The Responsible Edge Podcast

Aimee Rawlins on the trust crisis Onora O'Neill predicted in 2002 and the Reuters and Edelman data confirming it has arrived. This week on The Responsible Edge, why fake news is now a feeling as much as a fact, what local news deserts are doing to communities, and why giving the NLRB enforcement teeth is one structural response to an accountability system that cannot act. Sponsored by truMRK. New episodes every week. In 2002, Baroness Onora O'Neill used the BBC Reith Lectures to predict a coming crisis of institutional trust. A July 2026 article by Gavin Esler in The National argues the prediction has now fully arrived. The Edelman Trust Barometer 2026 found that seven in ten people globally report hesitance or unwillingness to trust someone with different values or backgrounds. The Reuters Digital News Report 2026 found that roughly forty percent of people practise news avoidance. Only thirty-nine percent get news from ideologically different sources on a weekly basis. In this episode of The Responsible Edge, host Charlie Martin discusses the Esler article with Aimee Rawlins, freelance editor and writer covering sustainability and climate for Time and The Guardian, and formerly Senior Editor for the Impact section at Fast Company, where she managed a team covering climate, clean energy, and ESG. Aimee's first observation is precise. The problem is not just that more fake news exists. It is that people now believe all information might be fake. Reuters found that two thirds of respondents believe foreign adversaries could be inserting falsehoods into national media. Once distrust extends to the source, it becomes indiscriminate. The conversation moves into what happens when local journalism disappears. Research consistently finds that in communities that have lost local news, polarisation increases and social capital falls. "Instead of having a shared source, a shared truth of sorts, people look for it elsewhere, and that is not in a community-oriented place." Aimee's magic wand: give the US National Labor Relations Board enforcement powers. Monetary penalties for illegal labour practices. Gallup found sixty-eight percent trust in unions. The institution has the public's confidence. The regulatory body cannot act. "There's zero incentive for companies not to engage in terrible practices." The episode closes with Esler's closing line from Confucius, via O'Neill: without trust we cannot stand. If your work touches trust, media, or corporate accountability, this episode is worth your time. #MediaTrust #InstitutionalTrust #LocalJournalism #SustainabilityJournalism #Disinformation #TheResponsibleEdge

Timothy Clement on why construction social value has become a procurement game fifteen years after the Social Value Act. This week on The Responsible Edge, why hitting the targets and missing the community are not in contradiction, and what a three-year post-completion evaluation would change. Sponsored by truMRK. New episodes every week. A June 2026 article by Darcie Lattin of Watson, published in PBC Today, identifies a persistent gap in how the construction industry approaches social value. The industry, Lattin argues, has become good at delivering social value activities and reporting against targets. The tendency is still to focus on what is easy to measure rather than what local communities actually need. In this episode of The Responsible Edge, host Charlie Martin discusses the article with Timothy Clement, Director of Social Value and Sustainability at Morgan Sindall Construction. Tim's response is direct. "We've gamified the very needs that the act is supposed to address." The Social Value Act, passed approximately fifteen years ago, was designed to ensure that private sector delivery of public sector contracts produced local benefit. What it produced, in many cases, was a procurement optimisation exercise. Numbers that go up. Communities that ask where it went. The conversation covers Lattin's argument that the most impactful social value initiatives are not built from scratch but strengthen existing local programmes, Morgan Sindall's ten-question framework for testing whether a social value activity meets genuine community need, and Tim's proposed structural fix: a mandatory three-year post-completion evaluation asking not what was delivered but what changed. Tim's magic wand is unexpected. "Compassion." Not as sentiment, but as the discipline that changes how an activity is delivered rather than what it delivers. "You don't see it on the wall of a social value thing, generally." The episode closes on Lattin's conclusion: social value should not start with a spreadsheet. It should start with a conversation. Whether procurement frameworks can be redesigned to reward that conversation is the open question. If your work touches construction, social value, or the governance of public contracts, this episode is worth your time. #SocialValue #ConstructionIndustry #SocialValueAct #BuiltEnvironment #ProcurementReform #TheResponsibleEdge

Matt Bourn on the Fortune case for a Chief Trust Officer, written by Edelman's U.S. Head of Corporate Reputation. This week on The Responsible Edge, why the diagnosis of trust as unowned across the C-suite is accurate, why a new C-suite role may not fix it, and what the shift from the attention economy to the trust economy actually requires. Sponsored by truMRK. New episodes every week. A May 2026 Fortune article by Jonathan Jordan, Edelman's U.S. Head of Corporate Reputation, argues that trust is now business-critical but sits unowned across most organisations. The solution it proposes: a Chief Trust Officer, a dedicated C-suite executive whose sole mandate is earning and protecting stakeholder confidence. In this episode of The Responsible Edge, host Charlie Martin discusses the article with Matt Bourn, Director of Communications at the Advertising Association and co-author of Trusted Advertising and Sustainable Advertising. Matt's response is precise. He agrees with the diagnosis, and notes that the article is written by a senior figure at a firm whose commercial model involves selling trust-related services to corporations. On the proposed remedy he is direct: creating a new C-suite role for trust misunderstands the problem. "The leadership team has a collective responsibility to make sure it's the most trusted business in its sector." The conversation covers the distinction the Fortune article draws between reputation and trust, which Matt endorses as the most valuable part of the piece. It covers the Edelman research cited in the article, including the claim that sixty-one percent of people globally hold a grievance mindset and seven in ten have an insular trust mindset reluctant to extend confidence beyond their immediate circle. And it moves into Matt's own evidence from Trusted Advertising: the Giffgaff case, the Net Promoter Score as the closest proxy for trust, and the broader shift from the attention economy to a trust economy. His magic wand: not a new C-suite title, but stronger industry self-regulation that embeds responsible practice through structure rather than communications. "There's a huge difference between being liked and being trusted." If your work touches brand trust, communications leadership, or the governance of responsible advertising, this episode is worth your time. #ChiefTrustOfficer #BrandTrust #TrustEconomy #ResponsibleAdvertising #CommunicationsLeadership #TheResponsibleEdge

Dr Leeya Hendricks on the Lippincott CMO Outlook 2026 and the gap between what marketing leaders know they should do and what they are actually doing. This week on The Responsible Edge, why the short-term credibility trade-off is costing CMOs something harder to recover than a quarterly target. Sponsored by truMRK. New episodes every week. A global study of more than five hundred CMOs, conducted by Lippincott in partnership with Bloomberg Media, finds a striking gap. Marketing leaders believe long-term brand building is critical for sustainable growth. They are systematically deprioritising it anyway, trading brand investment for short-term credibility with the C-suite. In this episode of The Responsible Edge, host Charlie Martin speaks with Dr Leeya Hendricks, Managing Director and Founder of Hark Consultants, Non-Executive Director at the Chartered Institute of Marketing, and author of The Platform Playbook, about what the CMO Outlook 2026 reveals and what it obscures. Leeya's response to the headline finding is a reframe. The short-term drift is not something being done to CMOs. It is a choice, and it reflects a failure by the marketing function to make its strategic case with sufficient rigour. "It shouldn't be a case of us being forced into a space. It's the job of the CMO to really have those strategic long-term discussions." The conversation covers the specific AI trap the Lippincott data surfaces: CMOs defunding the digital foundations AI depends on in order to fund AI implementation itself. It covers why the strategy conversation is being mistaken for a technology conversation. And it ends with the question Leeya argues the data is really pointing at: whether boards have the capability to lead organisations in an AI-enabled economy. "The question isn't simply whether marketers should be in the boardroom. It's whether boards have the capabilities needed to lead organisations in an AI-enabled economy." Her magic wand: businesses that measure long-term value across customers, employees, partners, society, and shareholders. "Responsible growth isn't about sacrificing commercial performance. It's about creating businesses that can sustain it." If your work touches marketing leadership, brand strategy, or the role of AI in commercial growth, this episode is worth your time. #CMOStrategy #MarketingLeadership #BrandBuilding #AIMarketing #ResponsibleGrowth #TheResponsibleEdge

A 2025 Korn Ferry report finds that the Chief Sustainability Officer role is becoming one of the most strategic positions in the enterprise. Sixty-two percent of executives surveyed plan to increase sustainability budgets. The shift is real. So is the nuance underneath it. In this episode of The Responsible Edge, host Charlie Martin speaks with Katja Tuomola, Head of Sustainability and Marketing Communications at MM Group, a fibre-based packaging company with over four billion euros in annual sales and fifteen thousand employees, about what the Korn Ferry findings look like in practice. Katja's read is precise and grounded in more than twenty years in the sustainability and forest industries. The article reflects large corporate reality, not the full market. And the strategic power that is being described does not come from championing sustainability. It comes from operating as a business executive who happens to own the sustainability function. "I am not doing this for sustainability," she says. "I am doing this for business. My number one priority is that the business does not go out, because then I will not have a job either." At MM Group, Katja is the final approver of CapEx projects exceeding two million euros before they reach the management board. She checks CO₂ considerations, supplier footprint, and energy impact on every major capital investment. The mechanism does not require any department to champion sustainability. It requires every major commercial decision to answer sustainability questions before it is ratified. The conversation covers how the umbrella framing of sustainability changes what a CSO actually does, why commercial credibility is the precondition for strategic trust, and why better investment decisions, not larger budgets, is the magic wand that would change everything. If your work touches sustainability leadership, organisational strategy, or the evolving CSO role, this episode is worth your time. #ChiefSustainabilityOfficer #CSO #SustainabilityLeadership #BusinessStrategy #CorporateSustainability #TheResponsibleEdge

Harriet Hodgson-Grove on the accounting profession's role in the UK's £105 billion net zero economy. This week on The Responsible Edge, why accountants are uniquely placed to unlock SME decarbonisation, and how embedding carbon reporting in standard practice could transform the journey to 2030. Sponsored by truMRK. New episodes every week. The UK's net zero economy has grown to £105 billion and supports 1.1 million jobs. SMEs account for thirty-seven percent of UK greenhouse gas emissions. And accountants already hold most of the data needed to help those businesses start their sustainability journey. In this episode of The Responsible Edge, host Charlie Martin speaks with Harriet Hodgson-Grove, Audit Partner and National Head of Sustainable Business Services at UHY Hacker Young, about an ICAEW article making the case for a bigger role for the accounting profession in the net zero economy. Harriet's argument is practical and specific. Scope 1 and 2 emissions can be estimated from spend data already collected for the accounts. Energy, fuel, travel: it is all there. "To do their basic Scope 1 and Scope 2, we have all of that data already," she says. "We're collecting it to be able to do their accounts." The next step is making that calculation standard across management accounts rather than a bespoke sustainability add-on. The conversation covers why framing sustainability as resilience opens doors that the word sustainability sometimes closes, how AI tools are accelerating the move from spend-based to activity-based emissions data, and what the internal confidence-building work looks like inside a mid-tier accountancy firm doing this well. The ambition is clear. "If we had all SME businesses beginning that journey now, imagine what a difference it could make by 2030." The profession has the entry point. The data is there. The client relationships are there. This episode is about what happens when accountants decide to use them. If your work touches accountancy, SME sustainability, or the practical mechanics of the net zero transition, this episode is worth your time. #NetZeroEconomy #SustainabilityAccounting #SMESustainability #CarbonReporting #AccountingForClimate #TheResponsibleEdge

In April 2026, Scotiabank and Royal Bank of Canada both withdrew their 2030 interim financed emissions reduction targets. Scotiabank went further, retiring its 2050 net zero goal entirely. Both cited changing policy assumptions, reduced data availability, and an investment environment in which climate commitments are no longer being demanded with the same force. In this episode of The Responsible Edge, host Charlie Martin speaks with Charlie Bronks, Group Head of Responsible Business at Crown Agents Bank, about what the withdrawals reveal and what, if anything, the transition finance metrics offered as replacements actually demonstrate. Charlie's reading is precise. "The more interesting question is what it says about the evolution of sustainability itself, rather than thinking that two organisations are actually dialling back." She does not dismiss the concern that withdrawing emissions targets creates cover for continued fossil fuel lending. But she argues that exiting a market or a client relationship does not reduce its emissions, and that being inside the transition is different from abandoning it. The conversation covers Crown Agents Bank's B Corp certification and social value commercial model in emerging and frontier markets, why clients are choosing the bank on sustainability credentials, and the two and a half trillion dollar trade finance gap in underserved markets. Her magic wand answer is structural. "I would like to see organisations recognised not for making big promises, but for consistently helping clients transition responsibly." Whether the accountability mechanisms being built, ratings, reporting requirements, procurement criteria, arrive fast enough to make that the industry standard is the episode's open question. If your work touches banking, ESG accountability, or responsible finance, this episode is worth your time. #NetZero #ESGBacklash #ResponsibleFinance #TransitionFinance #BankingAccountability #TheResponsibleEdge

During the May 2026 heatwave, a familiar set of narratives circulated across European platforms. Heatwaves have always existed. Scientists manipulate data. The media exaggerates. The claims were recycled. The infrastructure distributing them was not improvised. In this episode of The Responsible Edge, host Charlie Martin speaks with Sara Rego, founder of Mossy, Managing Director of BeTrue, and a researcher in sustainability communication at Universidade do Minho, about a June 2026 report from the European Digital Media Observatory: The Same Old Story: A Heat Wave of Climate Disinformation. The report identifies two overlapping economic systems driving the disinformation ecosystem. The carbon economy funds misleading content to protect its commercial interests. The attention economy's algorithms reward inflammatory content because engagement generates revenue. The two systems do not coordinate. Their incentives converge. Sara brings a specific lens to this. Her doctoral research produced the CARE model, a peer-reviewed framework for auditing sustainability communication. Mossy, launched in June 2026, applies that model as an AI tool for identifying greenwashing risk in ESG reports and company communications before regulators find it first. Her argument is precise: the tools being built to counter disinformation operate at the communicator level. They do not change what the algorithm amplifies. "Power and money," she says of why the disinformation ecosystem persists. "Because they think they can buy their exit out of this crisis with money." The episode covers the organised history of climate disinformation, Russia's state-level strategy targeting the EU, the harassment of climate scientists during extreme weather events, and why reconnecting people to nature may matter more than adding more information to a saturated environment. The incentive structure making disinformation commercially rational remains intact. That is the condition in which better sustainability communication is being attempted. #ClimateDisinformation #Greenwashing #ESG #SustainabilityCommunication #AttentionEconomy #TheResponsibleEdge

As of April 2026, twenty-eight jurisdictions have adopted the ISSB's sustainability disclosure standards. A further twelve are planning to. South Korea, Japan, and the United Kingdom have each issued domestic versions. The S&P Global report tracking this progress is detailed, comprehensive, and authoritative. It does not mention GRI once. In this episode of The Responsible Edge, host Charlie Martin speaks with Charles Cho, Professor of Sustainability Accounting at the Schulich School of Business, York University, and member of the Global Reporting Initiative's Global Sustainability Standards Board, about that omission and what it reveals. The tension between ISSB and GRI is not technical. ISSB standards ask how the environment affects the company. GRI standards ask how the company affects the world. "You can see that it's a very different type of reporting," Charles says, "when you ask a company to report on what are you doing to address the issue that you are causing to the planet, versus what are you doing about the issues that the planet is creating on your business." The conversation moves from the standards debate into the structural question underneath it. "We are so into the tree, we don't see the forest," Charles says. "We fight over reporting standards, which is ridiculous. We are far away from actual performance and action." His magic wand answer: change the capitalist system, redesign how incentives work, and apply that change globally. Better reporting standards make companies more accountable. They do not change what companies are designed to do. If your work touches sustainability reporting, ESG disclosure, or the structural limits of corporate accountability, this episode is worth your time. #ISSB #SustainabilityReporting #ESG #GRI #CorporateAccountability #TheResponsibleEdge

Remote work expanded access to talent. It reduced geographic barriers and gave organisations new flexibility. But did it also create a new problem? In this episode of The Responsible Edge, Christopher Carter, CEO of Approyo, discusses the hidden trade-off inside hybrid work. After building teams across the United States, United Kingdom, India and Brazil, Christopher argues that distributed workforces create opportunities for businesses while making visibility, mentorship and career progression harder to maintain. The conversation explores why some organisations are bringing employees back into offices, what leaders lose when informal interactions disappear, and how younger professionals can balance flexibility with career development. Christopher also shares insights from his work in artificial intelligence, including why businesses should focus on secure, contextually relevant data and why AI should be viewed as a tool that enhances human capability rather than replaces it. Topics include: - The future of hybrid work - Career progression in distributed organisations - Why visibility still matters - Leadership in remote teams - AI adoption and business strategy - Data governance and decision-making - Organisational culture beyond the office If the workplace has changed permanently, what happens to the relationships that careers depend on? Listen to the full conversation to explore the question. #HybridWork #FutureOfWork #Leadership #ArtificialIntelligence #BusinessStrategy #RemoteWork

A 2026 report, After Service: The Hidden Costs of Britain's Military on its Veterans, documents a specific failure. The legal commitments made to service leavers exist. At the transition point, they break down. Ten percent of service leavers struggle to find employment in year one. A further fifteen percent need meaningful support in the first two years. In this episode of The Responsible Edge, host Charlie Martin speaks with Jim Holland, co-founder and CEO of Carma, a veteran-led climate action business that pairs corporate ESG investment with veteran employment pathways through tree planting and nature-based work. Jim served thirteen years as a Weapons Engineering Artificer in the Royal Navy. He left at thirty, returned to Barnsley, bought a town centre pub, and spent four difficult years working out what he had lost. "I hadn't realised that I was missing three things: my forces family, my purpose and my identity." He eventually built Carma to address the gap he had lived through, connecting corporate sustainability budgets to veteran employment outcomes through a mechanism that is commercially self-sustaining. The conversation covers why hiring managers misread veterans as threats rather than assets, why nature-based work changes people in ways office environments cannot, and why Jim believes climate action and social value are a price businesses have never had to pay, not a cost. "Companies that do it now are stealing the march," he says. "They're being pioneers, not reacting to legislation." The veteran support system has not closed its gap. The question the episode leaves open is whether the market can. If your work touches veteran employment, ESG investment, or corporate social value, this episode is worth your time. #VeteranEmployment #ClimateAction #ESG #TreePlanting #SocialValue #TheResponsibleEdge

China is the world's largest carbon emitter and its largest producer of solar panels, electric vehicles, and battery storage. Those facts are not a paradox. From a Chinese cultural and political perspective, they are entirely consistent. In this episode of The Responsible Edge, host Charlie Martin speaks with Paul Gladston, Judith Nielsen Chair Professor of Contemporary Art at the University of New South Wales Sydney, about an article titled A Green World Order with Chinese Characteristics: Implications for Global Climate Cooperation. Paul's argument is precise. The analysis of China's climate positioning is limited because it focuses on the socio-economic and political while leaving out the cultural variable. "I often think that in order to decode some aspects of that discussion and give a richer view of that, one has to address culture. Leaving it out rather limits the discussion." The conversation covers the Confucian pragmatic idealism behind China's long-term strategic orientation, why Western frameworks misread Chinese climate commitment as bad faith, and why the global climate debate "remains westernised" despite its global ambitions. Paul is clear-eyed throughout. "We should not simply dress China up as some perfect exemplar of how to develop a green society." The point is not that China's approach is superior. It is that climate cooperation is being attempted between parties who mean fundamentally different things by the word. If your work touches climate policy, China, or the cultural dimensions of sustainability, this episode is worth your time. #ChinaClimate #GreenTech #ClimateDiplomacy #Sinosphere #CulturalIntelligence #TheResponsibleEdge

The energy transition has a materials problem most corporate sustainability reports do not address. Wind turbines, electric vehicles, and grid-scale batteries require cobalt, lithium, and nickel extracted from mines. The governance architecture sitting between those mines and the finished product is, in most supply chains, structurally incomplete. In this episode of The Responsible Edge, host Charlie Martin speaks with J.J. Messner, Sector Lead for Downstream Purchasers at the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance, about a 2025 analysis of how CDOP and the Science Based Targets initiative are attempting to give carbon accountability sharper teeth. JJ brings two decades of field experience across more than a hundred countries, from directing the Fragile States Index at the Fund for Peace to leading responsible sourcing at Microsoft. His argument is precise: the frameworks governing responsible mining are well-designed, but they struggle to reach the people making day-to-day sourcing decisions, because those people are appraised on cost, quality, and timeliness, and nothing else. "You're looking at people who have the responsibility without the accountability and people who have the accountability without the responsibility." The conversation covers why excluding risky suppliers moves the problem without solving it, why supplier capacity investment is the structural alternative, and why the green energy transition cannot be separated from the question of who bears the cost of the mining it requires. If your work touches supply chains, responsible sourcing, or the material reality of net zero, this episode is worth your time. #ResponsibleSourcing #CriticalMinerals #SupplyChainAccountability #ResponsibleMining #GreenTransition #TheResponsibleEdge

Greenpeace has called out the International Olympic Committee for accepting sponsorship from Eni, the Italian fossil fuel company, for the 2026 Winter Games. The charge is precise: a company contributing to global warming is funding an event whose future depends on snow and ice. In this episode of The Responsible Edge, host Charlie Martin uses that story as the starting point for a broader conversation with Manuela Zoninsein, CEO and co-founder of Kadeya, about why the economics of single use and fossil fuels hold even when the environmental case against them is overwhelming. Kadeya has built a bottling plant that fits inside a vending machine. Stainless steel bottles are dispensed, returned, washed, sanitised, and refilled on-site with no plastic, no deposit, and a ninety-nine percent return rate across five commercial deployments. The model cuts carbon footprint by seventy-five percent and costs a third less than single use at current volumes. It works not because consumers changed their behaviour, but because the infrastructure was designed to match the convenience of what it is replacing. Manuela's magic wand answer is a free and open carbon market, one that would reprice every commercial activity to reflect its true environmental cost. She is clear-eyed about why that does not yet exist: the additionality problem in carbon crediting, the difficulty of sizing a genuinely comprehensive market, and the risk that credits function as purchased permission to keep polluting. "How do you create a cap? How do you really say that you've got the full market under consideration? I don't know that you can." The episode does not resolve that question. It makes the structure of the problem visible. If your work sits at the intersection of packaging, carbon markets, or the economics of sustainability, this episode is worth your time. #CarbonMarkets #Greenwashing #SingleUsePlastic #RefillRevolution #ESG #TheResponsibleEdge

Research suggests forty percent of stressed senior leaders are currently considering stepping down. That figure arrives as organisations face climate risk, AI disruption, and shifting workforce expectations simultaneously. The leadership most needed is the leadership most at risk. In this episode of The Responsible Edge, host Charlie Martin speaks with Adrian Ferraro, founder of The Bioasis, an off-grid adventure and conservation company delivering nature-based retreats for corporate leadership teams and school groups on a 5,000-acre estate in South Devon. Adrian's argument is operational rather than therapeutic. Office-based resilience training does not change the conditions producing burnout. A C-suite team spending three days off-grid, working together outside their normal hierarchy, encountering conservation work with fifty-year time horizons, returns to the office with a different perspective. "If it's raining, it rains on everybody equally," he says. The conversation covers the lag between educating young people and seeing that thinking reach boardrooms, why resilience alone does not solve the leadership crisis, and the Harvard Business Review finding that nine out of ten people would accept lower pay for more meaningful work. Adrian is also candid about the limits of what a three-day retreat can do. The structural pressures producing burnout require more than an intervention. They require change. "Being a business that actively makes the world a better place is a really powerful motivator," he says. Whether that is sufficient to retain the leaders currently considering leaving is the episode's unresolved question. If your work touches leadership, resilience, or purpose-driven business, this episode is worth your time. #LeadershipResilience #BurnoutCrisis #NatureAndBusiness #PurposeLedBusiness #ResponsibleLeadership #TheResponsibleEdge

Climate communication has a problem that more data will not fix. Research from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication shows that 72 percent of Americans believe global warming is happening, but only 45 percent expect it to harm them personally. Scientific consensus messaging, the most common communication tool, can entrench scepticism rather than reduce it, particularly among those with an active distrust of scientific institutions. In this episode of The Responsible Edge, host Charlie Martin speaks with Kim Grob, Founding Partner of Right On, a sustainability communications agency working across corporate sustainability, nonprofits, and foundations. The conversation is anchored by a University of Chicago analysis of climate communication research, which finds that value-based, audience-targeted messaging consistently outperforms consensus-based approaches. Grobe's argument is direct: the sustainability sector has avoided the tools of marketing, associating them with greenwashing and overconsumption. That reluctance has been costly. "The same principles that we use across all of these different types of marketing campaigns have to be applied to our sustainability communications," she says. The episode covers how identity and ideological filters shape what audiences hear, the Great Salt Lake as a case study in aspiration-led environmental messaging, and what it would mean to shift the objects of desire rather than the structure of desire itself. "You cannot motivate someone through despair," Grobe observes. The question the episode leaves open is whether the marketing playbook that built consumer culture can move fast enough, across a wide enough audience, to change it. If your work sits at the intersection of communications, sustainability, and behaviour change, this episode is worth your time. #ClimateComms #SustainabilityCommunication #ClimateMessaging #ResponsibleMarketing #BehaviourChange #TheResponsibleEdge

When OpenAI completed its restructuring as a Delaware Public Benefit Corporation in October 2025, it did not create any new mandate to publish safety metrics, disclose how outputs are generated, or give civil society organisations formal standing in governance. A public benefit corporation requires directors to consider broader stakeholder interests. It does not require them to demonstrate that they have. That distinction is the subject of this episode of The Responsible Edge. Host Charlie Martin speaks with Asher Jay, National Geographic Explorer, systems strategist, and Chief Network Architect of the Shareholder Democracy Network, about a Financial Times piece asking whether public benefit corporations can solve AI governance challenges. Jay's position is direct. "Just making it about intention and not having tangible ways to translate that into practice is a cop-out." She traces OpenAI's structural evolution from nonprofit to capped-profit entity to PBC as a case study in how governance language can travel further than governance substance. Anthropic, also a PBC, faces the same test. The conversation covers mandatory safety metric disclosure, output-level transparency, why retail proxy voting is a practical lever that currently goes unused, and why civil society should hold voting seats, not advisory roles, at AI company board level. "AI is also a privilege," Jay observes. "I don't think it reaches a vast majority that we don't even converse about." The governance question is not resolved here. Its structure is made visible. If these questions sit close to your work, this episode is worth your time. #AIGovernance #PublicBenefitCorporation #OpenAI #CorporateAccountability #ShareholderDemocracy #TheResponsibleEdge

Most sustainability professionals inside organisations spend the majority of their time on reporting. That was not the original intent. In this episode of The Responsible Edge, host Charlie Martin speaks with Kelsey Parsons, a global sustainability consultant and former in-house sustainability officer, about what that compliance burden is doing to the people carrying it. Parsons draws on experience across corporate sustainability, media, and the maritime sector. She describes a structural pattern: professionals hired to create change end up consumed by disclosure requirements. "Every in-house sustainability person ends up working on some level of reporting," she says. The frameworks multiply. The capacity to think strategically does not expand alongside them. The conversation moves across the current ESG backlash, the divergence between organisations that are genuinely committed and those that were never serious, and what Parsons calls the "alphabet salad situation" of overlapping standards. She argues that reporting will eventually narrow and, when it does, will become more useful as a foundation for innovation rather than an obstacle to it. Parsons also reflects on sustainability in the Caribbean, where she grew up, and the gap between governmental ambition and corporate practice in emerging coastal economies. The episode closes with a direct challenge to how the sustainability function is positioned inside organisations. "I will scrap sustainability as a word and probably put in value-maker, change-maker, something like that instead," Parsons says. It is a small linguistic shift with a specific claim attached to it: that what a department is called determines whether a board treats it as peripheral or essential. Whether renaming changes the structural conditions is left, deliberately, unresolved. If these questions sit close to your work, this episode is worth your time. #Sustainability #ESGReporting #SustainabilityLeadership #CorporateResponsibility #ClimateAction #TheResponsibleEdge

Circular economy is one of the clearest ideas in sustainable construction. Close material loops, reuse existing structures, extend the life of assets. The business case has been made. So why does it stall in practice? In this episode of The Responsible Edge, Charlie Martin speaks with structural engineer Amira Damji, Director of Additive Sustainability, about the structural and contractual reasons circular construction struggles to become the default in the UK built environment. The conversation examines the incentives governing developer behaviour, the fragmented nature of construction contracts, and the limited ability of smaller firms to push against client briefs. It looks at why sustainability teams cluster around the largest players, why reclaimed material remains more expensive than virgin supply, and why regulatory levers such as VAT reductions would help but not solve the problem. Amira argues that designers, contractors and producers should remain accountable for what they build long after handover. "We have responsibility of the end of life." The current system is organised in the opposite direction. Responsibility ends cleanly at every contract boundary. "Someone's contract ends and someone's contract begins." The episode also covers the language of "asset maintenance" as an alternative framing to circular economy, the role of perception in what a sector treats as valuable, and the observation that large regulated projects outperform smaller ones on sustainability because compliance requires it. A conversation about where the built environment is structurally misaligned, and what it would take to close the loop. Listen to the full episode now. #CircularEconomy #BuiltEnvironment #EmbodiedCarbon #StructuralEngineering #sustainableconstruction #retrofit

Climate communication is often treated as a messaging problem. This episode examines why that assumption may be flawed. The discussion centres on a widely shared article arguing that climate messaging should become more human, more local, and more relevant. While this addresses tone, it may overlook a more fundamental constraint: timing and incentives. “It’s very difficult to think about the climate if you can’t pay the bills.” Ben Wynn, co-founder of Glad Climate, argues that behaviour is shaped less by understanding and more by immediate benefit. His model reframes climate participation through financial savings rather than moral appeal. “Save money, and you’ll help save the climate.” The episode explores how Glad uses brand marketing budgets to fund consumer savings, which in turn support greenhouse gas removal. It also examines a broader issue in corporate climate strategy: the gap between reducing future emissions and addressing accumulated impact. “You can’t call yourself responsible if you’re not trying to clean it up.” This is a discussion about incentives, not messaging. It considers whether climate action depends less on persuasion and more on how participation is designed. Listen to understand where current approaches fall short and what may need to change. #ClimateCommunication #BehaviourChange #SustainabilityStrategy #ESG #ResponsibleMarketing