When Sustainability Is No Longer Just a Slogan: What Taiwan and the Netherlands Can and Cannot Make Happen

Why did we want to host this Taiwan–Netherlands online sustainability gathering?

On the evening of May 28, Sustalent Hub and Slash Studio co-hosted an online gathering on sustainability in Taiwan and the Netherlands.

This time, we invited two speakers: Kang-Kang, who works at Fairphone and often moves between Taiwan and the Netherlands, and Nian-Tong, who currently works at B&S in the Netherlands. The conversation was moderated by Kai from Slash Studio, who helped connect the different threads throughout the session.

At first, we wanted to talk about “the differences between sustainability in Taiwan and the Netherlands.”

The Netherlands often gives people the impression of being more progressive, with more mature systems in place. Whether it is circular economy, product design, supply chain management, or the increasingly dense sustainability regulations coming from the EU in recent years, Dutch and European companies seem to have started facing these issues earlier.

But we were also curious: in an environment like this, does that mean sustainability is really easier to push forward?

In reality, things may not be that simple. Even in places where the system is relatively mature, companies may still develop more sustainable products, only to discontinue them because the market does not respond. Inside companies, many decisions still return to very practical questions: What impact will this have on operations? Will it make money? Will it affect the market, contracts, or product timelines?

So in this gathering, we wanted to start from everyday life and workplace experiences in Taiwan and the Netherlands, then move into industry and systems, and explore how sustainability is understood, pushed forward, and blocked in different cultural and business contexts.

Sustainability is our license to operate

Nian-Tong shared a phrase that is often used internally at B&S:

Sustainability is our license to operate.

This line also became one of the key threads running through the whole event.

Sustainability is no longer just about corporate image or an extra bonus point. It has become a basic condition for whether a company can continue operating and whether its products can enter the market.

B&S is a Dutch trading company with products across food, alcohol, beauty, fast-moving consumer goods, and electronics. Because of this, the company comes into contact with many different EU sustainability regulations. Regulations such as the EUDR, battery regulation, forced labor-related requirements, packaging regulation, and others may directly affect whether products can be sold into the EU market.

But Nian-Tong also mentioned that the hardest part for a sustainability team is not necessarily understanding the regulations. The harder part is translating those regulations into language that people inside the company can understand.

You cannot simply tell sales or procurement: “We need to comply with this regulation.” You need to help them understand: if we do not act, the product may not be able to enter the market; if we do not respond to customer requirements, it may affect orders; if we are not prepared, there may be future contract or penalty risks.

This is also what many sustainability professionals do every day.

It is not enough to understand sustainability. You also need to translate sustainability into reasons that make others willing to take action.

Starting from everyday life

Although the theme of the event was sustainability work, we did not begin directly with regulations or corporate strategy.

The two speakers first shared their experiences of living in Taiwan and the Netherlands.

Nian-Tong mentioned that after moving to the Netherlands, she clearly felt how much green space there was, and how nature seemed to be part of everyday life. Kang-Kang had a similar observation: in the Netherlands, it is easy to see grass, parks, and trees when going outside. But in Taiwan, if you want to access green space, you often need to intentionally go to a park, passing through traffic and gray urban spaces along the way.

This part was actually very interesting.

When we talk about sustainability, we do not always need to begin with regulations, corporate policies, or carbon emissions. Sometimes, how a place lives, moves, and relates to nature also affects how people understand sustainability.

When nature appears more easily in daily life, people’s relationship with the environment may also be different. This made us feel from the start that the sustainability differences between Taiwan and the Netherlands are not only about systems or policies, but also about lived experience.

Supply chain sustainability cannot be driven by the sustainability team alone

When talking about supply chains, both speakers mentioned a very practical point: if the sustainability team approaches suppliers alone, the impact is usually limited.

Nian-Tong shared that suppliers often care most about procurement. So the first step is actually to help procurement understand why the issue matters, and then allow procurement to bring sustainability requirements into supplier communication.

Kang-Kang also shared Fairphone’s approach. Because Fairphone is not a large company, its influence over suppliers may not be stronger than that of major brands. So they try to include impact requirements in the product requirements from the very beginning of product development, making sustainability part of the product specifications rather than a condition added at the end.

This part should feel very familiar to sustainability professionals in Taiwan.

Many things do not move forward not necessarily because people oppose sustainability, but because sustainability has not yet entered the other person’s workflow, KPIs, or decision-making logic.

If sustainability is only a task for the sustainability department, it can easily become “one more thing to do.” But if it is built into procurement, product development, supplier management, or business decisions from the start, the way it is implemented becomes completely different.

Which sustainability projects get pushed forward, and which get rejected?

One very practical question we originally wanted to discuss in this event was: why does a sustainability project get pushed forward, and why does it get rejected?

This question actually ran through the whole conversation.

From B&S’s perspective, when regulations, customer requirements, contract risks, or market access conditions are already clear, sustainability can more easily enter business decisions. It is no longer just “something we should do.” If it is not done, it may directly affect products, orders, and operations.

But Kang-Kang also mentioned that even at a company like Fairphone, where sustainability is already at the core of the business, sustainability projects do not always pass smoothly.

Some product or design concepts may be meaningful from a sustainability perspective. But if the cost is too high, if users do not respond, or if the product timeline cannot handle it, they may still not be adopted in the end.

This is also a very real side of sustainability work.

Sustainability work is not only about proposing a “better option.” It is also about helping that option enter product, supply chain, business, and market decisions. This requires not only ideals, but also an understanding of business realities.

How can we communicate when we encounter resistance?

Toward the end of the event, Kai brought the conversation back to one question: when we encounter resistance while pushing sustainability forward, what can we do?

Nian-Tong’s answer was: do not assume from the beginning that the other person will oppose you.

She shared that when she worked on climate risk assessment in the past, she was initially worried that people would not understand it. But instead of starting with a lot of technical terms, she reframed the issue into questions closer to operations, such as: “If the warehouse is flooded, will that affect operations?” Once framed this way, people actually started discussing it.

Kang-Kang also mentioned that we need to think from the other person’s KPIs and work goals.

She once encountered resistance from PMs when trying to push for early testing of sustainable materials. Later, she reframed it from the PM’s perspective: if testing is not done early, it may affect the product timeline later, and the product may also miss the opportunity to highlight this feature.

When sustainability is translated into the risks, costs, timelines, or product outcomes that the other person cares about, communication has a better chance of moving forward.

This was also an important takeaway from the whole event: sustainability work cannot only speak from its own ideals. It also needs to speak in a way that others can understand and genuinely care about.

Sustainability professionals are often doing “translation” work

Although this Taiwan–Netherlands sustainability gathering lasted just over an hour, the content was very substantial.

We talked about green spaces in the Netherlands, lunch culture, workplace communication, EU regulations, supply chain management, double materiality, and Fairphone’s product experiments. We also saw how sustainability professionals in different organizations often play the role of “translator.”

They translate regulations into business language, sustainability goals into product specifications, risks into reasons that different departments are willing to act on, and large sustainability issues into everyday work.

These things may not sound glamorous, but they are a very real part of sustainability work.

Thank you to everyone who joined us online

Finally, thank you to Slash Studio for making this event happen with us, and thank you to Nian-Tong and Kang-Kang for such honest and grounded sharing.

Thank you as well to every partner who joined us online that evening. Although this was an online gathering, we could feel from the speaker sharing and Q&A that these topics really resonated with everyone.

In the future, Sustalent Hub will continue to use different formats to explore the real issues that sustainability professionals encounter in their day-to-day work.