Developing a Global Scaling Strategy for the Climate Cocktail Club's International Sustainability Network

Published: Tuesday 2 June 2026 - 13:54

The climate and nature crises require urgent action at scale. Organisations like the Climate Cocktail Club, an international community fostering climate action, play a vital role as catalysts of collaboration driving regenerative action. Yet expanding initiatives across borders presents a complex challenge.

This project centred the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGS), in particular SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities; SDG12: Responsible Consumption and Production and SDG 13: Climate Action. Climate action is the core mission of the Climate Cocktail Club. Students supported this global network in scaling their collective action around sustainability action, and behaviour change while maintaining localised impact.

Scaling globally

Over the 2025-2026 academic year, 15 students from the MBA - Hacking For Sustainability MRKT9419 programme at TU Dublin, under the guidance of Dr Ciarán O’Carroll, Lecturer in Enterprise & Sustainability, acted as consultants for the Climate Cocktail Club, supported by TU Dublin’s Sustainability Action Lab programme.

The Executive MBA students addressed Climate Cocktail Club's challenge of scaling its global chapter network by applying academic frameworks to a real-world problem and producing a comprehensive 1,500-page consultancy report and a 10-minute pitch outlining a data-driven strategy for sustainable global expansion.

For students, the collaboration offered hands-on consultancy experience in scaling a global sustainability network, directly applying strategic and analytical skills.

For Climate Cocktail Club, it provided a data-driven, academically rigorous, and actionable strategy to achieve its global expansion goals by the end of 2026.

Dr Ciarán O’Carroll, Lecturer in Enterprise & Sustainability said:

“Being able to work on a real-world, applied project was an extremely valuable experience for the students. Climate Cocktail Club is a fantastic organisation doing important work, and it was a pleasure to collaborate with Tom Popple and his team in exploring opportunities for growth and expansion. The project allowed students to contribute ideas on how the impact of Climate Cocktail Club could be extended across Ireland and internationally, while also giving them first-hand experience of working on a live sustainability challenge.”

SDG Alignment

This initiative strongly aligns with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) including

SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities - Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable

SDG12: Responsible Consumption and Production - Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns

SDG 13: Climate Action- Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts

Each Sustainability Action Lab project is underpinned by:

SDG 4: Quality Education - Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all

SDG 17: Partnership for the Goals - Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development

GreenComp Alignment

The project also aligns with specific competences from the "GreenComp sustainability competency framework including

Embodying Sustainability Values,

Embracing Complexity in Sustainability, and

Acting for Sustainability

Competency Area	Competency	Descriptor
Embodying sustainability values	Valuing sustainability	To reflect on personal values; identify and explain how values vary among people and over time, while critically evaluating how they align with sustainability values.
Embracing complexity in sustainability	Systems thinking	To approach a sustainability problem from all sides; to consider time, space and context in order to understand how elements interact within and between systems.
Acting for sustainability	Collective action	To act for change in collaboration with others

This collaboration was supported by the Societal Engagement and Sustainability Education teams and through the Higher Education Authority’s Strategic Alignment of Teaching and Learning Enhancement (SATLE) fund.