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JOHN SHEGERIAN: Welcome to another edition of Green is Good. We’re so honored to have with us today Sher Kopman. She’s the President and co-founder of Raw Foodz. You can find them at www.rawfoodz.com. Welcome to Green is Good, Sher. SHER KOPMAN: Thank you so much for having me. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Before we get talking about all the great products that you have, Sher, and your great company and the yummy products that I got to try about an hour ago, I want you to share a little bit the Sher Kopman story, the journey leading up to the co-founding of Raw Foodz. SHER KOPMAN: OK, for sure. The whole idea that happened with our company started, actually, in mine and my sister-in-law’s kitchen. We, essentially, saw a very big niche in the market, very health ingredients, things that people could help with digestion and metabolizing the foods that they’re eating. There was nothing really clean and unrefined out there. We formulated these dressings to taste like homemade dressings but super healthy, digestible fats. We start with cold-pressed olive, unrefined, unfiltered, raw apple cider vinegar, lots of non-aerated spices and seeds like hemp, chia and sesame that make them creamy, so people aren’t missing that creamy, delicious texture, but all of the ingredients with them are actually amazing for their bodies. JOHN SHEGERIAN: How many years ago did you start having fun in the kitchen, whipping up some recipes, that you then were able to start thinking, “Hey, maybe we have something here that’s more than from us and our families?” SHER KOPMAN: Sure. Everything started in 2009. The thought behind all of that and starting to get our witch’s cauldron out without the heat underneath, stirring it up in the pot, and playing with different ingredients, and just having a lot of fun making things. We were taste testing with friends and family. We started with the salad dressings. JOHN SHEGERIAN: What was your first product? SHER KOPMAN: We started with our Caesar Serenity, Glorious Greek, French Fusion, and Purely Poppy. JOHN SHEGERIAN: And, this is 2009? SHER KOPMAN: 2009 is when we actually formulated them. In 2010, we started bringing them into local markets in Toronto, and that’s when we first started getting into our first market, which was on the Danforth in Toronto, and quickly expanded into other health food stores and natural product line places that carried things similar to ours. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Who made the sale to the first market? SHER KOPMAN: My sister-in-law and I. Michelle Cass and myself went in and met with the buyer there, and he fell in love. Within a couple days, it was in the store. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Tell me about the car ride back home. SHER KOPMAN: We were super excited. We were calling everyone and just jumping up and down with joy. We’re very passionate about what we do, so we take these things seriously, but at the same time, we have a lot of fun. We have a great relationship, so we’ve always had fun. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Now, do you have a warehouse in Toronto you run this out of? SHER KOPMAN: Yes. All the manufacturing and warehousing is in Toronto, and then we have an additional warehouse that we started up in Inglewood, California, that services a lot of the U.S. business. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Let’s talk a little bit about the last four years. You started with the four or five dressings. Now how many products do you have right now? SHER KOPMAN: We have 11 in total. After those four, we launched three more dressings because people were asking maybe a Japanese would be nice, a ranch, and came out with the Italian because the Green was really popular, so more of a vinaigrette style. Then we brought out our buttery spreads. One day Michelle came into my kitchen, and my husband and I were spreading coconut oil on our toast. She just had this spark and said there’s no amazing alternative to butter. There’s margarine and then there’s butter, but this is the go-to. This is the in-between. This is the healthy alternative. We formulated it using cold-pressed coconut oil and olive oil and hemp seeds, and put together this incredible whipped spread that is very buttery. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Sher, I had the pleasure, thanks to you, of trying that spread about an hour ago. It is one of the most delicious spreads that I’ve ever tasted in my 51 years on this planet. It was amazing, and knowing that it was good for me made it super amazing. It was really, really, really special stuff. You’re just doing an amazing job. For our listeners out there that just joined us, we’re so excited to have with us today Sher Kopman. She’s the President and co-founder of Raw Foodz. You can find Raw Foodz and all the stores that they’re carried in at www.rawfoodz.com. Talk a little bit about the stores. We went from the first sale that you made. How many stores are you in now, or at least, what brands? If our listeners are excited now and they’re starting to get hungry listening to all the yummy dressings you’re making and these spreads, where can they find your products right now? SHER KOPMAN: We are in all the Whole Foods Markets in Canada and the southern Pacific region Whole Foods. Everything is refrigerated, so you find us in produce or grocery, and the butters are in the dairy section. We are in chains like Mother’s, Lawson’s, Jimbo’s, Cooportunity, Erewhon and lots of health food stores. Of course, if you have a store by you and you want them to bring them in, please tell them that we have distribution all across the U.S. and Canada, and stores can bring them in. We want people to be asking for them. JOHN SHEGERIAN: That is so great. You’re in all the big chains right now. SHER KOPMAN: Right now, yes, and we just got into a really great chain in Canada, so we’re excited. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Wow, just growing every year. Every year, you’re just growing. SHER KOPMAN: Yes, and we keep intending on bringing more and more products. Our latest product, which is our cheese sauce, has been very popular. It’s going to be in a store by you very, very soon. JOHN SHEGERIAN: For our listeners out there, I also had the pleasure of trying it about an hour ago on a nacho chip, and it was amazing, the cheese sauce. That was really delicious. Why don’t we share a little bit with our listeners what makes your yummy spreads, dressings, food products different? What are the ingredients, and why are your products different than the typical stuff, the iconic brands that we’ve all seen and grown up with advertising that are owned by the big companies out there, why are your foods different and better? SHER KOPMAN: I’m happy you asked that. First and foremost, we are completely preservative-free and filler-free. We don’t have any corn, soy, gluten, nuts. A lot of low-allergen ingredients go into our products, and we want it to be readily accessible for healthy convenience for everyone. We also believe that in putting all the natural ingredients in there without the fillers and the preservatives, you’re really tasting that fresh taste and great aftertaste, and you don’t need to have the fillers and the preservatives. We use raw apple cider vinegar, like I said, with the mother, and that naturally preserves them. Our dressings are good refrigerated for 10 months. The butter is for a year. The cheese sauce is for eight months, so they have a lot of natural preservation, and unrefined. Everything is unprocessed, even the process that we use to make the products is completely raw, so nothing is ever heated. You’re getting all the natural enzymes and nothing goes through any kind of a process with the seeds that we use. We start with whole seeds and then they’re blended, so all the minerals are intact. The olive oil and coconut oil we use is first cold-pressed, so your essential fatty acids are there. Nothing is carcinogenic, and everything is really great and digestible by your body. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Talk a little bit about that because that’s something subtle that not enough people know about. What’s the importance of those kind of oils and the quality of those kind of oils that you’re using, as opposed to the standard stuff that’s out there today? SHER KOPMAN: Huge. When you use a first cold-pressed oil, you’re cold pressing it in the sense that you’re keeping everything that is meant to be in it naturally still present. Other oils out there, like canola and sunflower and even olive oils that are not extra virgin or first cold pressed, they go through a refining process, so they’re heated. It becomes carcinogenic, and it’s not properly digested by your body. You’re actually storing it as fat in your body, and a lot of bad fat. It’s causing a lot of problems and bad gut problems in people. The health starts in your gut. When you’re using first cold-pressed oil, which are essential for your body, and also you need them in order to digest the vitamins and the minerals in your greens, which are fat soluble. When you use oils like olive and coconut that are first cold pressed, you’re getting all of that and absorbing all the nutrients, which you will not be absorbing when you’re using oils that have been refined. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Let’s go over it again. All of your products are vegan. SHER KOPMAN: One hundred percent vegan, 100% raw and 100% organic. JOHN SHEGERIAN: We love being solution based on this show, Sher. Can you talk a little bit about the importance of avoiding overly processed foods today? SHER KOPMAN: Of course. I think the biggest part is overly processed foods are often high in sodium and the bad sodium, so table salt, and once again, things that go through a refining process. It’s basically junk food for your body. When you’re eating wholesome, pure ingredients that have not been heated or not been treated, then you’re once again giving your body what it needs, and you don’t need as much of it because it’s actually going to be absorbed and used as energy quicker than foods that have been refined. Unrefined, unheated, untreated foods are going to be used instead of being stored, and going to be digested instead of sitting and creating a really bad environment within the body. JOHN SHEGERIAN: As a mom and also as a woman entrepreneur, what would be your call to action for our listeners out there for the importance of considering a plant-based protein diet versus an animal-based protein diet? SHER KOPMAN: I think you have to start slowly. I never tell people, “Go vegan, that’s the only way to be.” I think a lot of people have a hard time. They’re on the go, they have families, they have busy schedules. For me, I started off as a total omnivore, and then I went to being a vegetarian, but I never really enjoyed eating dairy. It wasn’t working for my body, so from a young age, I never had that part of it. To become vegan was easy because I was transitioning naturally. I find that a lot of people question where you get your protein from and am I going to be full enough, and it’s so much prep work, but it’s become so much easier now with companies like ours and many out there. There’s so much healthy convenience and accessibility with all those ingredients, everything from your dark leafy greens, legumes. There’s so much plant protein available to you just from things like that, which you don’t need as much protein as people think that they do. When you’re eating a lot of greens and you’re eating quinoa and you’re eating beans and you’re eating sprouted tofu or tempeh, if it’s something that you can digest, then there’s so many sources of protein. Hemp seeds and seeds and nuts in general are very high protein sources, so it’s pretty easy. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Talk a little bit, also, about the marketing that exists out there in the world, both in the conventional supermarket world and even some of the health food world, where people talk about products being organic, but other people put this word natural on things, and it becomes very confusing in the marketplace to the consumers and to our listeners out there. SHER KOPMAN: It becomes very confusing. It’s very difficult when you have big companies out there that are touting whole grain, natural, even preservative-free, but really, when you break down the ingredients and you see citric acid and xanthan gum and a lot of ingredients going into the products that are really bad for your bodies and for children’s bodies, especially, right in the developmental stages, you really want to stay away from a lot of conventional things that are high in pesticides. A lot of crackers and cookies that are conventional go through so many pesticides in their growth. Young bodies are absorbing all of that, and it’s a shame when there are organic alternatives out there, and a lot of them today. It’s nice to see companies that are really looking at their ingredients and taking it seriously. I find that it’s very difficult for people that are not educated with ingredients to read an ingredient listing, and it looks very natural, and maybe sometimes they can’t even pronounce certain ingredients or preservatives, but they think the main top ingredients look OK, so they kind of stop reading and then they throw it in their cart. But it’s important to read every single ingredient. When the ingredient listing is more than seven to 10 items, you have to start questioning why did they need to put so much in there? What are they bulking it up with? Is that good for me? JOHN SHEGERIAN: So, our listeners should be looking for organic and non-GMO. If they see the word natural and nothing else, they should be aware. SHER KOPMAN: Definitely. Definitely read the ingredients. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Talk a little bit about why eating less is really more when you’re getting the right nutrients and you’re eating the right foods. SHER KOPMAN: Essentially, when you’re eating whole nutrients and whole grains and vegetables and things that are not overly processed or overly cooked, you’re getting a lot of natural enzymes and vitamins and minerals. It’s going to make you full if you eat slowly and then you sit for a little while, rather than running back for seconds too quickly. You’ll actually find that your body is using what it needs and absorbing and utilizing the nutrients as long as the nutrients are really healthy from the start. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Let’s have a little fun here. How many Green Festivals have you exhibited at, or is this your first one here in Los Angeles? SHER KOPMAN: This is my first. JOHN SHEGERIAN: So, talk a little bit about the Green Festival, why you and your sister-in-law decided to have a booth here today, and how it can continue to help get visibility for your brand. SHER KOPMAN: I really like that it’s an eco-conscious event. We package everything in glass. It’s really important to me to make sure that people understand manufacturing-wise the importance of packaging and certain things that are going to break down, help the environment, recycle. The packaging is going to get into the food that you’re eating, so you have to be very careful with a lot of plastics. I know here they’re really into compostable and recyclable, and I also like that they’re non-GMO this year, and that they’re really looking out for companies that are passionate about what they’re doing for the environment. That’s really important for us. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Are we going to be able to see Raw Foodz at other Green Festivals that are coming up? SHER KOPMAN: Yes, we will be at the San Francisco show in November, and we’re super excited about it. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Perfect. What are your other visions and dreams? Where can you and your sister-in-law take Raw Foodz? What’s the vision of the months and years to come? SHER KOPMAN: We want to keep bringing products out that people are going to get excited about. It’s going to make it much easier for them to be healthy, and hopefully consider a plant-based diet. We have sauces on the back burner. We have incredible cream cheese-style spreads and dips that will be coming out in the next couple months, and also some raw chocolate frostings. JOHN SHEGERIAN: This is it. This is really awesome. Thank you for being a guest today. Thank you for creating Raw Foodz and making the world a better place. For our listeners out there, it’s www.rawfoodz.com. Find out where they’re sold now, all the stores, Whole Foods and Lawson’s and Erewhon and all the other great stores across Canada and the United States. Sher Kopman, thank you. You are truly living proof that green is good. SHER KOPMAN: Thank you, John.

JOHN SHEGERIAN: Welcome to another edition of Green is Good. We’re so excited to have with us Siri Baldeep Kaur. She’s the National Field Marketing Manager for Beanfields bean and rice chips. You can find them at www.beanfieldssnacks.com. Welcome to Green is Good, Siri. SIRI BALDEEP KAUR: Thank you very much. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Siri, before we get talking about Beanfields bean and rice chips and all that you’re doing there as the National Field Marketing Manager, please share your story on your journey leading up to taking this position, what you did before, and why you were excited to be involved with this company and this family who owns this company. SIRI BALDEEP KAUR: Absolutely. I started my journey in food and health and awareness and consciousness of what we put in our bodies by traveling throughout the world, actually. I lived in West Africa and in India, and I was always interested in empowerment and how people got healthy and felt good. It always came down to foods they were eating and the preparation. That led me into studying herbal medicine and becoming more conscious of what I was putting in my body and how what I did impacted the environment. I went to school and studied herbal medicine, and I’m also a yoga teacher. It just so happens that one of my teachers is the CFO of our company. We met and I had been very interested in natural foods and the whole industry. It worked out that I could come in. I came into Beanfields about two years ago, and it’s been a really wonderful journey ever since. JOHN SHEGERIAN: When did the company start? SIRI BALDEEP KAUR: The company started three-and-a-half years ago. It was just started in the kitchen of Reed and Liza’s home. Liza made the first batch of bean chips in their oven, and now here we are, a national and international brand. JOHN SHEGERIAN: These chips that are right in front of me that look so yummy, they’re all vegan. SIRI BALDEEP KAUR: They’re all vegan, yes. There’s no dairy at all in any of our products. JOHN SHEGERIAN: How many different flavors do you have right now? SIRI BALDEEP KAUR: We have seven flavors, everything from unsalted to a super delicious creamy vegan ranch, nacho, pico de gallo, all sorts of different ones. JOHN SHEGERIAN: It’s owned by a family you said. SIRI BALDEEP KAUR: It’s owned by a family, yes, two brothers who have been in the natural food industry for combined, probably 30 to 40 years. They’ve worked at every level of natural foods, and finally decided to come out with this brand and are just very committed. Our founder has been a vegan for over 20 years, our main founder, Reed Glidden. We’re really vegan with a purpose, and that’s a huge part about this family-ran company, is that we create chips such as the cool ranch flavor or the nacho flavor, that are kind of like those Dorito favorites that you might have grown up on, but we’ve changed them to be vegan and healthy. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Vegan with a purpose. I love that. So, it’s a family-run business, and you’re located here in Los Angeles, where we’re taping the show from, from the Green Festivals. SIRI BALDEEP KAUR: Yeah, we’re right here in Los Angeles, about 10 to 15 miles from here, so no big deal. JOHN SHEGERIAN: That’s awesome. So, is this the first Green Festival that Beanfields bean and rice chips has been at? SIRI BALDEEP KAUR: Not at all. We’ve been participating in Green Fest for about three years. This is one of our first years where we’re doing all of them this year, New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, L.A. We love Green Fest. It’s the best place to really get in touch with our consumers and the people, and have that grassroots connection with people to really have them taste the product. It gives us a lot of encouragement to see their wow and excitement over our products. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Obviously, it’s been a successful partnership for you because, now, what stores are you being carried in? SIRI BALDEEP KAUR: We’re all over. You can find us here on the West Coast in Whole Foods or Sprouts. We just launched in Gelson’s, any of the natural foods stores, the co-op, Fresh and Easy. Throughout the country, we’re available in various Whole Foods Markets. There’s a couple areas where we’re still working to get into, but mainly the natural markets all around you can find us. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Being at the Green Festivals has not only been a B2C venture, trying to reach the consumer, but also a B2B. You’ve gotten exposure to the retailers who are now carrying your brand. SIRI BALDEEP KAUR: Absolutely. I think one of the main things is that we give away lots of coupons and all of our fans go into the stores and say, “I want this,” and show them the coupon. It has helped us to get some placement in various stores. JOHN SHEGERIAN: That’s awesome. That is really exciting. Let’s talk a little bit about your great products. For our listeners who just joined us, we’re so honored to have with us today Siri Baldeep Kaur. She’s the National Field Marketing Manager for Beanfields bean and rice chips. You can find their great products online at www.beanfieldssnacks.com. Siri, talk a little bit about the quality of the products you have. We already talked about vegan, but why is Beanfields GMO-free? SIRI BALDEEP KAUR: Sure. Well, before we go into that detail, the main thing about Beanfields that really sets us apart from other chip brands that’s really incredible to know is that we’re made from primarily beans and rice. There’s no corn in our product. There’s no wheat in our product. It’s just beans and rice, the all-American superfood, as we like to call it. We really believe in the non-GMO-verified products. It’s really important to us. There are so many products out there that are made from corn that not only are they empty carbohydrates and not really giving energy and fuel to the body, it’s, obviously, as we all know, a really incredible stand to really stand up and make sure that we’re having the cleanest food possible. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Let’s go back to something you just said. There’s no corn and no wheat. That’s really, really important. In a world that’s now talking about reducing inflammation in your body because inflammation leads to a lot of autoimmune diseases, potentially even cancer and other bad diseases, chronic illnesses let’s just say, getting rid of these two products in our food cycle, in our ecosystem, corn and wheat have proven to be very inflammatory. SIRI BALDEEP KAUR: They’re absolutely inflammatory. There are so many people, as we know now, who have chronic allergies to so much food out there. Some people don’t even realize why they’re feeling so lethargic or inflamed or tired or fatigued, and a lot of it could be the possibility of too much corn, especially GMO corn and wheat. Again, we use beans because they have so much protein and so much fiber. Corn also is a really tough crop on the environment. It uses a lot of water. Beans use so little water to actually produce. They also fix the nitrogen in the soil, so they’re actually giving health and nutrients to our Earth. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Let’s talk a little bit about the protein. So many people who are considering going from an animal-based diet to a plant-based diet are always worried that you can’t get enough protein through a plant-based diet. The stats on your chips is just wonderful, given that their core is beans and rice. Talk a little bit about when you compare one ounce of your Beanfields chips versus one ounce of something that America probably thinks is very protein-rich, an egg. SIRI BALDEEP KAUR: Exactly. We all grew up having our scrambled egg or our hard-boiled egg. Beans really do have so much protein in them. They’re really sustainable protein in the body. They give the body so much energy and fuel, and they’re plant based. There’s no heaviness of an animal in there. Again, it’s just a really great protein that processes through the body really efficiently. JOHN SHEGERIAN: And, the same things goes for fiber. Compare one ounce of your chips versus something that everyone thinks has tons of fiber, cereal. Compare the grams of fiber in one of your chips versus one ounce of Raisin Bran. SIRI BALDEEP KAUR: It’s a good double amount of fiber there. Our bag of chips, every ounce, which is about 13 to 17 chips, has 4 grams of protein and 4 grams of fiber. If you were to eat a whole bag of Beanfields, which is 6 ounces, you’re getting 24 grams of protein and fiber. They’re filling as well, where some of the corn or some cereals and whatnot, you can just keep eating and keep eating. These fill you up and give you that sustained energy. JOHN SHEGERIAN: When you talk to your customers out there, because you’re the National Field Marketing Manager, so you get to actually touch the customers, what would you say is the special sauce? Why do the people that eat your chips love your products? SIRI BALDEEP KAUR: We talk so much about protein and non-GMO and gluten-free and vegan, but really, what defines these chips is you eat them and they taste amazing. It doesn’t matter if you are celiac or if you’re a committed vegan or if you eat junk food all day long. You’re going to love the taste of the chips. Sometimes I don’t even tell anyone what’s in them, and they try it, and they say, “Wow! Yum! It’s so delicious!” That’s really what it’s all about, is the taste and the texture. They’re all about taste. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Switching topics a little bit on the business side, because there are lots of people that listen to our show in the United States and, actually now, around the world that want to be the next either Siri, marketing your great product like this and changing the world that way, or they want to be the people who create a product like this. Talk a little bit about what’s gotten hot now in the business world, especially in recent time, is this whole new B Corp thing. Why is it important for Beanfields to be a B Corp? SIRI BALDEEP KAUR: We’re a B Corp because we believe in awareness. We believe in awareness for the environment, for our employees, for the sustainability of our food industry. We just believe in really good values and that’s really what a B Corp is all about. It’s everything from recycling your batteries that you have to really valuing the personhood of your employees and the environment. It’s a lot to become a B Corp. They put you through a whole series of questions and check-ups on you and what not, and you become part of this B Corp, which other brands such as Ben & Jerry’s, Patagonia, other big, well-known brands that believe in social values and environmental values. It’s a big group of all of us who have those as the top of our mission. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Wow. I want to just say this. Your product is part of a new revolution of great foods now that are health for you, but as you say, not only vegan with a purpose, but also very tasty, really enjoyable. How far now do you feel that the colleagues that you work with, the family that you work with, are going to now take this product? How many different flavors and what other new products are you guys thinking of in terms of the growth of the company? SIRI BALDEEP KAUR: I’ve been with the company for two out of the three-and-a-half years that we’ve been around. What I think is so incredible is I don’t even know if we knew how big this would be and how well people would respond. We know these taste great, and we know that they work for people with allergens, and we know that the average person loves them. But it’s exciting to see us really grow throughout the country. We’re available now all throughout Canada. We have some Australian distribution here and there and Southeast Asian countries, so it’s exciting what has taken off. I think that, potentially, we’re just kind of scratching that surface. We just want to get people to try something that tastes great that they might have a fond memory as a child having chips, a certain type, and we just want to give them that nostalgia and that great feeling in a healthy way. We’re working it. There will always be new great things coming from Beanfields, so definitely keep your eyes open for them. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Siri, thank you for your time today. We really appreciate it. For our listeners out there, find, again, a store near you that sells these great products from Beanfields bean and rice chips. Please go to www.beanfieldssnacks.com. Vegan with a purpose, changing the world every day. Thank you so much, Siri Kaur. You are truly living proof that green is good. SIRI BALDEEP KAUR: Thank you so much.

JOHN SHEGERIAN: Welcome to Green is Good. We’ve got Brian McMahon with us today. He’s the Chief Community Officer from Pay It Forward Labs. We’re honored to have you here with us today, Brian. Welcome to Green is Good Radio. We’re here at the Green Festival in Los Angeles for a special edition of Green is Good at the Green Festival. Before we get talking about what you do with Pay It Forward Labs, how you started it, talk a little bit about the Brian McMahon journey leading up to Pay It Forward. How did you even get here? BRIAN MCMAHON: It’s a long story. I’ve lived in approximately 35 countries over the last 20 years. I’m a commercial broker. One of the things I find that as a commercial broker is that it’s incredibly hard to start your own business. You know about your own niche. I knew my workspace, but you don’t know about everything else. This is why there’s such a tremendously high failure rate within companies. That’s kind of what took me to Pay It Forward. JOHN SHEGERIAN: What year did you start it? BRIAN MCMAHON: Five years ago. JOHN SHEGERIAN: What exactly is Pay It Forward Labs? For our listeners out there that want to learn more about Brian’s great company, it’s www.payitforwardlabs.com. BRIAN MCMAHON: Wonderful. When I mentioned that it’s incredibly hard to start a business, most of the reason for that is because you lack expertise in those areas. Pay It Forward Labs is a listing of experts who are incredible at every single aspect of business you can imagine. Anything to do with marketing, legal, venture capital, social media, technology, just imagine an aspect of business that you want to know about, and then you get access to those people. The beautiful thing is the community then rate the value of the feedback that they get from those people, so we get to find out something which is incredibly hard to find, not just in California, but anywhere in the world, which is real experts curated by real people. JOHN SHEGERIAN: So, if I have a business concept or a new vision I’ve developed, I come to payitforwardlabs.com and I can find all the resources I need to start my business and take it from widget to commercial scalable product? BRIAN MCMAHON: Yes. One of the interesting things is actually starting a business is a journey. It’s probably one of the most difficult and frustrating journeys that anybody will ever have. It’s made to look wonderful because the only thing we ever see are the winners on television, but 98.4% of all companies that get funded through venture capital fail. What that means is it’s almost impossible to be successful in your business at the beginning. I don’t want to give no hope to listeners; there is hope, but there’s only hope if you go on the right road quickly. For example, here at the Green Festival, and the Green Festival really wanted to make sure not just the exhibitors but also the people who are coming had a chance of success, not just that they came here, they exhibited, and they have a good festival, but they had a really good start on their business to continue with the right roads. They asked us to bring 30 of our best mentors, and we brought marketing people, we brought technology people, and when I say people, I mean at least of the 30 people we brought, at least 20 of those people had sold companies for over $5 to $10 million. We’re talking really high-quality people. Those people then gave their time for the entire afternoon to do one-on-one sessions with people, spoke to people, advised them, helped them. The really nice win-win here is that what we’re trying to do is take something which a thousand years ago or 100 years ago, this was the basis for business. You asked your cousins, your brothers, your friends, everybody else you know, how do you actually start your business and what do you do? And, you take that advice. The challenge that we’ve got now is that people rely on the 1%. We rely on that 1% of people to give us mentorship. I and we want to take it to a level where the 99% can give mentorship. We all have an expertise in an area. If we bring that expertise to the online platform, and then we let the community rank that expertise based on actually how useful we are in our level of expertise to the community, then the community wins because they get all this great advice for free, and the mentors and the experts, which is everybody, wins because they get to be elevated to a position of not just social recognition, but also potential job recognition in the future and fee recognition when they do get paying jobs. Actually, if I take it a step further, I think that the level of trust as a value proposition to companies when finding people has never been higher because our trust level has never been lower. To be able to get people who are actually rated that highly because of what the community says, it increases everybody’s chances of getting more money. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Is this festival your first Green Festival here in Los Angeles, or have you done others before? BRIAN MCMAHON: This is our first one, and we’re going to take it straight to San Francisco. As soon as I did the first afternoon here and we had our first interaction with the exhibitors, we had some really great specialists. We had a guy named Dr. John Oda who’s worked with Tony Robbins. We also had a lady called Pina De Rosa. She’s got about 300,000 YouTube hits for her TED Talk on mindset effectiveness. We also had the head of the Environmental Committee in the city of Santa Monica, who were the cities who’ve really implemented their environmental policy much better than other cities. We also had a chap that owns about five outsourced call centers who’s onstage as well. We also had a guy called Ash Kumra who’s been recognized by the White House three times for his entrepreneurship. We had those five or six people up on the stage. This was in addition to the mentors that we also had over in the other area too. We started off by actually speaking to what the journey should look like and actually giving advice and help. It then turned into something which is really nice. We started growth hacking their companies. Growth hacking is a term that’s quite a recent term. If you imagine marketing, going on the road around the mountain, growth hacking is just a straight climb up. You look and you are cruelly hard and direct about the points that you make about people’s businesses. We started taking websites of green companies here in the audience, pulling them up on the screen, and doing a five-minute talk with our experts about what needed to be fixed. Here’s the news flash with all of this. 99% of us have something wrong. We either have our website wrong, we have the legal entity that we have in place wrong, we have the technology that our platform is built on wrong, we have our retail shop wrong, we have our brand which isn’t quite aligned with the other things. All of these areas, I think if you can build a trusted social network, that maybe this can be a network for good rather than most of what comes out in technology these days. JOHN SHEGERIAN: For our listeners who just joined us, we are so excited to have with us today Brian McMahon. He is the Chief Community Officer of Pay It Forward Labs. It’s www.payitforwardlabs.com. Brian, talk a little bit about the giving wall. What is the giving wall? BRIAN MCMAHON: It’s kind of interesting. I just want to say Pay It Forward Labs, for us, we never know what will happen in the future, but it’s a nonprofit. We came into this business, we don’t make money from it, we don’t charge fees for it, nobody pays a membership to get into it. I make my money from the commercial brokerage that we’ve had for years and years and years. Where the really interesting journey happened for me was when I started off my brokerage, I thought, “What if we could create a concept whereby you get a better return on investment for giving than you would normally get if you started a business?” For example, when somebody starts a business normally, they do marketing. They pay for pay-per-click, they pay for Google AdWords and Facebook and all these other faceless things which have nothing to do with value-based propositions. What if we can build a community and try to do it? That’s where Pay It Forward came from. Then right in some of the initial events, I thought, “What do I have that’s of value to the community that I can do? That’s workspace.” I have thousands of workspace providers, or people who have office space in those areas, where they’ll give me those spaces for free. We started to create physical events. The physical events had two rules behind them. We said, “Look, it’s the same Pay It Forward concept as we have within the online platform.” I was already friends with the people from the actual Pay It Forward Foundation, the organization themselves, who do a wonderful job. We have the producer of the original Pay It Forward movie who’s part of our movement as well. I thought, “Why don’t we create these really great events in these local areas? Why don’t we bring people in for free?” We don’t charge anything. What really surprised me, especially in somewhere like Santa Monica, where you wouldn’t imagine it’s the most giving place because there’s a lot of pressure on success. I wondered how big the events would become. We suddenly had 500, 600, 800 people coming in on a Monday night, all coming together. We would say, “There’s only two rules, really, behind you coming. The first rule is you can’t pitch. Nobody wants to hear your pitch. Nobody cares about your pitch. You’re just going to bore people and put it into the usual networking scenario. You have to come and ask what is it that I can do for you? What is it that you need? The second rule is you actually have to mean the question. You have to actually care about what you can change within that person’s business, because if you do that and then you multiply it by 400 or 500 people, you then have something powerful. You then have something which is real change.” The giving wall kind of came almost organically from that. Somebody said, “Look, we can’t meet 500 people. Can I just write up on the wall something I’m going to give away for free?” I think it was the Santa Monica Chamber of Commerce that did the first one. They said, “We want to just give a membership to one person for free for a year.” It’s a $500 value. It’s a good value thing to give away, but their angle was if we give away a membership to one person, maybe other people will be interested. We don’t need to give it away to those people. Maybe we give them a discount, but we’ll get prospects. We’ll get prospects by giving. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s actually all right by doing it that way because they’re giving to one person. They can choose the person they gave to. We put it a post-it up on the wall, a big orange post-it. Imagine what the normal post-it looks like and multiply it by three or four for the big Staples ones. We put an envelope underneath it, and we said, “Anybody who’s interested in this, just put your card in.” They had to come back for another envelope about 10 minutes later. So, then more people put it up, and more and more and more. We had 400 to 500 post-its, people offering jobs, services. The only rule is everything is free. You don’t need to give a whole product away, but maybe you just give a taste of it away, a test drive of it away. Maybe you give two hours of social media training for free. If you do an amazing job, people will want more. But then you give it for free. It’s kind of a freak of nature. It’s beautiful to watch. Our demographic at the events are everybody from 20-year-olds to 60-year-olds. It’s 50/50 men and women. If anybody knows Santa Monica, that’s not the Santa Monica way. I don’t know if I can say it, but sometimes it feels like Children of the Corn. It’s just the technology area. We wanted to change that so that we actually were totally inclusive with every area of business. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Brian, during the day, just so I understand this and our listeners understand this, you’re a commercial real estate broker, but this is something you’ve done as a mission. BRIAN MCMAHON: If I worked for me, I would fire myself. I have done so little on commercial real estate, but what happens in commercial real estate is I’ve got great people in the brokerage who do a lot of that work for me now. I think in life, if you’re not driven by a passion or something which is having an effect, sometimes it’s positive effects, sometimes it doesn’t work out as positively as you think, but you need to at least have the aim of doing something that you can get to wherever you get to and say they’re OK. I did something which was of value. So, you need to get money, but the commercial brokerage does OK. For me, this area here, this whole Pay It Forward, has a much deeper meaning. It has a meaning of great evangelists out there like Marianne Williamson and Tom Schues, and all of those people, what they try and do, which is to prove that actually by doing good, it’s not just a better way to live or a more sustainable way, it’s actually a more profitable way to work. JOHN SHEGERIAN: I agree, and I think our listeners agree also. We have listeners all around the United States and all around the world, Brian. What cities today are you in? Where do you intend to take this? BRIAN MCMAHON: We started off in Los Angeles, which we still are. We’re going into San Francisco at the end of this month. Because we’re an online platform, the wonderful thing here is I want to get it to a place where if you want to get technology advice, literally you’ve got people in Poland and Russia and everywhere else. The great thing about technology, we kind of got to this on the panel yesterday over at the Green Festival, is that 70% of businesses that are out there today can be green businesses very easily. A technology business that changes the way workspace is done is a green business because we’ve reduced the platform that we’re on. From our perspective, there’s no real limit to what we can do and the amount of people that we can have in this platform. It’s up to people to register their expertise, put themselves up in the platform, and just be seen. Then we’ll make sure that stuff gets relayed to them, will get pushed directly in their place. We want to have it global, we want to have it available, we want to have it that it’s never, ever a charged product, not for the normal, not premium, nor anything else. That is something that people can use for a real part of their business plan for the future. JOHN SHEGERIAN: For our listeners out there that are really excited right now about Pay It Forward Labs, how do they get involved? Is it as easy as going to the website, www.payitforwardlabs.com and signing up right now? BRIAN MCMAHON: There are two areas which are always really useful. The first thing is yes, go onto the site, register yourself, put yourself up there as an expert, and then you’ll be there. We make sure that as we continue to improve it and upgrade it and make it better, we’ll always do that for you. We welcome feedback. The second area is I always have felt with online that as powerful as it is, without having a really strong offline element, it’s really difficult. We need physical interaction, so I really wanted to make sure that these events that we have done here in Santa Monica, that we have every city to have these types of events. To digress for a second, it was funny with the giving wall because after about five of our events, we said, “This is great. We’re going to get rid of all the post-it notes because we have this great giving wall and it’s going to be more sustainable and more environmentally friendly, and we’re going to put it all online. Isn’t it fantastic?” Then we had a revolt because people love the colored sticky notes. I think we crave to be close to other people, once we got into the comfort level that those people are not going to harm us. By creating an environment where it’s a soft landing as a business, where you can go to and not feel intimidating, it’s really good. So, it’s really important to me that every city that we have this, that there’s a local community leader, that the local community leader realizes that these are not paid events, these are not profit events; these are events for the local community by the local community. They would go, then, alongside the online platform as well. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Brian, for our business owners out there that are thinking about exhibiting at the Green Festivals, what words of wisdom do you have for them in terms of interacting with and getting visibility at the Green Festivals? BRIAN MCMAHON: I would have two answers. I would say to everybody out there, they should come to the Green Festival. I brought my eight-year-old boy today. It’s beautiful just to see the minds at that early age start to be molded. Once we get to my age, we’re lost already. It’s hard for us to adapt and to change. Even if we like something, it’s an entire education. But by having your kids there, we almost have a social responsibility to bring our young ones there and have those people realize the impact on the planet from doing stuff which is just stupid, and which can be changed really easily. That’s just on a basic human level. For the price of entry, which is virtually nothing, there’s every single possible aspect of green business you could imagine. I think it’s great for the family and for the kids. From a business perspective, green is changing the world. We look at the stocks which are in energy stocks. They’ve doubled over the last couple of years. We look at the entire change that we have within cars, Tesla, the golden child for everybody in the car industry right now. This is not a fluffy thing that’s on the periphery of business; this is the future of business, not just here but all over the world. I think if anybody is serious about doing business in their own sector, they need to be at the event. They need to look at the businesses that are at the event. They need to look at their competitive advantage, and they need to look at it from two perspectives. Number one, how can I improve my business without destroying my business? How can I improve it without spending a lot of money to actually make it greener? A lot of those things are actually really simple things to do. The second thing is which ones of my competitors are actually making a bigger noise in the green area than I am, and actually getting more customers from it? The summary is come. Why not? JOHN SHEGERIAN: Come one, come all. Come as business, and also come as a family. That’s great, Brian. Brian, we thank you for your time today. We thank you also for being such a visionary to create Pay It Forward Labs. For our listeners out there, go to payitforwardlabs.com. Brian McMahon, you are truly living proof that green is good. BRIAN MCMAHON: Thank you, sir. Pleasure being here.

JOHN SHEGERIAN: Welcome back to Green is Good, and we’re so excited to have with us today Ira Baseman. He’s the President of Community Recycling. Welcome to Green is Good, Ira. IRA BASEMAN: Thank you very much, John. I appreciate the opportunity. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Hey, Ira, before we get talking about all the important great work you’re doing at Community Recycling, can you share with our listeners a little bit about the Ira Baseman journey and story leading up to getting involved with Community Recycling? IRA BASEMAN: Absolutely. I think it’s really best described as sort of having the entrepreneurial DNA. I was raised in a household where my father was involved in many different businesses along the way, and it wasn’t anything that wasn’t possible. There was always a new opportunity, always a new business interest, and I learned at a very young age about making things possible. And that really has been in my thinking from day one. Despite the fact that I was encouraged and maybe coerced is the wrong word to go into a professional degree practicing law and working in Washington, DC, and Philadelphia with a large corporate law firm, I had always harnessed and harbored the entrepreneurial spirit. It was after sort of the reality struck that practicing law was not my long-term interest, I decided to seek other opportunities. I thereafter went into the home building business, joining a large publicly traded luxury home-building company, where I was really given a business education. I had come through the legal world, but in very short order, I was given the tools and resources to learn what it meant to succeed in the business world. I spent seven years doing that. I did a lot of great things for that company, but realized at the end of the day that it was not mine, and so I sought after something different. I left that company with the idea that I was going to build my own company, and thereafter, I started a tech company in the first dot com revolution, which was a venture backed company that grew rapidly and was going to the moon. Certainly, that was everybody’s expectation, but, as the world knows, the market corrected. We sold the company, fortunately, before too long, and I was back into the world of building my next invention, as it were, which started with the entry into the clothing recycling world through the establishment of a thrift store in Philadelphia. This goes back about 15 years. I had this desire to create something new and different for the retail thrift community, professionally managed, clean, beautifully designed and an ultimate experience around thrift shopping, really changing the way people think about thrift. This goes back to the time when people were still accustomed to dark, dingy thrift stores. The thrift business was exciting to build, but the retail world was certainly not one that I was more or less inclined to. I ended up gaining a great deal of experience about that industry and learning about the whole industry, the entire life cycle, from the recycler’s side all the way through to the end user, the recipient of that material, whether at the thrift store or elsewhere around the world. I sold the thrift to Goodwill, and proceeded to focus on what I thought was really the most fascinating part of the business, which was the acquisition of material, the engagement of recycling, sort of on a global scale. That was the birth of Community Recycling. It’s been a journey, and one that I have been passionate about for the last 14 years. JOHN SHEGERIAN: I love your tagline, People Recycling for People. IRA BASEMAN: Thank you very much. It really informs everything that we do. It is the most fundamental concept that is really lost on many people when you think about recycling. The most traditional recycling is paper, glass, plastic, and certainly now in our world other good stuff that we recycle. But there is inherent in clothing, shoes, and accessories and the like, the opportunity of connecting people, of really making a difference, not only in your local community, not only in our country, but across the world, by inviting people to think about reuse, inviting people to think about the life cycle of their favorite shoe or favorite shirt, and it is ultimately about people. That concept of focusing on people, humanizing recycling, informs everything we think about and everything we do, from social media all the way through, the engagement we have with recyclers all over the country and around the world to the recipients of that material. JOHN SHEGERIAN: I love it. For our listeners who just joined us, we’ve got Ira Baseman. He’s the founder of Community Recycling. To learn more about his great business, go to www.communityrecycling.biz. I’m on your website now. It is beautiful. Ira, share a little bit about your definition of the reuse movement, so our listeners understand. When you say reuse movement, what do you mean by that? IRA BASEMAN: Reuse is the most powerful and impactful part of the recycling triangle. When we think about reuse, let’s think about the value that that has economically, environmentally and personally or socially. The idea of reuse is that we have, as a country, certainly, the opportunities that many others don’t, and we are blessed with affordable clothing, affordable shoes, and the like. The ideas that this material that we take for granted has life and has opportunity well beyond our short engagement with it, and it’s about the opportunity of creating a relationship through recycling. It’s about building the connection of recycler and recipient through reuse. Reuse is a personal connection, but it also has the most impact environmentally. From a carbon footprint standpoint, reuse is the most powerful. The EPA just recently came out with a study that clothing recycling is equivalent to taking, on an annual basis, about a million cars off the road every year. It is more impactful to the environment than plastic and glass recycling combined. Reuse is the glue that holds together what we do, and it is more important than anything else in teaching people about the impact. It’s about really bringing to the fore the value that we are building environmentally and economically and personally. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Got it. What are some of the programs? When you say community recycling, explain some of the siloed programs, the engagement programs that you offer at your company. IRA BASEMAN: Sure. Over the last several years, we’ve developed a portfolio of programs that really fall into four different categories, as it were. The oldest of them, and the one that really has gained some really fantastic visibility and traction, pardon the pun, is a program that we started a couple years ago called Shoebox Recycling. Shoebox Recycling is a program that really marries the concept of the note in the bottle to shoe recycling. So, what we’ve done is we’ve created a program that allows and invites people to go to our website, print off a note that has a unique identifier, put that note with a story about your experience with your shoes, anything that you’d like to write, put that note in the shoe, box up the shoes, print off a free shipping label, and deliver that box back to Community Recycling. That box travels around the world, and we are inviting recipients of those shoes to go online, take that note, and that website notifies us that your “solemate” has been found. It has been a fantastic experience. We have taken the idea of recycling and reuse to a totally different level by really inviting people to share a story, building engagement in a very different way. To date, we’ve recycled probably close to a million-and-a-half pounds of shoes throughout the United States. We’ve touched every state in the union, and we have managed to create relationships with thousands of organizations, from Girl Scout troops to Fortune 500 companies. So, Shoebox Recycling is really a pivotal moment in our development, and certainly represents one of the more exciting programs that we’ve created. The second program that we’ve created is called CR Kids. It’s an entire recycling experience that’s delivered to K-5 elementary schools, primarily. What we’ve designed is we’ve put together a program with the national company called Pods, which is a storage unit that is placed at the school. It’s branded with Community Recycling. We provide curriculum, we provide bags, we provide a recycled world map, a one-of-a-kind recycled world map that we’ve had specially designed and created. Each one is unique. The schools are given that map. The schools are invited to engage in the recycling and reuse movement, and if they hit a certain target of recycling, which is 5,000 lbs., we provide the school with an iPad. We’ve partnered with Skype in the Classroom to connect that school with a classroom around the world where the recycling ends up. So it’s about connecting cultures, it’s about teaching children about the value of reuse, and it’s about building a personal engagement that is really unparalleled in our industry. The third example is CR Campus. This is a program that we’ve designed around the college community. Remarkably, over the last couple of years, student groups have come out of the woodwork. It’s a fantastic experience. We’ve seen the college kids get really involved in sustainability. It’s not just the facilities management on campus; it’s really the students that make the difference. It’s about community service, it’s about finding a home for all of that stuff on campus, whether in the dorms or the apartments, that should be recycled or reused. So, we put together a program similar to the CR Kids program, where we set up on campus, invite the kids to participate, and we manage to do that from Harvard down through Georgia Tech and into the middle of the country. It’s a fantastic experience, and all these college kids are delighted to participate. We also provide them with our recycled world map as well. The fourth program, and really the one that I’m most excited about, is called CR Home. CR Home is really intended as the most direct relationship and the most direct experience that we can create for every individual consumer recycler. Through our website, we’ve invited everybody to join the reuse movement by participating individually by going online, printing a free shipping label, taking a box, filling it with shoes, clothes, and accessories. That is with a free shipping label, sent back to Community Recycling. In that process, we’re providing to each individual a personal sustainability report. Everybody will be provided with a detailed dashboard as the environmental impact that they’re having to their community, in addition to which, we’re going to track that box of recyclables from your home all the way around the world to the 50 countries, including the United States, in which we manage relationships. So we’re going to provide you with a personal sustainability report and tracking to teach you where your stuff goes, and invite you to learn and understand what the impact that you’re having, both locally and globally. It is an experience that is unparalleled in our industry, and is a direct engagement with the consumer recycler. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Unbelievable. Ira, I’m blown away about all the unique paradigms and collaborations you’ve created. Can you share a little bit of some wow numbers with our listeners, in terms of, for instance, how many tons of clothing does Community Recycling recycle and repurpose every day? IRA BASEMAN: Let me just start by putting this in context. It is estimated that every individual in our country discards approximately 70 pounds per year, which is 22 billion pounds of clothing, shoes, and accessories that are put into the waste stream. That is an enormous amount of material. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Let me be clear. Seventy pounds of textiles a year. IRA BASEMAN: Precisely. Seventy pounds per person per year, so equivalent to 22 billion pounds per year, only 15% of which are recycled. There’s a huge opportunity for change in our thinking, and a huge opportunity for everybody to make a simple difference by just thinking about the opportunity and thinking about what reuse can mean. As it relates to Community Recycling today, we manage to recycle on a weekly basis somewhere between a million to a million-and-a-half pounds per week, which is significant, certainly, but it is not by any means, in the context of what the opportunity is, as meaningful as we’d like to be. We are dedicated to that task. It’s really inviting more people to participate in the reuse movement and really educating everybody about the value of reuse. It’s not just unique to Community Recycling; it’s evident in our relationships that we enjoy with our partners. A lot of the companies that we’re working with and a lot of the retailers and large organizations are now talking more about sustainability than ever before, so it’s really raising awareness across the landscape. We want just to be part of that dialogue. JOHN SHEGERIAN: We’re down to the last three minutes, unfortunately, but can you then segue into that topic? How do we get textile recycling to be top of the mind, as traditional top of the mind, as curbside recycling materials such as aluminum, plastic, cardboard, and others? IRA BASEMAN: Sure. This is the great challenge that we tackle every day. First and foremost, it’s about raising awareness, and raising awareness is happening through a lot of different avenues, social media, traditional media, companies are talking about it. We are certainly out on the ground every day making a difference. Second, and really a key component to the recycling period, whether reuse or otherwise, is convenience. It’s certainly meaningful in everything we’re doing. We’re trying to make every program that we have as convenient as possible. Third, it’s about engagement. It’s about an experience that we’re building around the human personal act. The simple act of recycling can make a huge difference. So, marrying all those items together, awareness, convenience, engagement, is all about making a difference. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Got it. I like it. Name, please, the sustainable retailers that are involved with you, and what are some of the benefits to the retailers in terms of collaborating with Community Recycling and getting involved more with the reuse movement? IRA BASEMAN: We recently launched the CR Home program through our first retailer, called Original Penguin. It’s a brand that is really gaining some recent notoriety, and it’s a tremendous experience. The experience that we’ve built around CR Home for the retailer is very different than what the traditional opportunities have been in the past. No longer is it necessary for the retailer to have a box in the store, a passive, anonymous, untrackable event. We’ve built something that is direct to the consumer, is traceable, is trackable, and is reportable and measurable, and creates an experience that is unique to the individual and is unique to the retailer. That is really the value proposition that we’ve created with CR Home for the retail community. We’re in conversations with a couple of others that I’d rather not talk about at the moment, but it is a dialogue that is happening every day. The retail community is very much engaged. We’re participating in the retail sustainability conference coming up at the end of September, and we have a number of retailers that we’re very excited to talk with there. This is something you’ll see a lot more of in the short term. JOHN SHEGERIAN: I love it. For our listeners to see a lot more of what Ira’s great work is doing at Community Recycling, go to www.communityrecycling.biz. People recycling for people. Thank you, Ira, for being a sustainability visionary in the recycling and reuse of clothing and textiles. You are truly living proof that green is good.

JOHN SHEGERIAN: Welcome back to Green is Good, and we’re so honored to have with us today my friend, Anna Griffin. She’s the Publisher, Editor-in-Chief and founder of Coco Eco Magazine. Welcome to Green is Good, Anna. ANNA GRIFFIN: Hello, John. How are you? JOHN SHEGERIAN: I am wonderful today, and I’m so thankful you came on the show. You’re so busy producing another great magazine. Before we get talking about your wonderful and beautiful magazine, Coco Eco Magazine, I want you to share a little bit with our listeners first about your wonderful and interesting life and journey leading up to the founding of Coco Eco Magazine. ANNA GRIFFIN: That’s very generous of you. Wonderful and exciting. It’s interesting. You never know in life where your journey will lead you. My background was modeling. I was getting into TV hosting and having a terrific time. I got to travel all over the world. I’m from England, originally. Being a model took me from Europe to America out to Asia and back to the States. About seven years ago, I saw this notion that global warming was becoming very consistent, alarmingly consistent. Because of seeing so much of the world, I really have been blessed to have seen beautiful places, really stunning. The thought that we would be destroying that without even knowing about it was unfathomable to me, absolutely. The thought that polar bears were going around in the Arctic but we might actually be killing them without even knowing, I couldn’t get my head around it. The thought that in several years you couldn’t find a polar bear in a zoo was remarkable. It’s a bear, one of the most common species in the world. I started this process of staying up late at night and researching what was happening with global warming, and after about a year of doing that, I asked how does a girl like me live? I was already recycling and I was doing some work with dog rescue. So, I said I’m already into that slightly more mindful state. I started to learn about all these products and companies, beauty and fashion, that were starting to dip their toe into more eco aware products. After about a year of doing that, I realized it’s a great amount of information I’ve got, but it doesn’t help the planet or other women if it’s on my laptop or in my head. I better do something about this. I’ve never launched a magazine before ever. I’ve always been in front of the camera. I didn’t want to just do a website. A few websites had sprung up that were great, but he positioning of Eco was still very grassroots and granola and crunchy. I had this feeling that if we’re going to capture women’s imaginations, we’ve got to do this on a scale that’s more in line with an aspirational glossy magazine. Women are feeling, sentient beings, I’ve got to capture their heart and excite them with the possibility of living this new lifestyle. That was sort of the beginning of Coco Eco. I didn’t want to print at that time. I thought that was a new trend in eco products, so it started as a digital magazine. Everyone looked sideways at me. We launched on October 22, 2008, and the first issue was online. Everyone thought it was wonderful and it was a more exciting way of looking at living sustainably, whether it’s travel or fashion or beauty or the cars we drive. That first issue, I remember, had the Smart Car in it, it had an eco chic trip to Bali, Indonesia. It was very, very glossy. The general consensus out in the world was that’s great and eco-fabulous. All of a sudden, we had the prime mortgage crisis, and advertising changed to the internet, Steve Jobs, may he rest in peace, launched the iPad. This was in the following year, 2009, and all of a sudden the pieces started to fall into place, and digital publishing was very much the way to go. It turns out once you save the planet and my passion, it’s the biggest genius I never knew I had. It’s really amazing how passions can drive you, push you to make the world a better place. It’s really incredible how the chips fall. That was that. We carried on digital publishing, and we were so glad to work with some tremendous people. We’ve had some great cover stars, we’ve had some great people inside. There’s one with Richard Branson and what he’s up to with the airplanes and Necker Island conservation. They’re greening it now. People like Sting, who came out the last few years for the rainforest. Leonardo DiCaprio, we’ve featured all of them. Where do we go from here? We’ve got a great product. What are we going to do with it? I was approached to go into print. Print, at the beginning, wasn’t an option for me. But I was really suggested that I needed to do this. So, we took it into print this year. We launched in June in LA, with Andie MacDowell on our cover, and there has been a fantastic response to it. There is a place for it, and there is a desire for the content. The general public now has shifted to get in line with something that I, and I know you, have been working on for years. Now people are more aligned with it. We are in preparation now for our second print issue. I can’t talk too much about that now, but that’s in development. That will be in October, and then next year we have a four-issue schedule. Hearing someone think the world of my place inspires and excites me every day. I’m an entrepreneur. It’s a tough climate out there. It’s really hard. You’ve got to have so much faith. I’m working really hard to build a really good product that can survive out in the general public, but if you build up a product and are fortunate enough as I am to have attracted phenomenal people such as yourself that really make my work day such a better day, it’s incredible what you can achieve. It really, really is. It’s so worth it, particularly if you an entrepreneur who’s out there. Once you feel caught for the world and its people, it’s a really great opportunity to jump in and get involved and be a part of this great shift that’s occurring and really have your work count for something. After 16- to 18-hour days, which I do 16-hour days, I’m exhausted. But I’m so happy and I’m so grateful and so excited for the moment my alarm goes off the next morning to begin again. That’s me. JOHN SHEGERIAN: For our listeners out there, your magazine now is both online and offline. To look at it online, which I am right now, which is a beautiful website, it’s www.cocoecomag.com. And it’s also available offline. As you said, the last issue had the beautiful Andie MacDowell on the cover, and it was just the most gorgeous issue, chockfull of great information, and as is your website. For our listeners out there, both the website and the offline magazine are just wonderful to pick up in your travels and to enjoy. For our listeners out there that just joined us, we’ve got Anna Griffin, she’s the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Coco Eco Magazine, with us today. She’s also my good friend. Anna, for our listeners, share a little bit about the definition of sustainability, how you’re mixing both eco and stylish simultaneously with regards to sustainability. ANNA GRIFFIN: That’s a great question, John. Thank you. For your listeners, just to make it really simple for them, Coco Eco, I wanted to find something that was obvious in terms of our eco-commitment in our content, but also spoke to our love of fashion and beauty and glamor. Coco Chanel is one of the most legendary fashion designers of all time, one of my favorites. I think all girls love Chanel. Chanel herself, she had an incredible journey to get to where she was. She really, in her time, stood up against the status quo and forced her way through to be who she became. I wanted something catchy that also spoke to our love of fashion and beauty and that really signaled what sustainability is now, and it’s fun. It’s a lot of fun, and there are no compromises. Environmental activism has been a real grassroots movement that’s really been some of the people that have trickled out into the mainstream. I think the general public had an association of hugging trees and wearing hemp and smelling like patchouli. It’s just not that way anymore. There’s so much accessible. When I thought about starting the magazine, I noticed that there was a lot of messaging out there towards eco that was really bludgeoning. It was either fear-based or it was very lecturing in its tone. No one wants to be preached at. No one wants to be made to do something, and no one wants to be frightened into anything. I think women have very, very tough lives nowadays. They’ve got to worry about food on the table for their children, keeping a roof over their head, some women work two jobs. Life is not fun for everybody right now. So, I wanted to portray this in a way that was accurate and factual and in integrity, but could really excite women with the possibilities now living in this space, and that there are no compromises. I always say that living eco, you can have your cake and eat it too. It’s everything from travel to airplanes. I launched my first issue, and everyone was talking about airplanes. People were shaking their head, like airplanes? Most people have to get around. We’re not going to all of a sudden stop and go live in tipis. We have to incorporate it into our lives, being more sustainable and more aware. That was it, to give women choices, so they wouldn’t have to go and research all the information that I already knew. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Anna, speaking of choices, we have about five-and-a-half minutes left. Can you share some of your favorite eco-minded brands with regards to fashion, beauty, and lifestyle? Give our listeners a little tease of all the visibility that you have because of your hard work and you get to see a lot of these great sustainable and non-sustainable products. What are some of your favorite and great ones out there that women should be using in terms of not only making the world a better place, but also safer for them in terms of using products that have less chemicals that they should be avoiding and things of that such? Some of your favorite eco-minded brands. ANNA GRIFFIN: OK. It’s very easy. As far as beauty is concerned, I think we should all check labels. If there’s something that you can’t read on the back of it, if you can’t pronounce it, don’t put it on your body. Your skin is your largest living organ. It’s not a barrier, so anything you put on it goes directly into your bloodstream. The products we’re using, that we’re eating, foods with GMO, it goes on and on. You should stay away from anything that’s got sulfates and parabens. There are lots of great lines out there, everything from Burt’s Bees, which you can find in CVS, which is a great product for moms and for their children. I love Timberland, the clothing company. Everyone associates them with the great outdoors. Levi’s now has great jeans. Under Armour, Nike, even the big guys like Gucci. In terms of lifestyle, if you’re looking at cars, you should go with Mercedes has a B-class now which came out two weeks ago and it’s all electric. You obviously have BMW doing things, Cadillac, Ford. There’s something for everybody. With airlines, Virgin, and actually Lufthansa and Air France. There are major brands out there for everybody. Everybody is now doing something. It’s really, really exciting. Women really want to be careful of certain things. Change your deodorant. Get away from the commercial products that have aluminum in them. Aluminum has the ability to stay in your breast tissue, which is next to your armpit, so go with a more natural product, Tom’s of Maine. Great. I love Tom’s of Maine. Great toothpaste. You want to keep fluoride out of your mouth. Again, when you’re looking at things like fashion, for example, from Timberland I have a pair of boots that I just love. They’re great whether I’m in New York running around, in L.A. between meetings, I could also go out into the snow. They’re dyed without using formaldehyde. I think that’s the thing. I think women should know that there are lots of products, like lead going into lipstick, formaldehyde going into leather tanning, aluminum in deodorant. Mainstream commercial products are using these ingredients and they’re going into your bloodstream. No one wants lead or formaldehyde in their system. So, it’s really looking at it like that. Looking at going vegan is always a great way to go. Really stay away from the nasty chemicals. We need to take control of our personal health, and if it’s bad for the planet, it’s bad for you too. It’s really that simple. If it’s polluting our waterways and our land, then if you’re putting it in your body, you can be sure it’s going in your bloodstream. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Anna, we’re down to the last minute. Shameless plug. Where are people going to see Coco Eco in the years to come? ANNA GRIFFIN: If I have my way, they’ll be seeing it at Barnes & Noble and Whole Foods. Also, we’ll be going into hotels across the country, newsstands. Go to cocoecomag.com. There’s a new issue coming out October 15. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Thank you, Anna. We’re going to have you back. For our listeners out there, go to www.cocoecomag.com or to a great bookstore or store near you to find Anna’s great magazine on the shelves right now. Thank you, Anna, for being an inspiring ecopreneur and sustainability superstar. You are truly living proof that green is good.

JOHN SHEGERIAN: Welcome to another edition of Green is Good. We’re so excited to have with us today Beth Davies. She’s the CEO of Green ABCs. Welcome to Green is Good. BETH DAVIES: Thank you so much for having me. Good to be here. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Beth, before we get talking about Green ABCs, can you share a little bit about your background and journey leading up to the founding of the Green ABCs? BETH DAVIES: Sure. I grew up in the States, in Connecticut, and went to school actually in Rhode Island, and eventually became an executive in a big company. We lived overseas for a few years. I came home because I have a son who’s nine, and I really wanted him to go to school in the U.S. I’ve always had social issues and sustainability and environmental causes as part of how I was raised. I can remember boiling things to recycle them back in the day; I’m that old. When I went to get the huge list of things that my son needed for school that the school nicely sent home, I looked for green options and there weren’t any. I stewed on this idea, actually, for a couple years because it’s something I’ve thought about. I went to try to find these products. It was a huge amount of material, and I thought it really should be green, and I couldn’t find it. I thought about it, and finally through some innovations and some things coming online in the market, we were able to create a green school supply company. The environment always has been very important to me and part of my life and the way I think and the way we live, and it really wasn’t something I could deliver well in this one aspect of school supplies, which I thought was odd. So, this is why we started what we did. JOHN SHEGERIAN: And, when did you start Green ABCs? BETH DAVIES: It’s really new. We started the business maybe like six months ago, but we’ve just launched the range of products online this summer and this fall. JOHN SHEGERIAN: And, that’s the fun of our show. We love having big companies, we love having new entrepreneurs and eco-preneurs on the show talking about the great things that they’re doing. For our listeners out there that want to follow along, I’m on Beth’s website right now. It’s greenabcs.com. It’s that simple, as ABC. Beth, can you share a little bit about obviously, you’ve put a lot of thought and work into this. Talk a little bit about some of the information and the background facts that you put into this that are compelling for our listeners out there, such as the scale of the environmental impact schools have in the U.S. and things of that such. BETH DAVIES: Sure. I think what a lot of people would be very surprised to learn and people not involved in the environment and the green industries and those kind of things, is how un-green schools are. There are a lot of schools that still use Styrofoam every day. It was really surprising to me, so what I would say is there’s a big opportunity. There’s one way to look at it, as a big opportunity. The amount of material that students use every year is profound. Just in copy paper alone, there’s 52 million school-aged children in the U.S. If each one of them uses two or three pages of copy paper a day, which is grossly underestimating it, that’s one-half of a million trees a year plus. So, that’s a lot of trees. I think my son’s a genius. We all think our kids are a genius, but he’s not writing the Iliad in fourth grade. I think we can use recycled paper. You know what I mean? So, I think that there are two big wins here with green school supplies. One is the environmental impact, which is profound. We’re talking about a lot of natural resources that we’re using that are virgin material to create product, but we’re also talking about a huge opportunity for recycling and for using products again to create things like pens and notebooks and scissors. But we have a huge opportunity as well in terms of education. If you’ve ever thrown out a soda can in front of a ten-year-old in the garbage instead of the recycling bin, you’re more than likely going to hear all about it. “That’s recyclable.” The education about recycling has been really strong in schools, and it’s successful. Teaching children at a young age about these kinds of things has proven to be a really successful way to go. So, imagine if in 10 years, you went to go buy something in the store, and that child said, “What is this made from? Is it renewable? Is it made from recyclable materials? Is it made from renewable resources? Is there innovation that makes this biodegradable?” In 10 years, if a child automatically thought when you go to purchase something, “What’s in it? How’s it made? Where is it made?” Then that’s a huge step forward in the culture of sustainability and the things that we use every day. So, our vision is twofold. It’s to help schools to use sustainable products, and it’s also to help create this mindset and this teaching opportunity with children about sustainability in the things you use every day. JOHN SHEGERIAN: I like it. When you started the business enterprise and actually took your vision and the information you had gathered and now put it online as a business opportunity, how do you go about marketing it? Of course putting it online is one thing, but then what segments of the population did you start trying to message and educate to start building traction? BETH DAVIES: That’s a really good question. How do you reach these people? Most public schools have Parent Teacher Associations, so what we’re doing is reaching out to those associations to let them know about our company. What we do for schools is every school is different, but I don’t know if you have kids or have kids who are school-aged, the list you get home can be 25 to 50 items deep, depending on the school. It’s variable. So, we work with PTAs to create what’s called customized kits. PS 1 in Manhattan, we will sit down with them and we will design a kit from our full range for each one of their grades, so they’ll have a kindergarten kit, a first grade kit, and we will give them all the tools they need to send out flyers home in the backpacks and also to have parents go online and order it online. They can create custom kits for what they need for their school, and the parents have the option to buy the green version, so they know they’re getting exactly what the school wants. We also sell standard kits. This is a kit that provides a year’s worth of school supplies, so you don’t have to keep going back to the store and this kind of thing. It’s five notebooks for the year and three packs of pens and this, that, and the other, depending on the school. We also sell standard kits that provide what you need for the classroom and your child, so things like copy paper and things like that are included. We have student kits, which are just what the kid needs, what your child would need for their grade for the year, and then we have teacher kits. Your teachers spend over $1 billion a year on school supplies, so this is a great way for people to give a gift to a teacher or to support a teacher in their life, by buying kits that provide what the teacher needs to run their classroom, so the folders and the pens and the things that they themselves need, and gives them a bit of supplies for some of the kids in their class that don’t necessarily have everything they need. So, if you have 25 kids in a class, five to 10 will buy the kits, five to 10 are going to buy what their individual child needs, but there are, unfortunately, going to be some children in the class whose families are not in a position to buy anything. So, these teacher’s kits provide some items that all the kids are going to need, so teachers can help out the kids in their class individually. A lot of my family are educators, my mom, my sister, my brother-in-law, my great aunt was a teacher, so there’s a lot of teachers. I remember every year going and buying reams and reams of stuff at the store, and having a drawer where she’d dole out things to the kids in her class because the reality is that in New York City alone, we have 1.25 million kids in the public school system. 250,000 of those children get a free lunch every day, which means they are below the poverty level. So, there’s a real gap in resources for a lot of these students, and a lot of that burden falls on the teachers. They end up buying a lot of supplies for kids who need them. So, those are three options. We have four options. We have kits that are standardized. If you live wherever, you can just go online and order it. If you want to try to move the green agenda forward in your school, we can meet with your PTA and help create custom kits for you and your school and your child’s class and his grade and school, and get that process going for you. JOHN SHEGERIAN: For our listeners who just joined us, we’ve got Beth Davies on. She’s the CEO of Green ABCs. To learn more about Green ABCs, go to greenabcs.com. For our listeners out there, whether you’re a teacher, a parent, a student, a superintendent of a school system, there’s an entry point for everyone with regards to what you’ve created. BETH DAVIES: Sure. Absolutely. At the individual parent level, at the teacher level, at the friend of the teacher, at the systemic level, if you’re a superintendent, absolutely, yeah. We can scale it as big or as small as you want. That’s how our business is set up. But I think our vision is to green every school in the U.S. That’s our vision. That’s what we want to do. We feel we can be a part of that because there’s really kind of four aspects to green schools. There’s the physical environment, making sure it’s not toxic and it’s safe. There’s the consumption aspect. What do you use in your school? Are those resources sustainable? Are they green? Are they nontoxic? There’s green spaces. That’s kind of about increasing the green in your environment, whether that’s growing plants in the classroom or taking back an empty lot in the next lot or in the country, whether that’s creating gardens. Then the fourth component is about education, really creating a robust and profound environmental education component to your curriculum. So, those are kind of the four aspects of it. We feel we’re a real asset to any organization to help them create both a sustainability a plan, but also to help them drive the actual consumption part of their green agenda. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Obviously, you’re on the cutting edge of leading the green revolution in the U.S. school system, which is, by the way, badly needed. BETH DAVIES: It’s really shocking how bad it is. I really had no idea until my child got school aged. I’m telling you, there are schools that use Styrofoam plates every day, all day, 180 days a year still. Wow. OK. Where are we going to go from there? There’s a lot of opportunity, like I said. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Beth, how many brothers and sisters in arms, in terms of eco and entrepreneurs out there, have you met along the way that are part of this mission goal in some part of the ecosystem, not exactly what you’re doing, but also doing other things, other pieces of the eco pie that are helping to accomplish the goals that you’ve well laid out? BETH DAVIES: Sure. There’s an organization called the Green School Initiative, and you can find them online. They have some really great tools for people in terms of creating a green and sustainability plan for your school and giving some information about what the impact on the environment is. There are some places in the United States that are doing a good job. San Francisco, San Diego, their public school systems are cutting edge in terms of recycling more so than preconsumption. The issue is that there’s not a lot of this going on. Most schools and most educators are talking about post-consumption recycling, which is very, very important. We go through 50 million bottles of water a year as a country, but we only recycle about one-fourth of them, so that’s not good, obviously. So, there’s a huge opportunity in the post-consumption aspect, but we’re really trying to drive the conversation to before you buy it, what’s it made of? We’re trying to change how things are made because the issue with the environment, from my perspective, we’re really not going to solve this issue unless we stop making things from virgin material, unless we stop making everything we use every day, and we start recycling things or we start using things that are renewable resources. We use, for example, corn to make our plastic, as opposed to traditional plastic, which is a petrochemical derivative, we use corn. We use bamboo to create some of our paper. All of our paper is 100% recycled. It’s made from bamboo, which is an extremely strong plant, one of the fastest growing in the world. When you harvest it to make things, you don’t kill the plant, so it’s a renewable resource. We need to look at things like that and change how we make stuff full stop on a big scale. JOHN SHEGERIAN: We’re down to the last three minutes or so. I do want to ask you, you’ve spent a lot of time and energy not only doing research and then making the relationships and building the website and all the sell through aspects, but also sourcing all these great green materials that you’re now promoting and selling. BETH DAVIES: Yes. It took months and months to find these products. We work with some big brands, like Paper Mate has a line of products that are all made from recycled wood and Elmer’s Glue, but there’s lots of little brands like Onyx and Green, which is a great company out of Canada that has a whole range of green products and uses a lot of innovation. They’ve created the corn plastic and they have a additive they put in their plastic folders that makes them biodegradable. We had no boundaries of who we’d work with in terms of, obviously they had to be green and they had to be an innovative company, but we weren’t saying we’ll only work with big, well-known, global brands. So, we really sourced the best of what’s out there for each of the categories that we have, whether it’s pencils or paper or markers. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Love it. We’re down to the last two minutes or so. Tell me and our listeners what’s your goals here? You’ve got hurdles. Obviously, the legacy of the past and the apathy that still exists. What are some of your biggest challenges in the next year or two ahead, given you’re a relatively new business, and what are some of your goals? BETH DAVIES: Our biggest challenges are getting schools to adopt sustainability as a vision that they want to deliver. Our biggest challenge is getting schools to commit to becoming green and working with us to help them in the supply aspect of the school supplies. That’s our biggest challenge. But I think we plan to just do one school at a time. We have a sales team around the country, and just meet with the schools on an individual basis and grow year in year. Our vision is to help every school become green. JOHN SHEGERIAN: I think that’s a great vision. For our listeners out there that want to learn more about Beth Davies’s company, go to greenabcs.com. You can buy products, you can learn more about her great services, and you can introduce it to others in your school system, other teachers, other students, other school superintendents that run entire systems. Share the great word of Green ABCs. Beth, thank you for leading the green revolution in the U.S. school system. You are truly living proof that green is good.

JOHN SHEGERIAN: Welcome back to Green is Good, and we’re so honored to have with us today Dr. Lisa Bardwell. She’s the President and CEO for Earth Force. Welcome to Green is Good, Lisa. DR. LISA BARDWELL: Thank you so much for having us. JOHN SHEGERIAN: We’re so happy to have you on today and share all of the great work you are doing at Earth Force. But before we get there, you have a fascinating journey to share with us leading up to becoming the President and CEO of Earth Force. Can you share with our listeners a little bit about your story and journey leading up to Earth Force, and how you even got here? DR. LISA BARDWELL: Sure. I’m a recovering academic, and my dissertation, actually, was really focused on being so concerned that the way we think and present environmental issues in the classroom and in our communities is often so big and overwhelming that people kind of throw up their hands and say, “I’m going to live for today. I don’t think I can figure out a way to help make a difference.” My dissertation, actually, looked at how you present issues and how people think about them and work on them in a way that is exciting, reinforcing, and optimistic. Well, I was introduced to Earth Force at the very beginning in 1997, when they were developing local sites, and lo and behold, the educational strategy that Earth Force uses engages young people in approaching environmental issues in the way that my dissertation told me ought to work and be effective. For the last 17 years, I can tell you that process that we help people use to work together on environmental issues works. It validates the research and the kind of geeky stuff I did in a real world context, and I couldn’t be more excited at getting to bridge that and to really try and help address issues in communities I care a lot about, about issues I care a lot about, and getting to work with young people who I really care deeply about. JOHN SHEGERIAN: That is just so wonderful. When did you join Earth Force, Lisa? DR. LISA BARDWELL: It was started in 1994 by Pew Charitable Trusts. I joined it in 1997. JOHN SHEGERIAN: 1997. So, you’ve been there running the organization for now 17 years. DR. LISA BARDWELL: It’s a little more complicated. At the time, I helped start a local site in Denver, and then in 2008, maybe, I was asked to run the national organization, so it had local offices and a national entity, and I worked at the local site and built that up in Denver, Colorado, for the first about 10 years. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Gotcha. For our listeners out there that would like to follow along and learn more about Earth Force, please go to earthforce.org. Share with our listeners, please, the mission and what actually is going on at your great organization, Earth Force, Lisa. DR. LISA BARDWELL: I think the big vision of Earth Force is that we have a nation where young people are really actively involved. They’re sitting at the table and helping make decisions and positive change in their environment and their communities and schools. So, our mission is that we engage young people as active citizens who improve the environment and communities now and in the future. The thing that I think I am really excited and pleased about the work we do is that we recognize that you can’t just throw a program at an educator or a community partner or a group of young people and think that they can accomplish that, that our other commitment is to really working at a community level and bringing together those entities, be they businesses, faith-based, schools, other nonprofits, so the grown-ups, to be honest, to get their act together to really create a shared platform for young people to step into leadership roles to effect change in their communities. We’re convinced we don’t have to wait until you’re 18 to be a change agent and to bring marvelous energy and creativity and commitment to addressing some of the issues that we face. JOHN SHEGERIAN: That is so great. What does Earth Force mean? Everyone has different definitions of environment, of sustainability. How does Earth Force define environment, and how does health figure into that entire holistic definition? DR. LISA BARDWELL: Sure. So, we’ve kind of adopted the environmental justice definition of environment, which is really very place-based, so it’s the place where we work, play, and learn, some people add pray. So, it really grounds our work in young people looking at what is around them. When you do that, especially if you’re working in urban settings, that’s going to include clean air, clean water, the ability to recreate, to be able to have safe places to walk, so clean indoor air. At that point, you begin to really think about not only the environment as that kind of natural animals, trees, you really begin to think about how does that affect humans and the life and the quality of life that we have in our communities? I have to credit young people for really pushing that in our growth and our understanding about how we do this work because their process that we support and train adults to facilitate with young people starts with a community inventory and young people looking at what are some of the strengths and what are some of the challenges in their communities. Inevitably, they come back with those kinds of issues that really touch very directly on human health. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Explain what you mean in terms of it’s project based and how you engage youths into projects to create platforms that give them opportunities to become young leaders. DR. LISA BARDWELL: Our process is really focused on kind of the notion of we have a very deep commitment to being a democratic nation and really helping build those civics skills. The process is really six steps, and we train and support formal and informal educators and partners in really supporting this. It’s a group of young people who work together to go from identifying an issue in their community that they care about, that’s so critical. They’ve got to be passionate about it, and helping them figure out how to really look at the political and social landscape in their communities to figure out who do we need to work with to address this issue? What’s been done before? What are some resources and strategies that we could use to actually effect change for the long-term? They do this in a school context. You can integrate so many of the disciplines into how the young people actually go through this process and do this work. You’ve heard me mention research skills. They have to work together. They actually have to make decisions together, but it’s around an issue that they care about, which is so critical. Then it’s also really, really important that they get to actually implementing that project, and that because we use a process that we call criteria-based decision making, they really have brought criteria to bear on their decisions, so ideally, they’ve done a project that they can accomplish in the timeframe they’re given with the resources they’re given, and that they do a reflection at the end that says, “What did we accomplish? What else needs to be done? And how do we share and celebrate the work that we’ve done?” I think an example might be more useful too, or more helpful. I’m going to pick one that I think is near and dear to maybe Electronic Recyclers International. We had a group of young people, so I said they start with an inventory. Many, many of our programs start with young people looking at a watershed in terms of a local river or a local lake. They often go out and they do water quality monitoring and they do an assessment of just the health of that body of water. These young people were doing that inventory, and noticed that their local creek really had become a dumping ground. When they did an inventory of some of the trash they collected, they realized that a lot of it was electronics. So, folks were throwing their computer screens, whatever they couldn’t dispose of, they had to pay or whatever. So, their project was to actually work with their local community to set up an electronic recycling program. So, in their mind, they’re solving the issue of addressing dumping in their local waterways by creating a community alternative that had people bringing their electronics to a more appropriate disposal strategy. We’ve had another one. We had some young people who were looking at drinking water in their community. Because this is such a balanced process, we really force them or encourage them to look at the full picture. We had young people who were worried about they discovered that there was lead in the drinking pipes in a lot of their homes. This was an older neighborhood and quite low-income. Of course, the first thing young people would think is, “Oh my gosh, we have to sue. We have to sue the water company.” But you do your balanced research, you really think about how did these systems work, and they learned, of course, that old homes had lead water in the drinking pipes, and that in many of these homes the owners were not going to be able to afford replumbing their homes. So, these young people decided they were going to target a most vulnerable population, which is pregnant women and young people under six, and they raised $5,000 to distribute water filters to 100 of those homes and of course the concomitant this is why we’re doing this and this is why it’s important. That process for those young people, it’s one of my near and dear stories. It turned a group of young people, in their school they were seventh graders. Much of their school had given up on them because they were such a disruptive, challenging class, and doing this process and realizing that they had a critical role in helping others and in changing their communities, I literally, with the results for these young people, person by person, is astonishing in terms of how it changed their perspective on their academic performance and why they’re in school, on how they work together, and on their really almost their right and responsibility to step up in their communities. JOHN SHEGERIAN: I love it. Those are two great stories. If you have just joined us, we’ve got Dr. Lisa Bardwell with us. She’s the President and CEO of Earth Force. You can check out all their great work. You can also donate and support all their great work at www.earthforce.org. Lisa, these two critical points that I want you to discuss and share and basically define for our listeners out there that I’ve read about you and how you frame the issue and also frame the solution. You talked a little bit in your previous stories about looking at the full picture. You have really taken a holistic view of the environment. I want you to share what you mean by holistic view with regards to the stories you were just sharing, but more important, I’ve seen a term that you’ve put together called uncommon collaboratives, and I’d love you to unpack for our listeners and explain how uncommon collaboratives can be one of the keys to solution making with regards to sustainability and our environment for the months and years ahead. DR. LISA BARDWELL: When we talk about uncommon collaborative, we really are bringing to the table how critical it is that all of us, and that includes businesses, schools, parents, faith-based communities, so I’m talking at the adult level, that we really get our act together and figure out how to share an agenda and a vision for working together. The uncommon collaborative is really — and I think we’ve dedicated ourselves in the last few years to really trying to figure out how do you get those entities in a room to figure out how are we going to collectively bring the resources, the expertise, the energy, and a shared vision to really get something done? In working with young people, I’ve seen how frustrating it can be when you cannot figure out how to navigate the system because there’s people who are territorial, they’re in silos, and they’re not talking to each other. One of our efforts is, and the image I have of it, is that — and we have a beautiful graphic of this on the website — is that we’ve got these organizations and entities holding up a world where young people really can play a deep and profound leadership role in shaping the future of our communities. But if we don’t do that together, if we don’t commit to creating that uncommon collaborative, it’s very, very difficult, not only for young people, obviously, but for all of us. If some of you have heard of the term of collective impact, it’s not new, but there is definitely a movement of folks recognizing that we are so much more powerful and have so much more potential in accomplishing something if we get over those barriers and the silos we create, and figure out how to work together. JOHN SHEGERIAN: I love that. I’m on your website now. For our listeners again who want to support and learn more about Earth Force, it’s earthforce.org. I’m on the website. You have Green Schools Connect. Can you explain Green Schools Connect and the green efforts you’re making with youth and how that’s also moving the needle? DR. LISA BARDWELL: Yes. So, Green Schools Connect, if you imagine this world where we’re creating this uncommon collaborative, one of the places where that uncommon collaborative could so move the needle, is around schools. Green Schools Connect is really an effort to build an uncommon collaborative that supports school districts in becoming more sustainable. That means our moniker is that we envision all schools as shining examples of sustainability. Not only are schools a centerpiece in our communities and exemplars of that, but we’ve actually helped schools move the needle, not only on purchasing and operations, but on an integration of curriculum around sustainability, a culture that embraces that, and young people helping drive how our schools function at that level. If you think of a school, the heartbeats that are in a school are young people. Their behavior and their commitment to the sustainability and the sustainable practices of their schools are what are going to really, really make those changes. What Green Schools Connect does is it’s a regional effort that brings together six to eight school district teams across, again, that uncommon collaborative, purchasing, operations, curriculum, parents, young people, to really work together with teams from the corporate sector, government agencies, nonprofits, to really think about what are some explicit projects that they can work together on to begin to change how school districts approach sustainability. We’ve done our first one in Minneapolis, and we’ll be rolling out two in January and February in Denver and New Jersey. I hope I’ve captured the excitement of getting that cohort of folks in a room to dream about how they can change the policies and practices, and really sharing strategies that can transform and save money, of course, for their schools and school districts. JOHN SHEGERIAN: We have about two minutes left, Lisa. Can you share what events you have coming up of importance that you’d like our listeners to know about? DR. LISA BARDWELL: We are celebrating our 20th anniversary this year, and we’re very excited about that because as a nonprofit, we’ve made it. It’s also the 25th anniversary of a very wonderful partnership we’ve had with General Motors, where we work in every community in the U.S. and Canada where they build something, and support this collaborative partnership program to engage young people. As I mentioned before, we have the Green Schools Connect events coming up in Denver and New Jersey in early 2015. JOHN SHEGERIAN: That’s great. That is just awesome. For our listeners out there who want to learn more, go to earthforce.org. Lisa, this is the last minute-and-a-half. I’m going to leave it to you for any shameless plugs or anything you want to discuss for our youth around there from around the world, not only in the United States, any pearls of wisdom or any other last thoughts you want to have for our listeners. DR. LISA BARDWELL: I think I want to say, and this is my voice to adults, that one of the challenges to youth engagement in environmental issues is us, in that we need to really begin to embrace the opportunity and create space for young people to step up, because they’re energetic, creative and hardworking, and care deeply about the present and the future. I hope folks will join me in that. JOHN SHEGERIAN: That’s awesome. I hope they do. To join Lisa, please go to earthforce.org. Support, learn more about, and get with their program. Lisa, thank you for improving sustainability through uncommon collaboratives. You are truly living proof that green is good. DR. LISA BARDWELL: Thank you. Take care.

JOHN SHEGERIAN: Welcome back to Green is Good, and we’re so thankful and excited to have Neal Saiz with us today. He’s the Director of Safety, Health, and Environment for Unilever North America. Welcome to Green is Good, Neal. NEAL SAIZ: John, I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me on the show. JOHN SHEGERIAN: We’re so happy you’re here. It’s your first turn on Green is Good, and bringing with you your great brand, Unilever. We’re so excited. Since it’s your first time on Green is Good, Neal, I’d love you to share with our listeners first the Neal Saiz journey leading up to your position at Unilever, and also how you even got here. NEAL SAIZ: Good. So, I’m relatively new to Unilever and to the East Coast. I spent the last 20-25 years in the automotive industry, so it’s kind of refreshing. I had to make cars, and now I’m learning how to make food and tea and ice cream, so it’s a very exciting change for me. JOHN SHEGERIAN: That’s so interesting. Were you involved with any of the greening of the car industry when you were in the car industry? NEAL SAIZ: Well, I was predominantly safety and environmental, running the manufacturing sites, so day-to-day operations. Not really on the side of the design side of the vehicles. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Gotcha. OK. And so talk a little bit about your role at Unilever now. What is actually now your day-to-day in your new position at Unilever? NEAL SAIZ: Well, it’s been kind of interesting. I’ve really been on a road tour, trying to visit all of our factories, really understand our business, so I’m kind of still in that learning phase, getting ready to make that next shift into kind of the big picture and strategy phase, so I’ve been on the road for the past eight to nine months. I’ve visited almost every facility in North America, and I’ve also visited some of our sites globally. So, it’s been pretty exciting. I’m a little worn out. It’s good to be in Jersey and spending a little bit more time with my family. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Since you’ve now had this time to travel and roll up your sleeves and get familiarized with the new industry you’re in, can you speak of some differences that you’re seeing between your new industry that you’re in and the automotive industry, which you just came out of? NEAL SAIZ: Absolutely. I’ve been involved, like I said, in environmental and safety for almost 25 years, but in the last 10 years, I’ve seen a big shift into sustainability. It’s kind of exciting because you’re seeing the change from traditional compliance with our sheet professionals, to really thinking bigger green, recycling, and renewable energy, some of the more exciting things. But I tell you, the difference between automotive is amazing. Our stakes are much smaller. The sites I dealt with in the automotive industry had 3,000-4,000 people under one roof, and now we have sites with anywhere from 200-600 people, and they run completely different, much more personable, a lot more direct interaction with the people. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Interesting. So, now that you’ve got familiarized, what’s the next step in terms of your evolution at Unilever in terms of driving change and evolving change with regards to sustainability, energy, and the whole green revolution? NEAL SAIZ: Well, it’s really two things. It’s really communication and standardization. So, what I’ve seen, John, is we’ve got a lot of facilities out there that run independently, and we’re trying to pull them all together, share information a little bit more, not try to reinvent the wheel, and get everybody kind of working on the same page. I think we’re getting close in a very, very short period of time. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Gotcha. So, what new trends do you see that you could implement at Unilever that they have not leveraged yet, but are going to be highly valuable to Unilever in the years to come? NEAL SAIZ: Well, I tell you what. I want to share with you we introduced this recent partnership with NRG, and it’s really huge. So, NRG is one of the country’s largest energy providers. You might say, “Why would you partner up with them? They’re predominantly coal.” But it’s interesting because their CEO and our North American President got together and said, “Hey, how can we do something really, really big? Forget about incremental change. Let’s talk about transformation here.” They threw out 100% renewable energy by 2020. Of course, it scared the heck out of me because that’s quite a bit to accomplish, but we’re thinking big, we’re going big, and it’s moving very, very quickly. What it’s going to do is, we currently buy Green RECs. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s renewable energy certificates for 100% of our electricity in the U.S. So, we may not generate it on site, but we’re going to buy it from companies that do generate it, so it’s kind of a credit or an offset. So, we’re going to move into generating a lot of this energy on our own, either on site, off site, and what’s really exciting is we may eventually sell power to the community. We may sell power to other business partners, and possibly even our competitors. So very, very cutting edge. We’re learning as we’re going. In fact, I’m missing a meeting right now with our team. We’re moving very, very fast in a very short period of time. JOHN SHEGERIAN: For our listeners that just joined, we’ve got Neal Saiz on with us today. He’s the Director of Safety, Health, and Environment for Unilever North America. To follow along while you listen to this show or to learn more about Unilever after you hear this show, you can go to unileverusa.com. I’m on your site right now, Neal, and it’s just amazing. You have not only a very visually beautiful site, but it’s full of great information with regards to sustainable living. I’m on your sustainable living plan right now. It’s all about green and sustainability, so this is something that Unilever has adopted and is part of their and your DNA and culture. NEAL SAIZ: Yeah, and it’s even more than that, John. We don’t have a separate environmental or sustainability business plan. This is our business plan. Our CEO, Paul Polman, he’s the real deal. He’s recognized globally for his cutting edge view on this. He sees this as something that’s very important to the future of our business. This is really what’s going to set us apart from our competitors. Our USLP aims to double the size of the business while reducing our environmental footprint, and we’re doing it. Again, a lofty goal, but let me throw some statistics out there. Just in the last five to six years in North America, we have reduced our carbon dioxide per ton of product produced by almost 75%. That’s amazing. These are things that I was trying to accomplish in my previous career, very, very difficult because I didn’t have that type of leadership behind me. Water, I’m sure all your listeners have been reading the stories about Lake Mead recently. I mean, we’re a couple of years away from starting to shut the water off to parts of Nevada and California. So, it’s kind of scary stuff. We’ve reduced our water per ton, again in North America, by 56%. Quite amazing, considering a lot of our products have water in them. NRG, 20% less. We do have some very energy-intensive processes. We have to keep that ice cream cool, obviously, in some of our food products, and then probably our biggest accomplishment, North America was the first cluster in Unilever to become zero-waste landfill for non-haz waste in all of our manufacturing operations. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Wow, that’s incredible. NEAL SAIZ: It is. It’s quite incredible because, like I said, I tried to do this in the past, very, very difficult if you think about it. Where I come from in Michigan, there’s a landfill 5-10 miles away from just about every operation I had. Huge, huge culture shift. JOHN SHEGERIAN: When you went to all the different locations, Neal, is part of your goal, as you say, in terms of standardization, getting everyone to not only message the same and get the culture the same at all of them with regards to sustainability, but also to share and trade best practices among all of them, both nationally and internationally? NEAL SAIZ: Yes. We do work globally. All the cluster directors, similar to myself, we communicate quite a bit. We have regular meetings, but absolutely. Trying to make sure that we’re all kind of doing the same sort of things and learning from best practices. But I will say, all the sites are living to the spirit of the USLP. All new projects are living to the spirit of the USLP. Again, we’re taking this very, very serious because a lot of times, people are being very shortsighted, they’re not thinking long-term. We are thinking long-term. We’ve also challenged the traditional one-to-three ROI return on investment for capital. We’re saying, “Hey, OK, let’s look at the entire life cycle of this process, and see what really makes sense.” This is helping to fund some of these bigger sustainability projects. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Because of your new position, you get to have a lot of visibility into some of the biggest trends that are on our horizon. When you see trends with regards to renewable energy, what are some of the bigger trends that you can share with our listeners? What’s coming our way? Is it going to continue to be solar and wind, or do you see other things as well? NEAL SAIZ: Well, wind is incredible. You can throw up some huge wind farms and supply a lot of electricity to people, but that’s something you can actually do onsite. Solar is changing every day, but the real big thing here, John, is we can’t wait. You can’t wait for the next greatest, best technology. We have to move forward now. It’s getting better all the time, but I mean, there’s a lot of things. CHP, combined heat and power, solar, wind. But the other thing that you forget about is we really are focusing on efficiencies, so we’re trying to reduce what we’re actually consuming, whether it be waste, raw materials, or the energy consumption on our sites. That’s probably the biggest thing that we’re focusing on right now. JOHN SHEGERIAN: For our listeners who just joined, we’ve got Neal Saiz on. He’s the SHE Director of North America for Unilever. You know, Neal, after your name comes the initial CSP and CHMM. Can you share with our listeners, and with me, by the way, what those initials stand for? NEAL SAIZ: Those are a couple of credentials that are recognized in our industry. The Certified Safety Professional says you come from an accredited university, you’ve got at least a minimum amount of time in the industry, and you’re good at taking tests. More importantly, consulting, but again, it’s something that’s very big in automotive in our larger assembly plants. We expected a person to be a CSP. CHMM, Certified Hazardous Material Manager, so really getting into managing waste, recycling, and those sort of things. Again, same type of criteria. More important in consulting, but I got it, so I put it after my name. It looks good. JOHN SHEGERIAN: That’s great. And what is SHE mean? That just stands for Safety, Health, and Environmental Director of North America, SHE? NEAL SAIZ: Yeah, and every company is a little different, so I’ve just gotten used to the SHE. Sometimes it’s EHS, HSE, but we’re SHE, Safety, Health, and Environmental. JOHN SHEGERIAN: I love it. To learn more about what Unilever is doing, the great work that they’re doing in sustainability, it’s www.unileverusa.com. Neal, one of the common themes you’ve brought up a couple times today is the issue of leadership and how companies really get sustainable in terms of their culture and DNA comes from the top down. You’ve drawn some differences between Unilever, where you are at now, and the automotive industry. Can you share some more thoughts and some more background on how you came up with that, and why you see that continuing to be the right way to go in terms of a trend, in terms of how we’re going to change the world together as big business goes, and also as the nonprofits go? It’s from the top down. NEAL SAIZ: Absolutely, and automotive is doing great things. It’s more focused on their vehicles, and probably less focused on their manufacturing sites, but I think they’re getting there. Obviously, we went through some tough times. I’ve been through the bankruptcy, I’ve been through the plant closures, very, very lean times. Now they’re getting to the point where they can focus on those sort of things. But leadership, I mean, it’s key. Our zero-waste to landfill would have never happened without the support of our Senior VP for the Americas, Harold Emburger, who’s one of my line managers. Never would have happened, we would have never got to this point this quickly without his leadership. Same thing with our CEO. I mean, it sure does make my cause a whole lot easier when our CEO of our company is pushing the USLP. JOHN SHEGERIAN: So, the leadership does make a difference, and then the accountability on the back side on achieving the leader’s goals is the other side of the coin. NEAL SAIZ: Absolutely. It makes it much easier for me. I’m just delighted to be here because people think about it, all facets of the business, whether it’s the supply chain, logistics, our customer development, our sales force, they are all living the spirit of the USLP. JOHN SHEGERIAN: That’s just wonderful, and it’s so great to hear that Unilever has gone zero waste to landfill. You know, we’re down to the last five minutes or so, Neal, and one of the things we like to share with our listeners and we like to have our great thought leaders and our business leaders share with our listeners is solutions. Can you take the last five minutes to share some of your thoughts on what our listeners can do out there, whether they’re in business, nonprofit, whether they’re students, or whether they’re just great people living in their home and they want to be part of the solution, not part of the problem anymore? Can you share some of the changes that they can make, or the things they can do, to help make the world a better place? NEAL SAIZ: I tell you what. Don’t hesitate to contact me. Believe it or not, I’m not the expert. I’m just kind of steering the ship with some of these activities. I’m surrounded by people who are way smarter than I am. I can link you up with some really, really good people. The main thing is recycling, even at home. I personally wasn’t recycling 5-6 years ago. I can’t throw a plastic bottle in the garbage without my six-year-old daughter giving me a dirty look and pulling it out of the garbage, so really our future is our children. We’re starting to partner now with our customers and our vendors in sharing this information, so again, if anybody is interested, please contact me. I can link you up with the right people. There’s a lot of easy things you can do to really get started. JOHN SHEGERIAN: That is just great. What does the future hold now? Now that you’re there and you’ve toured the locations nationally and internationally and you’re going to catch your breath a little bit and then go out again, what’s your goals in the next three to five years at Unilever in terms of driving sustainability forward and being always on the cutting edge? NEAL SAIZ: I think the main thing, John, would probably be we want to be part of the business. I think we’re getting close, but to continue to integrate with our operations, being involved with projects on the drawing table versus when the show up at the factories, that’s key, making sure our designs are proper, but really becoming part of the business, and not just the police force enforcing regulations on the side. So, I think that’s probably the most important part in the next 3-5 years, and really just continue to drive the message home. I mean, there’s pockets of resistance. Everybody has their own agenda, but for the most part, I think we’re all on the same page. JOHN SHEGERIAN: When I was preparing for this show, Neal, I read a great story about things that you’re doing there. Can you share one of my favorite stories with regards to the amount of soap that you guys donated to the Clean World Foundation, and what that means, and how that makes a better world with regards to the great work that you’re doing just on the soap issue? NEAL SAIZ: John, you definitely need to get in touch with the Clean the World co-founder and CEO, Shawn Seipler. This guy is amazing. I had a chance to meet him. He started this business in his garage because one day he was at a hotel and he says, “What happens to all this soap?” He’s like, “Hey, it’s going to the landfill, but how can I help and reduce millions of deaths due to poor hygiene out there?” Unilever personally has donated over a million pounds of soap that may have been off-spec, we couldn’t sell to the consumer for any number of reasons, but there’s really nothing wrong with it. They’ve taken the soap and they’ve distributed it to basically all over the world. 17 million bars of soap in 96 countries Clean the World has covered, so we’re really excited to be part of that group. This is all product that wouldn’t have ended up in a landfill, but would probably have gone to waste energy for us. So, a win-win for both sides. JOHN SHEGERIAN: We’re down to the last minute or so, Neal. You mentioned your daughter, and I’ve got two children also, and I consider guys like us, we’re the sustainability immigrants, but our children are going to be the sustainability natives that are going to take this whole revolution to another level, of course. What’s your thoughts for our young listeners out there in the United States, and we have listeners of course around the world, what’s your thoughts and pearls of wisdom for them to get involved in terms of just changing the world, being part of the sustainability movement, and also maybe being the next Neal Saiz? NEAL SAIZ: Well, they get it, so I think as they mature, they’re going to be teaching us, and they’re going to be taking us to the next level. It’s funny because different industry, I mean, people are much younger here in Unilever than they are compared to where I come from, so I’m learning from these folks every day. JOHN SHEGERIAN: That’s so nice. That is just so nice. Thank you for coming on the show. We’re going to want to have you back on to continue to share the ongoing sustainability narrative at Unilever, and the continued success that you’re having there. Neal Saiz from Unilever USA, go to www.unileverusa.com to learn more about all the great things Unilever is doing in sustainability. Neal, thank you for your inspiring leadership in sustainability. You are truly living proof that green is good. NEAL SAIZ: Thank you, John.

JOHN SHEGERIAN: Welcome back to another edition of Green is Good. We’re so excited to have with us today Shel Horowitz. He’s the founder of Business for a Better World. Welcome to Green is Good, Shel. SHEL HOROWITZ: Thanks, John. Good to be here. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Before we get talking about Business for a Better World and your great website, business-for-a-better-world.com, can you talk a little bit about yourself and what even got you to this point? What was your journey leading up to Business for a Better World? SHEL HOROWITZ: It was a long journey. It really started back in the seventies when I was a kid, and I got interested in the environmental world and the peace movement, and then realized fairly early on that journalism and marketing skills were going to the way that I was going to express this. So, for more than 40 years, I’ve been both in the environmental world, activism, and in the business and marketing world, because some of the earliest stuff I did was promoting some of the groups that I was involved with that were working for a better world. So, this goes way, way back. Now, making a career out of it, that obviously didn’t happen when I was 15, but I was trained as a journalist in college, and over the years, more and more the groups I was working with in the community, because I had that journalism training, they would throw to me the job of writing the press releases and then dealing with the reporters who would call after the press releases went out. So, from that, I expanded into lots and lots of other kinds of marketing, copywriting in particular, and overall strategic consulting. What happened back around 2001-2002, when the business pages were exploding with all of this stuff about Enron and Worldcom and Martha Stewart and one scandal after another, I had the first of several epiphanies. This one was that I have something to say about the idea that business assets, and green principles as well, is an asset to business. It’s actually easier to make a profit doing business the right way than being a crook. So, that led to my sixth book, Principle Profit Marketing that Puts People First, and I really began to speak and write much more about this idea that it’s not enough just to be a good person; you also have to run a good business. Interestingly enough, John, the funny thing is when I started doing this work, my business took a stratospheric jump. All of a sudden I was attracting people who were willing to spend large amounts of money with me. In the past, typically I would write somebody a press release or write them a website, and then I’d have to go on and get the next client and the next and the next. And all of a sudden, I was bringing people who’d say, “Yeah, do us the press release and then do us the website, and then do us strategic marketing consulting, and then, by the way, help me produce my book.” They would drop five figures with me over the next year or so. So, that was a really wonderful side effect, and I do believe it was a side effect in making public my demand to the business world that they do things right, and my proof to them that they can profit from it, I started profiting much more. So, then the story continues, as I got more into this work and I realized that resource use was very key to all of this. In particular, energy and water, and so I started shifting more in the direction of showing businesses how it’s really profitable just to go green, just to cut your energy bills, cut your water bills, cut your trash disposal, make the world a better place, and make more money, and you not only cut your expenses, you also can then boost your marketing in a whole lot of ways because, interestingly enough, if you give people a choice between two companies and their product quality is similar, their pricing is similar, but one has a public environmental commitment and the other doesn’t, pretty much anybody except the serious wing nut climate deniers are going to go with the one that’s green. So, you look at, for example, a company like Mark Howard, a paper products company. They make toilet paper, napkins, paper towels. They went recycled — my God — they went recycled in 1950. I wasn’t born. They didn’t tell anybody. They totally didn’t tell anybody, and in the 1950s with the Leave It to Beaver, I Love Lucy mindset of that time, like “You’re making toilet paper out of other people’s junk mail? Ew!” But by let’s say 1972, maybe 1974, that was not an issue anymore, and they were just leaving money on the table because it was really hard to find on their packaging that they were recycled. Then in 2009, they did a whole big rebranding after a bankruptcy, and they started really talking about this, and oh my goodness, they became the number one recycled paper in the country, trumping even companies like Seventh Generation, who’d been loudly talking about recycled from the get-go. So, I started really focusing that. I do a talk called “Making Green Sexy,” in which I talk about three kinds of audiences that a green company has to reach, the deep greens, the lazy greens and the non-greens, and the different kinds of marketing messages for each. JOHN SHEGERIAN: That’s great. SHEL HOROWITZ: Yeah. Just really recently, I had another big epiphany, and that was like now that it’s become so much more mainstream to understand that the environment is important and to market to it, and incidentally this is not just me saying this, there’s a wonderful report from Green America called “The Big Green Opportunity” that came out last year. Oh my goodness, during the recession when the construction trades were shriveling up, the whole sector shrank 17%, the green buildings sector in that same time up 1,700%. And sector after sector, it’s just amazing. Organic food, everything. Walmart develops a market for organic food among people who have never been inside a Whole Foods and probably never will. But Walmart is a company, if there’s ever a company that was driven by profit, it’s Walmart. So, they realized that it was good for their business to sell organic food to people who’d never had it before. They pretty much doubled the market, and make about $15 billion a year doing so. JOHN SHEGERIAN: So, Shel, if I’ve got this right now, I’m just going to try to bring it into a nutshell for our listeners, then I want to ask some questions. For our listeners out there, we’ve got Shel Horowitz. He’s the founder of Business for a Better World, and to check out all of Shel’s great work and his books, go to www.business-for-a-better-world.com, and there’s a lot of great information there, and you can find out how to even contact Shel if you want to use his great services. You wrote a book, Guerilla Marketing Goes Green, so you’ve really synthesized these mega-trends of ethics, green and sustainability, and marketing, and you’ve packaged them, and you’ve now made a whole, not only a business, but like a whole enterprise around getting people on the ethics, green, and marketing train, and that’s really where you’ve taken this whole movement. SHEL HOROWITZ: Yeah, and I like to think that I’ve been at least a small part of making this happen, that it’s really more developed, at least a little bit, because of some things I did. Certainly, I was not the only factor, and Al Gore’s climate change video An Inconvenient Truth, certainly raised a lot of people’s awareness, but I do think that the work that I’ve done for, good Lord, 40 years, has made a difference in the world. I’m now, in the last few months, really looking and thinking even bigger than this. The whole reason I set up the Business for a Better World site is now that we’ve kind of convinced businesses that there’s a case for going green, let’s go bigger. Let’s make a business case for ending poverty, ending hunger, ending war, and staving off catastrophic climate change. It’s a big, ambitious thing, and I expect to spend about the next 15 years of my life working on it, and at that point I’ll be old enough for it to be somebody else’s turn if it’s not done. People will say, “You can’t do that. It’s too big.” JOHN SHEGERIAN: That’s what they say about everything. SHEL HOROWITZ: Exactly. There is never going to be a situation that is so easy that it doesn’t take any work. It’s going to take some work. It’s going to take a lot of work. JOHN SHEGERIAN: It’s always a crazy idea until it becomes obvious, and what you just said is obvious. SHEL HOROWITZ: Yeah, Gandhi said, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they get angry with you, then you win,” or something like that. I gave a TED Talk in May, and the theme was Impossible is Not a Fact, It’s a Dare. JOHN SHEGERIAN: I love it. That’s awesome. SHEL HOROWITZ: And, I talk in that TED Talk about all the impossible things that we now take for granted, such as the year my house was built, 1743, the general feeling was that humans can’t go faster than the fastest horse they can ride. Tell that to the people up there on the space station going by at 17,500 miles an hour. From there, I levered into looking at Nelson Mandela and how he, from the prison cell where he was serving a life sentence, for goodness sake, never expected to see freedom again, becomes not only the president of a free South Africa, but the president of a free South Africa that is not rooted in vengeance, but in reconciliation. So, if we can do that, if we can take the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland and make it look like the border between New York and New Jersey, except you don’t actually have to pay a toll, if we could take that highly militarized, terribly fearful society and make peace over there, why can’t we do these things? I think the way we can do it is just with the green, to show business that they can make money doing it. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Shel, what year did you write Guerilla Marketing Goes Green? SHEL HOROWITZ: It was published in 2010. I wrote parts of it considerably earlier because that self-published book I published earlier, Principle Profit, a lot of that material went into Guerilla Marketing Goes Green, and there was also a lot of new material that went in, and I’ve continued. I could probably do another edition tomorrow because there’s so much happening now in this space. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Before we get to tackling the bigger issues you just mentioned, hunger, poverty, war, climate change, go back to the great example you gave a couple minutes ago of Walmart. For our listeners out there, can you share some other great examples, because you’re intimately involved with this whole movement on many levels, of well-known companies that are just thriving because they’re going green? SHEL HOROWITZ: OK, let’s start with those two famous hippies in Vermont, Mr. Ben and Jerry. Let’s face it. From the outside looking in, these guys look like clowns. It’s 1978, they’re starting a business that they know nothing about, in fact they know nothing about business in general, their knowledge of ice cream is based on a correspondence course, they’re working out of not exactly the mainstream commerce hub of the United States, they’re working out of a converted garage in Burlington, Vermont, and they become the ice cream geniuses, and they become the people who have nearly half the market share of super premium ice cream in a space that has how many hundreds of brands? I am going to submit that the reason that they were so successful is because they gave people that choice. Here you have cold, corporate Häagen-Dazs, the Exxon of ice cream, and there on the side, you’ve got these two weird hippies who, from the get-go, have talked about social responsibility, have talked about the environment, they’re out there at solar fairs handing out popsicles, they were walking the talk. I think the reason that Ben & Jerry’s took off was number one, because they gave people the option to spend that $4 on a pint of ice cream that’s socially conscious and still really good ice cream, and also number two because they were scrappy New York-style street fighters who were not afraid to challenge when Häagen-Dazs essentially tried to shut them out. They actually made a huge marketing campaign around it, though. What’s the Dough Boy afraid of? At that time, Häagen-Dazs was owned by Pillsbury. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Isn’t it fun, Shel, when David slays Goliath? SHEL HOROWITZ: Yeah, we like it. I have a wonderful experience being the David right here in the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts, where I live. One day I was reading my local paper, and on page one, there is this story about the developer who’s planning to build 40 McMansions on the next hill over in the state park behind my house. I thought, “That’s not a real good idea.” Then I read further into the article, and all these people who should know better, all these so-called experts, said things like, “This is terrible, but there’s nothing we can do.” Well, remember when I talked about impossible before not being a fact but a dare, and that, by the way, comes from Muhammad Ali, of all people. It’s a great quote on that. So, when you tell me there’s nothing you can do, you just waved the red flag in front of the bull. So, I was like, “What do you mean, there’s nothing we can do? Of course there’s something we can do. Maybe one day I’ll write a book called Of Course There’s Something We Can Do. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Do it. I think that’s a great idea. SHEL HOROWITZ: Yeah, I’ve got a research file for it. It’s one of about a dozen research files for books I haven’t gotten around to writing yet. I’ve only done eight so far. But, you know, I wasn’t going to sit there and say that it’s totally OK for you to build this thing on my mountain, and that there’s nothing we can do about it. So, I organized a movement, my wife and I got together, and formed Save the Mountain. We got on the phone with friends, and I immediately wrote a press release and wrote a flier and wrote a web page, and started distributing all that material. My goodness, two weeks later, we had the first meeting in my house, and my house is built in 1743, but it is not a McMansion, and it was pretty crowded with 70 people in my dining room, and another 30 who called and said, “This is really important to me. I can’t make it tonight. Please keep me posted.” The next thing we knew, we had a movement with thousands of people involved. Thousands. JOHN SHEGERIAN: So, you’re not only the founder for Business for a Better World, you’re also a community organizer. SHEL HOROWITZ: Absolutely. JOHN SHEGERIAN: I love it. SHEL HOROWITZ: I’ve always been a community organizer, whether I was paid or not. So, yeah, I did this, and this is actually really the genesis of Business for a Better World because — get this — not only was there something we can do, I thought, “OK, it will take us five years. We’ll be enough of a thorn in the developer’s side that it will go away eventually.” Well, by the time we won, which was only 13 months, just over a year, we had already whittled the project down from 40 to 32 and then to 12, so we were three-quarters of the way to victory before we even knew that we had won, and then the state actually took title to the land by imminent domain. It was added to the park next door, and it was preserved forever, and we let them build two houses at the bottom, which if you had asked me privately during the campaign, “What do you think is appropriate for that site?” I would have said, “Privately, two houses at the bottom.” Ask for what you want, because you might just get it. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Shel, I love that. SHEL HOROWITZ: But that’s success. Wow, that really changed my life around professionally, because I looked at the work I was doing, and this was 1999-2000, and I looked at how effective that had been, and I looked at is there a way to make a living doing this kind of thing? I’ve been a marketing consulting and copywriter for how many years now? Could I do it for the kinds of companies that I really want to support? That’s when I started getting into the green and ethical piece. That’s when I started writing the Principle Profit book that eventually evolved into the much larger Guerilla Marketing Goes Green, and that, in turn, led to Business for a Better World, so it’s all, in my mind, at least, it’s a linear progression. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Yeah, it is, and it’s tied together. We’re down to the last two-and-a-half minutes, unfortunately. We love giving solutions on this show, Shel. Can you share your thoughts on individuals’ roles and companies’ roles in doing Business for a Better World, in terms of achieving the greater goals that you set out to do in the next 15 years? SHEL HOROWITZ: OK, well, I’d say start by looking at where your core competencies and interests are, and look for what you can intersect with that in terms of what the world needs and what you can build. I’ll give you some examples in companies that are doing great things like this. There’s a company called D-Light. They make solar-powered lanterns, and they sell a lot of them in Africa and Asia, and they sell them to people who typically have a kerosene lamp in their house. Let me tell you a little bit about kerosene lamps. They’re highly toxic, they’re highly flammable, enormous numbers of people die every year because of fires caused by kerosene lamps, and of course you have to keep buying the kerosene month after month after month. So, they thought, “What if we could sell a lamp really cheap that’s solar-powered, runs in LED so there’s practically no energy use, and you only have to buy it once, you don’t have to keep buying the fuel, and it gives, by the way, a better quality of light than the kerosene ones?” So, what do you get from that? You get kids that can do their schoolwork late into the night and get better grades, there are parents that can run a cottage business after the days in the fields and maybe get themselves out of poverty by selling some kind of handicraft of whatever it is, you get of course more money in the pockets of the family because after the second or third month, the cost of the kerosene they would have been buying every month is gone, they’ve paid for the lantern which might take a couple months’ worth of kerosene, but that’s it. So, one little LED lamp becomes a ladder out of poverty. Isn’t that fabulous? Isn’t that just wonderful? So, there are opportunities all over the place for this sort of thing. We talked about Ben & Jerry’s earlier, let’s talk about their brownie supplier. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Shel, we’re going to have to go today. We’re going to have you come back on, though. For our listeners out there that want to learn more about Shel’s great work, business-for-a-better-world.com or makinggreensexy.com. Shel, thank you for proving to our listeners today that impossible is not a fact, it’s a dare, and for helping us create a better world together. You are truly living proof that green is good. SHEL HOROWITZ: Thanks so much, John.

JOHN SHEGERIAN: Welcome back to Green is Good, and we’re so honored to have with us today Leonard Alexander Freeke. He’s the founder of Veri Soda Company, and you can find them on verisoda.com. Welcome to Green is Good, Leonard. LEONARD FREEKE: Thank you. It’s lovely to be on the show. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Well, I’m so thankful you’re here today because you have a fascinating company you’ve created, and it’s very a important company in terms of where we’re going as a society and the problems we have today with obesity. But before we get talking about your great company, Veri Soda, I want you to please share with our listeners your interesting journey and story leading up to the founding, because you have a fascinating story that I want you to share with our listeners first. LEONARD FREEKE: It’s been a while since we started Veri Soda. It took us about seven years to develop the current sodas that we’ve just launched in the American market. I actually grew up in the Dutch countryside. My father’s a vet, and I grew up what I consider very close to the food chain, so I saw my father’s patients were cows and pigs, and a lot of our friends were farmers. Later on in life, I went to university and became basically a city dweller, and then suddenly realize when you get older that you have distanced yourself from the countryside and from the food chain. About 10 years ago, I was asked to reorganize a food company in Netherlands. To my big surprise, my wife at that time was pregnant. We discussed in the morning, I said, “Darling, it’s going to be a wonderful day because I’m going to see my first lemonade factory from the inside.” I thought it’s going to be exciting because I’m going to see lemons and strawberries and probably bananas and all that. To my big surprise, I was just flabbergasted. I only saw bags and buckets and barrels with skull and bones on them with artificial ingredients. That was actually the beginning of my thinking about where have we ended up in the food chain, what are doing to ourselves, and especially to our children? The point when you become a father, I think that’s when you have an increased or at least you feel more responsible to your offspring, and you start thinking how can I positively change the world, and especially what my children are eating? I think that’s the theme of a lot of things I’ve been involved in for the last 10 years. I think this is a global thing. I think we’re in the middle of a food revolution. I think there is a general concern about what we’re eating and how we can improve that, and often it means going back to old ways of producing food and looking at food and treating food. So, it’s a very interesting environment, and what we did with these sodas, I think we went to one of the most unlikely products and tried to improve them and make a better and healthier soda. I think we’ve succeeded. JOHN SHEGERIAN: When did you launch Veri Soda? LEONARD FREEKE: We started the company here in the U.S. two years ago, and we launched just before Christmas last year. JOHN SHEGERIAN: For our listeners out there to go on your website, it is one of the most beautiful and visually stimulating and just gorgeous websites I’ve ever been on. For our listeners to go check it out, it’s www.verisoda.com. Two years ago you launched it in the United States. How’s it been going? Tell us a little bit about it, and how did you come up with that name? LEONARD FREEKE: For us, it’s been a wonderful market launch. I think the American market is very receptive to new products. The American market is the largest organic market in the world. It’s the largest soda market in the world. For us, as organic soda producers, to be here makes a lot of sense. The supermarkets have picked it up. We are currently in about 2,000 supermarkets, and it looks like we’re moving to about 3,000 towards the end of the year. I think we’ve been fortunate to meet really, really good partners. It started already in the Netherlands, where we come from, and we won several awards. We won the best company and entrepreneur awards, and at that time I was approached by a gentleman who today is the creative director of one of the largest advertising agencies in the U.S., and he was responsible for a lot of big advertising taking place in the U.S. He said, “What you’re doing is fantastic, and perhaps we should talk more about it,” which led to I think a remarkable partnership that we’ve been able to set up with this large advertising agency called the Martin Agency based out of Richmond. All the onus to them because they’ve been, with their wonderful creative minds, responsible for creating brands together with us that I think is authentic but also visually very strong, with its own personality and visual language. The name comes from Latin, and it comes from the word veritos, which means real or truth or genuine. For us, it’s the DNA of everything we do. It’s based on real, authentic products. JOHN SHEGERIAN: For truth in advertising, I drank your products before, and they’re delicious products. I’m very sugar conscious. I’m a vegan as I eat, and your products are wonderful, wonderful-tasting products for our listeners out there. LEONARD FREEKE: That’s the best compliment we can ever get, so thank you very much. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Who was the first supermarket chain to pick you up here in the United States? Who took the first chance on this very disruptive and wonderful product? LEONARD FREEKE: That was Whole Foods. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Whole Foods, yeah. That’s actually where I bought your products from. Talk a little bit about how that’s gone from there. Who then picked it up after that? Talk a little bit about your thoughts on food distribution and how we can improve upon that with new products in the United States. LEONARD FREEKE: Well, first of all, I think it’s important to note that I think we’re stuck in some kind of prisoner’s dilemma in food development. I think current food development taking place by companies doesn’t necessarily lead to the best products, best I mean from a health and taste point-of-view. I think we’ve lost over the last decades, especially after the Second World War, a lot of knowledge that we’ve gained over the centuries in humanity as part of our culture how foods are developed and the processes and tradition in food. That’s actually one of the things that we’ve done with our own sodas, gone back to old-fashioned ways of producing food, and a guaranteed quality. I think there’s a common denominator in a lot of new food developments taking place everywhere. I think the U.S. is in a happy space where literally I think you’re in a food revolution. Craft beer is booming, everybody is rediscovering brewing beer, and it’s fun, and the result is a wonderful product. There’s only one reason why these things are giving wonderful results. It’s all about good ingredients again. The same goes for wine. We’re making beautiful cheeses here in the U.S and bread, and so many things are being rediscovered. The common theme is that people are enjoying going back to old-fashioned, wonderful ingredients, and developing into beautiful food products, which are being loved by people. I think Whole Foods, in that respect, is not unusual that they pick it up, because I think they look very early to pick up on a trend for better products directly from farmers, and be very conscious for the quality of the products. Are they organic? Are they non-GMO? For us, that’s the leading theme. What we have done is we’ve developed our sodas for our own children, something we could give to them without feeling guilty or not afraid that they would drink something that is in essence very unhealthy, so we’ve taken out all the chemical ingredients, and we’ve produced a product which has a low glycemic load. I think that’s the big thing at the moment regarding sugar consumption. I think you should be very careful with the number of spikes you experience during the day in your blood sugar level. If you look at supermarkets, I think the trend is very clear. Whole Foods as set the trend. Sprouts is following it. I think all the mainstream supermarkets like Kroger and Walmart, they’re all following the trend that organic food is growing. It’s growing 15% a year on average, depending on the category, but there’s a big shift in consumption patterns that’s all being driven by the consumer who, at the end of the day, wants healthier food. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Your soda has none of that corn syrup or high fructose corn syrup, or none of that stuff. LEONARD FREEKE: Consciously not. Our soda is developed as purely organic, and it’s organic because we don’t want all these chemicals in the drinks. In mainstream sodas, there are about 40-50 chemicals which we consider very unhealthy, so by saying something is organic, that is the seal of quality and you can rely that these chemicals are not in these drinks. The second dimension, which is important for sodas, is the sugar, the sweetener, so, of course, no artificial sweetener. They’re even worse than sugar. Then the question is high fructose corn syrup. It gives you tremendous spikes in your blood sugar level, so we’ve sweetened it with a combination of stevia and organic cane sugar. There’s still some sugar inside. I think it’s becoming common knowledge now that diet drinks don’t work. On the contrary, they confuse your metabolism, so if you’re trying to get something sweet inside your body, it’s not necessarily bad to have a little bit of sugar. The key is not to create tremendous sugar highs and spikes in your blood sugar level. I think the latest research is really going in the direction that the number of sugar spikes you have during the day, that is in direct correlation with whether you’re prone to get Type 2 diabetes. So, I think we’ve developed something we think is a proper alternative to mainstream sodas, and the wonderful thing about this journey is once you make the decision to start working with better ingredients, you get wonderful products. That’s why we love our drinks. We know that there’s great products inside. Our lemons come from Sicily. Our oranges come from Mexico. We’ve got cinnamon from Sri Lanka. Our ginger and our ginger root comes from Nepal. We source it directly from the farmers. The farmers are very proud to be involved. It’s going back to its roots. JOHN SHEGERIAN: I’m on your website right now. Your vanilla is from Madagascar, and all of your lemons, oranges, ginger, and everything that’s put in there, whether it’s stevia or cane sugar, it’s all organic. LEONARD FREEKE: Everything is organic, and what we’re working on today is two things. We are in touch on a very regular basis with our own farmers, so we’re going to make that in the future transparent on our website to really show the consumer, “Listen, we source the lemons from this farmer, and literally if you want, you can pay him a visit.” The same with the other ingredients. The second thing we’re working on very hard at the moment is to get everything in place to be a completely climate-neutral company, so we’re climate and water-neutral as well. For us, it’s important to do everything properly. I think it belongs to our mindset. JOHN SHEGERIAN: It’s your culture and your DNA, obviously, and that’s so great. Leonard, I want you to explain to our listeners something that’s very prominent in your literature and on your website, but something that the consumers need to be further educated on because it’s an important distinction, what we’ve all been lulled into thinking here in the United States and beyond. Can you explain the difference in marketing between natural versus organic? LEONARD FREEKE: Well, at the end of the day, there’s nothing wrong with the word natural. The only thing that is wrong with it, since it’s not legally protected, it’s the most misabused word in marketing today. I think at the moment, there are hundreds of class action suits against producers that say something is natural which is not. A very simple rule for the consumer is that natural is not protected and doesn’t necessarily have to be natural. If you see something is organic, you can trust and rely on it. The USDA seal is very properly legislated and audited, and for us, it’s an annual audit that we get. It’s a surprise audit, and they take it very seriously. It’s the whole food chain, cradle to grave, they check it. It’s a very reliable seal. If the USDA seal is on it, that basically means it’s organic. Organic, for us, means it comes from nature with no artificial ingredients involved. JOHN SHEGERIAN: For our listeners out there who, like we all are, are consumers, a product can be labeled natural and still be GMO. LEONARD FREEKE: Yes. So, it’s natural in essence. There’s no guarantee at all. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Of anything. Now let’s go back and talk about your product. Not only is it organic, but it’s also important to point out that your Veri Soda has no GMO elements, so it’s organic and it’s non-GMO, so it checks every box for the millennials and the consumers at large out there that are worried about their children drinking the right product. Your product really goes to the heart of the matter. LEONARD FREEKE: I think so. For us, we can continue asking for a lot of certificates, and we are actually on that path, but we are suitable for people with allergies. It’s a long, long list, and it’s basically the result of working with a very clean product with very good quality ingredients. I think a lot of the problems with hyperactivity or allergies we’re seeing today with children are often food-related, and I think more people are waking up to the fact that the quality of the food you’re consuming is the fuel for your body, and especially for children that have to grow, it’s an important part of how they’re going to function. So, I think it’s an important thing that we’re very conscious of. There’s more and more communication and education on that, so that’s one of the reasons why we’re also a big sponsor of the Green School Conference. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Talk a little bit about the Green Festivals. Can you talk about why companies like Veri benefit tremendously from the Green Festivals, and what attendees of the Green Festivals can see when they come in terms of Veri Soda? LEONARD FREEKE: I think for us, our experience with the Green Festival is a wonderful one. It’s a pleasure to see so many like-minded people gathering together, and I think it’s a sign of the times that people are looking for better products and people with the same mindset. For us, it’s always been a warm bath to be there, and it’s addictive for us because we keep them coming back. The response of the consumers is overwhelming. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Are you going to be at the Green Festivals this fall in Los Angeles, Chicago? LEONARD FREEKE: We are. We’re going to be at most of them. As I said, we are big fans, and that’s because the consumers give us wonderful feedback. I’ve done many trade shows in the past, but it’s different from doing consumer shows. What we like is that people are generally prejudiced about sodas, and when they drink our sodas and hear the story behind it and they taste how delicious they are, they feel comfortable that this is a healthier product. That’s why we started this whole business in the first place. It’s wonderful to get that feedback. JOHN SHEGERIAN: We’re down to the last minute. I want to leave that to you to share anything you want or any shameless plugs. I want this to be all about your great products so our listeners can learn more about Veri Soda, so it’s up to you, Leonard. You close the show. LEONARD FREEKE: I think we’ve had a wonderful start here in the U.S., and what makes me very excited is that last week we had a presentation for a large school in the Los Angeles district, and we got wonderful feedback from the pupils. I think what is the big promising thing for future is that the children are really picking up on this as well. Education is geared towards strong consciousness of food and where food comes from, why we’re eating what we’re eating, and how we can make better products. That is resonating very strongly in the schools, so for us, the development here is a positive one. Society is driving it. There’s a great public debate when I hear that 80% of the U.S. families are regularly buying organic food. I think we’re moving to a better world, and a better world where families are feeding themselves with better products. In a good company, food is culture, and I think it’s a celebration of life. That’s hopefully what we’re a part of, at least we try to be a part of that very much. JOHN SHEGERIAN: For our listeners out there that want to try Veri Soda, go to the Green Festivals coming up in Los Angeles, Chicago, and San Francisco, or greenfestivals.org, or go to your local Whole Foods or great store in your area, and go grab a couple cans, and try Leonard’s great soda, Veri Soda. Verisoda.com. Thank you, Leonard, for being an inspiring and visionary entrepreneur in the organic food and beverage revolution. You are truly living proof that green is good. LEONARD FREEKE: It was a great pleasure. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Thank you.