Data Can’t Save Us — But Collaboration Might

Episode 104 | 11.6.2025

Data Can’t Save Us — But Collaboration Might

On this episode of The Responsible Edge, sustainability strategist and former TalkTalk executive Will Ennett offers a rare behind-the-scenes look at what actually drives corporate environmental progress. Hint: it’s not just targets, dashboards, or reporting software.

Listen to the full podcast episode on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.

Will isn’t just another voice in the ESG crowd. He’s been on the inside, designing sustainability strategy, engaging boards, and wrestling with the brutal complexity of telecom supply chains. And he’s refreshingly honest about what does and doesn’t work.

“The target’s just the start. It’s the action behind it that matters.”

In conversation, Will makes a compelling case: true progress demands that we escape our own organisational silos and rethink where value actually comes from—often in places overlooked by traditional ESG frameworks.

 

💡 Forget the Net Zero Checklists—Think Industry-Wide Standards

During his time at TalkTalk, Will led efforts that cut emissions by 58% in just four years. But he’s quick to point out that individual corporate action isn’t enough.

“We had to look beyond the four walls of the company. That meant getting competitors, regulators, and suppliers around the table.”

That effort led to one of the most ambitious initiatives in UK telecoms: a cross-sector collaboration representing £50 billion in annual revenue. The goal? Create minimum joint standards to address Scope 3 emissions—a problem that no single firm can solve in isolation.

Key Outcomes:

  • 85% of suppliers (by spend) now have science-based targets

  • A roadmap for reducing upstream emissions shared across the industry

  • Ongoing work with Ofcom to align regulatory frameworks with sustainability priorities

This isn’t ESG as branding. It’s ESG as systems change.

 

🧠 Why ESG Reporting Misses the Point (and What to Do Instead)

Will’s critique of standard ESG reporting is incisive. He doesn’t reject it outright—but he’s sceptical of the weight it carries in decision-making.

“Reporting on ESG metrics is often about satisfying frameworks. But that doesn’t necessarily lead to change.”

So what does?

  • Board-level engagement that links sustainability to commercial risk

  • Simplicity and clarity over 80-page reports

  • A shift from defensive disclosures to forward-looking strategy

His approach also included mandatory ESG training for TalkTalk employees and Carbon Literacy Training—a first in the sector.

 

🌐 What’s Next: A Commercial Lens on Sustainability

After nearly 12 years at TalkTalk, Will is shifting his focus to consultancy, bringing a commercial mindset to ESG challenges in other industries. He sees massive untapped potential for mid-sized firms—too often overlooked in policy discussions.

“The companies that are going to move the dial are those that see sustainability not as a cost, but as a catalyst.”

 

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We Don’t Need More Awareness—We Need Agency

Episode 103 | 7.6.2025

We Don’t Need More Awareness—We Need Agency

In a powerful episode of The Responsible Edge, we hear from Katie White, a strategist-turned-founder, who’s reframing how we address one of society’s most unyielding injustices: sexual violence. Rather than centring on institutional reform or incremental awareness campaigns, Katie is working to redesign the experience of reporting itself. Her mission? Make it easier for survivors to act—and harder for perpetrators to hide.

Listen to the full podcast episode on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.

Katie is the co-founder of enough., a new venture launching later this year that aims to empower survivors of sexual violence with a revolutionary new form of reporting. But this isn’t just a tech solution. It’s a design rethink of the power dynamics, pain points, and psychological weight that survivors face—often alone.

“The problem is not a lack of awareness anymore,” she explains. “We’re asking people to take on so much responsibility in a broken system. What if we redesigned the experience instead?”

 

🧩 Reframing the Challenge

Katie’s path to enough. wasn’t linear. She built her career in brand strategy, helping global firms innovate, position, and grow. But it was her own lived experience—and deep frustration with the status quo—that inspired her to step away from client briefs and into system-level change.

“This isn’t about replicating what exists or trying to make institutions slightly more efficient,” she says. “It’s about meeting people where they are, especially in moments of trauma, and creating something radically more human.”

With enough., survivors can document their experience in a way that feels safe, supported, and non-linear. The platform is built around behavioural science—acknowledging that trauma affects memory, decision-making, and timing. Reports can be time-stamped but held until a survivor is ready to act.

It’s not just empowering. It’s preventative. If a survivor chooses to release their report, the tool can alert others who have reported the same perpetrator, creating a network of patterns and protection.

 

🛠 What Happens When You Design For Survivors?

Katie describes how much of the current system is built around protecting institutions—from HR departments to law enforcement. But her lens, honed from years in innovation consulting, flips the script.

“I wanted to create something that protects survivors instead,” she says. “We can use design as a form of justice.”

Her approach is iterative, not prescriptive. During beta testing, Katie and her co-founder worked closely with a diverse group of users to prototype features, gather feedback, and refine their tone and timing. One insight? Survivors often want to share their experience—but not necessarily with authorities. So, enough. supports anonymous documentation, giving survivors a form of control even when they’re not ready to pursue action.

It’s a reminder that systems aren’t just broken because of bureaucracy—they’re broken because they weren’t designed with the user in mind.

 

🔮 What Would It Look Like to Shift the Culture?

Katie’s work intersects with a broader reckoning across sectors—from business to media—around how power operates. But what makes enough. stand out is its unwillingness to wait for cultural change. Instead, it builds micro-actions that could shift the ecosystem.

“We talk about ‘culture change’ all the time,” Katie says, “but culture is made up of small systems, actions, and choices. If you change the experience, the culture will follow.”

As her team prepares to launch in October, Katie hopes the platform can become both a tool and a statement. That we don’t need to wait for institutions to evolve—we can create new tools, new language, and new rituals for justice.

And if we’re serious about responsible business, perhaps this is what responsibility really looks like: not just acknowledging harm, but designing systems that make it harder to do harm in the first place.

 

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Lost at Sea, Leading with Purpose: Seneca Cottom’s Journey from Survival to Sustainability

Episode 102 | 5.6.2025

Lost at Sea, Leading with Purpose: Seneca Cottom’s Journey from Survival to Sustainability

From the Atlantic Ocean to boardroom influence, Alshaya Group’s Head of Sustainability, Seneca Cottom, proves that clarity often comes in the darkest depths. Her story is one of radical empathy, systems thinking, and redefining waste as value.

Listen to the full podcast episode on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.

There’s the kind of story you expect on a business podcast—and then there’s the kind Seneca tells. Her career-defining moment didn’t start with a sustainability framework or an MBA thesis. It started in the Atlantic Ocean. Alone. At night. Having just been flung from a sinking boat.

The experience left her with PTSD, temporary memory loss, and a recalibrated view of value—personal, professional, and environmental.

“I realised I couldn’t just make money—I had to leave a legacy,” she reflects.

That moment didn’t just mark her survival; it sparked a transformation.

Today, as Head of Sustainability at Alshaya Group—one of the Middle East’s largest retail franchise partners—Seneca isn’t just driving ESG from within; she’s reimagining what sustainability leadership looks like when it’s grounded in lived experience and systems insight.

 

🔄 Circular Thinking in a Linear World

At the core of Seneca’s philosophy is a simple but powerful idea: most waste isn’t rubbish, it’s misrecognised value.

Drawing on the article “Zero Waste Isn’t Just an Environmental Strategy—It’s a Business Strategy,” she underscores how waste—whether plastic, packaging, or people’s time—starts with procurement decisions. “Buy smarter, waste less,” she says. It’s not just about being lean. It’s about being honest.

Seneca recounts a pilot with Ericsson that slashed landfill waste by nearly 40%. Scale that, and you’re looking at over a million dollars in savings.

“But it still took me nine months to convince the right people,” she notes.

That delay? Not cost. Not tech. Just the drag of disbelief.

Her magic wand, if she had one? Not more regulation. Just awareness. “I’d wave it and everyone would go: ‘Ahhh.’ That’s the shift. That moment of realisation.”

 

🛍️ The Myth of the Virtuous Consumer

Seneca’s realism extends to the market. She’s seen enough to know that sustainability doesn’t sell itself.

“Consumers say they care—but they still shop for value. That’s not hypocrisy. That’s human.”

Referencing a BCG study showing the gap between climate concern and consumer action in the Gulf, she calls on brands to ditch eco-performative marketing. “Don’t lead with guilt. Lead with utility. No one pays more for less—no matter how green the packaging.”

Her call isn’t for less ambition—but more behavioural honesty.

 

🧠 Recovery, Systems, and Emotional Labour

What sets Seneca apart isn’t just technical competence—it’s her willingness to bring her full humanity to the table.

From navigating post-traumatic stress to completing Harvard Extension courses at 1am from Kuwait, she models a rare integration: academic depth, operational grit, and emotional insight. Every story she tells is a lesson in the unseen cost of change.

Whether it’s pushing back on inefficient legacy systems or holding space for team wellbeing, she sees transformation not as a directive—but as an act of seeing.

“Change doesn’t come from pressure alone,” she says. “It comes from people being able to see.”

 

Final Thought

Seneca’s leadership is quietly radical. She’s not broadcasting slogans. She’s modelling a different way of thinking—where clarity is hard-won, waste is reframed, and courage looks a lot like consistency.

In a world hungry for breakthrough solutions, her gift is something subtler: behavioural clarity forged through lived experience. Less hype. More vision. And a deeply human kind of wisdom.

 

For a Truly Sustainable Future


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Empathy in the Feed: Rethinking Social Media from the Inside Out

Episode 101 | 2.6.2025

Empathy in the Feed: Rethinking Social Media from the Inside Out

What if ethical social media isn’t about better tech—but deeper accountability? In this episode, Josh Pizey brings hard-won insights from agencies, NGOs, and global brands to show how real change begins behind the screen.

Listen to the full podcast episode on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.

The question isn’t whether social media is broken. It’s whether we’ve built the right teams—and asked the right questions—to fix it.

In this episode, Josh pulls back the curtain on life at the intersection of behaviour, branding, and burnout. As Global Head of Social at HX Expeditions—and with previous stints leading Unilever’s global Beauty & Personal Care output and digital comms at Save the Children UK—Josh has lived the highs and lows of the industry. He’s delivered Cannes-worthy content for global names and absorbed frontline pressure in moments of humanitarian urgency. That breadth shapes a rare kind of perspective: part systems thinker, part empathetic operator.

What drives this conversation is a hunger to reframe how social platforms—and the organisations behind them—approach engagement. Anchored in a provocative research paper on “Pro-Social Media,” Josh discusses an alternative feed logic: one that surfaces content not by sheer popularity, but by contextual relevance. Who is engaging, and why? What cognitive diversity might we introduce to nudge us out of algorithmic comfort zones?

“The platforms are doing exactly what we trained them to do,” Josh notes. “They mirror our psychology—particularly our bias towards outrage. But we never asked what it’s costing us.”

 

The Quiet Cost of ‘Always On’

For Josh, the biggest blind spot isn’t the algorithm—it’s the culture.

Across both commercial and non-profit sectors, he’s seen how social media teams often become reactive fire blankets rather than trusted strategists. “Don’t talk to them unless something’s on fire—that’s the norm,” he says. “But that invisibility comes at a cost. It’s real emotional labour.”

His solution is disarmingly low-tech: presence.

“Support isn’t a Slack channel. It’s someone in the room. Literally. Someone who understands the pressure and can hold space when things go sideways.”

This isn’t a wishlist—it’s hard-earned realism. And it speaks to a deeper point in the episode: if social platforms are behavioural ecosystems, then so are the teams managing them. Ignoring their emotional bandwidth is a systemic flaw.

 

Impact as Accountability

Josh’s lens sharpened significantly during his time at Save the Children. “You couldn’t just run a campaign for engagement’s sake,” he reflects.

“You were telling real stories—often about children’s lives. The weight of that forces you to rethink what success looks like.”

It’s here that Josh draws a line between metrics and meaning. Behavioural insights, he argues, should serve as connective tissue between a brand and its broader responsibility—not just as a shortcut to higher reach.

This realignment, he believes, is where social can regain its humanity.

 

Designing for Better (Not Just More)

Despite his honest view of ad-driven platform logic, Josh remains hopeful. “We might not be able to change the revenue model overnight,” he concedes, “but we can change what we reward internally.”

That might mean celebrating content that slows people down. Or labelling stories in ways that encourage reflection over reaction. Or simply asking: what does meaningful engagement look like if it’s not just a click?

Josh’s closing reflections speak less to marketing KPIs and more to human priorities. He dreams of a world where ESG is tied to financial markets—and where parenting well is seen as a leadership trait.

“If someone looks back and says I helped them be better—at work or in life—that’s the goal.”

It’s not a rebrand of social media. It’s a re-humanisation.

 

For a Truly Sustainable Future


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The Gender Investment Gap Is Costing Us Climate Solutions

Episode 100 | 29.5.2025

The Gender Investment Gap Is Costing Us Climate Solutions

Despite the rhetoric around data-driven investing, there’s one figure the venture capital world keeps conveniently ignoring: female founders consistently outperform their male counterparts—and yet receive just 2% of available funding. For Carmel Rafaeli, investor and serial entrepreneur, this isn’t just a moral failure. It’s an economic one.

Listen to the full podcast episode on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.

“I invest in women building in climate,” Carmel told us on The Responsible Edge. “Not because it’s charity, but because it’s good business.”

Carmel’s journey is anything but linear. From journalist to fashion executive to founder of a hospitality tech platform, her entrepreneurial drive took many forms—until COVID forced a hard reset. Sitting at her kitchen table during lockdown, she had a moment of realisation: “Whatever I do now, it cannot be about making something for someone just to buy. It has to be about impact.”

That pivot led her to climate tech, angel investing, and ultimately, founding The Table—a non-commercial community of over 225 investors with more than £10 billion AUM, all focused on backing women-led climate ventures. Since launch, 32 deals have been shared, 10 closed, and new models of capital allocation are taking shape.

 

🛑 The Myth of the Pipeline Problem

Investors often claim there just aren’t enough women building VC-backable climate solutions. Carmel disagrees.

“That’s not true,” she says plainly. “Women are building incredible businesses. They just don’t have the resources—and they’re building differently because of it.”

Women are present in the early stages. Cohorts at venture builders like Zinc or Carbon Thirteen are often 40–60% female. But when it comes to pre-seed or seed funding, the numbers plummet. The result? A false feedback loop that implies lack of ambition rather than lack of access.

 

🔁 Same Bias, New Money

A recent Trellis article suggested that more corporate capital in climate tech might change the gender equation. But Carmel isn’t convinced.

“Corporates don’t treat women differently. The same biases are embedded—just with a new logo.”

Her frustration is rooted in data. Women-led startups deliver higher ROI, reach unicorn status faster, and maintain stronger fundamentals. Yet when pitching, men are asked about their vision. Women are asked about their risks.

 

🔧 Fixing the System, Not the Women

So what needs to change? For Carmel, it’s not about training women to pitch better. It’s about rebuilding the structures they’re pitching into.

Here’s what she recommends:

  • More catalytic capital: Funds like The Table Foundation (launching soon) offer recoverable grants to match investments, reducing the perceived risk.

  • Visible, shared deal flow: The Table invites all investors—angels, syndicates, funds—to co-invest and share live rounds.

  • Data transparency: Asking every member to report the gender and diversity make-up of their portfolio and team is one small but powerful act of accountability.

“We’re not subsidising climate tech. We’re subsidising men. It’s time to change the ROI conversation.”

 

🎯 Why This Matters for Climate Tech

Carmel’s call-to-arms isn’t just about equity—it’s about effectiveness. Climate tech doesn’t have the luxury of letting good ideas die on the sidelines because of bias.

“We need all the innovation we can get,” she says. “We can’t afford to run the same VC playbook and just hope for the best.”

When you fund a narrow slice of society, you get narrow solutions. Mixed teams, diverse founders, and new ideas aren’t just morally right—they’re our best chance at solving the climate crisis.

 

✊ Final Word

When asked what one thing she’d change about the commercial world with a magic wand, Carmel didn’t hesitate:

“The bias against women.”

She’s not waiting for a wand, though. She’s building new structures. Sharing better data. Opening locked doors. And with every climate-positive, woman-led company that gets funded, she’s proving that impact and returns aren’t trade-offs—they’re allies.

 

For a Truly Sustainable Future


👉 Join The Anti-Greenwash Charter and join a growing movement of responsible communicators who are taking a stand against misinformation, exaggerated claims, and greenwashing.

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Play Your Carbon Right: What Sandwiches Can Teach Us About Behaviour Change

Episode 99 | 25.5.2025

Play Your Carbon Right: What Sandwiches Can Teach Us About Behaviour Change

When Gina Camfield, Head of ESG at Aramark UK & Global Offshore, joined The Responsible Edge, we didn’t expect to be talking about football academies, protein shakes, and card games. But like many paths into sustainability, Gina’s story is one of detours and surprising overlaps—each moment building resilience, shaping perspective, and ultimately leading her to rethink how we influence behaviour at scale.

Listen to the full podcast episode on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.

🧠 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.

 

For a Truly Sustainable Future


👉 Join The Anti-Greenwash Charter and join a growing movement of responsible communicators who are taking a stand against misinformation, exaggerated claims, and greenwashing.

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