Brands That Embraced The Sustainability Movement And Won

Julie Starr • March 22, 2021



Until recently, most business leaders assumed that going down the sustainability route would lead to lost profits, and worsening business performance. But, surprisingly, the opposite appears to be the case. Companies that take sustainability seriously in everything that they do tend to outperform the market, gaining higher returns. 

Why this is happening is still an open question. Suggestions run from selection bias all the way to “being at one with the planet.” But whatever the cause, the effects are clear. When companies choose to look after the environment in everything that they do, they suddenly see benefits. It’s as if the planet is rewarding them somehow. 

In this post, we take a look at some of the most sustainable brands out there and why they’re winning. 

 

Beyond Meat
 Beyond Meat’s products look like traditional burger patties. And, for most people, they taste pretty similar too. They provide a level of succulence that you just don’t get from other meat substitutes – except, perhaps, the Impossible Burger. 

Interestingly, Beyond Meat isn’t sustainable because of its business practices, but rather the product itself. When you eat a traditional beef burger, you contribute an enormous quantity of CO2 into the atmosphere. You also use lots of land, energy, and water in the process, not to mention the life of the animal. 

But with Beyond Meat, it’s totally different. The company essentially eliminates the greenhouse gases associated with meat production because it derives all ingredients from plants. Land use goes down by over 90 percent (because you’re not having to grow crops to feed animals). And water consumption also plummets. Overall resource usage is a fraction of what it would otherwise be if you got the meat via traditional means. 

Beyond Meat, though, takes its sustainability further by using recyclable and biodegradable packaging. And it uses special inks that won’t harm the groundwater. 

 

Patagonia
 Patagonia is an outdoor clothing brand, dead-set on providing the world with all the raincoats and snow gear that it could ever need. 

Patagonia, though, isn’t like other brands. The entire corporate philosophy is about going green. Its mission statement says that it is “100 percent for the planet.”

This position makes sense. After all, Patagonia is a company that sells apparel to people who want to spend their time outdoors. 

Patagonia’s green approach to business starts with the brand’s marketing. Instead of spending a lot of money on material advertisements, Patagonia now focuses almost exclusively on digital means of communicating with its audience. It appeals to them over social media and through various videos it regularly produces. 

To be like Patagonia, build your email list with Facebook ads . Start collecting as many people as possible interested in your brand. Then send them your marketing materials digitally to cut down on costs. 

Whole Foods Market
 Whole Foods Market is one of the most fascinating and innovative brands to hit the grocery sector in decades. Unlike traditional stores, Whole Foods Market attempts to cut down on the root causes of our unsustainable way of living: our terrible diets and addiction to packaging. 

Going into a Whole Foods Market is different from a regular supermarket. For starters, it smells like food, not just-baked bread. You get a combination of nuts, seeds, herbs, and spices whenever you walk in through the door. 

The company also eschews plastic packaging where it can. Many customers simply scoop the products that they want out of giant bins, putting them in paper bags. 

 

Ethical Lighting
 Ethical lighting wants to fundamentally change the way that we collectively illuminate our rooms. The brand makes lights from a combination of recycled steel and reclaimed timber. It also ensures that the lights use energy-efficient bulbs so that customers can reduce their electricity usage. It was one of the first companies to embrace LED lighting. 

 

Yes Straws
 In 2018, the world began a war against plastic straws. People worried about them getting into the groundwater, flowing into the ocean, and killing turtles. But while much of that narrative was overblown, the shift in attitudes towards straws has been quite remarkable. 

Yes Straws was one of the first companies to attempt to address this issue. It wanted to change straw material from plastic to something more sustainable to protect wildlife. 

The result of all their research was a straw made from entirely natural materials. People could still enjoy their cocktails and cold drinks through a straw. But now they wouldn’t be damaging the planet in the process. 

The straws are made of wheat and cane – two natural byproducts of modern farming methods. All Yes Straws does is process them to create a beautiful straw, capable of slurping up all your favorite drinks. It’s all about living a planet-conscious lifestyle. 

 

Numi Tea
 Farming is one of the most deadly activities for the planet. It reduces biodiversity and it encroaches on the forests that the planet needs for its very survival. 

That’s why Numi Tea does things differently . They want to make sustainability their mission and spread their practices to the rest of the business community. Numi Tea, for instance, makes sure that it only purchases tea leaves from sustainable plantations. It also tries to reduce the CO2 cost of transporting tea from one part of the world to another. 

Perhaps, most interestingly, Numi Tea takes a holistic approach to tea consumption. It recognizes that mind, body, and spirit all have to be in alignment if we’re ever going to get the beautiful, pristine planet that we all want. That’s why the brand works with farmers to provide them with safe drinking water. It feels that the world will become a better place once people’s emotions are healthy. 

 

Seventh Generation
 Most cleaning products contain harsh chemicals that damage the body and the environment. So that’s why Seventh Generation decided to do things differently. It has pretty much single-handedly revolutionized the cleaning industry, showing people that there are other ways of keeping their homes spotless.

At the core of the company’s offering are products made almost entirely from natural ingredients. There’s practically nothing inside these cleaning products that the natural world doesn’t make by itself. 

That’s the main reason for the brand’s success: it’s been able to take all-natural ingredients and turn them into a product that actually works. 

 

Blue Patch
 Big online retailers and e-commerce companies are extraordinarily efficient. But they’re not exactly eco-friendly : not in the way that consumers hope anyway. 

But that’s not true of Blue Patch, a British e-commerce brand trying to change the industry from the inside out. The company sells a range of eco-friendly products, and it packages them in a sustainable way. Most of its stock is wellness brands – everything from beauty products to clothing. 

 

Green Toys
 Toys are famously not green . Parents give their kids these awful plasticated objects which break after a couple of hours of use and then have to immediately go into the bin.

Green toys, though, are different. They’re creating a bunch of toys made of 100 percent recycled material. And they’re printing them with soy ink – a sustainable form of ink that naturally breaks down in the ground. The toys themselves don’t have the same level of vibrant color you get with synthetics. But they still look really good. 

Many toys are made of materials that would have otherwise gone into landfills. For instance, the brand makes many of its toys from plastic milk jugs – disposable packaging that can survive in the environment for thousands of years before eventually breaking down. The brand is also 100 percent US, which reduces transport emissions. 

How Student-Led ‘Energy Audits’ Are Cutting School Costs (and Lighting the Way Forward)

By Julie Starr • July 14, 2025
What happens when students stop waiting for adults to fix things and start conducting their own energy audits? Money gets saved. The lights get switched off. Data gets analyzed. And a quiet revolution in sustainability begins—inside schools that once overlooked their own inefficiencies. Across the globe, student-led energy audits are proving that change doesn't always need to come from a policy shift or a major capital budget. Sometimes, it begins with a clipboard, a spreadsheet, and a group of curious minds asking: Why are the hallway lights on at noon when sunlight floods the building? The Energy Detectives These audits aren’t science fair projects. They’re rigorous investigations, often done in collaboration with facilities staff, local environmental nonprofits, or even engineering mentors. Students go from classroom to classroom measuring electricity usage, checking for phantom loads , and identifying where heat is escaping in winter or air conditioning is leaking in summer. One high school in Ontario saved over $12,000 a year after its Grade 11 physics students ran an energy audit and suggested simple changes—LED upgrades, motion sensors in bathrooms, and smarter heating schedules. They didn’t just propose ideas. They pitched them with spreadsheets, thermal images, and payback timelines. It worked. Learning That Pays Off—Literally Unlike textbook learning, these audits blend real-world math, environmental science, economics, and persuasive communication. Students aren’t just learning about sustainability. They’re doing it. And the savings add up. From dimming overlit hallways to reprogramming HVAC systems that run all weekend for empty buildings, students are surfacing blind spots that administrators often overlook. In some districts, their findings are influencing energy policy. Elsewhere, the audits have inspired school boards to hire sustainability coordinators—often alumni of the student programs themselves. There’s something poetic about a school funding new books or laptops from money saved by students who found out the vending machines didn’t need to be plugged in 24/7. Why This Matters More Than Ever With education budgets tightening and utility costs rising, every dollar saved is a dollar that can go back into classrooms. And here’s where it gets interesting from a family finance perspective, too. If you’re a parent setting aside money for post-secondary savings, every bit of school efficiency helps. Fewer energy costs might mean more programming, better STEM facilities, or even bursaries. That raises a broader point: when families save for their children’s future, they often look into RESPs (Registered Education Savings Plans). And many wonder—is a RESP deduction available on my taxes? While contributions themselves aren’t deductible, the gains grow tax-free, and students often pay little to no tax when they withdraw the funds during school. A Movement Worth Replicating These audits aren’t just an exercise in environmentalism. They’re leadership labs. Students learn how to spot inefficiencies, speak up in board meetings, and make a business case for change. They don’t just flip switches—they shift mindsets. And they carry these habits into adulthood. The result? A generation growing up not only with climate anxiety, but also with tools to tackle it.

Smart Sensors, Smarter Supply Chains: Enhancing Traceability in Food & Beverage

By Julie Starr • June 20, 2025
In today’s competitive food and beverage (F&B) landscape, traceability is no longer a compliance checkbox—it’s a differentiator. The ability to track every step of a product’s journey, from origin to shelf, is vital for regulatory accuracy and to ensure brand integrity, supply chain agility, and consumer trust. Add smart sensors to the mix: the quiet, tireless observers revolutionizing supply chain intelligence. Traceability Has a Data Problem Despite digitization across many F&B operations, most traceability systems still rely on fragmented or manual data inputs. Batch numbers, barcodes, and handwritten logs often stand between a supplier and clarity when things go wrong. This approach struggles with latency and scale. When contamination or delays occur, root cause analysis is slow, costly, and damaging. Smart sensors shift this paradigm by embedding real-time, contextual intelligence into every stage of the supply chain . Whether monitoring humidity in transit or recording fill-level precision in bottling plants, they remove the guesswork by turning physical conditions into structured, time-stamped data. From Passive Monitoring to Active Optimization Sensors used to be reactive tools, alerting operators to anomalies. But smart sensors now play a proactive role in process control. They measure, and they interpret. For example, temperature sensors embedded in cold chain logistics can dynamically adjust cooling systems or flag threshold breaches before spoilage occurs. These advancements reduce waste and loss at a systemic level. In a production facility, smart sensors integrated with PLCs can enforce recipe compliance, verify clean-in-place processes, and detect micro-stoppages in real-time. This enables operations to pivot faster and isolate inefficiencies before they cascade downstream. Trust is Built on Transparency Consumers are paying more attention to what they eat and drink. They’re looking beyond labels, expecting visibility into how ingredients are sourced, processed, and handled. Smart sensors make this level of transparency achievable —without burdening manufacturers with excessive manual oversight. By capturing metadata throughout production and distribution, these sensors create a digital footprint that’s tamper-resistant and instantly accessible. When this data is integrated with a central platform, brands can respond confidently to audits, recalls, and quality assurance challenges with a level of precision that would be impossible through legacy systems. Intelligence Without Infrastructure Overhaul One common misconception is that adding smart sensors requires a top-down reinvention of supply chain infrastructure. In reality, companies can deploy edge sensors in a modular, scalable way. Many modern solutions offer plug-and-play functionality, allowing for fast integration with existing machinery and MES systems. This is where suppliers like alps-machine.com are reshaping expectations. Rather than pushing proprietary ecosystems, they design sensor-ready equipment with interoperability in mind. This future-proofs investment and keeps businesses nimble in the face of regulatory or market shifts. Designing for Data Longevity Sensors are only as powerful as the context they capture. A smart implementation ensures the data collected can be standardized, stored securely, and accessed meaningfully across departments. This means moving beyond local dashboards toward centralized, queryable datasets that inform everything from supplier contracts to marketing claims. As AI and predictive analytics become more accessible, these data-rich environments will unlock new capabilities—such as predicting demand spikes based on real-time freshness indicators or adjusting production schedules dynamically based on in-transit sensor feedback. Final Thoughts: Smarter Isn’t Optional Traceability isn’t solved by more paperwork—it’s solved by embedded intelligence. Smart sensors don’t just help businesses know what happened; they help prevent the wrong things from happening at all. For companies in the food and beverage sector, adopting smart sensors is less about chasing innovation and more about enabling resilience, speed, and confidence in every decision.