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Sustainability Incubator

Founded in 2012 in Honolulu, we help business shift from exploitation to durable production with dignity.

We measure problems like forced labour in global supply chains by investigating conditions and finding the places and people most affected. We find the shared objectives of people with competing interests and different stakes and reset arrangements to better match their goals and local setting. We take direct action inside the business model on many fronts and shift the system towards stability.

Our clients include ASEAN, Humanity United and the Freedom Fund, Whole Foods, UN-FAO, the Hawaii Tuna Fleet, SYMPAC and Fong Hsiang Enterprises, IOM, governments of Indonesia and the Philippines, Thai Union and many others. We succeed together by reconciling conflicting needs:

Livelihoods and environmental sustainability,

Economic efficiency and worker dignity,

Global markets and local communities,

Producers and buyers have different pressures. Workers and employers have different interests. Governments and industries have different responsibilities. None can sustain their interests without strong working relationships and that is where we come in.

We steward the system.

Here is an example:

2011-14: We estimated the magnitude of illegal fishing worldwide by looking at the illegal content in the top U.S. seafood imports from 10 countries, finding 20-32% on average and 70% for Thai tuna.

2013-16: Contributors said forced labour was routine in Thai seafood production so we invested in co-research with Thai human rights defenders. Together we developed detection methods that we published in Science Advances for others to use and improve on. We used the methods to screen over 500 supply chains and won the Partnership for Freedom grand prize for a digital version.

2015-2024: We trained over 80 seafood suppliers in 14 countries and invested heavily in building capacity for labour oversight. We developed curricula and trained inspectors at 4 ports (Indonesia and the Philippines), and educated six sectors of industry on decent work (Thailand and Indonesia with IOM). We wrote UN guidelines and trained practitioners.

Pandemic: To keep solutions afloat and moving forward, investigated sector-wide rights-washing for Humanity United and the Freedom Fund. We built a tuna vessel database and interviewed workers and producers across Asia. We tracked employers, conditions, earnings and costs, wholesale and consumer prices. The data showed markets were driving forced labour with soaring earnings for middlemen and supermarkets extracted from worker earnings in free-fall.

2025-26: We assisted ASEAN’s 11 member nations to develop regional policy for fishing labour and prepared practical workplace tools for workers and employers to use, like a Crew Rights Handbook and Vessel Owner Code of Conduct for the Hawaii Tuna Fleet, translated to Tagalog, Bahasa, Vietnamese.

These are some ways we help shift labour decisions inside global supply chains away from exploitation and toward durable production with dignity.

We have also built significant capacity for ocean stewardship. We reduced the incidental capture and death of sea birds, turtles, sharks and rays as leader of 30 industry-led Fishery Improvement Projects starting in 2012,. Currently we manage the ocean stewardship investment of SYM PAC International, Fong Hsiang Enterprises and Sprouts Farmers Market.

Resources to Share

When More Means LessDownload

Laboring for lessDownload

Contact us at the.sustainability.incubator@gmail.com. Mahalo.