SPILL THE (GREEN) TEA: How to talk about sustainability without getting called out

Making Design Circular is evolving. With a new name, a new remit, and a new co-host, this next chapter is all about one of the most urgent conversations in business today: how to talk about sustainability with honesty, nuance, and confidence. Katie Treggiden is joined by Malin Cunningham, founder of B Corp-certified B2B thought leadership consultancy Hattrick, to launch Spill the Green Tea – a podcast exploring how brands can communicate their environmental efforts without tipping into greenwashing… or disappearing into greenhushing. In a world saturated with content, polished claims, and call-outs, the real differentiator is authenticity. Together, Katie and Malin unpack how to share imperfect eco-efforts with clarity and credibility, so your sustainability story builds trust instead of backlash. Expect thoughtful conversations, practical insights, and honest reflections on what it really takes to speak up responsibly in today’s climate-aware marketplace. If you care about communicating sustainability in a way that stands up to scrutiny and still stands out, subscribe now and be the first to tune in to Spill the Green Tea PS Looking for Brackish? That has a new home at https://brackishbykatietreggiden.substack.com/t/podcast

SPILL THE (GREEN) TEA: How to talk about sustainability without getting called out is a business podcast hosted by Unknown Host, with 0 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Unknown Host hosts SPILL THE (GREEN) TEA: How to talk about sustainability without getting called out, a business show with 0 episodes published.

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  Episode #49

  Spill the (Green) Tea with Ankita Dwivedi

  Aug 26, 20261h 8m

  Katie opens by admitting she finds herself saying "it depends" a lot when people ask which of two options is more sustainable and that conundrum is exactly what Firstplanit was built to address. What follows is a conversation about products as systems, why radical transparency sells, and why sustainability comms may need more complexity, not less. In this episode, we cover: Products as systems, not just shapes — Design has historically treated materials as secondary to form, Firstplanit's approach reverses that, modelling a product as a system of performance, environmental, social and health data so non-technical decision-makers can act on it quickly. Why radical transparency sells — Rather than leading only with strengths, Ankita encourages brands to state clearly what a product does better, by how much, and what it doesn't achieve and why. That combination is what builds buyer trust, because it shows the work has actually been done. The unintended consequences of single-issue decision-making — Drawing a parallel with medicine, Ankita warns against narrowing sustainability down to one metric (like carbon) the way we once did with cost: it just becomes another number and misses whatever wasn't measured. Confidence comes from process, not outcome — Because innovation is inherently risky, Ankita argues real confidence comes from being able to communicate your methodology and the steps you're taking not from waiting for a guaranteed positive result before you speak. Complexity needs a story, not just data — Data alone is dry; Ankita's structure for a second conversation pairs a short, connecting headline with a rich mission and impact story ready for when someone wants to go deeper, including benchmarks and cross-category comparisons. Sustainability needs a future-facing narrative — Ankita pushes back on sustainability being framed as nostalgic or vernacular, pointing to concepts like biomimicry as proof that framing progress as forward-looking innovation, not virtue signalling, brings more people on board. More from Ankita www.firstplanit.com Linked: @ankitadwivedi Resources mentioned: UK Green Building Council Wild Spaces The Rest Is Politics hosted by Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart Hysteria hosted by Erin Ryan and Alyssa Mastromonaco Between The Covers hosted by writer David Naimon with writer, poet and translator Eleni Sikelianos How giffgaff built sustainability and responsibility into its media planning Giffgaff Responsible Marketing Manifesto More from Katie Green, Not Greenwashed : Get the clarity and confidence you need to talk about your eco-efforts without the fear of greenwashing. Follow Katie on Instagram @katietreggiden.1 More from Malin Greenwashing 101: Green or Greenwashed? Essential insights for sales and marketing professionals to make sense of sustainability and avoid falling into greenwashing's trap. Follow Malin on LinkedIn @malin-cunningham PS Looking for Brackish? That has a new home at https://brackishbykatietreggiden.substack.com/t/podcast

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  Episode #48

  Spill the (Green) Tea with Pauline Robson

  Aug 12, 20261h 11m

  After almost 20 years in the industry, she stepped away from that role to study for an MSc in Sustainability and Behaviour Change, wanting to understand what actually motivates people to change. She also sits on the Anti-Greenwash Charter's Advisory Council, alongside its founder Charlie Martin, a previous guest on the podcast. In this episode, we cover: Being the only sustainability person in the room and why that gap between the responsibility to drive change and the actual power to enact it is such a common thread across the profession. Sustainability is stuck in reporting and compliance, not innovation, missing a huge opportunity by treating sustainability as a risk to manage rather than a driver of new thinking. How the fear of falling foul of green claims regulation, a polarised political climate, consumer backlash, and a media agenda now dominated by AI are all pushing even well-intentioned companies into silence. The "spiral of silence" - when companies stop talking about progress, it normalises inaction, lets other businesses off the hook, and leaves a vacuum for anti-net-zero narratives to fill. Learning the hard way why internal comms means balancing three languages at once: the language of the business, the technical language of sustainability and a genuinely human register A powerful episode reminding us that progress, however imperfect, communicated honestly, is what builds the trust that silence never can. More from Pauline LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/pauline-robson/ The Anti-Greenwash Charter Resources mentioned: There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak Active Hope by Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone Meander, Spiral, Explode by Jane Alison Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke Accidental Gods Podcast, hosted by Manda Scott Screw This... Let's Try Something Else Podcast Positive News YearCompass Vestre / The Plus Tony's Chocolonely: Impact Report Bump into Brum, Possible The quote about partying, grieving, and activism during the HIV/AIDS epidemic that Katie mentioned comes from author and activist Dan Savage : “During the darkest days of the AIDS crisis, we buried our friends in the morning, we protested in the afternoon, and we danced all night. The dance kept us in the fight because it was the dance we were fighting for.” More from Katie Green, Not Greenwashed : Get the clarity and confidence you need to talk about your eco-efforts without the fear of greenwashing. Follow Katie on Instagram @katietreggiden.1 More from Malin Greenwashing 101: Green or Greenwashed? Essential insights for sales and marketing professionals to make sense of sustainability and avoid falling into greenwashing's trap. Follow Malin on LinkedIn @malin-cunningham PS Looking for Brackish? That has a new home at  https://brackishbykatietreggiden.substack.com/t/podcast

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  Episode #47

  Spill the (Green) Tea with Paul Randle

  Jul 29, 20261h 1m

  In this episode, Malin is joined by Paul Randle, who spent thirty years watching marketing — the most powerful behaviour-change tool ever invented — point in entirely the wrong direction, a realisation that first hit him and his now co-author Alexis Eyre as fellow marketers on a Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership course, sitting through session after session feeling, as Paul puts it, like they had devil's horns growing out of their foreheads. So he decided to do something about it: he co-founded the Sustainable Marketing Compass, which received 750,000 views in its first 24 hours on LinkedIn and is now embedded in programmes at Cambridge University Institute for Sustainability Leadership, the Chartered Institute of Marketing and the IPA. He co-authored two books with Alexis: Sustainable Marketing — The Industry's Role in a Sustainable Future , winner of the American Marketing Association's Leonard L. Berry Book Award, and Competitive Sustainability — Driving Change with Value , which asks the most powerful question in business right now — why wouldn't we? Paul joins Malin to unpack why sustainability's old opening line stopped working, and what he and Alexis built to replace it. In this episode, we cover: Why you don't have to agree on everything if the one thing you do agree on is important enough How The Ladder of Good swaps vague utopianism for six practical rungs because most sustainability visions are either a doom narrative or a Garden-of-Eden fantasy and neither gives a business a route map to actually get there. How to communicate change by exciting people about the future rather than shaming them about the present, an energy Paul thinks the sustainability community has never matched. Why reputation now has to hold up across the whole stakeholder chain, not just the brand story How the nine Rs are built as shared doorways for the boardroom, not activist slogans Why self-awareness is the chapter nobody expects to find in a sustainability book and how showing up determines whether stakeholders actually hear your business case or dismiss it as "sustainability sentimentality” A great episode to remind us that real progress is won by finding the doorway where sustainability and business already want the same thing. More from Paul: LinkedIn: @paulmrandle Website: Sustainable Marketing Compass Resources mentioned: Books Sustainable Marketing: The Industry's Role in a Sustainable Future by Paul Randle and Alexis Eyre Competitive Sustainability: Driving Change with Value by Alexis Eyre and Paul Randle Perilous Times by Thomas D. Lee Godstorm by Solitaire Townsend Capitalism in the Anthropocene by John Bellamy Foster Podcasts Essential Guide to Writing a Novel with James Thayer Examples of Sustainable Comms Tony's Open Chain - its bean-to-bar traceability Paul Polman’s Net Positive work at Unilever The Bristol Pound How to build a circular economy for EV batteries The Relationship Aid — Specsavers' Valentine's Day hearing-aid campaign More from Katie Green, Not Greenwashed : Get the clarity and confidence you need to talk about your eco-efforts without the fear of greenwashing. Follow Katie on Instagram @katietreggiden.1 More from Malin Greenwashing 101: Green or Greenwashed? Essential insights for sales and marketing professionals to make sense of sustainability and avoid falling into greenwashing's trap. Follow Malin on LinkedIn @malin-cunningham PS Looking for Brackish? That has a new home at  https://brackishbykatietreggiden.substack.com/t/podcast

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  Episode #46

  What good sustainability comms looks like

  Jul 15, 202629 min

  In this episode, Katie and Malin record from the middle of the UK's second heatwave of the summer, with climate change dominating their feeds. Rather than add to the noise, they set out to do the opposite: share the good news stories they've gathered, proof that sustainability comms are being done well in plenty of places. From the green economy overtaking healthcare in market value, to furniture passports, tap water with a conscience, and a climate campaign borrowing its swagger from an unlikely source, this is Katie and Malin's antidote to doom-scrolling. In this episode, we cover: The green economy is too big to call niche — new figures show it's now worth $10 trillion and would be the third-largest sector in the world if counted on its own, directly contradicting the assumption that sustainability is either expensive or marginal. Second-hand is coming for the built environment — a Vinted-style matchmaking platform for reclaimed construction materials, spotted at Futurebuild, points to specifiers getting the same resale infrastructure that's already transformed how people buy clothes. Message layering, done properly — Deadgood's furniture passports give specifiers a simple traffic-light headline with full substantiation available underneath for anyone who wants it, a textbook example of Katie's Credible Comms Framework in action. The tell that separates real commitment from performance — a Danish water brand that tells customers to choose tap water over its own product if they can, and why what's served at industry events says as much about a brand's values as its official comms. Craving company, not protecting an edge — from a chocolate brand publicly celebrating the rival that beat it to the top of an impact ranking, to a lighting company happy to see its idea copied, genuine progress looks like inviting others in rather than guarding a competitive advantage. Serious doesn't have to mean solemn — a climate campaign that borrowed the look of "Make America Great Again" to put science back in the spotlight shows that playfulness and rigour can sit in the same sentence. Resources Mentioned London Stock Exchange Group — Green Economy Mark Report Futurebuild — the annual built environment sustainability conference and showcase Madaster — the circular real estate and materials platform behind "Madaster Match," the Vinted-style marketplace for reclaimed construction products Deadgood — the furniture brand behind the furniture passports Design Conformity — the sustainability certification and back-end partner behind Deadgood's furniture passports Dekiln and Johnson Tiles — the Manchester-born non-fired tile technology partnering with Stoke-on-Trent's Johnson Tiles to bring low-carbon tiles to market Postevand — the Danish B Corp tap water brand in plant-based cartons We Don't Have Time , and its Make Science Great Again campaign — Ingmar Rentzhog's campaign putting science at the centre of climate communication Positive News — referenced as a source of good-news stories to counterbalance heavy news cycles Check out the photos we mentioned here More from Katie Green, Not Greenwashed : Get the clarity and confidence you need to talk about your eco-efforts without the fear of greenwashing. Follow Katie on Instagram @katietreggiden.1 More from Malin Greenwashing 101: Green or Greenwashed? Essential insights for sales and marketing professionals to make sense of sustainability and avoid falling into greenwashing's trap. Follow Malin on LinkedIn @malin-cunningham PS Looking for Brackish? That has a new home at  https://brackishbykatietreggiden.substack.com/t/podcast

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  Episode #45

  Spill The (Green) Tea with Ingmar Rentzhog

  Jul 1, 20261h 6m

  This episode digs into why Ingmar thinks the comms and marketing industry is the most under-recruited force in the climate movement and what he wants them to do about it. In this episode, we cover: Why the current climate narrative is failing and what it would take to fix it — Ingmar argues there's a gap between the polite sustainability crowd and the radical protesters, and that gap is exactly where humour, provocation and smart communications could live Why greenwashing discourse may be doing more harm than good — the climate movement, Ingmar argues, has a habit of attacking the companies that are trying while ignoring those that do nothing. We make a case for "calling in" rather than calling out and for redirecting criticism towards the companies staying silent beneath the radar Why W Social exists and what's different about it — with AI flooding existing platforms with disinformation and US-owned social media becoming increasingly unreliable, Ingmar and his team are building a European alternative that requires verified human identity to join More from Ingmar We Don't Have Time — Ingmar's global media platform for climate action; the world's largest of its kind W Social — the new European social media platform for verified humans; public beta launched June 17th Make Science Great Again — We Don't Have Time's campaign reclaiming the red cap and the slogan for science Resources mentioned: National Emergency Briefing — the UK initiative that briefed over 1,200 MPs, business and civic leaders on climate and nature science in November 2025; community screenings are ongoing across the UK via The People's Emergency Briefing film Berkana Institute Two Loops Model — the systems change model Katie references to explain how connectors and bridge-builders make impact even when it can't be measured in gallons of water; developed by Margaret Wheatley and Deborah Frieze Patagonia Work in Progress Report 2025 More from Katie Green, Not Greenwashed : Get the clarity and confidence you need to talk about your eco-efforts without the fear of greenwashing. Follow Katie on Instagram @katietreggiden.1 More from Malin Greenwashing 101: Green or Greenwashed? Essential insights for sales and marketing professionals to make sense of sustainability and avoid falling into greenwashing's trap. Follow Malin on LinkedIn @malin-cunningham PS Looking for Brackish? That has a new home at  https://brackishbykatietreggiden.substack.com/t/podcast

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