10 Climate & Sustainability Innovators from Shoptalk 2024

Author

Keith Anderson
March 29, 2024

It’s been about a week since I returned from Shoptalk, one of the largest events in digital commerce.

It was my first time attending since the pandemic, and it’s clear that demand for in-person gatherings like this has largely recovered.

The major themes, unsurprisingly, were topics like AI, creating unified retail experiences, building customer loyalty, and harnessing the power of branding.

Somewhat conspicuously absent (to me, anyway), was a concerted focus on climate or sustainability strategies and capabilities. To be fair, there were a few sessions that made it a focus, but it wasn’t positioned as one of the major themes of the event.

Still, I did find a cohort of companies offering retailers and brands services or solutions that highlight sustainability in their value proposition. Here are 10 standouts.

Accenture Song’s Sustainable Growth practice is focused on helping brands mainstream sustainability by following principles of “life-centricity,” which aims to drive relevance in areas like product innovation, marketing, commerce, sales, and service by incorporating an understanding of the economic, social, and cultural forces shaping customers’ preferences.

Alianaz is a branded and private label manufacturer based in the U.K. As suppliers for Amazon Aware, its in-house label for sustainable personal care products, Alianaz has deep expertise about how to qualify for Amazon programs including Compact by Design and Climate Pledge Friendly.

Boox provides e-commerce brands and retailers in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. with custom-branded reusable shipping boxes. Their service includes a network of take-back locations and connections to clothing re-sale platforms. Boox works with a number of beauty and apparel brands including Unilever, Sephora, L’Oreal, and H&M.

Earthara is a boutique sustainability consultancy founded by a former Walmart and Truepill operations and logistics executive and a management consultant. The company specializes in helping growing brands measure emissions and build reduction plans, as well as increase participation in programs like Walmart’s Project Gigaton.

Gently offers retailers and brands fast, affordable, and sustainable same-day delivery with an all-electric fleet of delivery vans and light electric vehicles.

Gently operates in greater Los Angeles, with plans to launch in New York in 2Q24 and other metros in California, Texas, Illinois, Nevada, Florida, and Georgia later in 2024.

Liquidonate connects retailers with nonprofits and upcyclers to donate excess inventory or economically non-viable returns, yielding operational and tax savings and helping them hit sustainability goals.

They work with retailers across categories, from food to furniture.

Nori operates a marketplace for carbon removal credits. It works with agriculture businesses and farmers to adopt practices that permanently remove carbon, paying them with funds from companies that seek to offset their hard- or impossible-to-abate emissions.

Purespace extends produce’s freshness and prevents food waste with a device that removes ethylene from the air at points along the cold chain like distribution centers, trucks, and the back room at stores. In a test, their device increased fruit and vegetable shelf time by +30% compared to a control.

Supercycle is a rental platform for Shopify sellers, helping them manage rental orders, memberships, inventory and returns.

Wiliot’s Internet of Things (IoT) technology embeds postage stamp-sized tags intro cases or product packaging, enabling traceability and intelligence along the supply chain.

The technology can support use cases like BOPIS and frictionless returns, but it can also minimize waste and enable more precise emissions measurement.

If you’re looking for partners in with capabilities like these, be sure to check out decarbonize.co/profiles, our free (for now) database of 400+ sustainability solution providers.