I recently read that the carbon footprint management market hit $11 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $18 billion by 2033. While the PCF (Product Carbon Footprint) verification market alone is forecast to grow from $15 billion to $31 billion by 2029[1].
What struck me is that so much money has been spent, and yet it appears to have been to little avail: carbon emissions keep relentlessly rising, and with them, global temperatures. I’ve always been mystified by the industry’s obsession with measurement, rather than drawing on the overlooked power of common sense action. The analogy that has always sprung to mind is that of a small fire breaking out in the basement of your home. Rather than grabbing a fire extinguisher, closing the doors, and getting to work, humanity has instead hired an army of professional ‘measurers’ to calculate the exact temperature, spread and composition of the flames… all the while the flames continue to grow and everyone else carries on partying upstairs.
So how did we get here?
Partly, it’s the triumph of what you might call material rationalism: the belief that if we can quantify something precisely enough, we can control it. But more fundamentally, it’s because sustainability has always felt… optional. A “nice to have”. A moral issue. An environmental issue. And in a system that externalises moral and environmental costs by shifting them off balance sheets and onto ecosystems and future generations, optional things don’t get prioritised.
However, I sense things are about to change. And dramatically. Because today’s near-constant geopolitical instability means supply chains that once seemed invisible and invincible are proving surprisingly fragile. Resource constraints are tightening. And ‘resilience’, which was once a slightly abstract concept, is quickly becoming a boardroom imperative.
Food is a case in point. For years, food waste was framed as a moral failure (“how can we throw away good food?”) or an environmental one (“look at the emissions and water use”). Both true. Both important. And both, if we’re honest, largely ignored. Yet the scale is staggering. Globally, we waste over $1 trillion worth of food each year – roughly one-third of everything we produce – generating around 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
But food waste is no longer just about morality or the environment. It’s about resilience, food security, and, increasingly, national security. In a world of disrupted supply chains, water scarcity, and volatile input costs, throwing away a third of our food isn’t just unethical or unsustainable, it’s reckless.
At Olio, we’ve seen this shift play out in real time. For years, surplus food redistribution was implicitly benchmarked against the bin. If something might otherwise be thrown away, then saving it was seen as a marginal gain: nice, but hardly mission-critical. But now, as supply chains are stretched, costs are rising, and availability is no longer guaranteed, surplus is no longer just waste. It’s resilience hiding in plain sight. What was once a “nice-to-have” sustainability initiative becomes a practical lever for improving efficiency, reducing cost, and strengthening local food systems. What’s striking is that nothing fundamental about the problem has changed. We’re still dealing with the same surplus, the same inefficiencies, the same waste. What’s changed is how it’s being valued. And that shift in perception, from expendable to essential, is what unlocks action at scale.
This is where the opportunity, and responsibility, for environmental consultancies becomes clear. Because we’re not going to measure our way into action. But we might just story-tell our way into it. The story we tell, however, needs to be a brand new one: a story of survival, instead of sustainability. When your supply chains start struggling, your costs, customers and continuity do too. And that accelerates action from being a ‘nice to have’ to ‘mission critical’.
So this is not about abandoning sustainability. It’s about reframing it. And rooting it in scalable action, not just measurement and reporting. The environmental consultancies who understand this will enter a golden era. But those who remain stuck in the measurement and reporting paradigm, will be left behind. Because in the end, the market doesn’t move on morality. It moves on necessity.
[1] Source: Sustainability Decoded newsletter
