From “Sustainable” to Sustainable: Rethinking Business Through Behaviour and Design

Sustainability is often framed as something organisations need to do.

For some, it is a priority. For others, it becomes a reporting requirement or a response to regulation. But increasingly, this framing is being challenged.

In a recent episode of the Materials Deep Dive podcast, hosted by Carolina Carreira, Colectivo’s CEO & Founder Laura McDermott explores a different perspective. Rather than viewing sustainability as an obligation, the conversation reframes it as an opportunity to build more resilient, adaptive, and future-proof organisations.

Moving Beyond Compliance

As sustainability expectations rise, many organisations are focused on meeting requirements. They invest time in reporting, aligning with frameworks, and ensuring compliance with evolving regulations.

While this is necessary, it is only one part of the picture. What the conversation highlights is a deeper shift. Sustainability is not something that can simply be layered on top of existing operations. It requires organisations to rethink how they make decisions, how they design systems, and how they create value over time.

When approached in this way, sustainability moves from being a constraint to becoming a driver of innovation and long-term performance.

The Real Challenge: From Intention to Action

A recurring theme throughout the episode is the gap between intention and execution.

Most organisations today are not lacking ambition. They have clear sustainability goals, strong messaging, and growing awareness across teams. Yet translating those ambitions into consistent, everyday action remains a challenge. This is where many initiatives lose momentum.

The issue is not that people do not care. It is that the systems around them do not always support the behaviours required to deliver change.

Behaviour Change as the Missing Link

This is where behavioural science becomes critical. Frameworks like COM-B help explain why change does or does not happen. For any behaviour to take place, people need the capability, the opportunity, and the motivation to act. When one of these elements is missing, even the most well-defined strategies struggle to take hold.

This is why sustainability cannot be treated purely as a technical or strategic challenge. It is fundamentally about people, how they make decisions, how they interact with systems, and how those systems either enable or block change.

Transparency as a Way Forward

Another important thread in the conversation is transparency. As expectations increase, organisations are being asked to do more than set targets. They are being asked to show how those targets are being achieved. This shift is pushing businesses toward greater alignment between what they say and what they do.

When transparency is embedded into how organisations operate, it stops being a risk and becomes a strength. It builds trust, improves decision-making, and creates a more honest foundation for growth.

From Individuals to Systems

The episode also highlights an important balance. Change often starts with individuals. Engineers, managers, and employees across organisations all play a role in shaping how sustainability is implemented in practice. But individual effort alone is not enough.

Without the right structures, processes, and incentives, even highly motivated people struggle to sustain change. This is why organisations need to think beyond awareness and begin designing systems that make the desired behaviour easier, clearer, and more consistent.

Connecting Insight to Application

At Colectivo, this perspective is central to how we work. We focus on helping organisations move from intention to implementation by combining strategy, design, and behavioural science.

This conversation also directly connects to our Behaviour Change for Sustainability course on Udemy.

The course explores these concepts in more depth, providing practical tools and frameworks to help individuals and organisations understand how to turn ambition into action. It focuses not just on what needs to change, but on how to make that change happen in real-world contexts.

Looking Ahead

What this discussion ultimately reinforces is that sustainability is evolving. It is no longer just about setting targets or meeting requirements. It is about redesigning how organisations operate in a way that is both effective and enduring.

The organisations that succeed will not be those that say the most, but those that create the conditions for change to happen consistently. Because in the end, sustainability is not just a strategy. It is a behaviour.

🎧 Listen to the full episode: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2oRfRivuRLtP4B1xMGRGkC?si=yKs0uocQRDCBf2zpeMyzAA&nd=1&dlsi=975e6234ce044b7c