TR.BIZ: 7.29.2025

Your early-mid-week check-in ✨

Welcome to The Trend Report: Business Edition™, a midweek look at top stories, trends, and more of what’s happening online and off by Kyle of The Trend Report™. Today, we’re discussing AI ads in Vogue, a series of offbeat spokespersons for brands, and a curious way cancellations are trending again.

🏛️ Politicultural: Sustainability is “unsustainable”

Sustainability under Trump 2.0 has resulted in a worldwide shift away from the planet, which is concerning given constant natural disasters. While I’ve tried to map the state of the movement, the business world has moved on: Shell and other oil/energy brands just announced putting net zero pursuits “on pause”, Google saw emissions go up 51% due to AI efforts (while lying about emissions for the past decade), and SHEIN saw a near 10% jump in emissions in the last year (which doesn’t even touch fast fashion at large’s massive waste and microplastics issue). This shows how businessess didn’t care about the planet or degrowth at all — especially as regulatory entities are similarly loosening slack, either to stay alive or because they too don’t care: the well regarded Science-Based Targets initiative loosened its standards to help companies “better reach” their goals as B Corp faces scrutiny for its greenwashy ways as the European Commission waters down climate targets — and even considers killing them. Sustainability has become unsustainable for all, it seems.

• What can you do about this? If you care about the planet on a company-level or on an individual level, now would be the time to double down on your efforts and be as vocal as possible about the moving of goalposts. The problem is there’s never been real scrutiny or real stakes on the issue: companies and nations have always self-regulated and, as we see with trends and times changing, it all loosens because they never cared. There is a huge opportunity for leadership, to stand up for something. Just ask Dr. Bronner!

👠 Aesthetically Pleasing: AI ads come to Vogue