JOHN SHEGERIAN: Welcome back to Green is Good, and today is a very special edition of Green is Good. We’ve got the co-founders of Conscious Company Magazine, Meghan French Dunbar and Maren Keeley on with us. Welcome, both of you, to Green is Good.
MEGHAN FRENCH DUNBAR: Thank you so much for having us on today.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Meghan and Maren, before we get talking about your great new magazine, and for our listeners out there, you can go to consciouscompanymagazine.com to look at their magazine online, to subscribe to it, or to buy single or multiple issues. Before we get talking about Conscious Company Magazine, talk a little bit about both of your journeys. How did both of you get involved with the green and sustainability industry at first?
MEGHAN FRENCH DUNBAR: My foray actually started multiple years ago. I was living in Costa Rica for a long time, and actually saw first-hand how development really impacted these beautiful, pristine, gorgeous areas and decided when I return from Costa Rica to go straight to work for the Environmental Defense Fund, where I spent five glorious years. Then I decided to further my education from there and did my MBA with a focus on sustainability at Presidio Graduate School. I received that in 2012, and for the last two years have been playing in the magazine space, the publishing world. In April of 2014, Maren and I started down this journey of doing Conscious Company Magazine.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: And Maren?
MAREN KEELEY: My story is actually quite similar. After undergrad, I looked around and I felt like there were so many problems that we were facing in the world today. I actually felt a responsibility to be part of the solution. Treading lightly has always been something that I’ve been concerned with. I did some traveling, and I actually brought William McDonough’s book Cradle to Cradle with me. It was the only book that I carried. Reading that, I was just really inspired to try and figure out my way of having a positive impact in the world. I was a chef for about 15 years, and then I met Meghan when we worked together for Slow Money. We stayed in touch. We were great friends, and we kept having this conversation. I’m also working on getting my MBA in sustainable systems from Pinchot University up in Seattle. I’m going to Bainbridge Graduate Institute, a program that they have. Meghan and I just kept talking, and we have a lot of the same shared interests. Once we stumbled on this idea, we just felt we couldn’t not do it.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Which leads me to the next question. Explain the “we couldn’t not do it.” Explain the journey leading up to the founding and the inspiration to the founding of Conscious Company Magazine.
MAREN KEELEY: Oh, goodness. I’ll give you the shortened version of that story. As I said, Meghan and I had been colleagues and co-workers, and we stayed in touch when our career paths took us in different directions. Last winter, in late February or early March, we were out enjoying some lovely pizza and wine together. I asked her, “Meg, there’s no magazine about sustainable business. Isn’t that kind of unbelievable?” She literally didn’t believe me. We went home that night and did a bunch of research and realized that there wasn’t a significant player in this space, at least not in the print world as well. We kept talking about this idea, and we just decided that this was something that the world really needed right now. We decided that it had to be print, as a way of really expanding the conversation around sustainability and the power of business to be a force for good in the world.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: How hard was it to go from that epiphany and that brainstorming together to actually getting the magazine off the ground? Explain that journey, both the joy of it, but also the torture of it.
MEGHAN FRENCH DUNBAR: I think we can really emphasize the torture aspect of it. We had this idea, and we actually incorporated in April 2014, and then seeking funding and knocked on a lot of doors of friends and family. We weren’t getting quite the traction that we needed, so in August of 2014 we launched a Kickstarter campaign and attempted to raise $50,000 of seed money. We raised $42,000 and came up $8,000 short. As many people might know, if you don’t reach your goal on Kickstarter, you end up losing all of the funds that you raised, so we had to literally watch $42,000 go down the drain. At the time, it was devastating, but it actually really provided that gut check moment that I feel like all entrepreneurs need, where Maren and I had to sit down and say, “Do we really want to do this? Do we really want to keep moving forward? Is there a way to move forward? Can we figure this out?” We asked ourselves the question, a year down the road, if we choose to abandon this, if we choose to quit now, how are we going to feel about this? Are we always going to wonder? Both of us, I think we took a week to kind of digest, and we came back and decided hell yes, let’s go for this. We launched another crowdfunding campaign, this time on Indiegogo. Between that and a couple of fantastically generous family members, we were able to get the seed funding. Around the end of September was when we figured out that we were a go, and we just busted it and got this first issue to press on December 15th and got it to market. Fortunately enough, with that first issue, we managed to get national distribution through every Whole Foods market in the nation right out of the gate. We did catch a huge lucky break with that. Leading up until that point, it was hard, but it was the way it was supposed to turn out.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: So many people say print is dead, and you went counter to that. You decided to launch a print publication. I’m holding it, and I wish this was one of our videotaped radio shows because I’m holding your beautiful magazine. For our listeners out there again, it’s called Conscious Company Magazine. You can go to consciouscompanymagazine.com and subscribe. I would do that right away, or you can buy some of these issues that I’m holding in my hand. We have John Mackey, one of the rock stars of sustainability, the CEO of Whole Foods, on the cover. It’s a gorgeous magazine visually. You’ve got unbelievable advertisers in here. You’ve got tons of beautiful content, important content. Print is dead? How did you ladies prove that print is not dead?
MEGHAN FRENCH DUNBAR: We obviously had to start from the premise that we don’t believe print is dead, and we did a ton of research around this when we were first starting out. One area that we found was that the Pew Center actually came out with a report saying that the reading behavior of people aged 16-29 is still actually anchored in print publication. We looked at it, and the largest area of growth within print publications is actually niche publications. There might be print that is dying, but this area where we’re playing in is definitely expanding. We operated from this premise of exactly what you just said, People still want a tangible product. People want to hold a product in their hand. They want to interact with it. The beauty of the photos and what we’re putting together is best held. It is best to have the product in your hand to actually look at it. The decision behind the print was based on that, but then we also wanted to have a medium where we could really expand the conversation around sustainability. Although we do have a digital component, the print magazine itself is the part that’s really catching fire and taking off right now. With being in every Whole Foods in the nation, when the shoppers of Whole Foods go through that line, every single time they go through the line, they see our magazine. It actually provides an access point, and it almost sparks an interest. People who might not be that interested in sustainability could potentially pick up a copy. It was twofold, really, just expanding the conversation and then also from a deeply held belief that print is not dead and people still want to interact with their products.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: You’ve proven it, because this magazine is just gorgeous, both visually and content-wise and my congratulations to both of you because you’ve created something that’s really a work of art, both from a business perspective and also from a relevancy perspective, so congrats.
MEGHAN FRENCH DUNBAR: Thank you.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Yeah, you both deserve that. Talk about some of the trends that you’re seeing. Now that you’re in the middle and you started this journey and you’re having conversations with thought leaders, sustainability leaders and professionals from so many directions, and you have a newfound visibility because of your position and because of your platform. What trends have you noticed that you’ve discovered along the way during this journey?
MEGHAN FRENCH DUNBAR: Let me start off by saying perhaps the most exciting thing about our business and what we do is that we do get to have these conversations with so many remarkable people, whether it is someone who’s an expert in their field or just an extremely successful entrepreneur or an entrepreneur who’s just getting their idea off the ground. To be able to have the spectrum of conversations that we have with these people is truly a dream come true, and it’s a big part of what fuels us to keep going. Across the board, though, a lot of the individuals that we’ve spoken to have talked about transparency really being on the rise, and that is true because of really the internet and the speed of information, as well as just reviews and how people, anyone, really, with a connection to the internet, has access to a lot of information about any company or business or person. A lot of the entrepreneurs have spoken about how they feel compelled by this being the only way that they can do business, not including incorporating their values into the way they operate their company, not driving it with mission and purpose being the source of fuel and inspiration. They just couldn’t imagine running their company any other way. There are lots of tangible business benefits that come from leading an organization in this way, employee retention and happiness, and just your consumers also really respond positively. I’d say across the board, those have been some of the more common threads in our interviews.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Got it. From a sustainability perspective, what steps are both of you taking to walk the walk instead of just talk the talk, in terms of your business and your personal lives?
MAREN KEELEY: I’ll speak to our business, and maybe I’ll let Meghan chime in about our personal lives. One of the things that we grapple with a lot in choosing to go forward with making this a print publication was the pushback that we got from a lot of our colleagues who were working in the sustainability industry, saying, “How can you be producing a publication that is about sustainability, and at the same time, be using a resource like paper in order to do so?” We thought that, as Meghan mentioned, it was so important for us to be able to expand the conversation, that print was not something we could compromise on, but in order to make it something that didn’t come with negative repercussions and impact, we specifically sought out a printer and are working with two certifications backing our print publication. One is actually really interesting. It’s a Boulder-based company called PrintReleaf. They actually plant trees in order to neutralize our paper consumption. In the future, we actually hope to be able to plant more trees than we use, so we can actually have a positive impact. In the way that we’re setting up our company, we’re also trying to be extremely sustainable and just conscientious, really thinking about the future of our business, how we build in wonderful benefits for employees that we don’t even actually have yet, and then also in other little ways. We bank with a local credit union, things like that. So we’re really actually truly trying to walk the walk as much as possible, support small, independent businesses, local businesses, that sort of thing in large ways and in small ways.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: For our listeners who just joined us, we have the co-founders of Conscious Company Magazine, Meghan French Dunbar and Maren Keeley, on with us right now. If you want to buy an issue of their great magazine, you can go to consciouscompanymagazine.com. Subscribe, buy an issue. I am a subscriber and I have an issue right in my hands. It is a gorgeous magazine chockfull of critical and important magazine if you want to be part of the sustainability journey, whether you’re just a consumer or you want to be a thought leader or professional or an eco-preneur one day. Conscious Company Magazine, subscribe, buy it now. Let me go back, ladies, to the magazine. Favorite part to date of running the magazine, one thing.
MEGHAN FRENCH DUNBAR: One thing. I think it’s really truly been the feedback that we’ve gotten from this first issue. I don’t know what we were expecting, but the amount of e-mails and phone calls that we get from people, we’ve literally had people say this is a masterpiece, it changed my life, it changed the way my son views business. We’re getting these on a daily basis, and it is the fuel to our fire. It is blowing us away, and we are sincerely touched by every single person who’s reached out to us.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Similar to that, the feedback has been wonderful. When you were envisioning this, who was your target market? Was it millennials? Because I’m 52 years old, and I’m certainly not a millennial, but I’m in love with your magazine and everything you’re doing. Who was your target market, and how did that turn out when you started getting the feedback?
MAREN KEELEY: We really had three target market segments, one being sustainability professionals and those working in the sustainability field, the second being conscious consumers, people who really want to support mission-driven businesses that might not know exactly how, and then third is really that millennial generation that you identified. They are looking for purpose and passion and values in the businesses that they support, and basically anyone who shares the values that we do. In terms of the people who’ve reached out to us, we’ve really heard a lot from that second segment, the conscious consumers, people who just want to do better with their purchases and they’re excited to have a guide to help show them which businesses are truly doing this in a fantastic way.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: If sustainability was a football game, you have the Tom Brady of sustainability on the cover of your first issue. You have the CEO of Whole Foods, John Mackey. Where do you go from here? What’s your next dream person on some of your upcoming covers of your magazines?
MEGHAN FRENCH DUNBAR: That’s a hard one for us to answer because it’s a long list. We’re thrilled to say that we have Chip Conley, the founder of Joie de Vivre hotels, gracing the cover of our second issue. This is going to come out in April. In the future, we would love to have Elon Musk or Richard Branson, Lisa Jackson, Jessica Alba, Tony Hsieh, Al Gore is a huge source of inspiration for us. It’s a lengthy list, but there are some key names that we’d love to see.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Go get them. If you had John Mackey and you’ve got Chip coming on, you’ll get them. They’re all going to be coming. I think they’re going to be asking you to come on the cover of the magazine. Who do you want to interview? If you could sit down with someone to interview and ask all the questions that have been burning on your mind, who would you love to interview for one of your upcoming issues?
MAREN KEELEY: I think we’d love to get our hands on Steve Ells of Chipotle. We are fascinated by what they’re doing right now. He’s a hot topic, and we’d love to get his insights and figure out where they’re going.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: He’s local. There’s no reason that you ladies can’t get him. He’s a fellow Coloradan, right?
MAREN KEELEY: Yes, he is. We’re trying. We’re going to get him.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Steve, if you’re listening now, you’ve got to call these ladies and get in the magazine, Conscious Company Magazine. What’s inspiring you right now? We’re down to the last couple of minutes. What keeps you both going every day, and what’s a constant source of inspiration to both of you?
MAREN KEELEY: I’ll jump in with my answer and then turn it over to Meghan. Personally, she, as my business partner, has been a huge source of inspiration. Getting to work with someone who I respect and admire has been a dream. I guess out in the world, I feel like we’re at this really interesting moment in history, and we’re on the verge of a really cataclysmic shift because we need to be, but more and more people are seeing sustainability as something that we really need to focus on, and at the same time, social justice issues are rising to the forefront of so many conversations. It is my hope for our future that we, as a global community these days, which I believe we are, just really start to consider more and more how we can figure out ways of doing things in a better sense, in a way that doesn’t come with negative consequences or repercussions, and in a way that truly makes this world a better place.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: I’m going to have both of you, Meghan and Maren, come back in the near future, because we’ve got to wrap up right now, unfortunately. Again, thank you both for Conscious Company Magazine. For our listeners out there, go to consciouscompanymagazine.com. You can buy a single issue or you can subscribe. Thank you both, Maren and Meghan, for being visionary eco-preneurs who are inspiring us all. You both are truly living proof that green is good.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Welcome back to Green is Good. We’re so honored to have with us back on Green is Good General Motors. We’ve got Rob Threlkeld. He’s the Global Manager of Renewable Energy at GM. Welcome to Green is Good, Rob.
ROB THRELKELD: Thank you, John. I appreciate being on the show and given a chance to highlight and demonstrate what we’re doing in the area of green and renewable energy.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: GM has been a regular on Green is Good, and we’re so honored and thrilled to have you back on again. Your first turn on Green is Good, and you’ve got a great story. But before we get talking about all the great work you’re doing at GM, please tell us more about the Rob Threlkeld journey in sustainability and your young epiphanies of greenness and how you even started getting interested in the whole sustainability revolution, Rob.
ROB THRELKELD: Certainly. It goes back, and it made my parents’ life very easy. When I chose my career back in second grade, when I learned a little bit about acid rain and its impact on the potential for the maple syrup production and the maple trees in the Northeast, and I was a huge fan of maple syrup back in the day, that put my focus on what I can do to improve the environment and reduce fossil fuel emissions and have a lot of interest in the environmental area and pursue that all the way through Purdue University, with a degree in civil engineering with an environmental strength. At that point, I joined General Motors and worked my way into the area where I am today, as the Global Manager of Renewable Energy and driving our corporate renewable goals and reducing our carbon footprint, especially with those projects. It’s been a great journey going back into the early years of my life, and it’s been one that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed and done a lot to help improve the area around sustainability. It’s been my heart and my interest going forward, and will continue to do that and instill that in my children and future generations as well.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: It’s so funny. When I read about you, Rob, before we did this show and about how you love instilling this in your children, how they’ve already taken the mantle and how they’re running with it because of your great influence, and not only the talk that you talk, but the walk that you walk. Why I’m so excited about this show today with you is my father was one of the first people who brought over windmills and windmill technology to the United States and put up windmill farms. You don’t realize it when you’re a kid. You’re just thinking, that’s my great dad and he’s doing great things. But the impression that leaves on you to go do other things and take that mantle, so to me, wind power and the great stuff that you’re doing with regards to GM’s renewable energy is so exciting to me. To be talking about wind today and the car industry is really fascinating. I don’t want to take any more time, but I just wanted you to know that this is a real great story, and we’re so honored to have you on today. For our listeners out there who want to learn more about everything GM is doing in green, and they’re doing a lot, it’s gmsustainability.com. I’m on the website now. It’s a gorgeous website, and it’s chockfull of information of all the things that GM is doing in sustainability, way beyond wind and energy power, which we’re going to be talking about right now. Let’s talk a little bit about what you’re doing and how this journey started with regards to energy and wind and how you got focused on this specific topic and when did you launch the first wind-powered plant for GM?
ROB THRELKELD: Actually, a lot of our initial activities, especially with onsite generation, whether it be owned by a third party or through General Motors, from a renewable energy standpoint, and we looked at the only way to really grow and drive a significant component and portion of our savings is to go offsite and look at procuring wind and having it transmitted to our facilities. As announced last week, we did our first large-scale wind PPA for our Mexican facilities. There will be 34 megawatts, supplying the bulk of that to our Toluca foundry there, casting engines and transmission facility, with the remaining portion of it going to our other facilities in Silao and Ramos. In all, it will be about a third of our power electricity used in Mexico will come from wind power. We are actively pursuing and looking at opportunities globally for where we can source large-scale offsite renewables, including wind.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: First of all, two questions. One, how hard was it to choose where to do your first wind project, Mexico versus U.S. versus one of your other plants? How hard was that decision?
ROB THRELKELD: You really look at the markets. Are they regulated or deregulated? You can easily start to exclude the regulated markets, which are many of the countries that we operate in. So we had to look at the deregulated markets, which really focused us back to the United States and Mexico. Mexico has got a great policy in place that really made the flexibility and risk mitigation when you look at any one manufacturing facility going down for facility modifications and where does that power go, the wind is still generating the flexibility to move power between facilities. We really look at it from a corporate risk perspective, as to how do we mitigate our risk as our manufacturing processes change over time when you’re entering into a long-term commitment. The deals for wind are 10-20 years. Our Mexico one is 12 years. It’s a long-term commitment, and you’ve got to look at how you mitigate that risk, especially with any plant.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: When it comes down to technologies, the evolution of wind technology, how hard was it to choose the right kind of wind technology in terms of what you put up there versus what’s out there in the marketplace and where the market is going in terms of evolving wind technologies?
ROB THRELKELD: The wind technology in the industry has really changed in the last 10 years. I would say it’s becoming more of a steady state. The cost of wind has come down dramatically in the last 10 years. Now, you’ve got different scalable wind turbines that are 1.5 megawatts, 2.5 megawatts, anywhere in between. We rely on the developer to match the best technology that’s available, as they’re the ones that are at risk and ensure that they’re generating, as we’ve got some components in our contract to ensure that they’re providing us the power, as well, to match the wind profile for that area for what is the best turbine technology and height that they need to generate the maximum efficiency from the wind turbines themselves.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Rob, what I always want to know about these kind of projects is what kind of anticipated cost savings do you have? This leads me to the bigger macro question, which I love when leaders like you, the Global Manager for Renewable Energy of GM, comes on the show. A lot of people, when I ask them, “How come your company is not being greener? How come you’re not being more environmentally responsible?” The old answer used to be it’s more expensive. It costs too much money. Can you sort of turn that on its head when you explain the cost savings you’re going to have from this project? Is being green really more expensive than not being green?
ROB THRELKELD: That’s one of my pet peeves, and you picked right on it. In fact, they view renewables as a cost versus a cost savings. In many areas, wind is much more economical. You look at Texas and some of those other locations, Kansas, wind is cheaper than fossil fuel-based generation. We’re really trying to educate the public that these technologies are becoming more mainstream. The cost has come down significantly. Working through barriers, now, the biggest issue we’re trying to drive to 100 percent green are the regulations that are in place in regulated markets, even in deregulated markets. Part of the reason why we’ve joined the Buyers’ Principles, signed onto that with the World Wildlife Federation and World Resources Institute, a consortium of large companies that are interested in procuring wind and other renewables on a large-scale basis, how do we work that collaboratively, working with utilities and with regulators to make that work? Because it is cost effective. In Mexico, we’re saving in excess of roughly $2 million a year in our electricity costs by sourcing wind power, so there’s true savings associated with these projects.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: $2 million a year. When you’re now thinking and you’re explaining to your colleagues the savings that’s involved, and of course the great visibility that it also brings to your company, because your consumers do care about how you do your business, and they’d love to hear these stories. What are you thinking about, now, in terms of wind for operations in other countries? What’s your current thought process on that right now, Rob?
ROB THRELKELD: I mentioned the regulated versus deregulated markets, and we work down that path. In deregulated, it’s much easier to look at how you can source power to your facilities. That kind of brings us back into what other opportunities do we have in Mexico? What opportunities do we have here in the U.S. and deregulated markets, such as in Ohio or Texas? Those are some locations we’re definitely going to be looking at opportunities. Globally, when you get outside of North America, there’s good opportunities in Europe and then in Brazil. We really kind of focus it down that path of what are the deregulated markets. Those usually are the easiest barriers to work through. It’s still going to be complicated to work through those opportunities. This isn’t something you do overnight; it’s a six- to eight-month process when you look at negotiating and signing a PPA and building it out. Even the Mexican wind farm won’t come on until the first quarter of 2016. It’s being currently built now.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Got it. For our listeners who just joined us around the United States and around the world on the iHeart Media Network, we’ve got Rob Threlkeld. He’s the Global Manager of Renewable Energy at General Motors. To learn more about everything that’s going green at GM, go to gmsustainability.com. It’s a great website. Your position is Global Manager of Renewable Energy, so it’s not just about wind. You have a very diversified portfolio on solar, landfill, gas, waste energy. Explain about how diversified it is and what’s the benefits to having such a diversified portfolio, in terms of powering all your plants, Rob?
ROB THRELKELD: I look at it similar to our diversified propulsion technology portfolio, from your standard combustion engine to plug-in hybrids to fuel cells. A similar strategy when it comes to procuring renewable energy. As you mentioned, we’ve got a large portfolio now. With the signing of the wind PPA, we’ve exceeded our 2020 manufacturing commitment of 125 megawatts. We’ve got a significant component of landfill gas generation at our Orion and Fort Wayne facilities. We’ve got roughly 46 megawatts of solar on our facilities globally, primarily that being in Europe, the United States, and then Korea at our Changwon facility. We recently just started up our large-scale 2.2-megawatt solar radar at our Lordstown facility in Ohio. That’s literally located right on the Ohio Turnpike. You won’t miss it when you’re driving by on the Ohio Turnpike. It’s probably the largest solar array that you’ll see right on an interstate, as visible as it is.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: With your title, you’re the Global Manager of Renewable Energy, safe to say you have a lot of job security because GM is committed to using renewable energy around the world in all their plants.
ROB THRELKELD: Yeah, it’s definitely safe to say. There’s a lot of focus from our top leadership on driving sustainability into our manufacturing processes and renewable energy is definitely visible and one of the significant cost savings opportunities, as mentioned. It’s a savings, so there’s a lot of push from our top leadership to look at opportunities where we can reduce our costs to fossil fuel-based generation.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: If we take it out of the GM spectrum for a second and just for our listener out there who’s listening to all the interesting things you’re doing and GM is doing with regards to solar, landfill, gas, waste energy and, of course, now wind, for people who own homes out there, how do they make the right choice, Rob? Now, you, as a consumer, as a homeowner, with a family, how do you make the right choice about how to save energy in your home with regards to what kind of energy savings should they look for? Should they put solar on now? Is that the right way to go? Are there wind options for homes? Or is there cost savings options in terms of the new technologies like NEST and the other type of things that they should be doing to save energy in their homes?
ROB THRELKELD: A big thing, a lot of the utilities are having a strong push on energy efficiency within homes. Solar is one of the components of that as well. I’m in the DT territory. I called up the local utility, they came out and did an energy efficiency assessment of my house, gave me some ideas of what I can do to improve the energy efficiency of my home, gave me some new light bulbs that are much more energy efficient than the current incandescent lights. I’ve now switched over to all LED lights. They did a thorough analysis of what I do. On a quarterly basis, they send a report out of your energy consumption in your home compared to a lot of your neighbors. You can see if you’re using a lot more energy. At least, for me, I keep a high focus to that, and then work with my kids to make sure they turn the lights off every night, which they seem to have a hard time doing.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: All the regular blocking and tackling stuff that we all go through as fathers and parents and things of that such. Something I was reading about GM prior to us doing the show together, you’re a co-founding member of the Business Renewable Center. I’ve never heard of that. Can you explain to our listeners what the Business Renewable Center is, and what you’re doing as a co-founding member?
ROB THRELKELD: Yeah, it is, as you mentioned, a new entity that’s been formed. It’s a consortium of companies that are there to share how we walk the process to do PPAs and share that internally with the organizations. So, how we did a PPA in Mexico, we kind of walk through the steps, the barriers, how did we overcome those barriers, what are some of the best practices or best contract terms or things that we thought that were worthy for us to look at ways that other companies can share that. It’s a collaborative kind of consortium to drive scale into renewable energy. It’s led by the Rocky Mountain Institute, which is one of the NGOs that has been focused. It’s kind of an offshoot of the Buyers’ Principles. The Buyers’ Principles for Renewable Energy with the World Wildlife Federation, we’re a resource institute. Our consortium of the large companies driving the applications that are needed to instill large-scale renewable energy, the Business Renewable Center is the offshoot of that, to really make that work and a mechanism to how PPAs and other large-scale renewables can be sourced.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Besides just the bottom line cost savings, which you’ve made the great case, $2 million a year just on the wind project, when it comes to renewable energy, what are the other tangible and intangible benefits that GM and your facilities get from powering your sites using renewable energy sources?
ROB THRELKELD: Boy, you’ve pegged on the great question of how I work through finance on doing renewable energy projects. It really starts off on the financial side of what are we looking at from an electric savings? What are the incentives associated with it? What are we going to do with renewable energy credits? Everything financially that sort of drives the business case to say why it makes sense for us to do it, and then you come in with the intangible benefits of how it’s going to improve our image from a brand image standpoint, when you look at corporate green images, local contacts as we work with the universities and schools of what we’re doing to support energy efficiency and renewable energy, all the way down into the Lordstown project. You’re on the Ohio Turnpike. When you look at it from a marketing standpoint and cost per impression, there’s over 100 million people, not vehicles, but people that have the visible view of that plant when you drive by. It’s very visible, and you’re going to see a solar array there, and it kind of gives them the idea of what is General Motors doing when it comes to a green brand image, and it’s not just one project. They then go to gmsustainability.com and say, “They built that project. Whoa, there’s another 125 megawatts of renewables on their facilities.” It kind of goes all the way around from financials to the intangible benefits of how it supports the marketing and the vision and values of the company.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: The wind project that we talked about in Mexico is going to help GM meet its goal of 125 megawatts of renewable energy by 2020. But Rob, you are a young guy and you’ve got a lot of energy and vision here. What are some of your goals for GM in renewables for the next few years ahead?
ROB THRELKELD: It’s continually to drive to the point where we’ve got a renewable project or component to each of our manufacturing facilities, whether it’s 100 percent or whether it’s a component of 100 percent. It’s going to be working through those regulated barriers in countries where it’s more difficult to do renewable energy, but my vision and goal would be to try to drive this company as green as possible and to source as much green energy as we can. I’d love to get to 100 percent, but there’s a lot of barriers and obstacles that we would have to work through to do that. I’m a risk-taking person. To ensure that we’ve got the necessary risks also mitigated, but to take those forward to leadership to make sure that they understand there’s a risk, but here are the risk mitigated barriers that we’re going to do as we do these long-term commitments at our facilities.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Rob, final thoughts. We have a lot of young listeners in the United States and actually around the world. How can they be the next Rob? Give one or two thoughts on how the next generation should go about taking the mantle from you.
ROB THRELKELD: It’s really taking it from what you do at home, recycling. We recycle more than what we actually put out in the trash, and my kids recognize that. What can you do at home? What can you do at work or at school to improve the environment? It’s taking that can and putting it in a recycling container versus putting it in the trash. Turn off the lights in the classroom or turn off the lights at home as you leave the office or leave the school or leave home. Those are the little things you can do, and all those little things add up if each person does that one by one. That multiplies to millions quickly.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Rob, thanks for coming on the show. We’re going to want you to come back. We’re going to want you to talk more about all the renewable energy projects you’re doing around the world. To learn more about GM and the great green things they’re doing in sustainability, it’s gmsustainability.com. Thank you, Rob, for being an inspirational renewable energy rock star. You are truly living proof that green is good.
Scott was introduced to green industry working as a summer intern managing asbestos abatement projects in public schools. Most recently, though, he is serving as Senior Vice President and Director of Corporate Sustainability for Comerica, Inc. As Director of Comerica’s sustainability program, Scott leads the bank’s enterprise-wide strategy and commitment to conduct business and operations in a way that enhances the well-being of people and the communities in which Comerica does business. Scott works with colleagues throughout the bank to develop and execute programs and initiatives that eliminate waste, capture operational efficiencies, improve environmental performance and demonstrate the value of socially and environmentally responsible behavior.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Welcome to another edition of Green is Good, and we’re so honored to have with us today Scott Beckerman. He’s the Senior Vice President and Director of Corporate Sustainability at Comerica Bank. Welcome to Green is Good, Scott.
SCOTT BECKERMAN: Thank you very much. Pleasure to be here.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Scott, before we get talking about Comerica and the iconic brand that you represent, talk a little bit about the Scott Beckerman story and your journey in sustainability and your journey in life.
SCOTT BECKERMAN: As a kid growing up in the Detroit area, I thought I was going to be an automotive engineer, but during one of the recessions, I ended up taking a summer job managing asbestos abatement projects in public schools. That really opened my eyes to the effects of environmental issues. I also had an opportunity to travel to the Far East in college with the men’s glee club from the University of Michigan. I got to see some beautiful countries, but some countries that had some horrible pollution challenges. When I got back, I changed my career path a little bit away from the automotive engineering, and ended up getting my Master’s degree in Environmental and Water Resources Engineering. It ultimately led to a career in consulting and an opportunity to join the Comerica team a few years back.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Interesting. For our listeners out there who maybe haven’t heard of Comerica, can you share a little bit about the great brand that you represent, Comerica?
SCOTT BECKERMAN: Sure. Comerica is a super regional bank. We’re headquartered in Dallas, Texas, with our core operations in five states: Michigan, Texas, California, Florida and Arizona. Our roots go back to 1849, as Detroit Savings Fund. I think on the first day we took in $41 of deposits, so we’ve obviously grown a bit over the years. We now have about $69 billion in assets, and we’re the 11th largest commercial and industrial lender in the United States.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Wow. For our listeners out there that would like to learn more about Comerica, you can go to www.comerica.com. To learn more about what we’re going to be talking about with Scott today, you can go to www.comerica.com/sustainability. Talk a little bit about Comerica’s approach to sustainability. Let’s hear just the macro overview, Scott, before we get into more specific questions.
SCOTT BECKERMAN: Sure. The way Comerica approaches sustainability, it’s a fairly standard definition, but it’s really a way of doing business that meets the needs of today in a way that doesn’t compromise the ability of future generations to meet their needs. We really want to take a holistic look at corporate sustainability. We have to consider not only the environmental issues, but the social, governance, and economic issues too. It’s really what our stakeholders are expecting from us. There’s a wide range of topics, whether it’s our carbon footprint or cyber security and data protection, diversity, all of those things are really interrelated in our approach to sustainable business.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Like you said, when it’s holistic, it means nowadays social and environmental all wrapped up in one.
SCOTT BECKERMAN: Right. If you look at the issues closely, it’s hard to really separate them. They have an impact on each other, and it’s hard to have vibrant communities if we’re not taking care of both the social and environmental needs.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Scott, when I started the show back in 2009, a lot of big brands didn’t even have Directors of Corporate Sustainability or Chief Sustainability Officers. Now that seems to be a growing title and a growing position, and a lot of students that I meet or speak with along the way now are aiming for those positions, the position that you have. Can you share a little bit about Comerica’s journey? When did they start taking their first steps towards sustainability, and when did they actually create the role that you now have of Director of Corporate Sustainability?
SCOTT BECKERMAN: For us, we’ve been doing various elements of sustainability for decades. We’ve had a comprehensive approach to diversity. We were doing really great things in credit risk management and looking at environmental issues from that perspective, but what we didn’t have was really that integrated approach. Our program was launched in 2008, after a 2007 shareholder resolution that called on the bank to prepare a sustainability report and start taking more of an integrated approach to sustainability. That opened up our eyes to the expectations of our stakeholders and the opportunity that we saw by taking that integrated approach to sustainability.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Gotcha. That report, now, I’m looking right here on your website. Again, for our listeners out there, it’s Comerica.com/sustainability. Those reports are published right on your website very transparently.
SCOTT BECKERMAN: Yes, that’s correct. That’s a big part of what we were doing and the shift that we wanted to make from knowing that we were doing all these great things, but actually getting out and talking about them and demonstrating some of the things that we’re doing.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: From those first overt steps that we’re making, when did they actually create the office of Director of Corporate Sustainability?
SCOTT BECKERMAN: They came along in 2008. We took a strategic approach and wanted to craft this into our business strategy. We recognized that if we didn’t approach sustainability as a way to create value, then it was just another corporate initiative that was liable to go by the wayside when people quit paying attention to it. We really looked at it from a value creation approach and are focused on knowledge and innovation, cost and risk reduction, opportunities and revenues, and really ways to enhance our reputation and brand.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Fast forward to where we are today. It’s 2015. You’ve got 6, 7, 8 years in the rearview mirror now. Talk a little bit about Comerica’s environmental footprint. What does it look like, and how do you go about managing it? What’s your approach to managing Comerica’s environmental footprint?
SCOTT BECKERMAN: The approach that we take may not sound super exciting, but it’s really based on incremental progress and it’s based on making progress each year in a broad variety of areas. As the years have rolled on, that’s really begun to add up for us in really meaningful ways. We operate about 500 buildings across the country, so our footprint environmentally is really related to the energy usage of our offices and data centers and bank branches. We set our first greenhouse gas reduction goal of 15 percent by 2014, and we were able to get past that by achieving 19 percent reduction by the end of 2013. So, we were able to meet our own goal, which prompts us to set more goals. This year, we’re releasing a new goal, not only on greenhouse gas emissions, but we’re also adding water reduction, waste reduction and paper usage reduction components to our goals as well.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: You have these 500 buildings. I’m on your sustainability report now. I’m looking at all these different subsectors. You have paper consumption. How do you go about reducing your paper consumption? What’s your approach to that?
SCOTT BECKERMAN: Paper, for us, is one of our largest purchases in consumable products, so we’re always looking for ways to reduce paper. Sometimes it’s really easy. Sometimes it’s as simple as pausing to ask yourself, “Do I really need to print that? Do I really need to print that in color? Can I take my laptop or my mobile device with me to a meeting instead of printing out a deck of slides to distribute to a bunch of folks?” Simple steps like that can help move the needle for us. We’ve also really looked at redesigning our processes and operations, specifically to avoid printing and consuming paper. It’s helped us be a more efficient company as well, so it’s a combination of business efficiency and environmental wins on the paper front.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Before we get talking to the other subsectors that you report on and do a lot of great work in, let’s just start with one macro question, Scott, which is to me the ongoing fallacy that I love when experts like you and leaders like you come on and disarm this. A lot of people always say when I ask them why aren’t you greener, why aren’t you doing things more environmentally friendly or responsibly? The stock answer back in the day, 8-9 years ago, is that it’s more expensive. Have you proven at Comerica that it’s not more expensive and you actually save money because of all your great environmental practices?
SCOTT BECKERMAN: Absolutely. Again, back to our value creation approach. One of our tenets is around cost and risk reduction. By reducing the amount of energy that we consume, the amount of paper that we purchase, all of those things are directly helping the bottom line. The thought that being environmentally friendly or being green always costs more is, I think, a thing of the past in large amounts.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: For our viewers and listeners who just joined us, we’ve got Scott Beckerman on with us. He’s the Senior Vice President and Director of Corporate Sustainability from Comerica. To learn more about Comerica’s sustainability program, you can go to www.comerica.com/sustainability. Scott, talk a little bit about the other subsectors. There’s lots of great work you’re doing, and I want to highlight some of these things, a little bit about solid waste. How much solid waste do you divert? You’ve got 500 buildings that you’re managing and that you’re in across this great country of ours. How do you handle solid waste, and how successful have you been in that division?
SCOTT BECKERMAN: Solid waste is interesting. We’re not a manufacturing company, so we don’t have an opportunity to easily go to zero waste by using our manufacturing processes or things like that. Again, back to paper. We’re making sure that we’re capturing and recycling and securely destroying all of our paper. One of our most successful community events that we host has been our shred days. That’s where we invite the public in to bring in their documents for secure destruction. We work with Iron Mountain, who is onsite, and shreds and recycles all of their documents in a way that helps really prevent identity theft and helps secure information. We’ve even ended up with a couple of Guinness Book of World Records from our shred day events. Last year in Dallas, we collected, securely destroyed and recycled over 400,000 pounds of paper in a single day, which is about enough to run a 2.5-inch ribbon of paper around the entire planet. A lot of paper that was recycled, but also we ask our participants to come in and make a donation or contribute to one of the local food banks, so we’re able to really help people, the planet and identity protection as well. It’s kind of a triple bottom line success story for us.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That’s amazing. We talked about paper a little bit, other solid waste, a little bit about greenhouse gas. Talk a little bit about some of the other very important things you’re doing. How about water use in your locations?
SCOTT BECKERMAN: Water is certainly a growing issue and a growing risk in many communities. With our footprint particularly in places like Texas and California, which have been really drought stricken states recently, that’s become a real priority for us. That’s an example of where we’ve turned to technology to help us reduce our water consumption. We’ve piloted a number of irrigation projects to reduce the amount of water that we’re using for irrigation. Those have seen dramatic results. A few of our pilots that we did saw reduction of water usage of over 40%, so some really amazing strides that can be made with water. Again, that’s water that we’re not buying. It’s water that’s not ending up as run-off and getting into local streams and the like, so it’s a win not only for us, but also for the communities that we operate in.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: For our listeners out there and some truth in advertising, my company is a client of Comerica, a very happy client of Comerica for now eight years and growing. We work with your environmental services division, obviously, and your banking sector. Can you talk a little bit about some of the work you do, both in community and economic development loan dollars you put out, but also in environmental services and how Comerica is really fueling the green economy, both in local communities that you work in, economic development and also environmental services?
SCOTT BECKERMAN: Certainly, we’re committed to supporting the communities where we operate. They’re the communities where we live and work and play, and we want those to be vibrant and successful communities. One of the ways that we do that, as you mentioned, is our support of what we call environmentally beneficial lending. Right now, we have roughly $1 billion in loan commitments out to a broad range of companies, from recyclers to renewable energy, from brownfield redevelopments to green buildings, as well as all of the brain power, the consulting and engineering work that goes into making those projects happen. It’s really been a matter for us not having specific green loans or products that we offer, but having the people on staff that understand these industries and really can be that trusted advisor to our customers and provide the financing and financial services that are needed to meet their needs as they try to green up their business, or develop a green product or service.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Scott, obviously you’ve had massive success at Comerica in doing what you do, but nothing is done alone. We know that sustainability and social responsibility is a journey. How many people are in your department working with you as Director of Corporate Sustainability at Comerica?
SCOTT BECKERMAN: My department alone is very small. Myself and my colleague Kristen make up the Corporate Sustainability department, but we have a fantastic group of people throughout the corporation. We have executives from all our business lines participating in our sustainability council, and that’s the group where we really drive the action year over year through the various business units, whether it’s our lending groups, human resources, marketing, our real estate groups, our risk management groups. All of them have different components of our sustainability program. Really, that’s helped us be successful. By keeping our department small, we really needed to and ended up being successful in embedding sustainability into how we do our jobs on a daily basis.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: So you’ve made it very cultural and DNA, and you’ve built up a large group of sustainability champions within Comerica.
SCOTT BECKERMAN: That’s right. There’s always more work to be done. That’s certainly one of our challenges. You don’t really win at sustainability, but as you make progress, really, we all win.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Talk a little bit about other challenges. What other challenges did you face when you were kicking this off and driving this through and making sustainability cultural and DNA at Comerica Bank?
SCOTT BECKERMAN: There are always challenges. I call them opportunities in disguise. The sustainability journey metaphor is maybe a little old and overused, but I like Ray Anderson and his analogy of all of us climbing Mount Sustainability. Along the way, there’s going to be some hiccups and some bumps. One of the ones, as an example, that we did, we had a mix-up in procuring our paper. A classic case of jumbled acronyms led us to buying paper that really wasn’t our desired standard for sustainably sourced forest products. We recognized that as an opportunity. We went and worked with our procurement staff, not only to train them on paper purchases, but the importance of green certifications, and in particularly, robust third-party certifications. Those are the kinds of things that, when we hit these bumps in the road, they often signal to us an opportunity to either improve communications or improve a process within the bank to improve our sustainability performance.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Now that we’re in 2015, give me one or two things that you’ve got your eye on that you want to try to accomplish in the next 12-24 months.
SCOTT BECKERMAN: As I mentioned, we’ll be this year releasing some new goals, stretching out to 2020 to help guide us in further reducing our footprint. As we look at our impact on the economy and our impact on the environment, we have to look beyond ourselves. We look to our customers and to our supply chain, so it’s making sure that on the supply side, we are working with companies to ensure that they are performing in a way that meets our expectations. We’re scoring requests for proposals based on sustainability and diversity questions. We’re scoring our existing suppliers based on what they’re doing to be more sustainable and, more importantly, what they’re doing to help us be more sustainable. We think it’s a great way to engage the supply chain and really deepen a lot of relationships by having a positive impact on the environment.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: For our young people out there that are listening both in the United States and around the world, what are some last thoughts and some final thoughts of advice you can give them? People want to be the next Scott Beckerman.
SCOTT BECKERMAN: Sure. Focus in on some core technical skills, the skills around engineering, technology, science, mix in the business, add the sustainability and social elements and really become that internal change agent within a corporation to end up being that Sustainability Director.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Thank you, Scott Beckerman. He’s the Senior Vice President and Director of Corporate Sustainability for Comerica. Learn more about Comerica at www.comerica.com/sustainability. Thank you, Scott, for being a sustainability superstar. You are truly living proof that green is good.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Welcome back to Green is Good. We’ve got Tomas Halberstad with us today. He’s the Editor-in-Chief of Phonebloks and he’s in Sweden. Welcome to green is Good, Tomas.
TOMAS HALBERSTAD: Thank you very much.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Tomas, before we start talking about Phonebloks, can you share a little bit about your own history and personal life that led up to you joining the Phonebloks team?
TOMAS HALBERSTAD: Absolutely. Well, I grew up here in Sweden. I’m 35 years old now so I’ve done a few things before getting involved in Phonebloks. Tried to be a rock star. That didn’t work out and then I got interested in philosophy and started studying philosophy here in Sweden. I did it for about six years and when my studies came to an end, I got interested in doing something for the environment and I was interested in sustainability and corporate social responsibility and that kind of stuff and I just saw the Phonebloks video online in October 2013 and the concept just blew me away so I just emailed the guys, there were two at the time, and told them what a great concept it was and shared a bit of my background with them in sustainability and corporate social responsibility studies and asked if there was anything I could do to help and then a few emails back and forth, I became Editor-in-Chief. The idea was for me to research and write on the company organization blog but since there are only four of us now, we all basically do everything so it has been not too much research and writing but more of everything else.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Are all of you in Sweden from Phonebloks?
TOMAS HALBERSTAD: No, we have a guy, Wade, he’s in America. I believe he’s on the move to San Francisco and we have the two founding members. The founding member, Dave, who came up with the concept, and then we have Gavin. Both of them are in Holland.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Got it. For our listeners out there who want to follow along, they can go to www.phonebloks.com. Tomas, share with our listeners what is Phonebloks. Please start from the beginning and explain to our whole listener audience what’s going on with Phonebloks.
TOMAS HALBERSTAD: So Phonebloks is a concept for a modular mobile phone. It’s also an initiative to get this phone built by anyone. Phonebloks is not a mobile phone manufacturer. We are, as I said, an idea and the idea is to help the existing mobile phone industry to accelerate their development of modular mobile phones because we believe that modular electronics are key to reducing electronic waste.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: And so you say it’s an idea. I’m on your website now. I know you have a video on it. How did this movement and this idea start though? Who came up with the idea? When did they come up with the idea and how has it evolved since its genesis?
TOMAS HALBERSTAD: In early 2013 or maybe late 2012, Dave, our founder, was thinking about graduation projects for his studies at the Design Academy in Eindhoven in Holland and he’s very interested in technology but he’s also very interested in the environment so he thought he’s design something that could incorporate both environmentalism and technology so he started doing research on waste and quickly came up on electronic waste and how growing these waste streams are and how hazardous they are to the land that they’re put in and he saw that mobile phones were one of the quickest growing waste streams because we buy so many and we buy them so often so he thought well maybe I can do something with this so he came up with the concept of Phonebloks. It’s a modular phone where you can replace parts of the phone without replacing the whole phone so he decided to do a video. He likes images and he likes videos so he decided to do a video and he put it up on the web thinking it might get a couple of thousand views and a couple of thousand likes and 24 hours later, there were a million views and it all went bananas.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: I’ve seen the video. I’ve seen it on your website and I’ve seen it on YouTube. How many views has that video had right now? For our listeners out there, again, go to their great website, www.phonebloks.com and you too can watch this video. Today, Tomas, how many YouTube views have been at this video?
TOMAS HALBERSTAD: I think we’re closing in on 25 million views on that video and we have produced a couple more videos since then. We like to recapitulate our progress by sharing videos with our community so they can see what has been done because we want the industry to develop this in a transparent way so we also want to be as transparent as possible, showing our community everything we do.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: So the video started the fire. You followed it up with other videos. You have now a big social following, you know, Facebook and Twitter, hundreds of thousands of people following you socially?
TOMAS HALBERSTAD: Yeah, we’re closing in on half-a-million social followers.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: My gosh! And so what is the ultimate goal here? What is the vision of Phonebloks?
TOMAS HALBERSTAD: The simple goal is to get a modular phone that reduces e-waste made. We want the phone to be developed open. We want it to be developed in an environmentally friendly way, in a sustainable way and we think that those goals are completely doable. Then, of course, there’s the dream of making a phone that’s not only for the entire world and worth keeping, but also recyclable or biodegradable but that’s stuff that lies ahead.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: How is it going so far? I saw that you guys had a Thunderclap campaign. What is a Thunderclap campaign, by the way?
TOMAS HALBERSTAD: It’s like a crowdfunding site but instead of donating money, you donate your social reach. So say you’ve got a hundred followers on Twitter, you go into Thunderclap, you see a campaign that you like. Then you just click the Twitter button and you automatically add your one hundred followers and if enough people do that, the project gets an incredible social reach so at a given point in time, the campaign stops and the message is sent out to everyone who’s been donating, so to speak, to the campaign. When we did this, we had a million people donate their social reach on Thunderclap and we had a social reach of something like 380 million people so this message just went worldwide within the hour. It was amazing.
JOHN SHEGERIAN. That is. When did you do that campaign?
TOMAS HALBERSTAD: I don’t have the exact date but I think it was somewhere in the end of October 2013.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Was that one of the most successful Thunderclap campaigns they’ve ever had?
TOMAS HALBERSTAD: Yeah it was, especially in terms of clicks from the people who got the campaign. They’ve had pretty successful campaigns before, but where the message that goes out is just read. We had a very high percentage of people who actually clicked on the link and got to our website. It crashed, actually.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: So now, how is it going to achieve the vision? What’s the steps now? Are you guys building a prototype and how do you take steps toward your vision and how much has been done and how much is left to do now?
TOMAS HALBERSTAD: When we released the video, Motorola, who was then owned by Google, got very interested because they, in fact, had had a modular mobile phone in development for about a year so when they saw our idea for a phone they said, ‘Well, we have something similar here,’ so they met with us and asked if we could do anything for them and if they could do anything for us so we got them to agree to develop their phone out in the open and we got them to let us give insight into their project and also insight through our community. We partnered a little bit with Motorola but they got sold by Google to Lenovo but Google ended up keeping the modular mobile phone so we’re now partners with Google so they’re going to develop their mobile phone but we hope that Google is one of many partners to come and we hope that Project Aura, which is the name of their modular mobile phone, is one of many modular mobile phones to come and that we can influence, hopefully.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: For our listeners that just joined us, we’ve got Tomas Halberstad on with us. He’s the Editor-in-Chief of Phonebloks and to look up their website, it’s www.phonebloks.com. Wait a second. So, Google and Motorola are your partners now?
TOMAS HALBERSTAD: Yeah, they’re our partners. We have insights into their project. We give input through our community. One of the major things about Phonebloks is our community. We decided from pretty early on that we wanted to get as much input from people out there as possible so on our website, we put a big forum on and on that forum we have something like sixteen thousand, seventeen thousand members who are now discussing problems and possibilities of a modular mobile phone and I’m guessing Google, or then Motorola, saw this as a big focus group who could really give them some great pointers, while doing it transparently.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Right. And have they helped you technologically? Has Google been able to help you technologically advance the Phoneblok phone or everybody keeps their own IP to themselves even though you’re partners?
TOMAS HALBERSTAD: No. As I said in the beginning, Phonebloks is not a mobile phone manufacturer. We will never be. We will never build our own phone so they don’t have to share technology with us. We just give them input on how we’d like to get things done. They listen and then they present the next advance of their project and see if it’s something we like. I mean, they don’t have to do what we say or do what we tell them to do or anything like that but yeah.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: With regards to our listeners out there – We’ve got listeners, not only across the United States but across the world because after it airs over the Clear Channel network on the iHeart platform, it also uploads on to the iTunes network so we have so many great listeners around the world. How can our listeners, if they’re excited about sustainability and your process at Phonebloks, how can they get involved and feel like they’re part of the process and part of the solution?
TOMAS HALBERSTAD: Well, the main thing is our forum, which is located on discuss,phonebloks.com. That’s about the only way to get involved right now and on the forum, literally every subject on a modular mobile phone is discussed and everyone has input and every day, we go through the forum and we comment on the forum and we take ideas from it and we lift it up to our social channels and we put it forward to our following on, let’s say, Facebook and let them have a say on if this idea is good or if it’s not just to get ideas out there. If you want to get your idea out there and if you’re interested in this, you should sign up for our forum and if you’re good, you’re going to get heard.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Are you the moderator of the forum? Is that how it goes? Or are you the curator of it?
TOMAS HALBERSTAD: The core team of Phonebloks is four people. All four people are moderators of this forum and then we have a couple of other guys helping out as well so every idea gets looked through, absolutely.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Got it. If people want to donate, can they also donate to help the movement move forward?
TOMAS HALBERSTAD: Everyone who works at Phonebloks does so voluntarily. We don’t get paid anything so we have a donation possibility on our website to keep the technical side of things going, especially our servers and maybe our software that we use. [inaudible, 53:50]
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Everybody, Tomas, is doing this as a mission. No one’s even getting paid?
TOMAS HALBERSTAD: Yeah, we just want to realize this idea.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Got it. So tell me, where are you? We’re down to the last five minutes or so. Where are you in the process? If this launched in 2013, and now we know, in your generation, Tomas, the digital natives of the world who really grew up with technology and really embraced and know how to use it well, how far along are you in this development? Is it going to be another year, another two years for this vision to get realized? Where are you guys in the development of the Phoneblok phone?
TOMAS HALBERSTAD: Google has stated that they’re going to realize their Project Aura in the first quarter of 2015 and I have no more info on it then that. I’m guessing that the United States is the first market for it. That’s just a guess. Then naturally, we have our ear to the ground as far as other modular phones coming along and there’s a company in China called ZTE, who has the Project Merbius on the way. We don’t know when that will be released. We have seen both Sony and Nokia working on modular phones so we think this is going to be pretty big and believe it’s going to take a couple of years. As I said, Motorola had developed their idea for a year before contacting us, before we went out with our idea and we kind of went the other way around by releasing our idea first instead of having a concept or researching material or anything like that. We had to get this idea out there. I believe that realistically, you will have a global market of modular mobile phone maybe in three years time. I’m doing a bit of guessing but I would say three years time.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Which one will be most like the phone that you show in the video? Is it going to be Google’s phone or the group in China that’s making a phone? Are the big electronics manufacturers in Korea taking the space, the Samsungs and the LGs of the world? What is the phone going to look like? If you were to guess today and you’ve seen things behind the scenes, is it going to look like the phones that we use today or is it going to be something totally different?
TOMAS HALBERSTAD: I think it’s going to look like the cell phones that we use. I don’t think people want that much change. I think for it to work, it has to look like the cell phones we use now. It has to work like them or better. It has to have an equivalent battery life or better. It has to have an equivalent camera or better because I don’t think we will be able to trade down so I think it will look pretty much the same. As far as which phone that will look like the Phoneblok concept, I don’t really have an idea. I don’t think Google’s or the other ones look like the design that we put out but maybe our design wasn’t the primary thing. When they did Phonebloks, it was the idea. I’m pretty sure if you just sat down and designed up a dream phone, it would look different but the functionality is first hand here.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: When you get feedback from all these different people, is it from people from around the world or is it primarily from people from Silicon Valley or the United States or are you getting feedback from the best and the brightest from all corners of the earth?
TOMAS HALBERSTAD: Yeah, the last one. It’s incredible the impact that this idea has had on a global scale. We’re getting emails and comments from literally everywhere, from people and from places you wouldn’t even think would be interested in this. I’m blown away by this. That’s why I emailed Phonebloks and said it’s an amazing idea, how can I help. We’re listening to people all over the globe.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: We’re down to the last minute, Tomas. Once this idea gets realized and that’s become part of our societies around the world, what’s the next thing for you and the team? What are you guys going to work on, another project like this or are you going to go into private business or what’s the next step for you guys?
TOMAS HALBERSTAD: We get this question a lot and as far as Phonebloks is concerned, we’re very much focused just on the mobile phone right now. We are super aware of the availability of the project. We’re very aware of the modularity of a lot of products and a lot of design. I just saw a very interesting concept on a smart watch designed on modularity but for us, the only thing that matters for us right now is to get this phone done and when it’s done, I don’t think we will move on to anything different. Maybe we will expand Phonebloks to other industries towards reducing electronic waste.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Well, perfect, and you guys can come back and share that story with us. For our listeners out there, it’s www.phonebloks.com. Thank you Tomas Halberstad for all you’ve done for sustainability. You’re a technological visionary and truly living proof that green is good.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Welcome back to Green is Good and we’re so honored to bring you this special edition of Green is Good this morning. We have Jeffrey and Meika Hollender on with us today. Welcome to Green is Good!
MEIKA HOLLENDER: Thank you for having us.
JEFFREY HOLLENDER: Yeah, we’re thrilled to be here.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Hey, well Jeffrey, you know, you’ve been on the show already twice before and we’re so thankful for you coming back but for bringing your daughter and starting a brand new business as a father daughter team, this is the first time we’ve ever done this on Green is Good and the first time we’ve ever hosted a father daughter duo, ecopreneur duo, who have started such a great business project. Before we get to talking about your new business, which is called Sustain Condoms, and for those of you out there who want to follow along, you can go to www.sustaincondoms.com. Jeffrey and Meika, please talk about how this whole thing started and your backgrounds a little bit. Of course, Jeffrey, you started the amazing iconic brand, Seventh Generation, but talk a little bit the journey and Meika, please, you also join in and share your journey leading up to this founding of this company.
JEFFREY HOLLENDER: Sure! You know, it actually goes back about twenty years ago so when I was in the early days of starting Seventh Generation, the company you know well, the household and personal products company. You have to remember twenty years ago we were still in the midst of the AIDS crisis, not that it’s gone away but it certainly was a much bigger concern twenty years ago than it is today, and I had this idea for a product that I called Rainforest Rubbers and the idea was to go into the Amazon Basin and harvest latex from wild rubber trees and the only place in the world that rubber trees actually grow wild is in the Amazon and so we would actually employ the indigenous rubber tappers to make condoms from wild rubber trees and be in a business that actually controlled population but back then, more importantly, helped control the AIDS crisis.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Meika, tell me a little bit about yourself and how you came together with your dad to create this new company.
MEIKA HOLLENDER: Sure, so obviously I grew up completely immersed in Seventh Generation and mission driven businesses and that’s kind of what I always knew. I kind of went my own way for a few years after graduating college, worked more in traditional corporate America and really realized that that wasn’t for me. I was so unfamiliar with that world and I didn’t feel like I was able to make a direct impact every day so that kind of led me to go back to school, get my MBA, and while I was back in school, Jeffrey was talking more and more about starting Sustain, or at the time it was still called Rainforest Rubbers, which we changed, and it was just the perfect timing for me. I didn’t necessarily always think of myself as somebody who would start a business but I had a partner who was willing to take me on with quite a bit of background in this space so it was kind of just this perfect situation where I was in school and getting ready to graduate and Jeffrey asked me to join him in founding Sustain.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That is just great and let me just say this. Let me give a shout-out to my alma mater. I know Meika, you graduated from New York University Stern School of Business where I took many courses and I graduated from Stern many, many more years ago than you did, of course, and Jeffrey is a teacher there in Corporate Sustainability and Social Entrepreneurship at New York University so a shout-out to a school that we all have ties to and now that you’ve come together, share a little bit about the Sustain story. There’s all these iconic brands that we’ve all heard about since we’ve been around and they’ve been around since all three of us have been around and our listeners. What makes Sustain different from all of them?
JEFFREY HOLLENDER: Sure. I’ll start and then Meika can compliment what I have to say. In this space of condoms, and condoms are a product that we don’t talk about that much but a product that is just critically important for all of the positive impacts that it has on our society, both from a health perspective, but helping families control and plan the size of their family and the number of children they have has all kinds of positive economic consequences for those families, not just health consequences. So we decided that we were going to create the first green condom and so what’s unique about Sustain is, first of all, it’s a Certified Fair Trade condom, which means that the rubber tappers are paid a significantly higher wage. The rubber tappers get free health care. They get free education for their children. We believe that this is the right way to harvest the latex that goes into condoms. Secondly, the plantation we use in Southern India is the world’s only plantation that has been certified by the Forest Stewardship Council for its sustainability practices so we have a fair trade latex, we have a Forest Stewardship Council plantation, and additionally, the condom is certified as vegan and not tested on animals, free of any GMOs, and of course, Sustain is a B Corporation so we feel that we’ve created the world’s most responsible and sustainable condom. That’s part of the story. I’ll let Meika talk about our focus.
MEIKA HOLLENDER: I think what we really noticed when we were thinking about Sustain is obviously, we wanted to make a safer, healthier product but we also wanted to be a brand in the category that was totally different than anything out there. What we noticed was big brands that have been around for a while have really kind of neglected women in terms of the condom conversation. Most condom brands out there target men. Everything is male-oriented, whether it’s their advertising or their packaging design. Women that we spoke to did not feel like anything out there really resonated with them. They didn’t feel like any of the brands were really talking directly to them. None of the packaging designs really fit with their lifestyles or looked like something they wanted to carry around and I think another part of that is there still is a stigma around women who buy and carry condoms, which I think is completely ridiculous in an era of showgirls and organizations like Laymen. It just doesn’t make sense anymore and so what we did was created a product that looks so different from anything out there. We’ve created a communications strategy and just really a brand conditioning that we feel resonated with women, speaks to them and is very upfront and honest about real issues out there. You know, you think of the fact that there’s still STDs, there’s still AIDS and only nineteen percent of single women who are sexually active actually use condoms regularly. This statistic is really what drives me every day. What’s going on? Women are so conscious about what they’re eating and what cosmetics products they’re using and then for some reason, we’re still falling short when it comes to protecting ourselves and our sexual health so we really hope to take on this issue of the number of women actually using condoms and really empower them to be using them, be carrying them, and really feel like a condom is a badge of honor rather than something you should be ashamed about.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Wow. Well said. Listen, for our listeners that have just joined us out there, we’ve got Jeffrey and Meika Hollender. They’re the co-founders and the leaders of, the CEO and the Marketing Director, of Sustain Condoms. It’s www.sustaincondoms.com. Now that you’ve platformed this very important product that you’re coming out with, share with our listeners. When does this come out and where are we going to be able to start buying the condom and what’s your marketing strategy in terms of the kinds of outlets that are going to be selling it?
JEFFREY HOLLENDER: Sure so the condoms will be available starting on June 1st. They will be available in a pretty wide variety of places from online, obviously at sustain.com but as well on a variety of websites and e-tailers from eBay and Amazon to a broad group of other e-tailers and we’ll also be focused on traditional drug stores, natural food retailers like Whole Foods and really trying to make sure that our condoms are available in the places where women most prefer shopping. Those may include some very untraditional locations that we found women would feel most comfortable shopping in.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Jeffrey, I’ve only had the honor of knowing you seven or eight years but if you roll back the time twenty years, when you’re sitting with Meika and you guys are thinking about your marketing strategy, is this almost like ground zero day one when you started Seventh Generation, going after the woman, going after the traditional retailers, saying this is a better product, this is why you should use it? Are you feeling like you’ve seen this movie and you know the ending and David can slay Goliath again?
JEFFREY HOLLENDER: You know, what we’re hoping is that it’s going to be a lot easier today than it was 25 years ago because 25 years ago, it was a battle to convince people that women and consumers in general cared about these types of issues. Today, because of the growth of the fair trade movement, because of the growth of organic and sustainable products are important to their customers so yes, it’s a replay of the movie. I just hope that it’s a shorter movie rather than the long movie it took to get Seventh Generation off the ground.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Well, now you have a secret weapon. Twenty-five years ago, Meika was a baby. Now she’s a grown woman and now you’ve got double the Hollenders walking in on you if you’re a retailer out there and Meika, you’re now the Chief Marketing Officer and you’ve got social media, which totally levels the playing field and can democratize this product and can democratize the word much faster than your pops could back in the day when we were just dealing in analogue sales, you know, nose to nose. Is this not part of the truth here?
MEIKA HOLLENDER: Yeah, I might I think in some ways it feels to Jeffrey like we’re doing it all over again. For me, obviously, it’s the first time that I’m starting a business but I think also, what’s great about our partnership is that Jeffrey comes with such a wealth of knowledge and experience and he knows how retailers work. He knows how to get shelf space. This is something that I’ve obviously never experienced before. What I bring to the table is I’m effectively targeting myself or targeting millennial women and I grew up with social media. I don’t know life without a computer and I hope I know which brands and how brands can really engage consumers. Although young people now have much shorter attention spans, I feel like we have such an interesting story. What better topic is there to talk about than sex among pretty much anyone? So I think we have a really interesting story and marketing strategy and yes, social media and the digital era will only hopefully help this all get translated and out there faster.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Meika, I have confidence in you. I know that I’m going to be watching Girls one night and you’re going to have Sustain Condoms on Girls. Come on.
MEIKA HOLLENDER: If you want to make that happen for us, we are open to your ideas.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Wait a second. Let’s go a little bit into the ecopreneurship, the entrepreneurship of the Hollender household. Meika, what’s it like working with dad? Dad’s a big shadow and I get that. Dad’s a big shadow for me and I’m just the business guy. He’s been inspiring and an iconic leader in the whole sustainability movement, even for a person like me and I’m of his age group so how about for you, growing up in the Hollender household and now you’re working with dad? You guys are partners. How’s that working?
MEIKA HOLLENDER: It’s working. I mean, the crazy thing is at this point, it’s actually almost been a year. We really started to get this going together last May so time has definitely flown. One of the first things somebody told me was to never refer to him as Dad in any sort of professional setting just to kind of set those boundaries but as I said, he is in my mind, one of the people who designed this space that I am in and aspire to be in. We are a very close-knit family. Our personal relationships are very valuable so I think that’s actually really helped. We preserve our personal relationship and we make that relationship a priority, sometimes over our professional relationship and we’re just constantly working to communicate with each other and be honest and open and give each other feedback to make sure that this works because we’re not willing to compromise our family, in general, to make this business work.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Jeffrey, what about you? Working with your very smart and beautiful young daughter, how’s that working for you?
JEFFREY HOLLENDER: It surpassed my expectations in every way. I have been amazed at the passion and commitment that Meika has to, not just sustainable business and Sustain, but the issues and the health issues for women that we’re focused on. I also discovered that as much credit that I have given her in the past, she is far brighter and far more capable than I think I ever would have known if I didn’t have the opportunity to work so closely with her and thankfully, she’s got a lot more energy than I do. Getting a new business off the ground really requires a tremendous amount of energy and I’m glad that I’m doing it with her. I can’t imagine what it would be like to do it alone.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Aw, that is really so nice and I have to say I have a 27-year-old daughter and I get to work with her. She works for my brother and when I was doing all the pre-read on everything you guys are doing together, it’s just really wonderful to hear about all this because you guys are changing the world together and you’re doing it again, Jeffrey, and you get to do it with your daughter so I’m really honored to have you guys on today. How about the money? Is this coming out of a Hollender piggy bank or did you guys go out and raise money like a real startup? To change the world is not an easy or a cheap proposition ever. Who’s putting the money into this deal?
JEFFREY HOLLENDER: You know, both. We financed some of this ourselves but we have brought in a group of individuals, mostly close friends, to participate with us. One of the things that I learned with Seventh Generation is you’ve got to have enough money. This is expensive to do. It’s expensive to do right and I feel like we’re in a great shape having raised the money that is required to get this company to profitability.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Where is the headquarters for it?
JEFFREY HOLLENDER: Well, Meika works from New York but our main office is up in Burlington and we love Vermont and we decided we wanted to start another business there.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Got it. And is it the two of you or do you have employees now or how big is the Sustain Condoms family growing to?
JEFFREY HOLLENDER: We have a team of about seven people to launch the business and look forward to adding more in the future.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Got it. Got it. And so the product launches on June 1st?
JEFFREY HOLLENDER: Yes.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: And it’s going to be in stores and online starting June 1st?
JEFFREY HOLLENDER: Yep.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Got it. Meika, any final comments? We’re down to the last couple of minutes or so. Anything you want our listeners to know or think about before we say goodbye today? Because we’re going to have you both back on for an update on this great product as you start rolling it out across the United States and eventually the world.
MEIKA HOLLENDER: No. Thank you so much for having us. Our website will be fully launched on May 1st so you can look out for that and what we’re doing there. You can start pre-ordering your condoms for summer 2014 and yeah, just thank you for having us. It’s been great.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Great, and it’s going to be sustaincondoms.com. Meika and Jeffrey Hollender, you’re both inspirational leaders and should be admired for your work towards corporate responsibility, sustainability, and social equity and that is why you are both living proof that green is good.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Welcome to another edition of Green is Good. I’m so excited to have with us today Luke Saunders. He’s the CEO and founder of Farmer’s Fridge. Welcome to Green is Good, Luke!
LUKE SAUNDERS: Hey! Thanks for having me on.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Hey Luke, you’ve built and started this important new business that our listeners are dying to hear about but before we talk about Farmer’s Fridge, talk a little bit about the Luke Saunders journey. What was your life like prior to founding this company and what led up to this?
LUKE SAUNDERS: Sure, so I’ve been entrepreneurial my whole life. I had a business in college where we rented bicycles on campus to encourage people to take bikes and then when I graduated I got a job working in industrial lubrication. It was something that I kind of knew about, had some family in the business, and definitely not what I was passionate about but gave me a good solid business background and I did that for about four years and I was driving around a lot for work doing sales call and then I realized that there had to be a better way to distribute healthy food.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: And that led to the epiphany and the idea of starting your new company, Farmer’s Fridge.
LUKE SAUNDERS: Yeah, exactly so I mean it’s kind of a stretch to go from I was visiting factories and I was seeing how industrial food was made and realized you could use the machine but in a way that you’re delivering hand made food instead of industrial food.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Got it, and I want you to explain what Farmer’s Fridge is but before we go any further, I’m on your website now and for our listeners out there who want to follow along on their phone or their mobile device or their laptop or desktop, it’s www.farmersfridge.com. It is one of the prettiest and most gorgeous and most hunger-inspiring websites I have ever seen. The fruits and the vegetables are the most fresh and crisp looking products I have ever seen so walk us a little through what is Farmer’s Fridge and what is the new vending kiosk and what is the differentiators between your concept and what’s out there today?
LUKE SAUNDERS: Sure. Obviously the quality of the food that you’re talking about is extremely important. Prior to Farmer’s Fridge and still I don’t know that there’s anybody who’s taken restaurant quality food and put it into a vending machine so that was really a big step. There’s definitely a movement towards fresh food in vending machines. I talk with people in the vending industry all the time and they get a lot of requests for this but it’s really not something that has been done very well and it’s a little bit haphazard so they just kind of throw stuff in there and see what works. What we wanted to do was create a brand dedicated to fresh food in a vending machine, a vending kiosk, and we only put things that we make in our kitchen in that kiosk and then the kiosk itself had to be very different so there’s a touch screen where you can see big shots of what the food looks like before you buy it. You get the nutrition information. You can get all of the ingredients. You can actually add items as you’re checking out so when you buy one of those delicious looking salads, you get to add chicken or a snack or a drink and it all comes out at the same time, unlike a normal vending machine.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: When did you launch this first machine?
LUKE SAUNDERS: We launched the first machine at the end of October.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Of 2013?
LUKE SAUNDERS: Yes, 2013.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: I’m looking at the machine and it is just so warm and inviting and it’s just more than just a machine. You put a lot of thought into the machine itself. Can you take our listeners through the thought that you put into both making the client experience really good but also making a machine that’s just not a typical vending machine? It’s very sustainably oriented.
LUKE SAUNDERS: Yeah, so we knew there was a huge hurdle to get people to the point where they were going to be able to buy restaurant quality food out of a kiosk. They can’t touch it. There’s nobody there to explain it to them so we spent an enormous amount of time just thinking about what are people going to think when they first walk up to this and how do we compete with a fast casual restaurant in terms of the experience that someone can have? We started with the packaging, which you can see from the picture is extremely appealing. It has a really unique way about it. It’s not something that you just will find anywhere. The kiosk itself is covered in plants. There’s reclaimed wood all over the outside so we actually use real reclaimed hardwood to cover the machine and it’s a huge presence. It’s about ten feet tall with the signage and everything so when you walk up to it you immediately kind of get a sense that a lot of energy has been put into this and it must be in to their food as well.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: I’m looking at all these. Really your menu, the salads, the antioxidant salad I’m looking at right now, and how you break out everything on that, your breakfast, the Greek yogurt and berries, and the lemon pepper chicken, you’re so transparent and it’s so appealing, both in terms of what’s in it but also how you package everything and explain everything. It’s so well done. What’s been the response to this first kiosk, this first vending machine that you’ve put up?
LUKE SAUNDERS: It’s been actually enormous. Even the day before we opened, I was not sure if people were going to go for this. What’s the reaction going to be? We’re in the middle of a food court and yeah, the product was great and we had a lot of people taste it and tell us it was great but was there just going to be too much of a gap between great product and this kiosk? Was it going to put a barrier to people actually buying stuff? And what we found on the first day was there was just some people who jumped right in. They tried it and were excited to try it and you know, a lot of it was in how we differentiated the products so much so we follow about a dozen guidelines for the produce that we use so one of our first customers -We had been there for about a week beforehand handing out coupons for opening day- and she walked up and said, “I don’t know how you do that. I don’t think there’s another restaurant that does that,” and she came back every day for a few weeks. We really put a lot of time into thinking about what would drive really loyal excited customers and that worked, I guess, from day one so we had people walk right up and just try it.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Wow, and so now you have it. It’s going and how did you even come up with the recipes? Even though you like food, I take it, do you have some sort of background in recipes or food creation or who do you turn to for this?
LUKE SAUNDERS: I had nothing, no food experience. I had manufacturing experience. I knew how to make a product once you have a formula but yeah, what I originally did was, I was living in Ann Arbor. My wife was finishing law school and there was a local cafe that had amazing healthy food. It all tasted good but was still healthy so I actually approached them. I said, “Listen, I know nothing about this. I have this crazy idea. I want to put really high quality food into a kiosk to make it more accessible,” and it was really funny. It’s a husband and wife and one of them was like, “That’s a great idea.” The other said it was a terrible idea and they kind of debated it for a while but they were like, “We’ll help you. You’re young and we want to see other people be successful.”
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That’s nice.
LUKE SAUNDERS: They started by letting me kind of work in their kitchen and showing me how to come up with a recipe so they had given me like a formula. You know, use some nuts and some cheese and some different vegetables that you might not find everywhere and some lettuce of course. Just to create a meal level salad, you need to have all those different ingredients. And then from there we kind of used that as a formula for making everything else and that’s easy. Once someone shows you here’s how to think about it, we go and we look at, okay we want to make a high protein salad, you just look up what are the most high protein vegetables out there? What can we use in the dressing that has a lot of protein? And then we mix and match like crazy until we find something that everyone tastes and says, ‘Yeah, that tastes great.’
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Great! And so you came up with all these recipes with this nice couple who already was in the business and —
LUKE SAUNDERS: Just to clarify, they kind of gave us a formula but all of the recipes, with the exception of one or two, we actually came up with on our own after that.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Wow, that is great. Then who makes the food for you now on a regular basis? Who is your producer of all the foods that go into the kiosk and how does this whole thing run?
LUKE SAUNDERS: Sure. So we actually have a commercial kitchen space that we rent and right now, it’s me and then there’s four cooks and so every morning, everybody shows up and we kind of get everything ready. It’s actually we do everything internally and part of that is it allows us to respond very quickly so if we come up with a recipe that we think will be really great and it’s not, we can stop making it or if we come up with something that’s great, we can put it in the machine very quickly and it allows us to be very flexible and really keep the quality up. Initially, when I was thinking about starting this, I looked at having other people do the product and it wasn’t possible to keep the quality at the level that we wanted and for the prices we wanted, it wouldn’t work, especially because we were doing everything in real time so we’re looing at what’s selling the day before to figure out what to put in there the next day at each machine and that kind of thing.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That’s so interesting. For our listeners that just joined in, we’ve got Luke Saunders. He’s the CEO and Founder of Farmer’s Fridge. He’s with us today and if you want to follow along, you can go to www.farmersfridge.com. Luke, couple things here. You’re in Chicago and you’ve launched this business in Chicago. Why Chicago? So many people think all the great food items come out of L.A. or San Francisco or New York. Chicago? Is that sort of a breeding ground, a ground zero, for great new food concepts and are you just following other great entrepreneurs who have done this before and started in Chicago or are you the new breed and new generation doing something different, starting in Chicago and then branching out to the coast?
LUKE SAUNDERS: It’s a little bit of both. Part of it is that Chicago’s a great place to start a business, especially something like this that’s really new and experimental. Generally the logistics are easier. The costs are lower. The built-in demand for this kind of thing might not be as high but it also gives you lower stakes in getting all the kinks out before you go somewhere where people are going to be much more demanding and the stakes will be a little bit higher. I feel like being part of the Chicago ecosystem is a really great thing for us. The other thing too is that a lot of credit gets put on -I’m from New Jersey so I know what you’re talking about- but there’s a ton of innovative Chicago-based food concepts in I think this city in particular. They might not all have been exported out of Chicago yet but there’s quite a few really popular, especially in the healthy foods-there’s quite a few food concepts that come to mind that have started in Chicago and are branching out.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Got it. Got it. Got it. For our listeners to have a little bit more knowledge, Luke’s all in on this whole sustainability and green thing. Just some factoids that I was reading before we went on the air; your napkins are a hundred percent recycled. Your utensils are biodegradable. Everything you do -the paper labeling on your jars is limited. Mostly, you do screen printing of the information so this way your jars are more recyclable. The lids are a hundred percent recyclable on your jars. Everything you’ve touched with regards to this business concept and your model and what you’re modeling is all sustainability driven and I’m sure your clients have to appreciate that. Luke, what’s the next steps here? You’ve got one location. It’s really successful. Now, how do you grow this thing? You’re an entrepreneur. You know what you’re doing here, obviously. This has been a big success. What’s next? How do you grow?
LUKE SAUNDERS: Right now what we’re doing, we’ve kind of opened the first one, we got it running how we wanted and then we just recently opened another one in downtown Chicago. It’s now kind of our flagship location in a high end mall right on Michigan Avenue and then we opened up a bunch of smaller locations in office buildings, in hospitals, places where people could – It’s a smaller machine but people were really asking for a healthy option. They might have odd hours so they can’t get away from their desk. That’s been our goal to have these big locations that generate a lot of interest and a lot of volume and then kind of fill it out with these smaller locations that literally will make the most convenient option for people so when people complain that the most convenient thing in their office is snack, chips, and candy, right next to it now will be the Farmer’s Fridge.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: What’s your goal for 2014? How many more can you open this year without the wheels coming off the Farmer’s Fridge train?
LUKE SAUNDERS: We don’t know. Honestly, there’s no answer because nobody’s done this before in a big way. It’s so exciting to say we’re going to have a hundred or we’re going to have two hundred or whatever the number is and people get really excited about hearing those numbers too but they don’t really mean much if we pick bad locations or if we can’t service them properly so at this point, we’re shooting for about twenty sustainable good locations so we have all the equipment for that. We have placements for all of those machines and we’ll kind of fine tune it. If we end up, from the batch, putting one in a place that doesn’t go great, we’ll move it but we want to make sure that we get a hundred percent of those twenty really working at the level that we want and we’re servicing them properly and everyone who has one says, ‘This is great. I love you guys.’
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Let’s have a little fun real quickly. When it comes to the locations, are you and your wife scouting them or are people calling you and emailing you saying, ‘Please come to our hospital! Please come to our school or our college!’ Or is it a little bit of both?
LUKE SAUNDERS: You know, there are places we definitely want to be and initially, I had to like beg people to get anywhere but now, it’s definitely people approaching us so that’s, the problem is actually trying to figure out, okay you want it but is this really going to make sense at the stage that we’re at? Can we service the location here? Is it on our route? Is it good for selling our food? Yeah, we have a ton of incoming and now we’re just trying to be selective.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Are you raising money for your venture or is this self-funded? How is this working in terms of a rollout and the scaling?
LUKE SAUNDERS: I was self funded all the way up until we opened the first kiosk and then from there, I was able to show that we had some traction and people were really excited about it and I took a loan for the balance of the equipment but we haven’t gone out and raised traditional venture money or anything like that and part of the reason is we have been able to raise money via a loan and it gives us more control over the future of the company. I’ve said this before but you’re talking about all the sustainable packaging and that was something that was really important to me. I felt like that would resonate with people and it’s not something you could say we pay one penny more for each napkin and this generates this many more sales, which is the kind of thing that an investor likes to see so now we can say people are really responding to this. Ask our real customers and they’ll tell you. It gives us the flexibility to make decisions that we really know, the people who are running the business day to day, are the right ones.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: We’re down to the last couple of minutes or so here, Luke. Just a couple more questions. We have listeners, not only in the United States but around the world. This is a concept that could very well be coming to a city or state that you’re in in the United States in the future and then one day in the country that you’re in because we have listeners throughout Paris and London and Mumbai and Dubai and Shanghai and they’re out there. We get emails from around the world so you could be coming to one of our listeners real soon, huh?
LUKE SAUNDERS: Absolutely. We’ve started taking meetings with people in different cities and different countries and at this point, we want to make sure that we are exporting or sending something to another city that will work and be successful for someone and we’re not quite there yet but we’re getting there and so we’ve started those conversations. We’re encouraging people to email us or to send us a note through the website and we have some forms that people can fill out to be on the first group of people that know hey, we’re ready. We want to go to a different city or a different country and they can help us.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: So they can email you through the website, through farmersfridge.com, to reach you?
LUKE SAUNDERS: Correct. We have a partnership form that we send to everyone who comes in and a couple people who are really serious, we’ve already starting talking to them.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Luke, we’re going to have you back on again later this year or whenever it’s convenient for you because we want to hear about how Farmer’s Fridge is spreading healthy food throughout the Chicago land and beyond. For our listeners out there who want to contact Luke or who want to find out more about the great business he started, it’s www.farmersfridge.com. Luke Saunders, thank you for bringing health food to all of us who are on the go. You are a fast food entrepreneur for a new generation of healthy eaters and you are truly living proof that green is good.
LUKE SAUNDERS: Thank you.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Welcome to another edition of Green is Good. It’s a special edition here in San Francisco at the Green Festivals. We’ve got a very special guest. It’s Harn Soper. He’s the General Partner of Sustainable Farm Partners. Welcome to Green is Good, Harn.
HARN SOPER: John, thank you very much. It’s great to be here.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: This is a great topic. We don’t talk about it enough in the media. We don’t talk about it enough on Green is Good Radio, but talking about sustainable farming. So glad you’re here. It all starts with farming.
HARN SOPER: It does. As I will point out to people, if you look around the room, absolutely everything here comes from the Earth. We’re standing on it, so we need to take care of it. It is our primary source of sustenance. It’s what I would describe as primary wealth.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Before we get talking about Sustainable Farm Partners, which we’re definitely going to talk about, talk a little bit about the Harn Soper story. How did you evolve from where you were to where you are today?
HARN SOPER: I grew up in Iowa, and I’m what you might call a bicoastal Iowan. Nobody really thinks of Iowa as having two coasts, but there’s the Missouri on the west side and the Mississippi on the east side. When I was growing up in Sioux City, we have family century farms in a little farm called Emmetsburg, Iowa, in northwest Iowa. When I was 11, my dad took me out to the farms to work with my Uncle Jack for the summer, and I thought it was really cool. I was sitting on a tractor cultivating corn, and my friends were back in Sioux City riding bicycles. That hooked me, so I would spend my summers farming.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Where in your journey, professionally and personally, did you realize that farming is an amazing profession and a great way to live, but farming sustainably is very important, to integrate that into the process?
HARN SOPER: Sustainability really sits on a stool with three legs. One is economic, one is social, the community, and one is environmental. If you lose one of those legs, the stool falls over. The economics are really critical. That first summer that I worked for my uncle was a really learning experience. After the harvest that fall, my dad took me aside and said, “Harn, did you realize that last summer, making a dollar an hour, you made more than your uncle?” The economics weren’t there. It was a struggle. My family farms and our farm relationships, these are some of the most optimistic people in the world. To plant a seed in the spring with any expectation that there’s going to be a harvest, it’s an amazing group of people to work with, and people that you want to promote and help. The work that we do, we have moved towards a sustainable model in our family farms, where we farm organic row crops. These are large acreages, hundreds and hundreds of acres, and within our family group, it’s about 4,000 acres. We farm organic seeds, primarily grains, that go to organic food producers. Once you get out of the grocery store area where the vegetables are, you’re into 70 percent of what food production is about. We grow the grains that go into that production.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Where in the farming industry was the tipping point? We sort of know back in ’05-’06 when Al Gore came out with An Inconvenient Truth, the tipping point in the sustainability revolution happened here in the United States in terms of climate change. But in terms of farming change, when did you see, what year was the tipping point where you said conventional farming, sustainable farming, let’s double down and go into sustainable farming?
HARN SOPER: We tried it about 20 years ago, and we, unfortunately, planted 40 acres of soybeans right on the edge of town on the main road and thought, “OK,” and then you don’t do anything. You don’t spray. It was a mess, and we were the laughing stock of Palo Alto County. So that clipped our wings a bit. About 2006, I went back to being the family management member of our family, which is four generations, over 70 stockholders, which incidentally, every time we make a farming decision, is always a unanimous vote. A pretty remarkable group.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That’s remarkable. I want to hear that, though. Is the family vote via phone, e-mail, or in person?
HARN SOPER: The family farms, the only reason for having them is to pay for our family reunions, I mean stockholder meetings. Excuse me about that. Last August, we had another stockholder meeting. It was in Seattle, where one of my nieces got married, so we all attended it. It was a good time to have a meeting. Of the 72 stockholders, 70 of us made it.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Wow. That’s amazing.
HARN SOPER: My father has passed. He’s the first generation. I’m second generation. My two sons are third generation, and they know their fourth generation cousins. It’s a tight family. The farms serve us in this way and keep us very closely connected.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That is so wonderful. About 20 years ago you started. Everybody has a rough start when they start something new, but you started 20 years ago. What percentage of what you grow on those 4,000 acres now is organic and sustainable? Is it 100 percent? 50 percent? Give me somewhat of an idea.
HARN SOPER: Within our family, it’s a group of families, and within that group, there’s about 24,000 acres under management. Our families only constitute about 1,000. When you add the family groups together, that’s where we get about 4,000. We have 800 acres that will go into transition production next year. It just continues to grow.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Sustainable Farm Partners is all that 24,000 with all the families then.
HARN SOPER: No, actually, we’re a funding mechanism to bring in other financial investors. Our whole goal is to buy conventional farm ground, primarily in Iowa, and convert it to organic grow crops.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: I want to talk about that in a second. Talk a little bit about, though, supply and demand. Before we talk about organic versus conventional and the benefits herein, share, though, the supply and demand issue. Is there an overdemand for the supply that exists sitting here today in organics?
HARN SOPER: Back in 2010, when I last checked the statistic, the demand for organic food was four times greater than the farmland in organic food production. At that time, it was a market in the low 20 billions of dollars. Today, that market is growing double digits. It’s $38 billion. There’s still this enormous gap between demand and production, and that will go on, I would guess, at least the next 10 years.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: So really, Sustainable Farm Partners and for our listeners and viewers out there, sustainablefarmpartners.com, it’s that simple, is really overall a good investment because the demand is so heavy for this new product.
HARN SOPER: Exactly. For example, this year, conventional corn, which typically is GMO corn, maybe some hybrid in there, is at an all-time low. It’s really dramatically low. It got as low as $3.25 per bushel of GMO corn. At the same time, our organic corn crops are getting between $11-$13 a bushel. It’s an enormous difference. We often measure our profitability in terms of net operating income per acre. On the GMO farms, this year it’s about $210 an acre. On our organic grow crop farms, the average is almost $600 an acre. That’s our net operating income.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: They can learn all about the opportunities and the risks and the potential rewards at sustainablefarmpartners.com.
HARN SOPER: Yes, indeed.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: I want you to share with our viewers, please, Harn, and with our listeners also at home and wherever they are today, in the United States and around the world, the difference between sustainable farming and conventional farming.
HARN SOPER: Conventional farming is focused around genetically modified seed. It’s a seed that is patented, so it’s very expensive seed, in comparison to organic farming, where GMO seeds are prohibited. Our seeds are developed under natural hybrid circumstances, cross-pollination. Just by shifting our seeds, we can get our cost per acre down by $60-$70 an acre. We farm organically. The U.S. government, the USDA, has only one farming program that is highly specific in how to do it, and that’s under organics. We farm on that organic protocol. It’s very strict. That means that when a piece of ground has gone through certification, we can put our organic seal on it. That opens up the opportunity for these enormous premiums that we get with our grains. In conventional GMO farming, herbicides are built into the cell of the plant. You can pour things like glyphosate on the plant. It kills weeds, but it won’t kill the plant. It involves pouring herbicides, pesticides, and they’re all synthetic. In organic farming, you don’t do any of that. You work with nature. Our crop rotation is part of our weed management program, for example. Some years we’ll grow oats and alfalfa together. Some years we’ll grow corn. The preceding crop helps to put nitrogen in the soil and limit weeds for the following crop, which might be corn, which needs the nitrogen and needs the weed control.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Is this all tracked now, all the algorithms of how to rotate the crops and everything, are they all via technology now? Is it all scientifically tracked via technology?
HARN SOPER: No, farming is still very observational because every piece of ground, the soil is different. The markets are different. You really have to understand where you’re farming. In my world, it not only depends on where you farm, but what you farm and how you farm. You get that equation tight, and it’s beneficial to everybody.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Before we have to say goodbye, do you have any other comments for our viewers or listeners to hear about the importance of farming, and especially sustainable farming, before we have to sign off today?
HARN SOPER: Sustainability is a big deal. We live on a planet that’s 70 percent water, but we can only drink 1 percent of that water. We’re losing that water, and it doesn’t come back. Farming is a big consumer of water, and a lot of water is wasted. It gets washed away. Sustainable farming involves a crop rotation that is much more tolerant of flooding, for example. In the United States, across the Midwest, there’s about four to six tons of topsoil that’s lost every year per acre, primarily because of the genetically modified conventional farming model. That equates to about a dime’s thickness. Stacked up, 21 dimes makes an inch. In 21 years, we are losing what took 300 million years to create. It’s not sustainable. Neither are the synthetic inputs that are oil-based because oil is not a sustainable commodity. Nature is very forgiving if you don’t try to sidestep her, but you work with her. As I said, it’s profitable, it’s healthy, and you can go on farming that way indefinitely.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: We hope you do, and we hope your family does, Harn. For our listeners and viewers out there, to learn more about Harn’s great work and his family’s great work and Sustainable Farm Partners, go to www.sustainablefarmpartners.com. As Harn said earlier, there’s some great opportunities there. You can learn more about the investment opportunities and other things about all the great work they’re doing there. Harn Soper, we thank you and your family for sustainable farming. You are truly living proof that green is good.
HARN SOPER: Green is excellent. Thank you so much.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Thank you.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Welcome to another edition of Green is Good. We’re here in San Francisco at the Green Festivals. We’ve got George Metrik with us today. He’s the founder of Coconut Organics. Welcome to Green is Good, George.
GEORGE METRIK: Thank you, John.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Thank you for being our guest today. Before we get talking about your great company, Coconut Organics, and there are samples right here in front of us, we’re going to talk about these samples, George, tell us a little bit about the George Metrik story. Talk a little bit about your journey before founding this great company.
GEORGE METRIK: Sure. I’ve been an entrepreneur my whole life on a variety of projects ranging from tech to other projects. Really, it wasn’t until I got exposed to the natural foods world that I decided that this is really where my passion is. I’ve been a health food nut my whole life, but that’s really what really took me over the edge. I wanted to make an impact on the food we eat, and so I decided to go for it.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: I love it. What year did you start Coconut Organics?
GEORGE METRIK: In my head, about 2010, and we’ve been planning since. Publicly, we have not been a secret for about a year now.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Got it. You’ve been selling the products that we see in front of us for about a year.
GEORGE METRIK: CocoBacon since 2012, but more family and friends, but really, we revealed ourselves about a year ago.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Got it. For our listeners and viewers out there, the website for Coconut Organics is just as it sounds, www.coconutorganics.com. George, what makes Coconut Organics such a special company?
GEORGE METRIK: We’re unique in a number of ways, but as the name suggests, we’re dedicated to coconuts and everything is organic. What makes us unique is our commitment exactly to that, to delivering the cleanest organic coconut-based foods and goods.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: What does that mean? Are your coconuts sourced differently than other coconuts? Where is it sourced from?
GEORGE METRIK: Sure. It starts with the sourcing. We make sure we work with fair trade farmers that practice organically, use no chemicals, all the way through to the ingredients we use along with those coconuts. Everything is organic and as clean and whole as possible.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: George, I’m a vegan. Can I eat all the great products that we see here in front?
GEORGE METRIK: Yep, absolutely. We are vegan 100%.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: And non-GMO?
GEORGE METRIK: Non-GMO, gluten-free, soy-free.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Come on, that’s the perfect storm.
GEORGE METRIK: Yeah, it’s food we want to eat. It’s food I want my kids to eat.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That’s great. Can you do a little explanation while we’re here? That’s why we now tape the show not only for our radio listeners around the world, but for our YouTube channel too. You’ve got the products with you. Why don’t you explain what these products are?
GEORGE METRIK: Sure. CocoBacon is our very first product we created years ago. It’s sort of an answer to folks that want a healthy, fatty meat-type alternative, a bacon alternative, but this harms no piggies. It’s good for you on so many levels. It’s coconut-based, so it’s high-fiber. It’s got a lot of healthy fat. It’s low glycemic because we use coconut sugar. We use Celtic sea salt, a high-mineral salt, so it’s the best ingredients come together. This is a smoky, sweet, savory bacon alternative. That’s what started it all for us. Our latest product is just our plain toasted coconut chips. What makes these different is we don’t add sugar or salt to these, like most coconut products out there. It’s not candy; it’s a one-ingredient product, just toasted organic coconut. My favorite and our newest addition is our 100% raw chocolate coconut chips. We take these beautiful coconut chips and we add our proprietary raw chocolate blend, coconut sugar, Celtic sea salt, a little bit of vanilla, and you have a decadent treat.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Can we try them right here?
GEORGE METRIK: Please, yeah.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: How about the bacon? I want to try the bacon, and then I’m going to try the chocolate.
GEORGE METRIK: Yeah, there you go.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: We’re trying them right here, right on camera. Coconut bacon. The taste is amazing. Oh my God. This tastes like bacon.
GEORGE METRIK: It took us several years to figure out this recipe. It’s very tricky finding a balance of smoky, savory, sweet, but not offensive in any direction. It’s actually tricky because we work with coconut oil, so you have to melt it first just to use it. It’s a very proprietary recipe.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That’s going to be a huge, huge product. This is awesome. Now I’m going to try your dark chocolate coconut chips. I’m going to show our viewers a little bit of what it looks like, just the coconut chips with chocolate on it.
GEORGE METRIK: It’s a true dark chocolate. It’s not candy. It’s not overly sweet. We use coconut sugar, so it’s low glycemic.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Delicious. Really, really quality products. So, George, the whole trend at one point, and it still might be, we had the founders of one of the first coconut water companies on Green is Good years ago. When he came on the show, he said that coconut water back then was the fastest growing non-alcoholic beverage in the world. Is this new offshoot business that you’ve created a little bit of a hand in glove with that? Is this what happens to the meat, then, of the coconut, when the water is used for coconut water? Is this now a new use for the meat?
GEORGE METRIK: The coconut water comes from young coconuts, so that’s in the early stage when they’re green and young and soft. This comes from mature, brown coconuts, so the thick coconut meat that they scrape and they toast it. But there are so many uses for the coconut, and that’s why we’re the coconut company. That’s our vision.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Talk a little bit about that. I’m a vegan and I eat vegan every day. These products are just delicious, but I actually even take coconut oil every day. Talk a little bit about some of the health benefits for our listeners and our viewers out there that want to learn more about the benefits of coconuts themselves.
GEORGE METRIK: Sure. We sort of reference it as the Swiss Army knife of ingredients because there’s so much you can do with it. They call it the tree of life for generations because of that. There’s so many benefits topically, systemically. It’s antibacterial, antimicrobial naturally, the coconut oil is. It’s very high in lauric acid. It’s second only to mother’s milk in lauric acid, so naturally it’s good for you in that form. Coconut water, of course, is very mineralizing, high in electrolytes. It can save your life. You could actually take the raw coconut water and go into your vein with it as an IV if you needed to. They make coconut sugar and flour from it. It’s the highest form of digestible fiber in food, unless you consider psyllium husk a good, which it’s not. It just goes on and on.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Speaking of on and on, you have these delicious products here in front. Again, for our viewers out there, I just tried the coconut bacon and the coconut chocolate chips. Just delicious. What does the future hold for Coconut Organics? How many lines can you take this into, George?
GEORGE METRIK: That’s exactly our vision, as the coconut company, to adopt this amazing ingredient and just run with it. We, at this point, have over 200 SKUs planned. There’s so many innovative products we’re working on. We’re a small company now, but as soon as we can, we just want to keep introducing innovative, healthy coconut foods and goods.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: For our listeners out there, besides your website, which, again, the website for George’s company is coconutorganics.com, where can our listeners and viewers find your products in the United States and around the world?
GEORGE METRIK: We ship globally, so we do a lot of business direct from our website. We’re also on Amazon and we’re in several stores, and we’re signing up more and more stores as quickly as we can.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Got it. Wonderful. George, thank you for coming on today. We thank you for inventing these amazing products. We want you to come back on and continue to tell us the story as you create more new products out of coconuts. Again, to go to George’s brand, go to coconutorganics.com. Learn where you can buy it locally, or just buy it online. Remember, he also ships globally for our listeners and viewers around the world. Thank you, George Metrik, for coming on Green is Good today. You are truly living proof that green is good.
GEORGE METRIK: Thank you, John.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Welcome to another edition of Green is Good. We have a special edition here in San Francisco at the Green Festivals. We’re so honored to have with us today Randy Dean. He’s the Founder and President of Uniss Systems and Bhoga. Welcome to Green is Good.
RANDY DEAN: Thank you, John. It’s a pleasure to be here.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Randy, before we get talking about Bhoga and what you’re doing there, can you share a little bit about the Randy Dean story and how you even came to founding this company, a little bit about your own personal journey?
RANDY DEAN: Sure. I’ve been doing yoga since I was 18 years old, so that’s over 40 years I’ve been doing yoga. I came out to San Francisco in 1978 to study yoga. The yoga that I studied is Iyengar style yoga, and B.K.S. Iyengar was the innovator of using props in yoga to help with alignment and to be able to customize for different flexibilities and different sizes. Before I even started the yoga school, I injured myself and I paralyzed the shoulder muscle. I had some challenges. At one point, I couldn’t raise my arm up over my head, but this actually gave me a great opportunity to be able to realign myself. I’ve also been able to rectify and resolve most of that, and I’ve been practicing yoga for many years.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Wow. Talk a little bit about Bhoga, when you founded it, and what does it mean, and what are the products that you sell?
RANDY DEAN: Yes. Bhoga means enjoyment. It’s the Sanskrit word for enjoyment, and the reason I named the product line Bhoga is because as I developed these tools, a lot of them are functional furniture, they are actually enjoyable to use. I have an alignment mat. I have a Bhoga bar. This is the bar here. It has a pair of grips on it, and it fits into a wall system. There are two sizes. One is wider than the one that we see here. This is 31 inches. There’s also a 50 inch long one, which has handles on the outside. Then I developed a chair and benches that are functional furniture that make it easy to not only sit and enhance good posture, but also to increase and inspire flexibility.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Wow. You make these functional furniture and things that we have here in front of us. Are they made out of sustainable or green materials?
RANDY DEAN: Yes. First and foremost, they are made from rubber tree wood, which is one of the most sustainable and renewable woods that there is.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Where is that sourced from?
RANDY DEAN: Vietnam. The rubber tree is used extensively throughout Asia, and it’s used a lot in furniture because it’s a very sturdy hardwood and it’s renewable and also it’s beautiful wood.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: How many products do you carry in your Bhoga brand?
RANDY DEAN: There are four currently, and one in the pipeline.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: You talk about enjoyment and functional design. What does that really mean? It means bye bye your chair, or something like that? It’s going to keep my body in alignment and things of that such?
RANDY DEAN: Yes, exactly. Because of the design of the chair, it’s ergonomically designed to be comfortable for the body, but also to allow us to have good posture. It’s very open design. It supports stretching. You can stretch in any direction. If you want to stretch forward or backward or sideways, there are not only things to hold onto that feel good but that are ergonomically designed to fit comfortably with the body.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Randy, do you still have the yoga studio? Is that still part of your business enterprise?
RANDY DEAN: No.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: But you taught yoga and you’ve been in that practice for over 40 years. So part of yoga, having practiced it at different points of my life, is not only inner, but it’s also outer. It depends on the instructor you have. A quality instructor can make the experience really wonderful. When you sell your wonderful products here, and we have a couple of them, I definitely understand the concept of the chair, the enjoyment of the ergonomic chair, the functional chair. But do the other products come with instructions, so we can make the most of your beautiful products?
RANDY DEAN: Definitely. Each product has an instruction manual. It’s actually a guidebook. I have a couple here. This is over 50 pages of color photographs with instructions of 50 poses with the bench and the chair. Take a look. Flip through that. For each of the other products, like the wall system, we also have an instructional guidebook. With the benches by themselves, they’re very functional furniture, but they’re also very powerful alignment tools and stretching tools.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Now I get it. This is all the different things you can do with your great products.
RANDY DEAN: This is actually just scratching the surface. It really inspires creativity because it’s such a pleasure, and that’s why it’s Bhoga, to touch it and to use it. The main structural support of the body is arches. If you look at the design of the benches and the chairs, there are a lot of arches in the design. It’s like putting a piece of a puzzle together.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Since our body is an interconnected system, are you designing these products to be part of the Bhoga ecosystem that can be used to help us in so many ways, more than just one dimensional?
RANDY DEAN: Yes, totally. I call it eco tools for body-mind balance. When we were young, I think we all had the drawings connecting the dots, right? The beauty of this is that we can visualize whatever shape. People always say, “I want to be in shape. I want to get in shape.” But you’ve got to think, what shape do you want to be in? When you’re doing any kind of stretch, if you can visualize that shape, this gives you the opportunity to connect the dots by having something to hold onto, so that your body can unfold.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Got it. That makes a lot of sense. Do you have plans to develop other products in the line of Bhoga products?
RANDY DEAN: I do. I have something that’s protoyped right now that is ready for production. It’s really a very special new design. Everything has got to be ergonomic, eco-friendly, and enjoyable to use. If it’s not fun, you’re not going to want to do it.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Exactly. Randy, how do you plan on growing this great business? Is it on the Internet, or do you have sales reps across the country and the world? What’s your vision on growth?
RANDY DEAN: My vision is different than the reality. Right now, I’m just on the Internet, and I do festivals like the Green Festival and other things. I visualize having reps. I visualize more social networking engagement. I need more mentoring in that way. In New Hampshire, there’s a yoga studio that has my benches that they have a Bhoga class. I really understand how the value of this, once people see and use it, that there might be a methodology that is also going to be spread as well.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Gotcha. That makes a lot of sense. You just mentioned the Green Festivals. Of course, we’re here at this beautiful Green Festival in San Francisco today. It’s a packed house. Is the purpose of coming to the Green Festival that you have a booth, you have your beautiful products set up there, and when people can come and see and touch, seeing is believing with regards to your potential clientele base?
RANDY DEAN: Yeah, and it helps a lot to experience it because the beauty of having been a yoga teacher, and I want to emphasize that this not just for people who are interested in yoga. Anybody who wants to have good posture, increase their flexibility and strength –
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Which is all of us, Randy, pretty much.
RANDY DEAN: Also, the design is such that it can fit any sizes. That talks about all of us as well.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That is so great. So the future is going to be hopefully sales reps around the world. But for our listeners out there, if they want to buy your products now and they didn’t have a chance to come today to the Green Festivals, they can go on your website, which is www.bhoga.com, right? And you’ll deliver anywhere in the world?
RANDY DEAN: Right now, the U.S. and Canada and Hawaii and Alaska. It depends on the product. I have delivered outside internationally.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: But mostly the United States right now.
RANDY DEAN: Mostly right now.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Including this book is sold online with your products?
RANDY DEAN: The book comes with the products. It’s not sold separately.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: If I buy one of your products, I get this book.
RANDY DEAN: Yes, if you buy a bench or a chair or a Bhoga bar or a Bhoga wall system, yes.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That’s great. Randy Dean, we thank you for coming to the Green Festival. Thank you for coming to Green is Good.
RANDY DEAN: I wanted to mention that I’m offering a discount for Green is Good listeners.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Thank you so much. Tell us about the discount.
RANDY DEAN: I’m on the website. If you put in GIGR20, that’s the discount code. That is good for a 20 percent off of any order. There is a limited time, but that is the discount for the listeners.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Thank you. That’s so kind of you. Our listeners and viewers appreciate it, I appreciate that, because getting this into the hands of more people is really what it’s about and supporting a great eco-preneur like you and making the world a better place is that it’s all about, so thank you, Randy. Thank you, Randy Dean, for coming on Green is Good. Again, www.bhoga.com. Make the world a better place. Make your own sitting and exercise regimen more enjoyable. Randy Dean, you are truly living proof that green is good.
RANDY DEAN: Thank you, John.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Thank you.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: We’re here in San Francisco at the Green Festivals, and we’ve got a really great guest here with us today, Lillian Johnson, the president, owner and founder of Friendly Fundraising. Welcome to Green is Good, Lillian.
LILLIAN JOHNSON: Hi. Thank you for having me.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Happy that you’re here today. Before we get talking about Friendly Fundraising, share a little bit about the Lillian Johnson story, the journey. What led up to you founding this great new company, Friendly Fundraising?
LILLIAN JOHNSON: Thank you. It started out because I have four children, and fundraising was my life for about 20 years, working with the schools, the teachers, the administration. I was really lucky and grateful that I had that opportunity to work with them. They’re amazing people. But it’s a lot of hard work, and there were many things about it that I wanted to see done a little differently. It’s kind of competitive for the kids sometimes. I kind of got to see all the aspects of how that affected the kids. The parents are working hard and they’re busy, but yet they have to find time to volunteer at the schools to drive the kids around, to make those phone calls, to get everything done. I wanted it to be eco-friendly. My four kids, as they grew up and got out on their own, they brought the world in to me, and I’m so lucky because they really helped me to understand about what it is to be conscious about the ecology and to be better shepherds and to take care of the Earth and each other. Because of them, I kind of what do you want to be when you grow up? This is where I wanted to be. Kids are my passion. I like any organization that really helps people, but that really is how I got started.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: What year did you start Friendly Fundraising?
LILLIAN JOHNSON: I’ve been working on it for about six years. We have been launched and live for just a few months.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Wonderful. You say it’s easy eco fundraising for organizations. Explain how it’s easy eco fundraising and it’s different than what other organizations are doing for their fundraising.
LILLIAN JOHNSON: The organization would sign up with us. We would give them a link to our website that’s dedicated just to that organization. They would share that link with all of their members. The members would go online. They’ll shop with us, and then every month we’re going to send a check to that organization for a percentage of the sales that were generated in their name. It’s not door-to-door. There’s no teachers taking classroom time to count money. I did that. It’s a lot of time.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: For our listeners and viewers that want to find your new service, it’s friendlyfundraising.com. It’s that simple.
LILLIAN JOHNSON: Yes, it’s that simple.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Share with our listeners what kind of products you have.
LILLIAN JOHNSON: We try to make sure that everyday products are on there. We have everything from laundry detergent to makeup to bath products to some vitamins, supplements, minerals, a little bit of everything. We wanted to make sure that it was things that people are going to use, to encourage them to shop a little more eco-friendly, and to support their schools all at the same time.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: How many products approximately do you have right now up on your website?
LILLIAN JOHNSON: We have over 10,000. We’ve got a lot of the names that people recognize, like Seventh Generation, Ecover, Bio-Clean, some of the ones that are very well-known, and then there are other ones that aren’t quite so mainstream.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: You’re a fresh eco-preneur, and your kids inspired you on all this. How’s it been going the first couple months?
LILLIAN JOHNSON: It’s amazing to do something you love and be able to be a partnership with my sons and daughters and their families, who also help. I couldn’t do it without them. It’s not something that I could do just on my own. With their support, it’s been amazing. These Festivals, oh my gosh, the people you meet here are amazing. It’s just beyond wonderful.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: For other budding and wannabe eco-preneurs and entrepreneurs, coming to the Green Festival to launch or to further promote their products is a good idea?
LILLIAN JOHNSON: It’s a wonderful idea. Even if it doesn’t help further what we’re doing, just to meet these people is wonderful and to connect. Everybody works together and just to learn about each other is wonderful. Everything here kind of helps build that mass consciousness of the direction we want to be going. It’s wonderful.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: How big of an area do you service? Is it the entire United States, every zip code, or is it limited to a certain area?
LILLIAN JOHNSON: Right now we’re continental U.S. We’d like to branch out at some point, but right now, 48 states.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: If I’m a guy who runs a fundraising program in ABC City, is there any restrictions on the organization, or can it be any organization that wants to raise money in an eco-friendly way can sign up with Friendly Fundraising?
LILLIAN JOHNSON: Yes, any organization. It does not have to be a school. It started that way, just because that was my passion and that was what I knew. But basically, it would work the same for any organization that has to raise funds.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: How’s your marketing been? Besides the great Green Festivals where we’re at today in San Francisco, how are you getting the word out to all the organizations that need the fundraisers? You and I know it’s schools, there’s so many types of organizations that always need to fundraise. How are you, then, marketing to them?
LILLIAN JOHNSON: Actually, my daughter, that’s her field. She does the online part of the marketing, and I’ll be quite honest with you that it’s totally her field. She handles that for me.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: She’s divide and conquer, and it’s a family affair. That’s wonderful. Before we have to say goodbye today, is there anything else you’d like to share with our listeners or viewers?
LILLIAN JOHNSON: I’m grateful for the opportunity to get to talk to you. Hopefully, you’re having a great day, and I would love it if you would check us out at friendlyfundraising.com.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: If you want to raise money and do it in an eco-friendly way, go to friendlyfundraising.com. Lillian Johnson, we thank you for being on Green is Good, and we thank you for making the world a better place. You are truly living proof that green is good.
LILLIAN JOHNSON: Thank you very much.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Thank you.
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