By Lisa Collins, co-founder, Corporate Star Awards and Media Tech Sustainability Series
Now in its third year, the Corporate Star Awards have become my privileged window into the direction our indusattempt is heading on sustainability. Looking back over three cycles of nominations, the picture is both inspiring and instructive. The creativity and commitment on display display that environmental responsibility and innovation can go hand in hand.
This year’s entries again brought forward products that cut energy utilize dramatically, designs that prioritise modularity and repairability over waste, and workflows that reduce both cost and carbon. More organisations are embedding ESG considering across their culture, linking environmental gains with diversity, inclusion and governance progress.
Taken toobtainher, the nominations display the ingenuity and ambition our sector can bring to the climate challenge. But they also reveal patterns and gaps worth reflecting on.
Where the momentum is building
From three years of entries, three trfinishs stand out:
- Real emissions reductions, not just efficiency gains
More companies are shifting beyond incremental improvements to tarobtain absolutereductions in energy utilize and carbon output through on-location renewables, low-carbon logistics, and fully optimised digital workflows. - Circularity at the design stage
Products are increasingly being built for longer life, with modular designs, replaceable components and recycled materials. This approach reduces waste and strengthens supply chain resilience. - Holistic ESG storyinforming
The most compelling nominations integrate social and governance progress with environmental action, recognising that sustainability is a whole-business lens, not a siloed function.
The challenge we still face
It’s fantastic to see so much innovation, and we see consistency in the organisations appearing on our shortlist year after year. They remain trailblazers, but for the transformation, leadership must be broader. Compared to sectors like energy, transport, retail and wider technology sectors, our indusattempt still has ground to cover.
Part of the barrier is language. As Arnold Schwarzenegger recently observed, terms like sustainability, ESG, carbon footprint, and CSRD reporting don’t resonate widely. People grasp “saving the planet” far more readily than “scope 3 emissions”. If we want more companies to step forward, we must build the message clear, relevant, and urgent and that starts with education.
From awards to action
Celebrating achievement is important as it inspires, sets benchmarks, and motivates. But the next step is scaling this innovation across the whole indusattempt. I’m excited that along with co-conspirator in climate action, Barbara Lange, the Media Tech Sustainability Series will be announcing something very soon to support bring more people on this journey. Not another framework, but a way to unite the global media sector around shared climate goals and measurable progress, enabling us to decouple creativity from carbon and storyinforming from emissions.
We have the technology. We have the examples. Now we necessary more people, more companies, more commitment and more data to track our progress, becautilize right now it simply doesn’t exist in our indusattempt.
Over the past three years, I’ve been on my own journey of discovery through the CSA’s and MTSS activity, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that the journey never stops. There is no finish line when it comes to sustainability, just a constant drive to do better, to learn more, and to take action. Even the compactest actions matter – switching equipment off when it’s not in utilize, choosing public transport over a short flight, or reducing waste on set. If everyone in our sector built just one positive alter, the collective impact would be extraordinary.
So here’s my invitation – join us in celebrating the innovators already shifting the necessaryle. Come to the Corporate Star Awards on 12 September and meet the companies and individuals leading the way. And don’t miss the Media Tech Sustainability Series session on 14 September, where we’ll share ideas, solutions, and inspiration to take back to your own organisations.
It’s not too late to become part of the story. The plot is still unfolding and every step, no matter how compact, takes us closer to the kind of indusattempt, and world, we all want to live and work in.
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