Is sustainability in CPG entering a maturity phase?
A Q&A with Adam Pawelas, a veteran of sustainability in FMCG
Our Guest
Adam Pawelas is a senior sustainability leader with over 25 years of international experience across consumer goods and industrial sectors. He currently serves as Global Environmental Sustainability Director at Campari Group, where he leads work on decarbonisation, water stewardship, and resource efficiency across global operations.
Adam is known for a practical, execution-driven approach to sustainability, mastering the translation of environmental commitments into operational outcomes across supply chains and manufacturing. He is passionate about advancing sustainability as a core business discipline.
N.B. The views expressed in this interview reflect his own perspective, shaped by experience across organisations including Danone and the Carlsberg Group, and the supply chains of the food and beverage industry, rather than those of his current employer.
Our Q&A
How is sustainability doing in CPG as of 2026?
Sustainability in CPG is entering a more mature phase. Companies are withstanding short-term pressures from geopolitics and markets, but supply chain complexity remains a significant barrier to rapid progress.
Can you describe this new phase of maturity?
Recent years have seen company motivations for sustainability combine: starting with voluntary initiatives, evolving into company-wide commitments, then integrating ESG as risk mitigation, and now adapting to regulatory and investor demands for disclosures and performance.
This was all sustainability known before 2026. What was the compounding effect?
Companies are taking lessons from previous experiences and those of others and putting sustainability into a business context, so, in a way, integrating it into the business rather than keeping it as an add-on. Add-on sustainability focused on storytelling, incrementalism, and quick, easy wins from early action, with much enthusiasm and bold ambitions. As the sustainability programs moved on, it became apparent that initial targets are hard to achieve, and sustainability needs a strong connection to business; it will stumble.
How do we know that?
It is not often super apparent, and we can see some evidence of this. For example, there is a key tool required by European sustainability reporting laws and by CDP (one of the leading ESG scoring schemes): a Climate Transition Plan. Companies are obliged to publish their plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This plan shows how a company intends to achieve its emission goals over time and how many of the interventions are driven by business decisions. Recent releases of climate plans by several companies reveal gaps in their targets and in their responses to external influences, raising questions about their effectiveness. However, many companies are committed to continuous improvement and adapting strategies as circumstances evolve.
So what will the companies do, scrap the plans?
No, I do not think so. Most companies are well-intentioned and will try hard, transparently reporting failures or delays from circumstances. I hope the public will recognise these efforts and press other stakeholders involved in the transition.
Let us go back to the initial question: how can we describe the current maturity of companies in sustainability?
Too-high ambitions, without a broader context, jeopardise success. Each company or sector must factor in its unique challenges to create realistic, achievable sustainability goals.
Selecting must-win battles, scaling down or designing a program to double down on the efforts with available resources and commitment to strong execution
Combining sustainability with other business topics, such as risks and resilience, can be value-adding
Collaborating across industry or in local ecosystems to generate a bigger impact and engage wider stakeholders
Operationalising sustainability by building sustainability dimensions into diverse business functions, with supporting metrics and incentives, as the company moves into the mature execution phase of its commitments
Gaining access to capital (e.g. ESG-linked loans) and winning B2B offers, especially in proving strong sustainability performance in high-risk industries with endangered social licence to operate.
There are other sustainability drivers; large companies often represent many of them, as they manage complex supply chains and products with the resources for large-scale programs.
Let us go back to consumers. What does sustainability mean to them now?
In mature markets, consumers have grown weary of sustainability messages and demand credible, integrated action. Today, companies are punished for failing to be sustainable but not rewarded for modest efforts. Focus should shift to current, tangible improvements that matter to consumers, not distant promises.
What are the real economic trade-offs companies are making in sustainability today?
The main economic trade-off is the business case for sustainability, what is the acceptable payback with real money or with externalities augmented with shadow prices (internal carbon price, risk-based price of water, etc.), or defined by willingness-to-pay (e.g. business criticality to deliver an ambition, innovation opportunity, future advantage, consequence of not doing it). This is a persistent dilemma in sustainability today, tomorrow, and yesterday as well.
As of today, in the transitional situation (VUCA mode!) of CPG, the additional trade-off is future-proofness of action or inaction. To what extent can some action be delayed, re-framed, re-located, temporary/stepwise vs end-game, how flexible is the initial plan or its revision given the changing circumstances, how can the risk of investment be shared or transferred outside? A discussion on make-or-buy, shine-or-shame, and direct action versus tradeable market-based solutions (sustainability credits in new, emerging shapes and forms) is becoming necessary.
Which sustainability approaches have proven ineffective, and why?
What has often been ineffective is to set sustainability ambitions and targets in disconnection with other superior business objectives, leading to conflicting objectives, misaligned and demotivated teams initially enthusiastic and challenged with the ‘business case’, at the end requiring the resolution of conflicts or reframing of the ambitions.
Secondly, companies may stumble initially on overly broad ambitions with insufficient execution resources or on uncovered implementation complexity, leading to program under-delivery.
Thirdly, the lack of a global-local (i.e., flexible) view on the feasibility and relevance of the sustainability program may cause implementation difficulties and costly (time or financial) adjustments.
How do investors see sustainability nowadays?
Here, a certain maturity stage has also been reached. Many ESG ratings are evolving to address investors’ interests, such as the credibility of sustainability actions, progress on company commitments, and disclosures with explanations of performance, asset visibility, vulnerability to physical risks (e.g., extreme weather, water scarcity), and transitional risks (e.g., regulations, reputation, and financial effects). Reporting frameworks for non-financial disclosures are becoming more structured, adding assurance rigour and providing repeatable, comparable insights to investors. Within companies, we see how reporting is now bringing the financial function together with sustainability efforts.