From “Sustainable" to Sustainable: How to future-proof your business (ft. Laura McDermott, Colectivo)

Sustainability is a priority for some companies, a nuisance for others and a concern for most. And with all of the environmental regulations coming out, being sustainable can feel like an obligation to fill the ESG reports. But what if being more “sustainable” could make your company more sustainable?

In this deep dive, I speak with Laura McDermott from Colectivo, a sustainability consultancy that coaches companies on how they can become future-proof, through engaging their employees and redesigning their products and services. Besides working with companies, Laura teaches Design Thinking and Sustainability at the IE Business School in Madrid. So be ready to take some notes.

Listen till the end to find what type of sustainability persona you are and let us know in the comments.
In this episode we cover:

• What sustainability means for a company
• The steps to make your company future-proof
• Intention-action gap
• Types of sustainability personas
• The “COM-B” model
• Automatic motivation vs. Reflective motivation
• New Year’s resolutions, Atomic Habits and biking to work
• Transparency as a business model
• How can engineers impact their companies

If you want to get the "Behavior Change for Sustainability" course that Laura mentioned for FREE, you can do it here until May 23rd, 2026.

Follow Colectivo on LinkedIn and check out their site colectivo.ie. You can also follow Laura on her LinkedIn.

If you enjoyed this episode, follow Materials Deep Dive on ⁠Instagram⁠ and ⁠TikTok⁠ @materialsdeepdive for behind-the-scenes and more conversations with founders and engineers reshaping the materials world.