Building a platform for collaboration and climate action

2024 Clean50 members gather for their group picture after a full day of work, and ahead of the award ceremony. supplied

There are a number of action items that can make an impact on Canada’s overall climate performance, "but we need to do them at scale – and we need to do them faster,” says Gavin Pitchford, CEO of sustainability and cleantech search firm Delta Management Group and founder and executive director of the Canada’s Clean50 Awards program.

“Specifically, we need to stop making things worse by enabling oil companies to pollute with impunity,” he says. “We need to identify the most effective solutions, especially Canadian cleantech, and invest in these growing organizations and in finding new ones. And we need to truly recognize that climate change is the single biggest threat to our economic well-being and act accordingly.”   

While post-COVID inflation is an issue for many, “things will get much worse and prices are going to skyrocket if we don’t fix climate change. Most importantly, politicians need get honest and stop placating their base with nonsensical slogans,” says Mr. Pitchford. “Instead, they need to act on the incredible opportunity Canada has: to play a role in delivering solutions and invest in the future economy rather than keep doubling down on a failed resource extraction strategy from 50 years ago that no longer works.”

Hoping to kick-start some of those solutions, Mr. Pitchford founded the Clean50 program in 2011 to identify forward-looking sustainability leaders from across Canada, to recognize and amplify their work, and most importantly, to bring them together so they can identify opportunities to collaborate at scale. Since then, the program has recognized over 900 members and over 200 sustainability projects, and hosted 13 Clean50 summits.

After last year’s summit, within two weeks, 144 participants reported that they had identified – and were working on – over 1,000 collaborations, he says. “Even if some of those collaborations involve three or four players, that’s at least 400 distinct climate projects – some big, some small – but all having an impact.”

Frances Edmonds, head of sustainable impact at HP Canada, two-time Clean50 honouree and frequent summit participant, praises the Clean50 program for its influence. There is recognition at HP Canada, long identified as Canada’s most sustainable technology company, “that we cannot do it alone,” she notes. “Sustainability is a team sport.

“The Clean50 summit regularly connects us with a diverse group of passionate leaders and experts willing to collaborate to amplify our collective impact,” Ms. Edmonds says. “We continuously evolve and learn from our interactions with other professionals as well as share our own expertise, particularly around sustainable procurement, to outline alternative and inspiring ways of doing things – and to make us better at our jobs and how we do business.”

Another recent summit participant and Clean50 honouree, Maya Colombani, chief sustainability and human rights officer at L’Oreal Canada, echoes these sentiments.

“Engaging the full ecosystem across all our value chains, collaborating with our suppliers and competitors, with retailers and consumers, and truly act for our society beyond our logo and individual interests is absolutely critical,” she says. “That’s what it takes to scale up our impact.

“What the Clean 50 community brings is an authentic and interconnected approach, and the best of what our power and expertise can bring to our society,” Ms. Colombani says. “The Clean50 is extremely effective at making those connections and kick-starting those collaborations.”

Mr. Pitchford adds that beyond galvanizing collaboration between sustainability leaders, the Clean50 community also advocates for policy change, for example, most recently, the implementation of a sustainable investment and financing taxonomy. On Earth Day, these efforts, which brought together over 200 members of the Clean50 as well as 125 of their organizations, were endorsed by another 50 individuals and 30 organizations, mostly leaders from the finance community. “The Clean50 channels both collaboration between members and shared calls for meaningful climate action,” he says. “While we’re making a difference, we’re painfully aware of the urgent need to do more – and do it faster.”

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