Test a small nature-first initiative in your business.
📌 Think beyond carbon—embed biodiversity into decision-making.
📌 Share progress openly—authenticity wins consumer trust.

👉 The most successful businesses of the future won’t just reduce harm—they’ll restore, replenish, and rethink their role in the natural world.

A New Business Mindset for a Finite Planet

As businesses worldwide scramble to prove their sustainability credentials, Matt challenges the assumption that scaling up is always the goal. Instead, he advocates for a model where impact, purpose, and resilience outweigh unchecked growth.

“For any ecosystem to thrive, it has to have balance. Growth for growth’s sake leads to collapse. We’ve seen it in nature, and we’re seeing it in business.”

This conversation explored the risks of overgrowth, the integrity of sustainability certifications, and why businesses must redefine their purpose beyond profit.

From Creative Chaos to Planet-Centred Design

Matt’s journey into sustainable business was anything but conventional. With no formal design training, he built his career through instinct, experimentation, and a commitment to using creativity for good. His early work with Sky, LEGO, and the Eden Project reinforced a critical insight:

“I wasn’t interested in making money for the sake of it. I wanted to create something that mattered.”

This ethos led to the founding of Leap, a design studio that prioritises sustainability not as a trend, but as the default. In an era where businesses increasingly see sustainability as a box-ticking exercise, Leap was built with purpose at its core—proving that business can be a force for positive change from the outset.

Beyond Profit: When is Growth Too Much?

One of the most compelling insights Matt shared was his challenge to the ‘bigger is better’ mindset. As sustainability-focused companies scale, they often face the same pressures as traditional corporations—profitability, shareholder expectations, and market dominance. This raises a difficult question:

“How big do you actually need to be to deliver your mission effectively?”

The concept of enoughism pushes back against the idea that businesses must continuously scale to succeed. Instead, Matt argues that companies should be introspective about their purpose:

✔ Is expansion genuinely serving the mission, or is it just expected?
✔ Can a business be impactful without growing beyond its optimal size?
✔ What does responsible, sustainable growth actually look like?

In a world facing climate crises, resource depletion, and widening inequality, he believes that businesses must redefine success on their own terms—before external pressures force them to do so.

Can B Corp Keep Its Integrity?

Matt was an early adopter of B Corp certification in the UK, believing in its potential to drive accountability in business. However, as the movement expands—bringing in multinational corporations alongside activist-led businesses—its original intent is being tested.

“B Corp was never meant to be a badge; it’s a framework. But when it becomes a selling point, that’s where issues arise.”

While certification provides a roadmap for better business practices, Matt warns that some companies are using it as a branding tool rather than embedding real change. The true value of B Corp lies not in external validation, but in whether a company genuinely commits to ethical decision-making, regardless of certification.

“If your values aren’t baked into your business from day one, no certification can fix that.”

This highlights a broader tension within ESG movements: How do we scale responsible business without diluting its principles?

The Future of Business: Systemic Change or More of the Same?

A Call to Action: Defining “Enough” in Business

The Problem: The House and the Lifestyle That Comes With It

One of the biggest issues Marc sees in the UK’s built environment is how deeply cultural perceptions of homeownership shape the country’s carbon footprint.

“In the UK, the ultimate dream is still a detached house, a driveway, and two cars parked outside,” Marc explained.

“It’s a vision that’s been ingrained for generations, but it comes with a high-carbon lifestyle—one that’s built around long commutes, energy-intensive homes, and car dependency.”

Even though denser urban living—with well-designed apartments, shared green spaces, and integrated public transport—is objectively better for both sustainability and quality of life, Marc highlighted how developers, policymakers, and homebuyers continue to default to suburban sprawl.

“We’re still designing new housing developments that bake in car dependency from the start,” he said.

“If you build an estate in the middle of nowhere, with no walkable shops, schools, or public transport, you’re forcing people into a car-based lifestyle for decades to come.”

This, he argues, is where sustainability in construction is failing—not because we don’t have energy-efficient materials, but because we keep designing places that make low-carbon living impossible.

Sustainability Starts With Systemic Thinking, Not Just Better Buildings

One of Marc’s biggest takeaways from his career—spanning engineering, architecture, and sustainable design—is that sustainability isn’t just about making buildings more efficient, it’s about designing better systems.

“We focus so much on energy ratings and materials, but if you zoom out, the bigger problem is how we design entire neighbourhoods,” he said.

“If a development is built in a location that forces people into cars and long commutes, then it doesn’t matter how low-carbon the buildings are—the lifestyle it supports will still be high-carbon.”

The key, he argues, is rethinking how we define sustainability—not just by looking at individual buildings, but by considering:

✔ How connected a place is – Can people get to work, schools, and shops without relying on a car?
✔ How resources are shared – Could we design for co-housing, community spaces, and shared infrastructure rather than everyone owning the same appliances, tools, and cars?
✔ How people actually use buildings – Are we designing for sufficiency, or are we still building bigger and bigger homes with more energy use baked in?

Marc pointed out that policy and regulation still lag behind in this kind of thinking. “We have regulations on how energy-efficient homes should be,” he said. “But there’s no regulation saying we should stop building isolated developments that force car dependency.”

This, he believes, is the real sustainability challenge—shifting from optimising individual buildings to creating built environments that enable lower-carbon living.

Why Behaviour Change Is the Missing Piece

A recurring theme in Marc’s work is that technology alone isn’t enough—people’s behaviours and expectations need to change too.

“We already have the technology to build net-zero homes,” he said.

“What we don’t have is a society that’s ready to adopt the lifestyle changes that come with them.”

One of the biggest behavioural shifts he sees as necessary is rethinking what makes a good home.

“We’ve normalised the idea that bigger is always better,” Marc explained. “But bigger homes aren’t just expensive—they also use more energy, more materials, and more land. We need to rethink the relationship between space, comfort, and sustainability.”

He also pointed to the heat pump dilemma in the UK as an example of behaviour-driven barriers.

“Heat pumps are a great alternative to gas boilers, but people are reluctant to switch because it’s different from what they know,” he said.

“A lot of sustainability solutions aren’t failing because they don’t work, but because they don’t fit into existing habits.”

Marc believes better communication is key. “We can’t just tell people, ‘This is more sustainable, so do it.’ We need to show them how these changes improve their quality of life—whether that’s lower energy bills, better air quality, or more walkable communities.”

The Real Challenge: Balancing Progress With Practicality

One of Marc’s most interesting reflections was how sustainability professionals must balance ambition with realism.

“There are two camps,” he said.

“One side believes we need radical system change now—stop all new roads, stop suburban sprawl, force high-density living. The other side believes in incremental progress—working with what we have, nudging people in the right direction.”

Marc sees himself somewhere in the middle.

“I’d love to see major system change overnight,” he admitted.

“But I also recognise that people don’t change that fast. You can’t just force people to accept something different—you have to bring them along, make it desirable, make it practical.”

This pragmatic approach is why he sees education and cultural shifts as just as important as regulation.

“If we can change the way people think about space, home, and transport, we can create demand for more sustainable urban planning and construction,” he said. “And once that demand is there, the market will respond.”

Final Thought: The Built Environment Reflects the Lives We Want to Live

Marc’s insights make one thing clear: sustainability in construction isn’t just about buildings—it’s about the kind of lives we’re designing for.

Without addressing car dependency, lifestyle expectations, and systemic planning failures, even the most energy-efficient homes won’t be enough to tackle climate change.

As Marc put it:

“You can’t just make buildings greener—you have to make low-carbon living the easiest and most attractive option.”

And that, he believes, is where the real work in sustainable construction needs to happen.