Carol Cone:
I’m Carol Cone and welcome to Purpose 360, the podcast that unlocks the power of purpose to ignite business and social impact.
And today, I am honored to welcome one of the world’s most influential voices in sustainability, Andrew Winston. Andrew is a globally respected author, speaker, and advisor. He’s founder of Winston Eco-Strategies and was recently named the number one thinker in the world by the renowned organization Thinkers50, alongside his Net Positive co-author and former Unilever CEO, Paul Polman. It’s such a powerful recognition, but what truly sets Andrew apart is not just his insight, it’s also his moral clarity. At a time when sustainability, ESG, and DEI have been under direct political and cultural attacks, Andrew brings perspective grounded in data, history, and values.
In a recent Fortune article he penned, provocatively titled, 2025: The Year Sustainability Didn’t Die, Andrew explains why some critics just got it wrong. And why even amid green hushing and backlash, sustainability work continued and in many places around the world is actually flourishing. In our conversation we explore where real progress is happening, especially from China’s accelerated investments in clean tech and green energy, which are reshaping global competitiveness. We’ll also talk about why sustainability is no longer just a climate story, but a story about efficiency, resilience, health, justice, and economic leadership.
Andrew challenges leaders to confront what’s truly at risk now, not just profits or policies, but leaders’ souls. He argues that too many companies have lost their moral center and that the future of business depends on putting humanity back into organizations, into the center of decision making. He asks a question every leader and every sustainability professional must answer. What is your role in the future? This was a candid, urgent, and hopeful conversation. One designed to help leaders and practitioners navigate these very trying times with courage, purpose, and forward vision. Please join me in welcoming Andrew Winston to Purpose 360.
Andrew Winston:
Thanks for having me. It’s always fun talking to you.
Carol Cone:
And I want to just share with our listeners that there is this group, the Thinkers50, which celebrates and elevates the foremost thinkers in the world. And Andrew used to be number three, but he’s now number one with his co-colleague, Paul Polman. How does it feel to be the number one thinker in the world, Andrew?
Andrew Winston:
Look, it was an honor. Even if it’s not that widely known, there is a group of people in the world that are aware of this list and really respect it. And I’m one of them. It feels like something you got to live up to now. But for me, I think, and Paul has said this too, it’s really been about our work and that this organization has said, “You can be the top thinker working on sustainability like that. It’s important enough to the world.” And they felt our book together was important and was changing the conversation in business. And I hope that’s true. But I think it shows real support for all the work that we do, that you and I do and others do. And that was what was so touching for me.
Carol Cone:
That’s great. So let’s just talk a little bit about your background because you weren’t born a sustainability expert. You didn’t come out of college and say, “I’m going to try and green up the world.” So how did you get into it? And then was there an epiphany moment that was like, “I really want to do this?”
Andrew Winston:
Yeah. I’m not sure there’s ever a single moment. Things build, but there was a few week period that my life changed and I thought, “I got to go do this.Ó So my first part of my career was in consulting at BCG and then I was in media companies. And I went to a dot-com and then the dot-com crash happened and I was unemployed. And it let me start anew really. And I had just gotten married and my wife was surviving the dot-com and the layoffs. And so she was still gainfully employed and it let me step back.
And I’d been doing normal business strategy, marketing, branding kind of jobs. And I knew I had this need to do something more. And I had this feeling that the things weren’t really right in the world. I was a vegetarian and doing things to reduce my impact, but I didn’t really have the language.
And so I started asking around and read a couple key books in this field, the ones that really inspired me, from Ray Anderson and from Paul Hawken, Ecology of Commerce. And over those few weeks when I read those, it just changed my life. I thought, “Oh, this is what I have to go do. I have to use my business background and point it in this direction.” So ended up going back to grad school to get an environmental management degree because I already had an MBA, but wanted to get some of the science and some of the policy. And then started working with my co-author from my first book, Dan Esty, who is still a professor there. And that led to the first book and kicked off my whole career in this space. And the book is going to be 20 this year, which is just absolutely shocking. Just shocking to me.
Carol Cone:
And that’s Green to Gold for our listeners. So when you started the work, how was sustainability described or defined when you started the work? Because I think there’s a transition. When we started doing social impact work in the ’80s, people looked at us as weird too. So I’m curious about the initial description and then where it’s going to.
Andrew Winston:
Well, look, the classic definition comes out of the ’80s from the UN Brundtland Report. And when I got into this, that was I think really the foundational definition. And as you know, but maybe not everybody’s memorized, the idea was that we have sustainable development. Or development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.
That’s always been a really great functional definition, but it is really clinical. And it is, as my friend Hunter Lovins says, “It’s the bare minimum.” It’s just getting your nose above water to say, “Okay, we’re not going to take from the future.” If we got to that, it would be pretty amazing, but we’ve gone past the point where that’s enough. And so I think sustainability has broadened quite a bit and has much more nuanced and much more evolved frameworks that tell us that we need to live inside the bounds of the planet. What it can offer us and what it can take in terms of pollution. And try to create a world that’s just and has enough for sufficiency for all.
There’s some bigger concepts now that I think are embedded in sustainability. So for me, sustainability is when you see action and engagement on really our existential challenges. Climate and biodiversity, inequality, justice, that’s what sustainability is pushing for. I think how it’s defined in business often for people who haven’t made a career in this, they think it often means philanthropy. I think we spend a lot of time in our work. I’ve been saying this for years, having to say it out loud and talks, “Hey, it’s not philanthropy. That’s something different. Also important, but something very different. This is about how we operate in a way that keeps the world livable.”
Carol Cone:
And I’ve seen you talk about organizational purpose as something really important. But I’m curious, because today we’re going to talk about sustainability. I do a lot of work in purpose, but what is the role of an organization’s purpose as it advances its sustainability strategy and commitments?
Andrew Winston:
Well, I think it helps you prioritize. We could talk about this, you and I, and we’ve written books on something like this, so it’s hard to say quickly, but purpose has become a little bit of a catchall. Every company has one, even if it’s unstated, right? Even if they haven’t thought it through, there’s a reason for them being. But it also is on a tactical level, it just helps you prioritize. It helps you do the materiality analysis or look at the sustainable development goals and say, “Where do we really play? Where are we having a material impact on the world or vice versa? Where do we need to do better? Where can we help the world? And what are we maybe uniquely qualified to do?”
Carol Cone:
So let’s talk about your Fortune article. When you penned it, it was very provocative.
Andrew Winston:
Yeah. I think we ended up with the year sustainability didn’t die.
Carol Cone:
So what do critics get wrong and where’s the real impact taking place? Why is sustainability not dead?
Andrew Winston:
There’s two buckets of critics. There’s the obvious, the anti-sustainability crowd. I don’t think they got it wrong necessarily, but they did, I think so far, overestimate their impact. Even coming from the full force of the US federal government, it hasn’t stopped everything. When I say it didn’t die, I mean, there’s been companies that have laid off sustainability people for sure. Green hushing or not saying a word about your sustainability work has become the only thing companies do. It’s the norm. But the work continues and most of the companies I talk to or work with, they’re just quieter about it.
And so what I think maybe everybody got a little wrong, but especially the critics, was they didn’t really understand and probably still don’t, what’s driving sustainability. At least verbally, what they say is it’s about being woke or some liberal plot or some progressive agenda. Then if that’s what you believe, you think attacking it is righteous and maybe good for business. You’re helping them get away from this thing that costs more money.
But that’s not at the core what’s driven sustainability. What’s driven it is the realities on the ground. Meaning we do climate work, not just because Greenpeace wants us to, but because there’s climate change and it’s affecting the world. And we care. We do diversity because the world’s getting more diverse. So it’s driven by real things and those real things have only accelerated, which is why I think it can’t die.
Carol Cone:
So what are the characteristics, I’m curious, of a CEO, because you do a lot of advisory that are shifting from, “Oh, it’s a nice thing to do. It’s the right thing to do,” to truly seeing the business upside. What are the characteristics of those CEOs? And will we see more of them because there’s a change over to the next younger generation? And so they’ll embrace it because it’s good business.
Andrew Winston:
Yeah, I wish I could say we’ve seen some huge uptick of CEOs getting it but again, they’re all so quiet right now and it’s not a time of real courage in the US in particular. Again, I think they just are practical and know it is on the agenda. So I think they have to be open-minded enough to see that it isn’t just some anti-business attack, but you mentioned it in passing.
Carol Cone:
So where is sustainability flourishing, especially globally? I know that you are very bullish on green markets and green technologies. So where, and we’re going to probably say China because China is just galloping forward in terms of what it’s doing. And then is there a company or two that you go, “Boy, these really” … US or not, they really get it.
Andrew Winston:
Yeah. So flourishing’s probably a big word for sustainability right now. If my summary was it didn’t die, that’s a much lower bar than flourishing. But that said, you’ve seen some of the data that’s come out in the last four or five months that shows survey wise at least, 99% of global CEOs in an Accenture survey said they weren’t changing really on their sustainability. And 88% said the business case was better than it was five years ago.
I don’t think Americans realize how fast this is happening around the world and there’s lots of amazing stats, but basically in 2025, coal and natural gas use were flat really for the first time. And all of the new electricity was provided by solar/wind storage and some nuclear. That’s a tipping point, right? And the EV growth is remarkable. It’s 20% of new cars globally. It’s 50% of Chinese new cars. So that pace of change is remarkable and it’s becoming a multi-trillion dollar market. So that’s a win. I think the other surprising place I’m seeing it is what would seem unlikely sectors like mining, they have a big role to play in this clean economy.
And then there’s also oddly, heavy industry, steel and aluminum. They’re moving forward on decarbonizing and electrifying production and that seems to be moving. So it’s a surprising thing. The normal leaders, like Unilever under Paul, they’ve gone pretty quiet. No one wants to lead at the retail consumer product forward-facing level.
It seems like, and I’ve heard this even from the recruiting and staffing perspective that deeper in the supply chain, in heavier industry, sustainability is growing and staffing up because it’s where the rubber meets the road, right? It’s where it has to really happen. And that, it does seem to be moving along and that’s really good news.
Carol Cone:
But let me ask you a question. I’m going to jump to AI because I thought it was fascinating that Microsoft is going to regenerate what Three Mile Island to get nuclear power to help with its data centers. What do you think of that?
Andrew Winston:
The demand for energy from AI is huge, right? It absolutely is. I think it’s much more complicated than people let on. The macro data is clear, right? Google, Microsoft, they had these aggressive goals. They were heading down towards net-zero. They were buying renewables in huge quantities. And then over four or five years, I think Google’s emissions went up 50%, so they just blew through their goals. So that is factual. So it’s fair to worry about that.
But AI also replaces some other energy use. If it does something faster or helps you do something that you would have done for an hour on your computer, that took energy too, right? So there’s this trade off happening, but the tech companies have been pretty committed to decarbonizing for many reasons. I think they also find it a risk reduction not to be reliant on fossil fuels that have huge price swings.
They want to be reliant on renewable energy that has a variable cost of basically zero. That’s the ideal.
Carol Cone:
Right. And also, I’m a big fan of Satya and the fact that they were trying, in terms of their emissions, they were even going backwards to try and remediate those. So I think that they’re constantly trying to innovate and look forward.
I love to hear you talking about AI. AI, we’re going to put in billions and trillions. And what’s the ROI? I am very curious about why do you have this point of view? And when will sustainability … I mean, it’s proven in so many areas now with tons of data.
Andrew Winston:
So look, it’s obvious that sustainability is held to a higher standard. They’re asked to prove with some specific ROI almost everything they do. And that’s fine to have business logic, but I don’t know who we’re kidding. Even marketing or R&D are made up. They’re guesstimates on the return. When you say we’re launching a new product or we’re putting a Super Bowl ad out, you’re guessing as a marketing executive, how much is this going to pay back? But the example I’ve been using for a couple of years is that obviously people are pouring money into AI without pausing to say, “What’s the exact ROI?” And now there’s surveys that have come out, IBM and others showing the percentage of companies saying they know even if it paid back or feel it paid back is low. 25%.
And so imagine if sustainability initiatives were 75% failure or unknown, we would be laughed out of the building. So it’s just that sustainability always starts way behind the starting line. If the gun goes off, we’re 100 yards back because it plays into this narrative, the neoliberal narrative that the purpose of business is just maximizing shareholder profits. And sustainability is inherently stakeholder based. It’s inherently about our connection and our shared resources. And when the whole system is geared towards maximizing one dimension of business success, our stuff always feels like it’s pulling CEOs or CFOs away from the real work.
I also think ROI is complicated and broken because it’s never measured in tangible value very well. And I’m not talking externalized value, like internal, the stuff that’s affecting the business, employee or customer retention or engagement, resilience. These things that you can put some numbers on, but they’re hard. And often sustainability has a high quotient of longer term systemic and tangible value, and that’s hard to measure.
Carol Cone:
So I assume in some of your advisory work, you’ve been called into companies regarding ROI metrics. How do you approach that?
Andrew Winston:
I’m always pushing the sustainability folks to do what I’ve been talking about, which is to embed the conversation with a fuller sense of value creation. When you go in and say, “This is the goal we have,” it isn’t just because it looks nice to source responsibly. It has a huge set of value creation items like resilience in your supply chain, understanding your supply chain better, identifying problems before they happen.
Because it is really hard to convince people, why should you care about human rights or slavery in your supply chain. There’s going to be problems if you don’t, right? And it’s a challenge, but I think increasingly, I hope that the CSOs are learning to make a broader ROI case. That’s what I’m always pushing for is not just talk tactical direct cash back, but think much more broadly about the value to the business.
Carol Cone:
And reputation. Do you have any point of view about, is that going to be at least a help to show what a company’s record can be if indeed they’re giving realistic, authentic reporting?
Andrew Winston:
Well, they have to. The big guys have to report, right? There’s been challenges in Europe and they restricted the number of the size of companies that would have to do reporting, but the big guys still have to do it. So that data is going to exist somewhere and you’re right. AI should be able to go find it even if they’re not going to go say it.
I think what companies are doing less of, and I’m seeing this directly, is forward-looking statements like, “We will be net-zero by 2035.” They’re really wary of that now of getting attention, getting criticism, even getting sued, they think on the other side for greenwashing. I don’t think that’s as huge an issue as they might, but it is part of the thinking now that we shouldn’t talk about forward-looking stuff. But their actual performance, their own assessment of climate risk, those things are now part of these reporting requirements. So they will be out there. They have to put them out in some way.
Carol Cone:
Yeah. I am curious about, you’ve had a beautiful talk, a TEDx talk about courage, and this is a time for courage. And so why is courage critical to advance sustainability and what does it look like? I bet you’re going into companies and maybe some of your consulting with C-level teams. What does it look like?
Andrew Winston:
Yeah, it’s a really good question. And again, there’s very little courage coming out of corporate leaders right now in the US. I think they’re scared, right? There’s actual personal threats against CEOs and look one was killed early last year. There’s threats if you come out in favor of some issue. They’ve just all gone into this quiet zone and they feel personally threatened. And I think they feel threatened in their jobs as well, that the attacks or boycotts will hurt the business and will hurt their stock price. And that they will do poorly as a CEO.
I think the conversation now in a way with leaders has got to be broader about legacy and the deathbed conversation, like looking back. I feel like some of these CEOs are going to look back at giving the president some bobble of gold or going to tell him how great he is that they’re going to look back and think, “What was I doing?”
Carol Cone:
What was I doing?
Andrew Winston:
What was that about, right? So it takes courage, obviously, to literally stand up to pressure. I think we’ve seen it from some leaders in the academic community that have just said, “No, we can’t sign this letter. We can’t do these things you’re asking because it takes away our being, our reason for being.” It’s also always been, I think, challenging for leaders to challenge the dominant narrative, to go against that, “I’m supposed to maximize profits this quarter to the ultimate.” And to ask this deeper question that we do in Net Positive, which is, “Is the world better off because your business is in it?” That takes courage because it’s a different kind of question.
I think the answer and what I try to get companies to do is to find ways to work together because collective courage is the only real solution against systemic problems. And it’s the only path I think for individuals to find their best version of themselves and courage is to find others and not go it alone. That’s our solution.
Carol Cone:
And I love that solution. I am curious about when I saw you at Climate Week that I was surprised that health and sustainability were being spoken about for the first time that I had heard. And I’m curious, are you hearing at all about that from some of your consulting or some of your clients, how the two are becoming linked together and recognized that climate impacts human health impact?
Andrew Winston:
Probably not as much as it should. I think the data has been growing for years that there’ll be diseases that go further north as the temperature changes. And that there’s actual heat risk, severe heat risk.
And so you hear, I think the more aware hospital systems and healthcare companies with this on their agenda saying sustainability isn’t just access to drugs. It’s the general wellbeing and health. And you’re seeing, I think more discussions about again, how the weather changes.
Carol Cone:
Yeah, great. I’m just curious, when you are doing your advisory work or your speeches, there are many different areas that companies can have an impact that is aligned with their business. How should a leader decide that I should invest in one area, especially which might be inequality, social justice, in addition to the environment?
Andrew Winston:
Yeah, it partly goes back to purpose and what is the business uniquely qualified to do and where is it best positioned to help? But it’s also about responsibility, and not in the old-fashioned guilt trip, citizenship thing. But the way we talk about it in Net Positive is you have a responsibility for your impacts up and down the value chain for how your business affects the world and the people in it.
And that’s just common sense. It’s the old if you break it, you own it. You walk into the store and you break something. And our operations of businesses, they crack things, they break things and we’ve walked away from it for so long. But I think increasingly, if you take a bigger view of responsibility, it gets you to the things that are most important that you can have the biggest impact on or where you have the most impact on people, right?
Carol Cone:
As we wind down, and I could do two or three hours and I hope we can get you to come back, but in the Fortune article, you said, “Predicting the future, even predicting 2026 is laughably hard.” So we get that. But what is truly at risk for companies and leaders 2026, 2027?
Andrew Winston:
It sounds … I’ve been the guy talking about the business case for years, but honestly, their souls as a business and as humans. We are in a time, the theoretical, what would I have done if I were living in a fascist state? What would I have done in certain times in history? Well, you can find out right now. The attacks on rights, we just witnessed the killing of an unarmed citizen-
Carol Cone:
Mother.
Andrew Winston:
… driving. Just, the situation is very different, very dangerous. And I think companies and their leaders are at risk of really losing their moral center and their ethics. That’s the human side. There’s always this larger business case. And if you were backing down, going quiet, thinking sustainability stuff is going away, I go back to the point that the drivers are still there and accelerating. And the solution set, the clean economy is moving quickly.
The CEO of Ford recently said, “We can’t give up the EV race to China. We can’t succeed as a business.” So that’s a very specific example of we won’t thrive as a business over time if we don’t head in this direction with the rest of the world. And what’s at stake is missing out, not being relevant, becoming a dinosaur. And that can happen really quickly now.
Carol Cone:
I saw that.
Andrew Winston:
And so I think we’re going to see change happen really fast. So it is really hard to predict, especially when you throw in political leadership and uncertainty and war. That just creates a powder keg and is really difficult to know. The uncertainty is what throws us all off, but we have to find a place of comfort. It’s like a Buddhist thing, just that we’re winning and losing. We’re seeing progress and retrenchment. So how do you live with that? How do you live with that … It’s not black or white, it’s black and white, right? How do you find that space where you can get comfortable with it?
Carol Cone:
Brilliantly said. If you had to distill one parting comment to the C-suite, we have a lot of our listeners, they’re C-suite professionals or they’re mid-range or they’re aspiring sustainability for careerists. Is there one non-negotiable and is it about don’t lose your soul?
Andrew Winston:
Look, it’s find courage and I think understand where the world’s headed. We’re headed to a decarbonized world. We’re heading to a more diverse world. These are unstoppable demographic trends, mega giga trends, value shifts. So are you going to be part of the future or not? Take a really hard look at where the world’s going. And I guess I always hope that leaders will take a longer term view, right? Not just the quarter, not just this year, but what are you leaving the CEO of five or 10 years from now? What are you leaving for them?
Carol Cone:
What’s the legacy? In closing, I always like to give the last word to my guest. We’ve had a wonderful conversation, hit so many topics. What’s your last parting comment, Andrew, for our listeners?
Andrew Winston:
I think assuming a lot of the listeners are in sustainability, I guess partly, just thank you for the work you’re doing and just an acknowledgement that it’s been hard. And this is the hardest time I’ve seen in 20 to 25 years in this space, but I think it’s always good to remember that we’re right. That sounds really arrogant or something, but we’re on the right side of history and we’re doing what’s right for the business. What’s right for the world. The world just can’t thrive. The business world can’t thrive unless people and planet are thriving. That’s always my last thought. We’re doing this so that people and planet can thrive and just know that this is really good work.
Carol Cone:
It is really great work. It can be very innovative. It can be stimulating. It can be challenging. But this is our one planet and this is our home and so we need it to thrive. And we are very, very honored and thoughtful and that we have Andrew Winston helping to battle this tough battle.
So thank you so much for coming onto Purpose 360 and keep up the great work. And if I could give you a hug, I’d give you a hug, but let you know we’re all in this together. So there is a long term. It’s not just quarterly. So we look forward to hearing you, seeing you, and all your great influence. Thank you.
Andrew Winston:
Thank you.
Carol Cone:
This podcast was brought to you by some amazing people, and I’d love to thank them. Ann Hundertmark and Kristen Kenny at Carol Cone On Purpose. Pete Wright, and Andy Nelson, our crack production team at True Story FM, and you, our listener. Please rate and rank us because we really want to be as high as possible as one of the top business podcasts available, so that we can continue exploring together the importance and the activation of authentic purpose.
Thanks so much for listening.
