Webinar | Carbon Confidential with Paul Polman
July 28, 2026
12:00 pm
Zoom call
Speakers
In this second session, Gabrielle Walker sat down with Paul Polman — former CEO of Unilever and co-author of Net Positive — for an in-depth conversation about what it really takes to build markets before they exist.
📣 What we covered:
- Betting on a market before the board believes in it: Paul shared why he scrapped quarterly earnings guidance early in his tenure as Unilever's CEO ("working on the forest, not in the forest"), how he recognised shifts before the business case arrived, and what it takes to back a market that doesn't exist yet.
- Escaping the pioneer trap: From sustainable palm oil onwards, Paul explained why being furthest ahead alone is a failure state, and what it actually took to stop being the only responsible buyer and pull an entire industry along.
- The anatomy of market creation: Across food, fashion, and aviation fuel, Paul walked through whether there's a repeatable playbook for building a market from nothing (creating credible standards, forming coalitions, working the demand side) and the biggest mistakes pioneers make.
- Why sustainability drove Unilever's success: Paul credited putting sustainability at the core of business strategy, not off to the side, with 10 years of top and bottom line growth, market share gains, and a 300% shareholder return. His key lesson for making the business case: treat sustainability as an investment and an opportunity, not a cost.
And the line that stuck with us: sustainability isn't a premium, it's a bridge — an investment in future value creation, not a cost. Or as Paul put it, "it's better to make the dust than to eat the dust".
