As Global Sustainability Officer at HanesBrands Inc., Teddy Mendoza leads the company’s global sustainability strategy, bringing 24 years of experience in environmental sustainability and social impact within the apparel industry. Teddy is responsible for advancing HanesBrands’ 2030 goals across “People, Planet, and Product,” ensuring sustainability is deeply aligned with business strategy.

Under Teddy’s leadership, HanesBrands achieved its near-term Science-Based Targets seven years ahead of schedule, maintained A- scores in CDP Climate and Water for four consecutive years, along with an improved score in CDP Forests, as well as achieving Zero Waste to Landfill across all global operations.

John Shegerian: Hit the latest Impact Podcast right into your inbox each week. Subscribe by entering your email address at impactpodcast.com to make sure you never miss an interview. This edition of the Impact Podcast is brought to you by ERI. ERI has a mission to protect people, the planet, and your privacy, and is the largest fully integrated IT and electronics asset disposition provider and cybersecurity-focused hardware destruction company in the United States and maybe even the world. For more information on how ERI can help your business properly dispose of outdated electronic hardware devices, please visit eridirect.com. This episode of the Impact Podcast is brought to you by Closed Loop Partners. Closed Loop Partners is a leading circular economy investor in the United States with an extensive network of Fortune 500 corporate investors, family offices, institutional investors, industry experts, and impact partners. Closed Loop’s platform spans the arc of capital from venture capital to private equity, bridging gaps and fostering synergies to scale the circular economy. To find Closed Loop Partners, please go to www.closedlooppartners.com.

John: Welcome to another edition of the Impact Podcast. I’m John Shegerian, and I’m so honored to have with us today Teddy Mendoza. He’s the Global Sustainability Officer and Director of Global Sustainability and EH&S for Hanes Brands. Welcome, Teddy, to the Impact Podcast.

Teddy Mendoza: Thanks for having me here, John, and happy to be here.

John: Yeah, well, we’re happy to have you. We’ve never had you on, we’ve never had Hanes on, and for our listeners and viewers to understand the size and scope of Hanes, not only does Hanes do over $3.5 billion in sales every year, but it also has over 48,000 employees around the world and in over 30 countries. But 9 out of 10 households in America have a Hanes product in their household. And yes, I have a Hanes t-shirt underneath, always my white shirt. I always have my Hanes t-shirts on, and I love your brand, Teddy. So you have a true believer with you today on the show.

Teddy: Well, there you go. As I said, it’s a great company. I think we have a very interesting sustainability story to share with the rest of the world. So, happy to walk your audience through our sustainability journey, share some of those insights and learnings, and also tell a little bit about what’s ahead for us regarding our strategy.

John: We’re going to get to that in a moment, but first, I want to hear the Teddy Mendoza journey and story. Where did you grow up, Teddy, and who inspired you? And how did you get inspired to get on this fascinating and important journey that you’re on?

Teddy: Sure. Well, I’m originally from Honduras, Central America. I grew up there, and that’s actually where I started my career here in Hanes. Hanes has big manufacturing operations down in Honduras, and I was still actually studying my university. I was studying industrial engineering. I’m an industrial engineer. When I started to work for Hanes as the Environmental Health and Safety Coordinator in one of the Hanes manufacturing facilities in Honduras, part of my role was not only health and safety but also environmental. So, how do we make sure to properly recycle our waste? Or how to manage our environmental impacts? Or how to stay in compliance with the environmental regulations back then? So, that was my initial role. You can say that throughout my career in Hanes, almost 24 years, I’ve been involved with sustainability. First in Honduras, and then a few years later, 4 years later, I was relocated to El Salvador, a neighboring country in Central America, and that’s where I spent most of my professional career in Hanes. So, 18 years, that’s how much I lived there in El Salvador, until about 3 years ago, when I relocated here to North Carolina, where the Hanes headquarters offices are.

So, you asked about what inspired me in sustainability. I’ve been doing this most of my professional career, but if I can think of a moment, it was a moment of self-reflection about climate change, and the work that I was doing, and the impact that I could have on the world. Back in 2020, the year of the pandemic, two category-five hurricanes hit Honduras, my country, within a month. There was a lot of devastation, a lot of dead people, a lot of destruction, and part of my role as a sustainability leader was providing support to our communities and employees in need. So, there was such devastation, and that’s the moment where I thought to myself, “Hey, this is a real problem.” So, I was seeing things like extreme weather events hitting my country in a disproportionate way, and it got me thinking about my role as a sustainability leader in Hanes, and the type of impact that I could create, especially on the climate side of things, trying to make that link between that problem that we’re all facing; an existential problem that we’re all facing, and specifically the work that we do within the business context to try to solve that issue. So, that was the moment where I thought, “This is something that we all need to work on, and me personally.”

John: When were you named the Global Sustainability Officer for Hanes? What year, just so I understand?

Teddy: A couple of years ago.

John: When you moved, it was during that period when you moved over to the headquarters?

Teddy: Yes, exactly. That’s when I was promoted to Global Sustainability Officer, after years working in the supply chain of our company in the manufacturing operations of our company.

John: It’s a common theme, Teddy. I’ve seen my good friend Jim Gowan, who used to be, and still is, Chief Supply Chain Officer at Verizon, back in, I think, ’11 or ’12, they took that title because he knew supply chain so well, and also made him Chief Sustainability Officer, which he still is at Verizon. So, he has both dual roles, but he was the first to explain to me why it’s such a natural fit. I never got it, but he explained it to me and educated me on that. I’ve seen that theme throughout this broadcast of the show over the years, as I’ve interviewed more and more leaders like you. That seems to be a common theme. Do you feel that you were duly prepared, because of your supply chain background, to fit in this role and make it really impactful?

Teddy: I would say definitely yes. It makes a lot of sense for us also for one reason. This is one of the particularities of our company. I won’t say it’s a unique model for us, but it’s certainly not very common to see this in our industry. And the fact that we’re not only the brands, we own our brands, Hanes brand. It’s a very well-known brand. A lot of what we call intimate brands here in the U.S., Australia, everywhere else. But the fact that we are also the owners, or we operate our own supply chain. So what does that mean? It’s not the traditional model in our textile industry or the apparel industry, where you will have the brands, but then the production, you will have that outsourced model through supply partners. It is not our case. In our case, HBI, or Hanes, we own and operate our own supply chain, so our own sewing plants and our own textile mills. Almost 75% of all the products that we bring to market are made in facilities or factories that are wholly owned by Hanes. So, for us, supply chain is a very important piece in our business model. In my case, the fact that I’ve worked throughout most of my career in the supply chain means that I’ve been able to see firsthand. How do we produce? How do we make the products? How do we make the fabric? The dyes and chemicals that we use. How do we use energy in our facilities? What are our emissions? What are our impacts? How do we manage wastewater? And a lot of different environmental aspects. So, for me in particular, the fact that I’ve been in supply chain and manufacturing for so many years, I think that has equipped me and prepared me for this role that I currently have in our company.

John: As you and I know, sustainability and Chief Sustainability Officer, but sustainability as a word, Ted, it can be read narrowly or widely. In terms of your mandate, Global Sustainability Officer, Director of Global Sustainability, and EH&S, how wide is your mandate? And were you the first one in this role? Did you come in with that proverbial blank sheet of paper? You got to basically put this all together yourself? Or was there already some path that you were asked to follow, and then build upon? How did that work day one?

Teddy: So, I will definitely have to take you back many years ago.

John: Go ahead, please.

Teddy: We always say this: sustainability is not new to us here at Hanes. And the reason for that is that, going back to this factor that we own, we operate our supply chain. Even when I started to work for Hanes, 24 years ago, I don’t think the concept of sustainability was widely used back then. For us, it was simply just good business practices: trying to save energy, trying to reduce water consumption, trying to do more with less, trying to generate less waste (like common waste to the environment), staying in compliance with regulations, taking care of our people, taking into account human rights aspects, and all that. So, for us, it’s been years and years. We’ve been doing this for decades. We just didn’t call it sustainability back then. It wasn’t until 2020 that we decided to build upon our long history of sustainability practices, and we decided to create this big umbrella that we started to call “sustainability.” This was back in 2020, and we decided, “Hey, this is going to be our sustainability strategy, consisting of three main areas or pillars,” as we call them, “the people pillar, the planet pillar, and the product pillar.” That explains how broad our program is. People pillar: things like human rights, philanthropy, associate development, our own associate or employee development. Planet pillar: aspects like climate, water, resource conservation in general, waste, zero waste to landfill, dyes and chemicals, and so on. And then, the product pillar: the materials that we use: cotton, polyester, packaging materials, circularity, and all that. So that explains how broad our program is.

I cannot give self-credit. I was part of the team that came up with this strategy back then, but my predecessor was the person who led this whole strategy before me. I was part of that team. However, I have to say, and we can get into that in just a couple of minutes, we’re ready to relaunch our strategy. We’ve been through a whole process of reviewing our current strategy, and in just a couple of weeks, we will be announcing to the world what our new strategy is. It’s a refreshed strategy, it’s been updated, modernized. I think it’s well aligned with the current landscape. That’s happening in just a couple of weeks. But yeah, going back to your question, that’s how broad our program is: people, planet, product. And yes, we’re ready to announce a new strategy.

John: I was doing some homework about your tenure there. The Hanes brand has achieved a near-term science-based target 7 years ahead of schedule. I want to ask, under your leadership, have you always been an overachiever, Teddy? 7 years ahead of schedule, that sounds like a magic trick. How did you do that?

Teddy: Yeah, we’re very proud of this achievement. It’s a major milestone in our sustainability strategy. So, we set near-term science-based targets back in 2021. And those targets called for us to reduce our Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 50% by 2030, and our Scope 3 emissions by 27.5%, something like that, by 2030. We set those near-term science-based targets, they were approved by the SBTi, and we began to work on those targets. We have always had this very pragmatic approach to sustainability. For us, it’s setting targets, setting goals, setting internal accountability in our company, and just delivering those results. But I also have to say that the big factor for us achieving those near-term science-based targets has to do with the fact that for us, sustainability is well embedded in our business strategy. It’s well aligned with the fact that we own our supply chain, and that we’re always looking, just as part of what other businesses will do. We’re always looking for opportunities to improve, opportunities to save costs, opportunities to become more efficient. That’s part of our company culture already. So, a few things. On Scope 1 and 2 emissions, very early on in this journey, we came to realize that investing in renewable energy, renewable electricity, was good business for us. Let me give you one example of that. 2 or 3 years ago, we signed a solar power purchase agreement (PPA) in the Dominican Republic. In the Dominican Republic, we operate one of our largest textile facilities in the world for Hanes. It’s called the Dos Rios Textile Plant.

That solar PPA allowed us not only to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, and that’s the single largest contributor to our significant reductions, we were able to reduce, I think, 52,000 tons of CO2. But it also helped us save a lot of money, almost $1.8 million in cost savings. That’s just one example to say that the fact that we own our supply chain, we own our factories, gives us the ability to invest in those operations, in more energy-efficient technology, invest in renewables. We work with our own employees in those facilities to seek energy improvement opportunities. We have a very strong energy-reduction culture. We’re always big supporters of continuous improvement and the Kaizen philosophy. That has also been a cornerstone for us. So, solar power purchase agreements which is tied with our business strategy, trying to seek cost opportunities to reduce costs. Very specific things, for example, how do we improve the way that we transport our products? Shifting to more sustainable modes of transportation, so using less air shipments to shipping more through sea. And, very interestingly, it’s not because me or my team were pushing those initiatives. It’s just part of our business model. It’s just part of our business leaders around the world trying to become more efficient and reduce costs. And we’ve seen the benefits on the sustainability side of all these initiatives. I can keep going, just giving you a lot of examples. Yeah.

John: [inaudible] to some of those examples in a second. Just so I understand, do you produce a sustainability or impact report?

Teddy: Yeah. So what we decided many years ago is that we were going to have a more dynamic tool, and that’s our website, our sustainability website: hbisustains.com. But not only that, that’s where we provide a lot of content regarding transparency of all these efforts. We also use other platforms, transparency platforms like CDP, for example. We’ve been reporting all of our environmental performance on CDP for, I think, more than 10 years. And, by the way, that’s also one of the milestones, or achievements, that we feel very proud of. The latest scores on CDP because of our disclosures. We were given some scores that we’re very happy with: A-minus in both climate and water. We got a B on forest, and we were able to improve our forest scores. So yes, CDP is the platform that we use to provide a lot of this information that I’m explaining here.

John: You talk about two A-minuses and a B. You also went zero waste to landfill across all global operations. That’s no easy trick.

Teddy: Yes, it’s been quite a journey on zero waste to landfill for us.

John: It’s huge.

Teddy: It’s one of our sustainability goals that we also set back in 2020. We said back then, we’re going to achieve zero waste to landfill by 2025, this year. Remember, we own and operate the vast majority of our production facilities in different parts of the world, both in the Western and Eastern Hemispheres. So, over the last 5 years, it has been really hard work from all of our global teams in our manufacturing facilities, just diverting, literally, tons of operational waste from landfills around the world. And now we are on track to achieve zero waste to landfill. So that’s also another big milestone that we’re going to be announcing later this year.

John: And for our listeners and viewers, Teddy just mentioned the website, but we’re sending you to see all the great work Teddy, his team, and colleagues are doing with regards to sustainability at Hanes. It’s hbisustains.com. It’s going to be in the show notes. So, if you’re driving your car or working out at the gym, don’t do anything dangerous. It’s already going to be in the show notes. You don’t have to write it down or text it to yourself or anything else like that. Teddy, you’ve made it very clear that you came out of supply chain and, instead of outsourcing, you’ve turned the typical outsourcing model on its head, and you’re an in-source company. Everything’s 75% in-source. Back in the day, as you said, 25 years ago, sustainability wasn’t a thing. Then, as time has gone on, when people started hearing about sustainability back in 2004 to 2010, if a C-suite member heard about sustainability, they just had this “oh boy” moment. They thought it’s going to cost them money. You just showed us a couple of examples where sustainability at Hanes creates savings and money. Is it because you in-source, and your in-sourcing and sustainability are so interconnected, that one of the new words, sustainability, in the last 5, 6 years has been known to create more resilience for good brands that are leaning into good sustainable practices and doing well? In recent months, maybe the last year, one of the emerging terms is materiality. It seems as though you’re getting an A-plus in materiality because you’ve tied sustainability to your supply chain, which is in-source, which creates even more impactful material benefits right from the get-go. Does that make sense? Am I connecting the dots the right way here?

Teddy: Yes. You got it, John. Really, we have a mantra in our company, and we use it a lot: sustainability doesn’t have to cost more to our consumers. I think that has been our mantra for many years. We’ve been able to demonstrate that sustainability is really a driver of innovation, of employee engagement, of cost savings, but also of risk mitigation.

John: Go back to employee engagement, that’s also for retention and also for attraction of good and better employees, correct?

Teddy: Exactly. I’ve heard many times from our HR teams that that’s one of the first questions that comes up when they’re interviewing potential candidates: “What are you doing in sustainability? I went to your sustainability website, and I saw that you’re doing this or that.” There’s a lot of interest from candidates whenever they’re thinking about coming to work for us over here. That’s definitely a big element for us. Going back to your question, I think that’s a very interesting question because, for us, we keep track of all the cost savings related with sustainability initiatives in our company. So far, we are reporting more than $30 million in cost savings since we started our program back in 2020. Let me break it down for you. Those $31 million that we’re now accounting and reporting in terms of sustainability-related cost savings have to do with, one, the energy usage savings, meaning how do we become more efficient and then being able to use less energy across our global operations. Using less water, that’s also a very important line item there in that accounting. But also, moving to more efficient dyes and chemicals since we operate our textile mills. How do we move to dyes and chemicals that allow us to become more efficient in our production process? That’s also a big component. Then there’s another very interesting line item there on cost savings. It goes back to another of our sustainability goals, which is packaging material reductions.

It’s part of our strategy to reduce our packaging materials to reduce plastics in packaging. Over the last 5 years, we’ve been able to significantly make those reductions in our packaging materials. Of course, there’s a benefit in terms of spending less on materials and all that. For us, it has proven that it’s really an element of cost savings. We’ve been able to tie it nicely with our business strategy and also show that sustainability is actually a value-creation element, as well as the other aspects that I already mentioned: risk mitigation, employee engagement, innovation, and so on.

John: But the materiality is tangible. It’s palpable. That hangs between sustainability and supply chain because you in-source so much. Let’s now go to something you teased a couple of minutes ago. Tell me now, and tell our audience, a little bit about what you’re about to announce in the coming weeks: HBI’s new circularity and materials framework that you’re going to be setting new goals with.

Teddy: As I said just a few seconds ago, over the last few months, we’ve been reviewing our current sustainability strategy consisting of these three pillars: people, planet, product, and a series of ambitious goals within each one of those pillars. My team, and it was a company-wide effort, went through this process that we reviewed. What’s the current landscape right now? Are there any emerging trends, risks, opportunities, regulations that we needed to take into account? We went through that process, and we decided to update our sustainability program. Again, we’re not changing our framework of people, planet, product, and goals within each one of those pillars. But two new components of our program, and we’re about to announce that, so stay tuned on our sustainability website, because that’s happening in the next couple of weeks. One, it has to do with how we define the materials that we use for our products in terms of their environmental and social impacts. What are the sustainability aspects, and how do we define those materials? So far, our current goal has to do with our two main materials. One is cotton, and the second one is polyester. Those are the main materials that we use. Between the two of them, they represent about 96% of all the materials that we use in all of our Hanes products every year.

So the current goal was about using certain origins for the cotton or certain certification progress for both the cotton and the polyester. We thought we needed to modernize that a little bit. So what we’re doing right now is setting a framework. It’s a tiered framework consisting of three categories of materials for all the materials and fibers that we use in our products. So those three tiers consist of basic, better, and best categories, where there’s a very clear definition of the criteria for us to allocate all the fibers in those three different categories. For the best category, for us, it has to do with how we can back up sustainability claims around those fibers. So, let me give you an example: recycled or organic. If there is a certification, if there’s credible research from credible and reputable organizations about the environmental and social impacts of that material, full chain of custody, third-party auditing, then we say those are the best materials that we can use in our products. But then there’s a middle tier, we call it the better tier because it’s better than basic. So a good example of that is U.S.-grown cotton. We feel like U.S.-grown cotton has a really good and cool sustainability story, and we’re big supporters of U.S.-grown cotton because it’s, we believe, one of the most sustainable farming practices in the world. When it comes to cotton, happens here in the U.S., farmers are highly technified. You don’t have labor and human rights risks as you have in other parts of the world.

Also, over the years, you’ve seen really good performance across different sustainability metrics. I think there’s a very good sustainability story behind conventional U.S.-grown cotton. So that’s the middle tier. And then we have another tier called the basics. There’s a lack of information behind the sustainability attributes. We call it basic. So we’re classifying all of our materials within these three tiers, and we’re doing it for our natural fibers, for our synthetic fibers like polyester, that’s an example, and also for man-made cellulosic fibers as well. So just the three tiers and all that. And what we’re saying, in terms of our sustainability goals, is that from here to 2030, all the cotton that we use is going to be either better or best. At least 90% of all the materials that we use are going to be either in the better category or in the best category from here to 2030. We’re going to be very transparent in how we use materials, how we classify those materials, and how we make progress towards those goals. In a nutshell, that’s our new materials framework. There’s a lot of research, there’s a lot of technical data we’re providing, coming from very reputable organizations that are doing a lot of research on all these materials. So that’s our materials framework that we’re going to announce really soon.

John: Are there any other 2030 goals that you want to announce?

Teddy: Well, that’s one of them.

John: Yes, that’s [inaudible].

Teddy: So we’re announcing almost 90% of all the materials that we use are going to be either in the better or best category, 100% of our cotton. But then there’s another new element or component of our sustainability strategy, John, and it has to do with circularity and how we view circularity. How do we view this concept of a circular economy? We noticed that the whole concept of circularity sometimes can be a little bit ambiguous. Sometimes it’s a broad concept, and it all depends who you ask. They will give you a different definition of what circularity means. For some people, it’s more focused around the product, so how do you use recycled materials in your products? Just to give you one example. We did our research, we did our due diligence, and we engaged with different organizations to come up with a definition of what circularity meant for us at HBI. We came to the conclusion that circularity should be seen in a more holistic way. So circularity as a business model containing different aspects of your business that, at the end of the day, help you move away from this linear concept of [crosstalk].

John: [inaudible]. America’s been the land of the big and the free, and we just keep digging landfills. Historically, we’re getting away from that linear economy, moving to the circular economy, and you want to do the same.

Teddy: Yes, exactly. It’s a real problem here in the U.S.. If you look at data from the EPA, textile waste is becoming more and more predominant in our country’s landfills. So it’s a real problem. So for us, our definition, and we’re going to be explaining that in more detail when we announce our new strategy, has to do with this holistic view of circularity. We’re announcing this circularity roadmap, recognizing that we’re not there yet, meaning we already have some really good best practices in our industry, but there’s still a lot of way to go. There’s a lot of room for improvement. And there are a lot of aspirations where we want to be by 2030.

John: That’s the beauty of your job, though, Teddy, circularity and sustainability, there’s no finish line. It’s a journey. And that’s the fun part of it for us because it evolves, right?

Teddy: Exactly. So for us, five different components or stages in this circularity framework, starting with how we design our products; having that quality mindset, that durability mindset, because we think that our products are more sustainable because they’re more durable. So we keep them away from the landfills way longer. We’re going to explain everything that we go through as part of our design process in terms of the rigorous processes that we have in place to ensure the quality and the durability of our products that we bring to market. Then, how do we eliminate waste in our industrial stage? How do we maintain zero waste to landfill, but how do we reduce significantly energy, water, and resources? But also, how do we prevent pre-consumer waste, meaning finished products that we cannot sell? So excess inventory. How do we attack the root causes of pre-consumer waste? That’s going to be part of our model. Then, post-consumer waste, and here’s when we start seeing that aspirational aspect. So, how do we provide options to our consumers once they use our product? The t-shirt that you’re wearing, John. What happens when that t-shirt is worn, and it’s time for you to say goodbye to that t-shirt? What options do you have? There’s a lot of work in this area: take-back programs, take-back schemes. How do we use that fiber to make a new product and avoiding it going into the landfills? It’s hard. It’s not easy at this point. There’s a lot of textile EPR regulations coming into effect in a few years now. So that’s something that we should be thinking about today.

John: You’re getting ahead of it by doing this. What I’ve seen with the big OEMs in the electronic business, because we’re in the recycling of electronic business, we represent most of the OEMs that you and I would know: Samsung, LG, Panasonic, Sony, and all these great brands. When we started servicing them 20, 25 years ago, of course, as we’ve discussed already, sustainability and circularity really weren’t part of our vernacular, as were most of these; EH&S wasn’t part of the vernacular. But now we’re fighting with these OEMs; they even have divisions called Design for Sustainability. Is that becoming part of a thing at Hanes, where now you actually have a team that is thinking about sustainability from the design perspective? And that leads then, of course, to the circular perspective as well?

Teddy: Yeah, so that’s also a very interesting question. What I’m about to say also talks about our approach to sustainability in terms of how we’re structured in our company. I would say we have a small sustainability team, and that’s for a reason. We delegate and assign that accountability not to a central corporate sustainability team, but spread across all the different business functions. So what I’m trying to say here is that we have a design team, we have a product development team, and because of the culture that we’ve been able to build over the years, we believe that our teams have that sustainability mindset as they’re designing products, as they’re developing products, as they’re manufacturing products, as they’re bringing to market the different products. So, going back to your questions, we have our designs and product development teams who are doing all this work. What are those technical specs? How can we ensure that our products last longer, are durable, have high-quality products? We’re using the right materials. We’re using better materials as part of our framework that I just talked about a few seconds ago. How do we use better chemistries, better chemicals in our products, and [inaudible]? So they’re making all these questions and making all these decisions just to ensure that sustainability is embedded from the get-go once we’re designing our products.

John: Got it. So it’s a similar model that you’re following at Hanes to ensure the circularity opportunity exists at Hanes Brands.

Teddy: Yes, and that’s what we’re trying to accomplish with our new circularity framework; just trying to encourage this mindset that circularity should be a broader business model, not just limiting it to a product or a specific practice or a specific material. It’s broader than that. It’s a business model that we’re striving for.

John: For our listeners and viewers who’ve just joined us, we’ve got Teddy Mendoza with us today. He’s the Global Sustainability Officer for Hanes Brands. To find Teddy and his colleagues and all the wonderful and important work they’re doing in sustainability, circularity, and EH&S, please go to www.hbisustains.com. I mentioned the size and scope of your brand and doing business in over 30 countries and billions of dollars in sales, but let me just say it goes way beyond Hanes. You also own Champion Brand, which I grew up with, and Maidenform. Hanes is more than just Hanes. You do business, Teddy, in over 30 countries. Talk a little bit about the regulatory scheme work that exists and the pressure of the patchwork quilt nature of these regulations on different continents without harmonization. Is that going to get better in the future, or is it just something that we all have to suck up and deal with and we can’t really hope for much harmonization in the years to come to make it a little bit easier on people like you and teams like yours to do the important work of sustainability, not always having to be over-reporting in different forms what you’re doing to every different continent around the world?

Teddy: Yeah, so that’s a big challenge for people in my position and sustainability practitioners in different companies around the world. What I’m seeing is that what many companies like HBI and other companies have been doing on a voluntary basis, little by little, is becoming mandated by regulation, by law, not only here in the U.S., but also in different countries around the world. And it’s becoming more and more complex. It’s challenging. I think definitely there’s a need for more harmonization. I’m still not seeing that, unfortunately. So, depending on the different geographies where companies operate, there’s a series of requirements in those regions and geographies. And that’s putting a lot of stress, increased costs for companies that have this global footprint. So I think that’s something that, in our position, in our industry, we need to keep insisting on. How do we harmonize those requirements? And here in the U.S., it’s becoming also very complex, where we’re seeing state-level requirements also, so that adds to the complexity in things like climate disclosure and things like packaging, EPR regulations, and, let alone, different due diligence, human rights reporting also that companies like us have to do. So, more work to be done in trying to encourage global harmonization in a lot of the reporting frameworks.

John: Hanes thought so much of your great work that they moved you, after 18 years of doing work in Central America, to headquarters, and because, as you point out, sustainability is part of the Hanes DNA, I assume that you answer right into the C-suite and that you are invited to every important meeting but sustainability is that important at Hanes Brands.

Teddy: Yeah, let me tell you a little bit about our sustainability governance structure. So oversight of sustainability starts at the very top. Our board have oversight, so we report sustainability performance, risks, and opportunities all the way up to the board. Then, at the executive level, I report directly to our executive vice president of supply chain. There’s what we call a sustainability steering committee, consisting of the CEO of our company and all of his direct reports, so the executive leadership team of this company, where I provide sustainability updates and performance on a quarterly basis. That’s at the executive level of our company. And then, how we cascade and drive performance across the world, we have conformed working groups consisting of the different pillars, and those teams are the ones responsible for cascading and driving all of our sustainability initiatives. So we have a formal sustainability governance structure where we report all the way to the board and the different committees within the board. There’s CEO oversight, there’s executive oversight, and there’s execution across the board in the different countries where we operate.

John: That’s huge. What are some of your most proud of projects initiatives at HBI? You’ve been there doing this since 2020, you set the goals, you’ve been moved up there about 3,4 years. What are some of the projects that you’re absolutely most proud of so far to date?

Teddy: Well, the first one that comes to my mind, while I was living in El Salvador in Central America, this was about 10, maybe 12 years ago, we started this program called Green for Good. We call it that because the way that we set it up was that the wastes that our factories, our facilities, were generating, the recyclable wastes, and the profits coming from selling those wastes to recyclers, we used those profits to fund community impact programs. So we were able to set it up in a way that we were able to have a good budget to invest in our communities, in our philanthropic programs. We started in El Salvador investing a lot in public education, refurbishing public schools there in El Salvador, planting trees, building water wells for underserved communities in El Salvador. Then we started to expand that to countries like Honduras, Dominican Republic, then in Asia, and all this was money coming from recycling waste. So we had a dual benefit of recycling waste, but also helping serve underprivileged communities in different countries where we did business. We still have that program to this day. It’s very much alive in countries like the Dominican Republic, we’re able to implement programs that help with health initiatives, just like a partnership that we have with the Wake Forest Baptist Health Hospital here from Winston-Salem. We’re able, twice a year, to work with doctors from this hospital; they go down twice a year to the Dominican Republic, and they’re able to provide, free of charge, medical surgeries to the population there in the Dominican Republic. So that’s just one example of what we’ve been able to do for the last 12 years. That all started back when I was in El Salvador. [crosstalk].

John: [inaudible]. Now, Teddy, there’s not a day that you and I could turn on any news channel we’d like to watch for news, call it Bloomberg, call it MS, call it CNBC, or the New York Times, or Wall Street Journal, where AI is in a headline somewhere, and robotics. How much is AI and robotics going to help you with, in the weeks ahead, your newly stated 2030 goals for circularity and for sustainability, and materials framework? Is AI and robotics going to help you achieve your goals at Hanes Brands, you and your colleagues, and the important work that you’re doing?

Teddy: Well, I have to say it’s yet to be seen. It’s still a big TBD. Our company is certainly already investing in new technologies, especially in our distribution centers, where there’s a lot of robotics that help us become more efficient from an operational standpoint. But what’s going to happen in the years to come regarding sustainability and the work that we do as sustainability practitioners? I see a lot of opportunities, especially what you were just alluding to earlier, about all the work that we do for reporting purposes. So, is there technology that could make our lives easier? Well, me and my team spend a lot of hours collecting data, reporting data, all year round. So I think there’s a good opportunity also to get some support and some help from AI in that regard.

John: Teddy, we have listeners and viewers around the world that are young, 17 to 25, 17 to 30, pre-graduate, pre-college, post-graduate, and they’re very interested in being you. They’re very interested in being someone like you, who gets to get up every day, go to work for a wonderful brand with great culture, make a living, pay their own bills, but also make an impact every day. You were sharing with me a little bit before a wonderful story about mentoring your own son, obviously, one of the people you love the most on this planet. Share a little bit of some of the advice you gave your son, and what you would share with our young listeners around the world that are looking for a career in sustainability or impact and want to follow in your footsteps to help make the world a better place.

Teddy: Yeah, so I was having this conversation with my son Diego just about 2 days ago. He’s a junior in high school, and he’s already thinking about what his major is going to be or his area of study is going to be when he gets to college, and he’s very much interested in sustainability. He was considering just going straight to something like sustainability studies or something like that. My advice to him was that I feel like he should focus on an area that he’s really passionate about. Yes, you need to be interested in something that you really like, but you need to become really good in that area, in that field. Like, if you’re interested in business, go on and study business. If you’re interested in engineering, go on and learn about that career, gain some experience. If you’re interested in finance, get yourself educated in finance, go on and get a lot of experience in finance. As you become a well-rounded professional subject matter expert in your area of study, in your field, then that’s when I think you can create a lot of impact. You create a lot of impact within your area of expertise. Because I think that, reflecting on my own journey and my own career, I spent 20–24 years in manufacturing, so 24 years on the production floor, in a textile mill, in a sewing facility, in distribution centers. That’s how I learned about this industry. And since I’ve been able to gain all this experience in the technical aspects of my industry, which is the apparel industry, a fascinating industry, I think that’s the reason why I’ve been able, right now, to create an impact and lead our company’s sustainability strategy; because of that experience that I’ve earned over the years.

So that was my advice to my son. It will be fine if somebody is interested in sustainability from the get-go, but my advice would be become a good lawyer, good doctor, good business professional, good journalist, because that’s how you learn how to get things done, that’s how you learn all the intricacies of your profession. There’s a lot of impact that you can create within that area of expertise, in my humble opinion.

John: Teddy, how do you stay [inaudible]? It’s a great opinion, Teddy. What inspires you? I call it one of the greatest fraternities in the world, the chief sustainability officers, the chief impact officers. Do you look in industry for inspiration and ideas, and aspiration? Do you look outside of your industry? Do you look in other places? What inspires you, what continues to keep you inspired, and keep your engines running all the time?

Teddy: John, I am very passionate about this industry. As I said just a few seconds ago, I think that the textile and apparel industry is such a fascinating industry because of the scale that we have as an industry. And what inspires me is precisely that: the possibilities of having the scale that we do. How many people around the world are involved in this industry, starting from the cotton farmers, starting from the people involved in the different stages, the different tiers of our value chain, all the way to our consumers. The whole population in the world, we’re consumers of apparel, if you think about it that way. And then also the fact that I have this privilege of leading our company’s sustainability strategy and the scale that Hanes has, and the footprint that we have around the world, that’s what really keeps me motivated, just the fact that I’m able, at scale, create meaningful impact in the world.

John: I love it. Teddy, you have very big 2030 goals. You and I know sustainability and circularity has no finish line, so what I want to have you do is, in a couple years, come back on the show and report in on how it’s going towards your 2030 goals, and continue to share your journey in circularity and sustainability and EH&S with all our listeners and viewers around the world. For our listeners and viewers to find Teddy and all his wonderful colleagues at Hanes Brands, and the important work they’re doing in sustainability and circularity, and EH&S, please go to www.hbisustains.com. Teddy, thanks for not only spending an hour with us today on the show, but more importantly, thank you for making the world a better place.

Teddy: And thank you, John, for the work that you’re doing. It’s an amazing job promoting sustainability, and thank you to all your listeners and your audience.

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