Let's Talk Sustainable Business The Conference Board

Professor Guy Jubb is an Honorary Professor at the University of Edinburgh Business School and Co-Director of the Conference Board's European Corporate Governance Council. A chartered accountant, Guy is a corporate governance pioneer, having worked on investor stewardship and ESG issues since the early 1990s. 
In this episode, Guy talks about being one of the first people in the UK to have 'governance' in his job title, why he feels 'stewardship' as a concept is a sustainability cornerstone, and why remuneration and greenwashing are two important governance-related issues for companies to consider.

Genica Schaefgen from Ecosia talks about how customers' privacy is at the core of the business, how Ecosia is the official "planting partner" of debit card company TreeCard - which dedicates 80% of profits earned from merchant transaction fees into planting trees, why the company is very careful who it partners with, and Genica's work with the Social Entrepreneurship Network Germany, which helps raise the visibility of socially-focused companies to politicians and other stakeholders.

Genica Schaefgen is Head of Ecosia Germany, a Berlin-based tech company best known as the "search engine that plants trees". In this episode, Genica explains how using Ecosia contributes to its global tree-planting projects, enabling a tree to be planted "every 1.3 seconds", why Ecosia positions itself as a social business and takes a holistic approach to its biodiversity projects, and how the company aims to hold itself accountable by publishing their financial reports every month.

Mari Granström from Origin by Ocean talks about scaling up and reimagining an algae processing value chain, how she feels about EU and global climate and oceans policy, developing collaborative partnerships, and the advice she would give to anyone thinking of setting up a company with a bio-based focus.

Mari Granström is the CEO and Founder of Origin by Ocean, a Finnish start-up building a business ecosystem based on farmed and harvested algae, which is turned into ingredients used in the production of everyday consumer goods including in food, cosmetics, detergents, agriculture, textiles and packaging. In this episode we discuss why Mari decided to focus on the processed algae market, how Origin by Ocean uses biorefinery technology to tackle the problem of marine eutrophication and the company's partnership with Finnish brand Marikmekko.

The European Commission's Małgorzata Gołębiewska talks about how the EU Green Claims Directive aims to "level the playing field" for companies, the recent amendment to the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, the important role independent verification will play in the future, and also answers a question she often receives - what will the cost be for companies needing to adhere to the EU Green Claims Directive?