1
Economics Before Ethics
Sustainability strategies that ignore economic viability fail. Period. We don't start by asking "What's the right thing to do?" We start by asking "What actually works economically?"
Not because ethics don't matter. Because solutions that can't survive in the market aren't solutions, they're expensive moral theater.
What This Means in Practice:
We'll show you when your sustainability initiative makes you feel good but destroys your margins.
We'll help you find approaches where environmental performance and profit aren't competing, they're the same calculation done correctly.
2
Truth Before Comfort
Most consultants tell you what you want to hear. We tell you what you need to know, even when it contradicts your five-year plan, challenges your board's assumptions, or suggests your entire business model needs rebuilding.
If you need validation with "sustainable" branding, hire someone else.
If you need someone to question your assumptions before the market does it for you, we should talk.
Sometimes the uncomfortable truth is: your current approach can't work. Not "needs improvement." Can't work. The economics don't close. The regulatory trajectory makes it obsolete. The supply chain physics are impossible.
What This Means in Practice:
We've walked away from engagements where the client wanted us to validate a predetermined strategy.
We've told pharmaceutical executives their business model has a fatal flaw.
We've shown food companies their circular economy investments will never break even. Not to be provocative, to prevent millions in wasted capital.
3
Data Before Hope
Your sustainability strategy can't be built on aspirations, good intentions, or industry best practices that don't actually work.
We show you the data, including the data that's uncomfortable.
Virgin plastic: €943/tonne. Recycled plastic: €1,631/tonne.
Climate change: 173-280 additional cancer cases per 100,000 women per 1°C rise.
EU CSRD requirements: forcing 50,000+ companies to report by 2028.
These aren't opinions. These are facts. Your strategy either accounts for them or fails when it meets reality.
What This Means in Practice:
We don't build strategies around what you wish were true.
We build them around what IS true, then show you how to profit from reality instead of being destroyed by it.
Chemistry PhD rigor meets Brussels policy architecture meets entrepreneurship.
Not hope, not hype, not hashtags.
4
Questions Before Solutions
Most consultants show up with pre-packaged solutions.
We show up with uncomfortable questions that expose the assumptions your strategy depends on.
We do not ask rhetorical questions.
We ask strategic question with economic implications you're probably not addressing.
The right question asked early is worth more than the perfect solution applied late.
We help you ask the questions your organization has been avoiding, before your competitors ask them for you.
What This Means in Practice:
Our diagnostic phase isn't about confirming what you already know.
It's about exposing what you don't want to see.
We interview 15-20 stakeholders, analyze your strategy, find out where you could be more profitable, and identify the fundamental contradictions preventing results.
Then we rebuild from there.
5
Systems Before Statements
Sustainability isn't a communications challenge. It's a business model challenge.
No amount of messaging fixes a strategy that doesn't work economically.
We don't help you "talk about" sustainability better. We help you rebuild the systems (supply chains, product development, operational processes, regulatory positioning) that actually deliver results.
Your stakeholders don't care about your sustainability report.
They care about whether you'll still be profitable when regulations tighten, when carbon pricing becomes real, when cheap materials become illegal.
What This Means in Practice:
If you want help rebuilding your business model so there's something worth communicating, we should talk. Our clients see 60-80% profit increases because we change the economics, not the messaging.
Most importantly we remove green & social washing from your communication.
6
Selectivity Before Scale
We could work with every company that contacts us. We don't.
Not because we're exclusive, because this work requires the right organizational readiness.
If you're not prepared to question fundamental assumptions, implement difficult changes, or commit to 6 months of intensive work, we're not the right partner. And that's fine, there are plenty of consultants who'll take your money for incremental improvements.
We're selective because our methodology works when the organization is ready for it. Forcing it on unprepared companies wastes everyone's time and damages both reputations.
What This Means in Practice:
We turn down engagements regularly. We've told prospects they're not ready. We've recommended they try smaller interventions first and come back in 12 months. Because delivering transformative results requires the right starting conditions, and pretending otherwise serves no one.
7
Environmental, Social, and Economic Are Inseparable
Environmental sustainability alone doesn't fix revenue problems.
Social sustainability alone doesn't cut costs. Economic sustainability that ignores environmental and social factors is liquidation with a longer timeline.
Most companies treat ESG as three separate initiatives.
We treat them as what they actually are: the same system viewed from three angles.
When a mid-market food company came to us with "input costs up 18%," their all-white-male leadership team saw a procurement problem.
What we saw: their core customer demographic (women and people of color under 35) had abandoned them because the brand lacked credibility.
The solution wasn't "better sourcing" OR "diversity initiatives" OR "waste reduction." It was all three, simultaneously. Because that's how systems actually work.
What This Means in Practice:
We don't let you isolate "the environmental problem" from the social and economic context that created it.
If your sustainability strategy doesn't account for all three dimensions, it's not a strategy, it's compliance theater that won't survive contact with reality.