"He stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way... a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock."
Like so many that work in sustainability roles, the case is clear, right? So why does it feel like the message still is not breaking through?
Forgive me. Sometimes a passionate article is not enough, and tying in Leonardo DiCaprio to bring it to life was too tempting. In The Great Gatsby, he tries everything, but the harder he reaches, his great love seems to move further away. In Inception on the other hand, he finds a way through. Incredibly complex, and I cannot claim to know where it landed, but he did. From the inside. This is the move being asked of the industry today.
We have just published our Impact Thesis. We explain what we do, where we fit, and how we quantify impact, against the Global Circularity Protocol and commercially for each stakeholder we work with. Impact and commercial value, side by side.
Inception, Romeo and Juliet, The Great Gatsby. One success story, two tragedies. All justifying the decision to use him as a teaser for this article. Trust me on this.
The reaching has been real
Sustainability has come a long way. Regulations are moving. Businesses are investing more than they used to. None of this happened on its own. Over two decades, sustainability has reinvented itself, ESG, CSR, B Corp, regenerative, net zero, circular, looking for the version of itself the commercial engines of business would finally take hold of and transform business and impact around the world.
Companies named Chief Sustainability and Impact Officers, and it was all looking like the happily ever after we had worked for. The last twelve months feel like the wind has gone out of the sails, even if just a little bit. Personally, I do not think it is going backwards. It is a bump in the road, and bumps are expected.
What we must always be cautious of, and at a reach, is the lesson of Jay (yes, Jay was his invented name, born James Gatz, son of poor North Dakota farmers) Gatsby. Jay Gatsby is the version of himself that he built, to be worthy of the green light, the love of Daisy. He had it all, but in the end, he did not. Gatsby builds an entire empire to be worthy of Daisy, and she still chooses the safer, richer, older money.
Two reports, two sides of the same finding
Two major industry reports have recently confirmed this. It is not all bad news, but we need to be smarter in how things go from here. They describe a conversation moving away from impact at the same moment the case for impact has never been clearer.
Circle Economy's Circularity Gap Report 2026: The Value Gap, published in April. I recently had the chance to hear from two of the team directly, walking through some of the key findings: where investment is flowing, where the value is lost, and what business is doing about it. €25.4 trillion in avoidable value lost annually to the linear economy. About €1 lost for every €3 created. Around 31% of global GDP. These are incredible numbers, and they align with many of the headlines we have been reading over the last year.
The killer finding? The structural loss "remains largely invisible in economic decision-making." These losses are externalities that are not immediately apparent to company P&Ls or balance sheets. They are not directly linked to the material success or survival of the company in the here and now.
Global Fashion Agenda and BCG published the Fashion CFO Agenda 2026 in early May. Sustainability mentions in fashion earnings calls are down by roughly one third since 2022. The report draws on more than thirty CFO interviews and analysis of over 150 fashion brands. Around 70% of fashion-sector GHG emissions can be reduced at low or negative cost. EPR fees could reduce net profits by about 4% for large mass-fashion players by 2030. Sustainability is no longer a peripheral concern but a defining force shaping the economics of our industry.
From compliance to the office of the CFO
The historical undercurrent of ESG, and the many terms, has been one of compliance. HR when it was weighted internally, focused on the treatment and equality of staff within a company. Then moving to legal and procurement to examine supply chains and align with anti-slavery. Incredibly important work, and impact we can see, setting new standards, with important work still to do.
Today, it is a question of financial performance, at a time when the focus of boardrooms is dominated by AI, tariffs, and uncertain conditions on trade. It is no surprise that this report confirms a trend we have all seen. Sustainability is moving into the office of the CFO. What are they saying?
"Sustainability is not treated as a standalone business decision. It's embedded in our way of working."
Mia Zhou, CFO eBay UK · GFA + BCG, Fashion CFO Agenda 2026
The focus has moved "from 'if' to 'how,' specifically, 'how we balance sustainability priorities within budget pressure.'"
Margarita Salvans, CFO Mango · GFA + BCG, Fashion CFO Agenda 2026
The report frames the quote as the message having broken through. Sustainability is now embedded in how the business works, so the era of a separate sustainability function with its own budget line is ending.
The second reading is less flattering. A specialist team is expensive. When that team's purpose is also a regulatory and reputational obligation the business has to meet anyway, the cost becomes harder to defend. The work gets folded into compliance, procurement, communications, ESG reporting that already had a head. The line item disappears. The business gets to claim that sustainability is embedded everywhere, which in practice often means nobody owns it.
Daisy chooses Tom, and business keeps prioritising traditional, more familiar commercial drivers to measure what success looks like.
The letter that did not arrive
What does this have to do with Romeo and Juliet? I am glad you asked.
We intuitively understand that impact, in simple terms doing good, is good for business, in the same way that the love between Romeo and Juliet was undeniable. When budgets are tight, impact gets pushed to next year. Impact alone is not enough.
Most people remember Romeo and Juliet for the feuding families. The tragedy actually turns on a letter that arrives too late. The message for industry is the same. So many sustainability initiatives would be transformational, but the timing is off. Commercial teams are working to tighter deadlines, or to metrics that do not factor in impact. The idea is not bad. The investment window passes.
The time for Inception has come
Let us meet our hero again, this time Dominic Cobb. When you think about it, sitting through that movie is probably how many sustainability people feel about their day to day over the past few years. Twists and turns, looking inside their own mind in what feels like a house of mirrors. In the end, he wins.
The path forward was not by trying to change an outcome by arguing from the outside, but by being on the inside the moment the decision was being made.
Does this need another transformation? I do not think so. But I do think it means one thing needs to be accepted. Impact, on its own, is not enough.
Very simply, if businesses seem to be stepping away from sustainability, that is not quite what is happening. Sustainability practitioners need to be more comfortable aligning what they do, designing the programmes they are passionate about in a way that aligns perfectly with how the business measures success.
How does it save costs? How does it drive revenue? There is no in-between just because it feels good.
What is the message for CFOs?
This can be a question of efficiency and compliance. Regulations will bring new costs. You will factor them into forecasts and adjust accordingly. It can be tempting to look for the lowest cost option and tick the box.
However, many new regulations are more than just a tariff. By 2028, the European retail estate is about to operate the largest in-store product take-back programme in the region's history. The constraint on what these programmes achieve is not the collection infrastructure; it is the engagement-and-incentivisation layer at the moment of consumer return.
Like any asset, what can you do to maximise the return it has to offer?
This brings us to our Impact Thesis
We have made a conscious decision. Not to stand on the outside and tell the business to do better. We go inside the moment where the choice gets made, and we design it so commercial success and impact do not have to choose between each other.
Under the EU Categorisation System for the Circular Economy, what we do sits in two adjacent positions. Category 3, Traceability platforms. Category 4, Enabling Technologies. The first describes what the platform does. The second describes how it scales. The Global Circularity Protocol, ratified at COP30 last November, treats enabling technologies as a contributor category in its own right, alongside the material flows themselves, for the simple reason that material flows on their own do not move. They need a layer that connects the customer to the return, the return to the data, and the data to a commercial reason for the business to keep doing it.
There is some satisfaction in seeing this written into the frameworks. We have been building the engagement-and-incentivisation layer at the moment of consumer return since the company was founded, on the conviction that the take-back system would not work without it. For a long time the role of that layer had to be explained from first principles. It now has a category, a name, and a place in the protocols the industry will be measured against. The impact this layer drives can be talked about directly, against frameworks the boardroom already recognises. We have been playing the Inception card from day one. (See what I did there?)
Four stakeholders: customer, retailer, brand, recycler. Each captures a verifiable sustainability outcome and a commercial value from the same data event. We will continue to talk about both, at the same time, and never pretend one is more important than the other.
That is the third act this industry has not yet been offered. Not louder advocacy. Not a better report. Design.
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
What hero will you be? The one who keeps reaching, or the one who designs the moment so love and impact are not a choice?
Read next: the Impact Thesis sets out the four-stakeholder framework and operational mechanics. A public-facing summary sits alongside it.
With thanks to the Director of Literary Cross-References, who remains anonymous.