JOHN SHEGERIAN: Welcome back to Green is Good, and I’m so honored to have with us today my good friend, Mitch Hedlund. She’s the founder and Executive Director of Recycle Across America. Welcome to Green is Good, Mitch.
MITCH HEDLUND: Thank you, John. I’m excited to be part of a show.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: We are so excited to have you today. You’re doing so many amazing things with Recycle Across America. We’re gonna get to that in a second, though, but before that, since this is your first time on Green is Good, I would love for you to share with our listeners your story and journey leading up to the founding of Recycle Across America because your story’s fascinating and it’s wonderful and I’ve gotten to know you and know your story, but I want our listeners to know you as well.
MITCH HEDLUND: Well, thank you. Really, my history is branding and marketing and communication and I think if you look down the line at the solution, it really evolved within that wheelhouse, but it was years ago that I was doing marketing and communication for a number of companies and I started to delve into the sustainability world. I think basically, that was part of my upbringing. At the time, it wasn’t called green. It was just called a very conservative family as far as resources and very healthy. My mom’s like dessert was honey on a spoon in the freezer. It wasn’t Twinkies, which we all longed for as kids, so she would take us to coops when they were dirt floors at the time and there was really nothing trendy about it so I think just that foundation set me up for where I was going professionally and when I took on a couple of marketing clients in the sustainability space, I really started looking at sustainability and trying to see what are the things that are working and what’s really not working and over the course of time, I was invited to meet with a lot of major corporations and small businesses and schools and universities and airport commissions to talk about sustainability but it was really interesting because every time I met with them, there were a number of things that we were going to be talking about. It was including water and energy and purchasing and waste diversion but in every instance, the subject of recycling came up first. These organizations would start to talk about their recycling program within their buildings and inevitably, every one of them said the exact same thing. They all said that their recycling program doesn’t seem to be working and they wanted to talk about that and figure out what the problem was and it was also interesting because these people are responsible for all of their sustainability including energy reduction and water conservation and purchasing and so forth and recycling is less than 10% of their responsibility, but in each case, they were spending over 75% of their time trying to figure it out and the complaint that they were sharing with me was that people in their buildings, whether it’s employees or visitors or consumers, kept throwing trash in the recycling bin and throwing recycling in the trash bin and usually they’d bring me up to the bins and sure enough, the contents of each bin looked identical so mixed trash in recycling and mixed recycling in with the trash and I personally, as I’m listening to their stories, I’m personally reflecting on my own experience at the recycling bin when I’m out in public places like at the airports or at a sports stadium or wherever I was out in public. I started reflecting on the fact that I too have these moments standing at the bin confused and I’m not sure if I should be throwing my can or my newspaper in the bin and in one instance at an airport, I remember having a really isolated moment of confusion at the recycling bin and a man came up right in front of me and threw in a dirty diaper in the recycling bin and he said, “Oh, it’s all going to landfill anyway,” and so as I’m kind of listening to all these stories come together and having this aha moment about recycling, I was actually asked to be the keynote speaker at a recycling conference to speak about sustainability in general and after that presentation, I had asked the audience, which was about 100 recycling industry executives, if they would mind if I shared some of these observations about their industry with them and so the audience had said, sure, go ahead, and I had actually prepared for it so on the big huge screen behind me, I flipped away from the sustainability presentation I had just completed and I showed an image of five different stop signs on this huge 20-foot screen behind me but none of them were stop signs that we’re familiar with. One was the word ‘stop’ spray painted on a light post and the other was a sign with a hand on it implying you stop and then there were three other signs and none of them were the red sign that we’re familiar with and the audience looked up at me and they were very perplexed and I said, “What would happen in society if everyone had to create their own stop sign? How effective would that be for road safety?” and they still looked perplexed and I flipped the screen away from those images and then I showed literally hundreds of recycling bins and no two of them had a similar recycling label. Some of them imply that you might do the same thing but none of the labels looked alike and I just shared with the audience. I said I know my profession and my focus if on overall sustainability, but the more I’m spending time with companies, the more I’m learning about their challenges with recycling and it’s because of this. This is what recycling currently looks like to the general public and it’s incredibly confusing and out of that, I introduced to that audience the idea of a standardized labeling system and I actually mocked up what it could look like because I didn’t want to just deliver a problem to them. I wanted them to hear what the solution could be for their industry and actually see what that could look like and that was really where Recycle Across America began.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: And, for our listeners out there that want to go to Mitch’s great website while we’re having this wonderful chat this morning, please go to www.recycleacrossamerica.org, so as you’ve educated me, Mitch, standardized labels for recycling bins is a deceivingly simple idea that has a profound impact on all of us, so now we know why you started this great concept and this great initiative so talk a little bit about how it’s gone since you’ve started and all the amazing energy and velocity that you’ve built up and partners that you’ve gotten along the way and how it’s going.
MITCH HEDLUND: Absolutely. Well, I think from that conference where I was presenting this idea, fortunately, because of my marketing and because of my communication and because of my branding and graphic design experience, I was able to take what was in my mind’s eye and develop it so I think I was really fortunate to be able to tap into my previous profession and experience to bring it together into fruition but we brought on some industry leaders to evaluate the labels to make sure that it wasn’t just me coming out saying these are the new standardized labels but instead, to make sure that we have all sorts of different layers of industry, including the general public and teachers and school administrators and students and parents, evaluate the labels and make sure they really can hold up for what we’re trying to do so that was really a critical part of it, but once we launched the website, really it was just putting the website up on Google or up on the website, I should say, and I think right in the beginning, we were probably on page six of recycling labels if you Googled ‘recycling labels’ but within a very short amount of time, we became the very first recycling label search on Google and that was completely organically and within a very short amount of time, Disney started using the standardized labels in their employee areas and NBC Universal started using them throughout their TV and film studios throughout North America and Hallmark Corporation and AOL and 2,000 schools across the country. All of a sudden, without any effort — plenty of effort but without any marketing or without any sales or outreach — finally it’s being adopted by some really remarkable companies that are leading the way on this initiative and I think that was a great indicator for me personally to know that I’m not the only one that believes that this should be happening but one of the other things that came from this is we ended up having a New York Times article written and in that process, the person writing the story, David Brunstein, who’s amazing, really delved into what’s the outcome of the labels. Are they working? Maybe they’re not just becoming popular, but we need to know are they actually doing a better job from the confusing labels out there and that was a huge moment for us because the results that he found was from Veolia. This is one example. Veolia is one of the largest waste and recyclers in the world. They’re not the largest here in the U.S. They’re very big, but they are the largest in the world, and they’ve been using the standardized labels for many of their Fortune 500 companies and in many cases, even at that time, they were showing us 50% or more in recycling renewables and since then, we’ve heard all sorts of testimonials in recycling renewables are not only going up 50%, but in some cases, doubling and the materials that are going into the bin are much cleaner. In fact, in some cases, like with NBC, they just had their hauler, which is ground disposal, say that they’re just amazed at how clean the capture is and that, to us, is a huge bingo in this because if we can get the standardized labels out throughout society and it results in more people recycling but most importantly, recycling light, so that there’s less dirty diapers, there’s less half eaten hot dogs, there’s less garbage in the recycling bin, that is transformational because now that means that manufacturers will actually want these materials and they’ll be able to buy these materials at a price point that is competitive with virgin materials. Right now, recycling is so highly contaminated with garbage that by the time the processors remove those dirty diapers and half eaten hot dogs and all the things that don’t belong in there. By the time they remove that, it drives the price up so high that manufacturers can’t make the commitment to switch to recycled materials so it’s really been this kind of organic explosion but most important, it’s been great to witness that the labels are actually working and making a difference.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: For our listeners that just joined us, we’ve got Mitch Hedlund on with us. She’s a good friend of mine. She’s the founder and Executive Director of Recycle Across America and you can see all the great work Mitch is doing at www.recycleacrossamerica.org. It was in that New York Times article that The New York Times did say about Recycle Across America that this is one of the top environmental fixes taking root today and your tagline is amazing and it’s wonderful; ‘Let’s recycle right,’ and you have, Mitch, as you’ve explained to me, so many celebrities and celebrities are the tastemakers and some of the thought leaders now of society. For better or for worse, they are the people that guide our culture in so many ways and you’ve been so well received by Hollywood and by the celebrity world; Gabby Reece, Kristen Bell, Alanis Morissette, Angie Harmon, just to name a few, have signed on to help promote recycling right, Recycle Across America in your program and the Let’s Recycle Right campaign, so talk a little bit about what you’re doing with Hollywood, what you’re doing with participant media, and also what you’re doing with our friends at TerraCycle.
MITCH HEDLUND: Yes, absolutely. I think that’s the evolution that’s been so exciting with this is once we could say, okay, the labels are working, they’re being frequently adapted, companies are starting to use them on their bins, they’re working, recycling levels are going up and renewables are cleaner, it’s such a simple solution to make that transformation and once we had that confidence to be able to say that, then we started tapping into the celebrity space and the window was opened by a great company by the name of Fields, who donated to us in our first year out of the blue, again unsolicited, and not only did they donate money to us, but they introduced us to celebrities who want to get behind us and so that was really the crack in the window that just allowed us to go after celebrities and ask them if they would want to join us and volunteer their time, their voice, and their influence and we were hoping to get about five to seven celebrities and we right away got close to 40. In fact, I think we’re over 40 of celebrities; everything from top models to comedians to Olympic gold medalists to national sports figures and Academy Award-winning actors who want to get behind this and I think the reason we attracted so many was because they also have stood at the bin. They can relate to this. They have been at a recycling bin wanting to do the right thing and I think that’s where that stems from.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: We have about five minutes or so left. Can you share a little bit and give a little taste of what’s coming up for you with Participant Media and with TerraCycle in the near future?
MITCH HEDLUND: Yes, definitely. Participant Media is a remarkable double-bottom-line company. They focus, not only on creating great films that we’re all familiar with, including Inconvenient Truth and Fast Food Nation and some others, but also, great films like The Help and Lincoln and so forth, so their goal is to create transformational films and TV shows that really inspire people to think different, act different, and to help change the world and so they approached us a couple of months ago and wanted to partner with us and partner with a great TV show that they’ve created that is a story about TerraCycle and I’m just incredibly honored that these two pinnacle organizations have to come to us to allow us to be part of what they’re doing and to be great advocates for the Standardized Label Initiative and just quickly, Participant has a TV program or TV channel, I should say, called Pivot TV and on August 8th, they will launch a show called Human Resources, which is brilliantly made, and it’s focusing on TerraCycle, which is one of the biggest world changers because they are finding ways to recycle things that notoriously no one thought could be recycled and they’re doing it in a wonderful, systematic way and a very highly capitalized way, so they’re proving recycling is not only good for the environment, but it’s also good for the economy and the economics for business and so we’re part of that story and Participant is committed to having standardized labels be used within the next 12 months because of this effort and this attachment with the TV program.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Mitch, we’re down to the last two minutes or so. You were a keynote speaker a few weeks ago at the European Union. Does your Standardized Label Initiative with Recycle Across America have international application as well?
MITCH HEDLUND: Absolutely. A couple of things: We ended up winning an Ashoka Global Fellowship a couple of years ago, and when they heard about our solution, they vetted for a year to determine is there a global application for this solution? Does it create systemic change? And, it was a grueling process to go through that. Ashoka is an amazing organization and we ended up winning the Ashoka Global Fellowship for the Solution because they did see that there is a global application. No country seems to have recycling down to a complete solid science. I think Europe is further advanced in some of the countries than we are. Clearly, they have much higher recycling levels in Germany and Belgium and some other countries, but they are also looking at something that could be universal throughout all the European countries, so we are looking at some initiatives with the Commissioner for the EU for the Environment and I’m hoping that this can become part of their waste diversion program as well.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That is just wonderful. Any final thoughts as we have to sign off right now? But we’re gonna have you back on in the very near future. Any final thoughts for the months and years ahead for Recycle Across America?
MITCH HEDLUND: Well, first of all, thank you again for allowing me to share this story and this critical initiatives. Five to ten years from now, I really think we’re gonna have a tipping point with the standardized labels will become much more mainstream but this is my final note on everything: Aside from this being a game changer for the environment and for the economics of recycling and for manufacturers to be able to close the loop, I also think that we need to talk about waste doubling in 2025. In less than 11 years, it’s expected that world waste will double, which means all the resources spent for those materials, all the CO2 to create those materials will also double and if we’re looking at what’s happening with the ocean and waterways, we also have to take into what’s gonna happen. If we’re not managing waste properly right now, what happens in 11 years from now when it’s expected to double and the only way to get those materials out of the ocean, out of the waterways, and out of the bellies of sea life is to make them valuable. When they become valuable, nobody will want them to be in those nature spaces and one way to do that is to get to recycle right and the only way to do that, we believe, is with the standardization campaign and with the standardized labels.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That’s why we have to use your standardized labels and go to your website, www.recycleacrossamerica.org. Thank you, Mitch, for being a recycling visionary and showing us all how to recycle it right, which ultimately makes the world a better place. You are truly living proof that green is good.
MITCH HEDLUND: Thank you, John.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Welcome back to Green is Good, and we’re so excited to have with us today Wendy Livingstone. She’s a Regional Leader for Neal’s Yard Remedies, NYR Organic. Welcome to Green is Good, Wendy.
WENDY LIVINGSTONE: Thank you. I’m really excited to be here.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: We’re excited to have you, but before we get into the topic of the company you work with, Neal’s Yard Remedies, I want you to first share the topic of Wendy Livingstone. Talk a little bit about your life and journey leading up to becoming a Regional Leader of NYR Organic.
WENDY LIVINGSTONE: Well, I’m actually 50 years old and my husband and I have four children, two adult children and two in high school, and as you can imagine, our life is quite busy. We live in Yorktown, Virginia, and my journey into even being interested in products and ingredients and all of that began about eight years ago when I was talking with a friend of mine and she mentioned to me that there were harmful ingredients in some of the products that I was using and I was really kind of aghast because I was spending good money on products and thought I was buying products for my family that were good. It just had never crossed my mind that there might be cancer causing ingredients or harmful ingredients, especially as a mom, in things that I was putting on my kids at the time so I started doing some research and was really shocked at what I found and that just kind of led me down a path where I did more investigation and looked around more and then about three years ago, I landed at NYR Organic. They’re actually a company that’s over 30 years old, but they had just launched in the U.S. and it was exactly what I had been looking for, everything with their mission. The products were amazing, very effective, and so since I joined NYR Organic, I’ve continued on that path of education and I think it’s really important as a consumer. It can be very confusing in the marketplace and so I think it’s really important. We have to be our own advocates for our health and the products that we use and so not only do I love the products and sharing them, but I also love helping to educate other people so that they can make informed decisions and it’s been great. Obviously, I love sharing these products and I have probably over 1,100 consultants that I work with in my organization all over the U.S. and it has grown very quickly and I think part of that is with the internet, information is easier to come by and people are starting to question what is in these products that I’m using and that my family is using? And, they start looking for information and a lot of people find us on the web and it’s grown very quickly and it’s been very, very exciting and we look forward to growing even more in the U.S. and other markets.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: As we get started talking about Neal’s Yard Remedies, I want you to share with our listeners who they are and what they stand for and for our listeners who want to follow along, I’d like you to go to their website while I have this wonderful chat with Wendy today. It’s www.nyrorganic.com. It’s a gorgeous website. There’s lots of information. There’s a lot of color and a lot of great products on it. Share please with our listeners, Wendy, who Neal’s Yard Remedies are and what they stand for.
WENDY LIVINGSTONE: Well, the company started in 1981 and a lot of people ask us when they see NYR, they think it has something to do with New York, which it does not, and it actually is the abbreviation for Neal’s Yard Remedies, as you’ve mentioned, so it started in Neal’s Yard, which is a small enclave of shops and covered gardens, and the buildings were very derelict and they were gonna be torn down and some shopkeepers and business owners came together and decided to rehabilitate the area and Romy Fraser, who was the founder of our company, she was a teacher. She had a passion for holistic health and it started as an apothecary and so she had all kinds of dried herbs and she would make lotions and herbal remedies for people and it grew from there. She started developing some skin care ranges and different things like that and then about I think it was six or eight years ago, she actually decided to retire. The company had grown quite large and Peter Kindersley and his family purchased the company from her and they are owners of I believe it’s the largest organic farm in the U.K. It’s called Sheep Drive. I’ve had the pleasure to go there. It’s an amazing place and so they have continued on that path of developing certified organic products that are effective and expanding the range and expanding into the direct sales market, which is how they brought the products into the U.S., so we were the first certified-organic health and beauty company in the U.K., the first mainstream seller to sell certified organic essential oils. All of our products are certified organic by the Soil Association and we use fair wild products as well as certified organic and they have the largest range of certified-organic health and beauty product and we’ve won many awards, so we’re very excited about all of that. That’s just kind of a little glimpse of who we are.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Wendy, speaking of your awards, NYR Organic has champion status with Environmental Working Groups. What does that mean? I don’t understand that.
WENDY LIVINGSTONE: Well, Environmental Working Group is an organization in the United States that came together. Personal care products in the US fall under the umbrella of the FDA, but it’s a little misleading because the FDA doesn’t actually regulate products in the personal care industry, so they kind of pass it back off to the companies, so there’s some self-regulation going on there and so Environmental Working Group came together the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics for companies to sign, which basically states that they would not use certain ingredients that were known to be harmful in personal care products and that they would use products and ingredients that were beneficial and what’s really interesting is there were not a lot of companies that agreed to sign this and abide by their standards, but Neal’s Yard Remedies was one that signed the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics and then to achieve champion status, there’s a list of things that you needed to do. I think it was by 2011, you had to comply with the European Union Cosmetics Directive. You had to disclose all of your ingredients, which a lot of people in the U.S. don’t understand that companies are not required to disclose all of their ingredients, so even if you’re reading labels, you may not be getting all the information you need. And, we have to publish and regularly update product information on the Skin Deep Database, which is an amazing resource that Environmental Working Group has so if you have questions about a product, you can go look at the product in that database and it will list the ingredients and then it ranks the ingredients as far as their toxicity levels.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Got it. Are your products all certified organic and does that say that on all your bottles? There’s a lot of confusion, Wendy, as you and I know, in truth in advertising in products in the United States such as certified organic versus other people who say their products are natural. Can you explain the difference and how Neal’s Yard Remedy handles this situation?
WENDY LIVINGSTONE: You know, that’s one of the things, the education part of it, that I really love because it is really confusing in the marketplace and anybody who’s been shopping in Target or any of the drug stores or anything like that out there at this point, you realize that the majority of products on the shelf now have some wording on them that says natural or organic. Well, that’s because that is the direction that the market’s going in and these companies want to have a piece of that pie. The issue is that that means absolutely nothing. I tell consumers when you’re shopping, you need to look for products that have been certified by a third-party agency who has no stake in the game and so the tricky thing is when you’re looking at labels, when you’re looking at ingredients, as I said before, in the U.S. they’re not required to list all of the ingredients and the ingredients can be hiding so when they say fragrance, fragrance can have a lot of different things in it so for us at Neal’s Yard Remedies, one of the things we’re really proud of is full disclosure of all of our ingredients and when you look at our labels, each ingredient that is certified organic is labeled with an asterisk and so you know exactly which ingredients are organic and which aren’t. Now, it’s interesting because some people will look at our label and it will actually say 87% organic ingredients and people will say to me, ‘Well, if your products are certified organic, why aren’t they 100% organic?’ Well, for a product to be certified organic, it has to be plant based, so water can’t be certified organic. Minerals can’t be certified organic. So, for example, a shower gel that might have a higher water content will actually have a lower organic content or some of our cosmetics, which are mineral based, because they have a higher mineral content might have a lower organic content, but again, we completely disclose all of that information so that the consumer can see it right there on the label and also, all of our products are sustainably packaged. One of our trademarks are our cobalt blue bottles, which are absolutely gorgeous in the bathroom, but they’re also recyclable and we use them for a lot of different things after we finish with the products, so it’s just kind of from the farm to the production and then recycling when we’re done. It’s all about sustainability and protecting.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: So, Wendy, the net is that our listeners should be using products that are certified organic, not just natural.
WENDY LIVINGSTONE: Absolutely. That’s the only way you can really be sure about the ingredients.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: For our listeners who just joined us, we’re so happy to have with us today Wendy Livingstone. She’s the Regional Leader of Neal’s Yard Remedies. It’s NYR Organic and you can look them up and buy their great products at www.nyrorganic.com. We met you through our great friends at the Green Festivals and you were an exhibitor there and your great products, Neal’s Yard Remedies, are gonna be on display at all the Green Festivals across America and obviously, there’s a couple more coming up in Los Angeles September 12th through the 14th, Chicago October 24th through the 26th and San Francisco November 14th through the 16th. You guys were a brand award finalist. Can you talk a little bit about that and talk about your involvement in the Green Festivals in Washington, DC, and how you interacted with all the wonderful people that came out and came to your wonderful exhibition area and they tried your products and things of that such?
WENDY LIVINGSTONE: Yeah. We were so excited, first of all, to be one of the finalists and then just thrilled that we got second place. We placed number two, which means we were in the top three of the grand winners. You know, I have participated in Green Festival with NYR for the past three years and it’s one of my favorite events every year, not just as an exhibitor but also as a consumer because there are so many great products out there and I’ve changed the way I do my laundry and everything from food to personal care products to things that you use in your house or even building houses. It’s just really, really a great marketplace for people who are looking for products that are organic and green and sustainable so we actually in our booth that we have there, we have products that people can come right into the booth and demo. We have sample packs that they can purchase and take home if they want to just give the product a try. We have products that they can order and take home right there with them or they can order from our website and it’s really, really great because so many people have never heard of us and so we’re really getting the word out there about NYR Organic and you know, there’s this huge range of people who come to Green Festival. A couple years ago, I met a lady there who had just been diagnosed with cancer and she was changing over and going organic and so this was really a marketplace for her to see what was out there and how she could make some positive changes in her life and then there are people there who’ve been using organic sustainable products for years and they’re there to kind of see what’s new and see all the exhibitors there so it’s fantastic. I would recommend if you live within driving distance of one of the Green Festivals. It’s well worth the time and effort to go there.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Wendy, Neal’s Yard Remedies follows the precautionary principle — and I say that in quotes. I read that on your website, with regards to their regulation. What does that mean and can you explain to our listeners what precautionary principle means with regards to your great products?
WENDY LIVINGSTONE: Well, the best way to describe it is in the United States and some other countries, companies who are producing products, they will use any ingredient, whether it’s been proven to be safe or not, and even when products have been proven to be harmful, for example, a couple of years ago, the FDA came out and they labeled parabens, which are used as preservatives in a lot of products, as cancer causing ingredients. They said, yeah, these are cancer-causing ingredients and you shouldn’t be using them but they did not require companies to take them out of the product, which really, for the life of me I can’t understand so what happened was it was a big splash in the news for a couple weeks and then it went away and companies to this day continue to use parabens in products even though they know that they’re cancer causing and a lot of times not just one parabens. I looked at an eye cream in the store the other day that had four parabens in it so they’re using ingredients even though they know that they’re harmful so the precautionary principle, which is the principle that we follow, basically says if we’re not 100% sure that an ingredient is safe, we just don’t use it so we’re not gonna put anything in our product that is not 100% safe for you and I think that that’s really, really important.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: We’re down to the last three minutes or so, but it’s important to talk about transparency and ingredients. Where are your ingredients sourced from and where are the products actually made?
WENDY LIVINGSTONE: Our ingredients are sourced from a number of different locations and we’ve had relationships with our growers, as you can imagine, for many years so just to give you an example, our frankincense is set from Kenya. Our roses come from Turkey. Our orange flower comes from Morocco. Our calamaris are from Madagascar, so we actually source from the locations where the products are grown and our products are actually made in our eco-factory in Dorset, which is outside of London, and I have had the pleasure to travel there and go to that factory and watch them make the product and bottle them. It’s an amazing place. The factory is run with solar panels and they have a farm there as well where they grow some of the ingredients and one of the things that really struck me when I visited there was when I went on a tour. I had my camera and I was gonna go put it away and the guy who was doing the tour with us, he said you can bring your camera with you and I said, “I didn’t know if you guys were gonna allow us to take pictures,” and he looked at me and he said, “Wendy, we have nothing to hide,” and that really is what we’re about. We have nothing to hide.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: I love that. That’s an exclamation point behind the name of your brand, Neal’s Yard Remedies. Last question for today: For our listeners out there, giving them some solutions, Wendy. What can they do to transition from traditional products, which they’ve been conditioned to and socialized to for many years, to now organic products and the great products that you’ve had at Neal’s Yard Remedies?
WENDY LIVINGSTONE: Well, what I tell people is unfortunately, we live in a world where we can’t be 100% organic. There are toxins in the food we eat, in the air we breathe, and all around us, so I think you start just like you would anything else. Start by educating yourself. There’s a lot of great information and resources on the Internet. There are some great documentaries on YouTube that you can see and start looking at the ingredients. Again, in the U.S., if it’s not certified organic, you have to take that with a little grain of salt, but I tell people if they’re not at the point where they can afford to throw all their products out and completely start over, as you run out of the products that you’re using, replace them with products that are gonna be safe and I really think even small changes that we make in the food we eat and the products we use can have a really great impact long term and hopefully, of course, they’ll go on to the NYROrganic website, check out our products, and start using those but even if it’s not NYR Organic, I’m really for helping people to make safer choices for their long term health.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Well, thank you, Wendy, for being a sustainability evangelist and leader. You are truly living proof that green is good.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Welcome to another edition of Green is Good, and we’re so honored today to have with us Marilyn Sloane. She’s the Principal of Energy Efficient Lighting Design. Welcome to Green is Good, Marilyn.
MARILYN SLOANE: Thank you so much. Happy to be here.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Hey, Marilyn, before we get talking about Energy Efficient Lighting Design and all the important work you’re doing there, can you share first your story and your journey leading up to becoming a principal at your company?
MARILYN SLOANE: Well, I actually started out in lighting as an artist. I was doing neon art and that was back in the days back in the early ’80s and had to get serious about making a living at a point and realized lighting was a terrific place to be and that’s really how I got started in lighting and just moved from was working in Florida and Chicago, came to New York and saw lots of opportunities here and decided to stay. I’ve been here for the last 25 years.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: And, what year did you start Energy Efficient Lighting Design?
MARILYN SLOANE: We started in ’09. I had been working in energy-efficient lighting previous to that. Had my own company with an associate and we did that for about 10 years and I decided to make a change, did a couple of other things but came back and have been doing it since ’09 especially because everyone is now talking about energy efficiency and back when we started, it was really a struggle to get people to understand and appreciate it.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: For our listeners out there who want to follow along as we have a nice conversation today, you can go to Marilyn’s great website. It’s a beautiful website, lots of great information there. It’s www.eeldesign.com, Energy Efficient Lighting Design.com. So, let’s talk about that. You said it was difficult to get people interested back in 2009 but now in 2014, lighting seems to be the rage and energy efficiency and saving energy seems to be really on top of everyone’s mind so can you explain if we were just meeting for the first time and for our listeners out there, why should they even consider replacing their existing lighting? Can you explain the cost benefit analysis that exists with that discussion?
MARILYN SLOANE: Sure. I can give you a simple example. Everyone is familiar with a 4-foot fluorescent lamp and apartment buildings are notorious for having old T12 4-foot lamps in their basement areas, in their stairwells, in mechanical spaces, and they typically have a two-lamp fixture. That fixture consumes 72 watts and then in corridors, you’ll have those fixtures on 24/7. You can replace that fixture with a current, up-to-date, T8 fluorescent lamp with an electronic valice, one lamp, 32 watts to replace your 72-watt fixture, so you’re looking at the savings per year of about $80 per fixture and everyone is interested in saving money. I’m sure of that and this is one simple way of doing it and not only will you save money, but ConEd will give you $20 for changing that fixture to a T8, but in addition to all of that, that T12 fluorescent lamp has been discontinued by the Department of Energy as well as that valance, so you really can’t even go buy those lamps anymore, nor the valance that makes it work, so while rebates are available, it really makes sense. It’s really a no-brainer to make that change.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: So, you get a rebate. You’re saving money. There’s just not any reason anymore.
MARILYN SLOANE: I know. You get much better lighting. The quality of the light. Even in a basement area, if you have the laundry down in the basement, it would be much nicer to walk into that basement with a T8 lamp versus a T12, but in addition to that, what the real key is turning lights off or dimming them. That’s really where you’re going to make an additional tremendous savings and in a corridor in an apartment building, those lights are always on. You can now turn them off or dim them and what we typically do in an apartment building in the corridor we’ll turn off every other light or we’ll turn off every two lights and then leave the third light partially on and the fixture has an occupancy center in it so it will go to full bright or on and once you include those savings, that really makes it even more palatable and in addition to that, you’re gonna have less maintenance because you’re not gonna have to change that light bulb as often.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: So, wait a second. We met through our common friend, the wonderful Tina Larson, and also through the organization that we both belong to, the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce, great, great organization and so I know you’re in New York City and I have listeners in the United States and around the world, so this is a really important topic because we’re talking more and more about lighting, Marilyn, than ever before on the show and we have so many guests that really have great expertise like you do on this subject matter, so let’s go back and talk about the blocking and tackling of getting people really interested and obviously, you say there’s a real compelling economic interest to do it. Now, let’s go back to how you started in terms of co-op and condo boards and how come in New York or other great cities across this country where there’s co-op and condo boards that manage the places that we live in, how come these changes aren’t happening immediately? What has been the resistance toward this change and how can we get them to move faster nowadays?
MARILYN SLOANE: It is very frustrating, but I do understand there are certain buildings that I’m working with that have some major upgrades that they’re going through so they’ve had to put this project on the back burner. We’re still communicating though. They know they need to do it and they will do it as soon as we can schedule it, but there are so many other buildings that don’t move forward and I really don’t know why. The other thing is if it’s money, which very often people tell me, the Serta just came out, and this again is for the New York City and New York State area, but they just came out with some really great loan options, so there’s really hardly any reason why someone shouldn’t move forward. People are, I find, resistant to change and tend to be difficult. We just did a building out in Brooklyn where we worked with the interior designer and we implemented light fixtures in their corridors with occupancy sensors and we returned to leaving two fixtures off and leaving two fixtures just dim but it was something new. When we installed it, there were two people in the whole building that were not comfortable with that so we made a slight change on the fixture so that all the fixtures could be high level and then when they want, they can turn those two off at a later time so the point is some people are more resistant to change than others. Other than that, I can’t figure out why anyone wouldn’t move forward. There are so many benefits and we have some new energy codes here in New York that are requiring upgrades so now is a good time to do it while those are available.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: And, is this true across the country? When you talk with or meet with your colleagues across the country that are lighting professionals like you are and energy professionals like you are across the country, are most states and most cities putting in the same types of requirements that New York is and the same type of rebate program so this is really a major trend? This isn’t just a fad in New York City. This is really a major trend across America and across the world really, right?
MARILYN SLOANE: Absolutely. I was at a meeting yesterday the Department of Energy spoke. Several organizations from New York State spoke and they all talked about emerging technology and how they’re trying to push it even further like solar energy so absolutely, it is a really hot topic. People want to save space but not only that; we have a sustainability issue. We have one planet that we’re living on. We all need to live here and there are only so many resources and there are so many new technologies that we can benefit from.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: For our listeners that just joined us, we’re so happy to have with us today Marilyn Sloane. She’s the Principal of Energy Efficient Lighting Design. To learn more about her great services or to save money and change your lighting, you can look her up at www.eeldesign.com. Marilyn, you’ve talked about the Brooklyn example and please share with our listeners a couple of different issues. You’re an energy expert. You’re a lighting professional but you work with an interior designer. Talk a little bit about the difference between what you do and what an interior designer does and also talk a little bit about when you have different client bases, whether they’re a business or a condo, and everybody’s different. Every condo association and co-op association is different and every business is different. Share with our listeners how you can make adjustments to make them happy like you said in this building, you had to adjust things to make them happy but it was all adjustable. Share a little bit of how you work with interior designers but you also make your clients happy and how everyone can be made happy with the use of technologies and things of that such.
MARILYN SLOANE: Well, we bring added value to the interior designer. It’s not always a simple one for one fixture replacement. Yes, you can do it that way but there are other options that are available that will save the building more money and give them a rebate and so that’s what we focus on. We focus on the lighting, the latest technology. I find it hard myself to stay on top of what’s happening today. It’s changing almost daily. I have a fixture that we’ve been developing and in the past two months, a new product just came out that’s gonna change the way we use this fixture now so it’s really an exciting time to be in the lighting industry. We bring that extra added value to a designer, to an architect, to a property manager and that’s where we focus our energy as well, working with property managers. They have so much on their plate. We can go in and take care of all their lighting needs. We can prepare a maintenance Excel spreadsheet so that they know what they have installed in their building and they know what to replace it with. It helps to properly maintain their building so you have the right lamps in the right fixtures but just simple maintenance things. We were actually on campus at Columbia University for six years assisting the energy manager. This was in the ’90s. We converted the entire campus into energy-efficient lighting sources where we really got to appreciate the importance of maintenance and I see that so often where a designer will specify a fixture that’s hard to maintain so that’s of prime importance in what we specify, maintenance. It’s gotta be easy to maintain.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Marilyn, talk a little bit about this new wave of LEDs. Are they always the answer over fluorescents or is there still a happy medium or a mix that needs to be found?
MARILYN SLOANE: LEDs are fantastic. If you have a recessed fixture and you’ve got a compact fluorescent in there, you can replace it with an LED and get a better resource, more than twice the lamp life, definitely more than twice the lamp life, and a great color but if you have a fluorescent fixture that’s in a basement area, you can replace that with a fluorescent fixture that has an occupancy sensor in it and not have to spend the additional cost for an LED lamp because that’s definitely much more money than a fluorescent and still have great energy savings and a lower cost, so LEDs aren’t the answer for everywhere.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: In New York, there’s a program called A Thousand Green Supers. How do people work with their super and how do you work with the Thousand Green Supers and what does this mean for your industry and for your company specifically, Marilyn?
MARILYN SLOANE: Well, it’s been great for us. That’s a part of the 32BJ program. It’s an organization. It’s a union for all the service workers here in New York City. It’s the largest union and they have a program that’s called One Thousand Green Supers. It’s promoted by Blue Book and it was teaching supers about green lighting sources, what they could do in their building to make their buildings more efficient with new lighting and subsequently, 32BJ has continued that program in offering these people green lighting and we teach it so right there with supers, with people who maintain apartment buildings and we take them to a building. Here are emergency stairs. Here’s what you typically find there and this is what you should replace it with. This is how much money you’ll save and this is the payback, which they can then discuss that with their co-op board. This is why they send these people to these organizations, to learn about new technologies so it’s a great class. It’s a great opportunity for them to see what they can implement in their building.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Marilyn, in New York City, what does California Title 24 mean and what does that mean for New York City, California Title 24?
MARILYN SLOANE: Well, you know, you had asked about lighting across the country and the first thing I want to say is yes, rebates are available across the country and there is a website that you can go to and check your state and find out what rebates are available and that website is zsireusa.org and you can find out what rebates are available, but California is very aggressive about their energy savings. They’re way far ahead of the rest of the country, but what typically happens is what they do out there eventually comes this way and so it’s an opportunity to learn from what they’re doing and if it’s successful or not. They are actually dimming lights outside. They’re dimming lights in corridors. They’re dimming lights on the bicycle path. They’re really being aggressive about saving money and as I had mentioned earlier, the key to real savings is controls and turning lights off or dimming them and California is requiring bi-level lighting in emergency stairs and garages, in corridors, so they are actually implementing upgrades that we’re only discussing here.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: So, the rebates for all our listeners across America can be found on dsireusa.org?
MARILYN SLOANE: Right.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Perfect, and we’re down to the last minute-and-a-half or so. Talk a little bit about occupancy sensors and all these new apps, Marilyn, that have come out to help us save energy and so that we can control our energy and stuff like that. Are you using that as part of your program too to help people save more energy?
MARILYN SLOANE: Well, in a sense, yes. We’re working with the supers and the co-op boards and management devices so that they can actually monitor how much energy they’re spending in their building and there’s no energy codes here in New York City that are requiring building to monitor the energy that they use because if you don’t measure what you use, you can’t make any changes.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Well, Marilyn, we want to have you back on. You’re helping people make great changes. If you want to reach Marilyn and use her services to help you save energy and save money, go to her great company’s website, Energy Efficient Lighting Design, www.eeldesign.com. Thank you, Marilyn, for showing Green is Good listeners the light. You are a sustainability leader and truly living proof that green is good.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Welcome back to Green is Good, and we’re honored to have with us today Lise Asimont. She’s the Director of Grower Relations at the Francis Ford Coppola Winery. Welcome to Green is Good, Lise.
LISE ASIMONT: Hello. Thank you so much for having me on.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Hey, Lise, you’re doing just wonderful things in sustainability at the Francis Ford Coppola Winery, but before we get into speaking about those things you’re doing there, I want you to share with our listeners please the Lisa Asimont story, the journey leading up to becoming the Director of Grower Relations. How did that journey go and how did you end up there?
LISE ASIMONT: Well, thank you so much, and it’s an interesting journey, actually. I am what you call a viticulturist, which is a $2 term for someone who cultivates wine grapes. That’s my study and I come from a long line of people who have nothing to do with wine or growing grapes or agriculture for that matter and I’m a farmer so basically, I didn’t want to be a doctor like my folks. My mother is from the Philippines. My dad is a third-generation American, but his family’s French and everyone is in the medical field and I really enjoyed science. I still enjoy science. I consider myself a scientist and I had the pleasure of trying to be a pre med student and part of the way through that, I had what I like to call a pre med student nervous breakdown and I called my mom and dad and said I didn’t want to go to med school and they said great because they didn’t have to support a kid to go through med school and they could retire early. Everyone was happy. They threw a party when I got home and my dad took me aside and that French heritage, it’s pretty strong and he said what are you gonna do? And, I said I’d like to get my undergraduate degree in anthropology or biological anthropology and he goes, okay, so what are you gonna do? And, I said well, I don’t know and he said you’ve drunk wine your whole like, it’s a part of our family lifestyle, we consider it a food at home and why don’t you check that out? And, I did and I ended up going to UC – Davis, got my master’s in viticulture, studied with some amazing people, and fell in love more with the farming of the wine grapes than with the winemaking because my whole life I’ve been a very outdoorsy person, grew up snow skiing and grew up in the mountains of Lake Arrowhead, California, where sustainability is exceptionally important to us there and preserving the beautiful environment that we have there and the beautiful blue lakes that we have and so it all kind of fit in together really well and eight years ago, I had the great honor and pleasure of being invited to join the Francis Ford Coppola winemaking team and ever since then, it’s just been an amazing, amazing journey and I gotta tell you, working for a company that cares so much about its employees it treats us like family and really sees the world in a different way than any other wine company I know of has been wonderful. They don’t clip your wings. They put your wings on and say go for it and it’s truly an amazing team environment. I’m very grateful to the Coppola family for that.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That is just wonderful, and you are the Director of Grower Relations there, right?
LISE ASIMONT: Yes, and basically, grower relations is a part of the viticulture field where in the California wine industry, we are the viticulturists that work on behalf of the winery. We’re employed by the winery and our main job is to make sure that the relationships between the wine grape growers of California and the wineries is a successful and sustainable one for that matter and we are basically the consulting viticulturists on behalf of the winery to make sure that the level of quality and style of wines that we produce start in the vineyard so another way to kind of look at me is I’m the farming winemaker. I’m the winemaker of the field.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That is just wonderful and I’m on your website now and for our listeners who want to follow along as we visit with Lise today, you can go to FrancisFordCoppolaWinery.com. I’m on the site now. It’s a visually gorgeous site. It just like invited you in. I feel like I want to walk into the winery just by being on the site so it’s just really special so tell our listeners and share with our listeners a little bit about the winery itself and give us a little bit of a visual tour of how it’s to be at the winery.
LISE ASIMONT: Well, I alluded to it a second ago, where I said working for the Coppola family and working for the Francis Ford Coppola Winery, we’re individuals. We’re run by an artist. Francis Ford Coppola himself is truly an artist at heart, and family is the most important thing to this man so when you go to our winery and you look on the winery website, which is extremely beautiful and props to our web team and our website designers there who are artists themselves, it is unlike any winery you will ever go to in your life. I think the first thing you notice is that there’s swimming pools and what do swimming pools have to do with a winery and wine and all these things? Basically, our winery is a destination. It is a Sonoma County wine visiting center gem where basically, the Coppola family want you to come to our winery and spend the day. Bring your family. It’s not just for adults only. We have cabins that are for rent for the day and you can change in a cabin, lay down in a chaise lounge, enjoy some poolside service. The kids can swim. There’s lifeguards. We have a beautiful pavilion where we actually have local theater and musical performances. It’s truly an amazing place. We have two restaurants on site. One is our seasonal grill that supports our park, our pool area and the other one is Rustic, which is Francis’ favorite, which is a restaurant there and that is also very unusual. Rustic actually has its own garden so it supplies as much of our produce as possible for our cuisine. It’s a pretty amazing place too. You’d really dig Rustic, too. It’s really neat. They’ve actually structured all of their restaurant waste. All of the restaurant oil goes to a company that produces toiletries and soaps and they’re very beautiful, very high end, very nice bath soaps and lotions and such and all of our other waste is also composted. It’s a really neat restaurant.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Wait a second, so really, what you’re sharing is not only is this a very family-oriented place to work and to the wine and the winemaking and food experience, but the Coppolas themselves are really into sustainability. This is a DNA and a culture thing so share with our listeners what was the epiphany or the tipping point or the catalyst, for that matter, for them to be so into making sustainability part of the culture and the DNA of your great winery?
LISE ASIMONT: Well, you know, it’s from the top down. The Coppolas themselves, like I said earlier, family is everything to them and they love their family so much, their children and the grandchildren, and their main residence is about an hour from our winery, which is in Sonoma County located in Geyserville. It’s about an hour and a half north of San Francisco but their main residence is located on the Inglenook Estate and it was so important to them that their grandchildren could run free at this beautiful estate and never have to worry about chemicals. It’s a very reasonable thing. You know, you love your kids. You love your grandkids. You want them to run on the lawn and not worry about anything and that’s kind of where it sort of started. That was the seed. Their resorts, the Coppola family and Francis Ford Coppola Presents owns resorts. The first ones were in Belize, and in Belize these resorts actually have water-based energy sources, which is extraordinary and it was revolutionary at the time when the resorts were founded and created and engineered and outside of that too, first and foremost, it’s beautiful at the resort. It’s a beautiful place to come to. Hospitality is first and foremost when you go to our winery. We want you to feel like family, but we are a fully functioning winery. That’s what we are first and foremost and when you’re a winery, there’s a lot of practicality involved with waste management. You know, with wineries, we have pomace, which is when we crush the grapes, we have leftover pomace and what do you do with all those skins and seeds and leftovers from the fermentation? We have packaging and cardboard and what do we do with that? All of these things and out of sheer practicality and it wasn’t necessarily an environmental claim but just a practical what is the best way to manage our waste and the same regards, make that a sustainable situation for us? And that basically came to we compost all of our pomace, which is great, and then we use that pomace back in the vineyards. There’s 25 acres there and another 40 acres up the road from there that we use that to add basically a green manure back into our fields. All of our winery wastewater is actually recycled and that’s the water source that we use to irrigate all of our vineyards at the Francis Ford Coppola Winery Estate Vineyard so it’s a completely sustainable system and all of our packaging and compost for that, of course, is recycled. That was extremely easy but a lot of that kind of came from this seed of we love our family, we love our grandkids, and let’s do the best we can and it translated all the way down to well, you know what, I’m gonna turn the water on in the vineyard and it’s coming from recycled wastewater that we just washed a tank out with.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That is just great. So, it’s through and through part of your DNA at the Francis Ford Coppola Winery so for our listeners out there who just joined us, we’ve got Lise Asimont on. She’s the Director of Grower Relations at Francis Ford Coppola Winery. You can learn more about them and all of Lise’s great work at FrancisFordCoppolaWinery.com. One question for you: We are one of the media sponsors and partners with the Green Festivals. How did your winery become part of The Green Festival?
LISE ASIMONT: Well, you know, our team — and this is a lot of credit to basically our executive team here — but they learned about the festival and they really felt it was completely aligned with the Coppolas’ personal initiatives. It’s exactly what they were looking for. It’s such an easy partnership. It’s such an organic partnership with us with regards to every part of it makes sense and we’re really looking forward to the festival events this fall.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: And, will your wine be available for tasting at those festivals?
LISE ASIMONT: I believe it is, and it’s very exciting to bring that to that festival and share, basically, a very exciting way to experience sustainability and practice to be able to literally put in your mouth and taste it and we’re very proud of our wine and it’s, again, to support the rest of our winery and I think there’s nobody way to drive a point home than do that.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: You’re not kidding. Let’s go back to sustainability and all the great things you’re doing. Talk about certifications. In every industry, there’s certain types of good housekeeping seals of approval and other types of certifications. What types of certifications do you have at the Francis Ford Coppola Winery?
LISE ASIMONT: Well, we take our certifications very, very seriously and we’re very proud of it because it is a part of our DNA and it is a part of our heart and at this point in time, it’s a big source of pride for us to state that both the facility so the winemaking facility and our vineyards that surround the winery as well, are certified sustainable. I know that doesn’t sound like much perhaps to your listeners, of course. What’s the big deal about that? But up until about three years ago, there was actually no certification or third party certification available for sustainable practices in our industry and we have signed on with California Sustainable Winegrowing Alliance and through a lot of hard work were able to have both our winery and our vineyards certified sustainable. We’re incredibly proud of that. Outside of that, there are quite a few certifications that we have that are also to our close to our heart directly. One of them is fish friendly farming. Very proud of that. That was started in, I believe, 1999 by Laura Marcus. It’s an entity over actually Napa County, which is one county over from us, about an hour’s drive, and fish friendly farming is a beautiful certification basically because for one reason selfishly. I’m a fly fisherman and my kids and my family, we live in that area as well and being stewards of the land tends to be an easy term that people tend to say but fish friendly farming takes it one step further where we’re not stewards of the land. We’re improving the environment and that’s huge. We are basically protecting the river, which for our watershed is the Russian River, which flows through Sonoma County and out into the Pacific Ocean and basically, fish-friendly farming are practices that protect the endangered salmon and steelhead trout, which are extremely important to us. What that means in practice for me at the vineyard as a viticulturist is that during a rain event, every single drop of water that leaves the vineyard is clear and that basically means that we’re conserving all of our soil and everything we can to make that we’re protecting those salmon and steelhead habitats and for me, that’s big and you know, my hat’s off to Fish Friendly Farming. It’s a wonderful organization to work with and we’re very proud of that certification and beyond that, we’re hobby beekeepers and European Honeybee is extremely important to us, especially in lieu of Colony Collapse Disorder that’s taking away so much from our food chain. I don’t know if you know this, John, but one-third of every bit of food that omnivores like ourselves take is the product of colonization and taking care of those bees is extremely important to us and all of the wasp species that are extremely important to us in agriculture so we are also Bee Friendly Farming certified as well.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: It’s so interesting, Lise. On the top of the show, our first guest today was Cheryl Dahle, who is the Executive Director of Future of Fish, so we were talking about fish-friendly farming and the Future of Fish and the transparency and tracking of fish just on today’s show and we are gonna cover the issue of bees and the importance of bees in future shows. It’s not a subject we’ve covered, yet but it is one so important and I’m so glad you brought that up. We’re down to the last four minutes or so, and I want you to cover over back at the winery, the green team, what does the green team do and what are some of your initiatives there?
LISE ASIMONT: Well, the green team is a voluntary group of our employees that meet regularly to implement sustainable and green practices at our business while also improving the moral and quality of life at the winery. It’s a really neat group. It’s beyond just being “green.” It’s really enforcing the sustainability aspect, which much of sustainability in our mind and our philosophical take on it has to do with the individual as their sustainability within the moral complex of a group so the green team, they do everything from they just recently did an initiative on if you carpool with any of our employees back into the winery, come to work, do a carpool, you record it. There’s initiatives if you record that. There’s prizes, there’s drawings, and there’s this wonderful good morale that’s associated with hey, get together with your friend at work, carpool in, get less cars on the road. The green team gave us all water bottles one year so we would eliminate the excessive plastic packaging at the winery so we all have our Coppola issued water bottles now, which is great, and there’s tons of fresh water everywhere to refill up your water bottle so we’re eliminating plastic use. They host an annual health fair. At the annual health fair, it’s everything from measuring your blood pressure and your current status of health to having several booths available with green vendors in the area to further educate our employees on how we can be greater ambassadors of sustainability in our own community and in our own homes. It’s a really neat group of people.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Wow, and talk a little bit about your grape growers. You have a partnership with about 150 grape growers and talk a little bit about sustainability and how you work with them in terms of making sure they’re all staying sustainable and things of that such.
LISE ASIMONT: Well, the nice thing for me is for those 150 growers across the state of California, I don’t actually have to make sure that they stay sustainable. They do it themselves so it’s pretty impressive. Based on the region, grape growers, they’re farmers and they care for the land no matter what so one region that we source from in low dye, they started their own certified sustainable program about five years before California Sustainable existed so they have low dye rules. Central coast growers have the Central Coast Vit Team. They created that right about the same time as low dye and at this point in time, I’m proud to report that Sonoma County Winegrape Association just this year in 2014 has stated that they are aiming as a goal to have 100 certified sustainable for all of their wine growers in the region of Sonoma County by 2015. It’s really impressive so my job’s pretty easy. I’m learning more from them than I’m telling them to do it.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Any final thoughts? We’re down to the last minute. Any final thoughts, Lise, before we have to sign off for today?
LISE ASIMONT: Well, you know, on behalf of the Francis Ford Coppola Winery, I just really appreciate this chance to come talk to you today and I’m so impressed with the work that you do in getting the good work out there. I love your programming. I think it’s so important and valuable and pertinent, and thank you so much for having us.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Well, Lise, we think your work is so important as well and we’re so excited for the work you’re doing as are your colleagues at the Francis Ford Coppola Winery. To learn more about that work, please go to FrancisFordCoppolaWinery.com and enjoy their wines responsibly. To taste their wines at the Green Festivals, it’s in Los Angeles September 12th through the 14th, Chicago October 24th to the 26th and in San Francisco November 14th through the 16th at the Green Festivals. You can find your great wines there. Thank you, Lise, for being a viticulturist and sustainability leader and superstar. You are truly living proof that green is good.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Welcome back to Green is Good, and we’re so excited today to have Louis Berger on with us. He’s the co-founder of Washington Square Capital Management. Welcome to Green is Good, Louis.
LOUIS BERGER: Great. Thanks for having me, guys.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Happy to have you on, and we’re gonna be talking about an important subject, socially responsible investing, but before we get to that, I want to hear the story of Louis Berger — your journey leading up to founding Washington Square Capital Management.
LOUIS BERGER: Sure, so actually, investing and financial advisory was a second career for me. I worked in the film industry for several years and then in 2006, I made the switch over to finance so investing had always been interesting to me. The environment and social causes were always interesting to me so I decided I wanted to merge those two ideas and so I started working at UBS, the Swiss bank, for a few years and then my business partner and I decided to start our own firm, Washington Square Capital, a little over five years ago. So, we run an independent financial advisory now where we work with clients and build socially responsible portfolios.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That is great, and for our listeners who want to follow along as we have our visit with Louis today and follow along with his company and see what he’s doing at Washington Square Management, you can go to www.wsqcapital.com. So, Louis, let’s get right into it. Social-responsible investing, is this a hot topic the last five years? Is this something new or is this something that’s been around a long time?
LOUIS BERGER: You know, it’s interesting because it’s often described as a passing fad when in reality, it’s been around for a very long time. It’s actually been around for as long as the United States has been around. We can trace it back to colonial times where the Quakers in the 1750s prohibited members from participating in the slave trade. You can look back to John Wesley, one of the founders of the Methodist church, and his use of money sermon where he preached helping people, helping the poor, avoiding businesses that hurt the poor, hurt other people, like casinos and distilleries, and then more recently we’ve seen SOI come into prominence in the 1960s during the Vietnam War. Investors wanted to divest from war profiteers. There was some widespread protest against Dow Chemical, the makers of napalm, and then in the ’80s, we saw the divestment movement from South Africa due to apartheid so it’s really been part of the fabric of the United States and then more recently, we’ve seen the green movement and investors are interested in what companies they’re invested in and actually making choices to invest in companies that reflect their world view.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: So, this is something that goes back pretty much time immemorial, like you said, to the founding of our great country. It’s just not a green thing that just happened after Inconvenient Truth or some other landmark event here in the sustainability revolution. This really traces back to just our roots of the United States?
LOUIS BERGER: Yeah, absolutely. It’s certainly become more popular in recent years. I think certainly Inconvenient Truth has raised the profile of environmentalism and there’s certainly more money being invested but it is something that’s been around for a very long time.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: So, say today you and I met at a cocktail party. Can you share with our listeners what would be your major pitch, your major tenets for why our listeners should consider investing in a socially responsible way?
LOUIS BERGER: What your listeners should know is that investing can be an extension of your worldview and your values and if you’re passionate about certain issues like the environment, it really should be an extension of your worldview and we view it as a natural progression of conscious consumerism so in recent years, many of us have started questioning where and how our products are made, where our food comes from, how our energy is sourced and we’ve adjusted our consumer habits as a result so investing has actually followed that same path so if you’re invested in a typical mutual fund and let’s say you care about the environment, you’re likely invested in companies that are diametrically opposed to your worldview so you may be invested in fracking companies, oil drilling, mining petrochemicals and investing in these types of companies is more than just an endorsement of their business practices. By owning their stocks and bonds, you’re actually helping to foster their growth and I doubt many listeners would want to help fracking companies expand their operations so it’s important to start thinking about, just like as a consumer where your dollars go, as an investor what companies your dollars are supporting.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: So, how does one go about defining what investments are considered socially responsible? And, I mean it on both sides of the equation. I mean it on the Louis Berger side of the equation and in also your potential client base side of the equation. How do you find investments that are considered socially responsible?
LOUIS BERGER: Sure, so it’s interesting because the term social responsibility is kind of nebulas, right? You know, it’s actually very subjective and can be very personal, so it’ll mean different things to different people and what one investor may consider socially responsible another may not so through our practice and interacting with our clients, we’ve come to realize that it’s important to have a customized portfolio for clients that follows their individual mandate so when we look at the space, we’re gonna look at investing in companies that our clients feel comfortable investing in and then my own preferences tend to sort of move towards environmentalism so I’m really interested in investing in companies that are part of the alternative energy movement, energy efficiency, companies that consider human rights, labor rights, water resources. There’s a lot of themes around environmentalism that you can express through an investment portfolio.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Okay, so now environmentalism is one form of sustainability and green, of course, and I love that and I think that is great so you would have today, if I’m a new potential client and you and I are having lunch today in Manhattan, you would have a list of potential investments that you’ve had success with or you’ve been tracking that you like but then how long does it take for you to get to know me so you get to know my likes and dislikes so then you can start matching up some things from your list and maybe some things that are off your list that you think that I would appreciate because of how different and idiosyncratic we all are?
LOUIS BERGER: Yeah, no, absolutely. We look at each client individually so we run a pretty extensive questionnaire where we cover a lot of different themes and we get a sense of what a prospective client is really interested in, what types of companies or issues they want to include, what they want to avoid, and then using that criteria, we’ll build out a portfolio from there and yeah, we’ll certainly include certain types of companies that a client may specifically want to include or if they want to avoid certain types of companies for whatever reason. They may have a problem with a specific company’s business practices and our view is that our job is to make sure that the portfolio reflects the client’s wishes.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Is there a taboo list of things that you really are trying to shy your clients away from investing in or most of the people who come to you don’t want to invest in such as alcohol and tobacco, pornography, guns? Is there a big taboo list or is this just very personalized and has to do with your client base and also you and your partner?
LOUIS BERGER: Yeah, it’s definitely the client base. There’s a lot of overlap in client portfolios, so yeah, there’s certainly themes that are pretty consistent that we see. I guess a taboo list of negative themes so fossil fuel companies, oil drillers, firearm manufacturers, companies that are involved with military or war, tobacco, big retail banks is actually a pretty big theme these days so clients will want to avoid investing in those larger banks. Nuclear power will come up. I’ve had clients come to me and say I want to avoid the big box retailers. We have clients that are vegan and want to avoid GMO or meat packers or companies that are using processed foods so again, it’s so subjective and totally fascinating because each client’s gonna have their kind of angle and worldview that we’ll incorporate.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: So, there’s sort of a master taboo list but then it gets hand crafted based on, like you said, the client’s vegan or a client’s really anti-military or any of that kind of stuff.
LOUIS BERGER: Sure, and most of those themes overlap. Most of those are consistent but some themes will be stronger than others.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That’s so fascinating. If you’ve just joined us, we’re excited to have Louis Berger on with us today. He’s the co-founder and Principal of Washington Square Capital Management. To learn more about socially responsible investing and all the great work that Louis and his partner is up to, you can go to www.wsqcapital.com, so let’s talk about that a little bit. What are the different types of socially responsible investment strategies that you’re excited about today? Is it solar? Is it Tesla? Is it Amy’s Foods? What are you looking at for your investors today and what are you showing them?
LOUIS BERGER: Right, so there’s really four kind of broad approaches that investors will use when approaching the space and the first would be something called positive screening so you would look at the investment universe and you would say I want to invest in something that has a positive impact on the world so if you care about the environment, you’re gonna look at solar companies, wind companies. You’re gonna look at energy efficiency companies or just general companies that have a strong environmental track record. The second approach would be negative screening so you’d look at the investment universe and you would remove those companies or avoid those companies that you view as having a negative impact on the world so going back to that taboo list, and we’re talking about the environment, it’s generally going to be fossil fuel companies, mining, petrochemicals. Our third approach is something called Best in Class where you’re gonna look at an industry that may be negative screened so you’re gonna look at, let’s say, the utility space and you’re gonna find that company that’s leading the way, that’s at the vanguard, let’s say, in terms of their environmental practices so you may look at a utility that could have some exposure to fossil fuels but they diversify their portfolio in alternative energy so they’ll have wind power and solar power, biofuels, and this approach is probably best for a pragmatic investor that says okay, here’s a company that’s doing good things in the utility space. They’re moving forward. They’re aware of their environmental footprint, they’re aware of the resources that they use, and they’re actually seeking to limit those and then the fourth approach is something called Shareholder Advocacy, where you’re actually changing the way a company does their business from the inside so as a shareholder, you’re part owner of a business or company and you have the ability to put forward shareholder resolutions and this is something that larger institutional investors will do; a mutual fund, a pension, a nonprofit, a foundation. A lot of them have an environmental mandate and will often pull their resources together and put forward shareholder resolutions that will have a company look at their carbon footprint, look at their water use, question where they’re sourcing certain types of materials from and a lot of times, this change will be incremental but over time, it will help shape a company’s business practices and change the way they do business in the long run.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: So, there’s four different types of investment strategies that are —
LOUIS BERGER: Yeah, and then I guess to your initial question about what types of companies, again, I can’t really talk specifically to companies but generally speaking, we’re very interested in the alternative energy space. We think LED lighting is really interesting. Metal recycling is a space we look at. Disruptive Internet technologies are interesting. So, organic foods is a space that’s growing pretty rapidly so there’s several different companies that we’ll keep an eye on and then put those into client portfolios when we see good opportunities to buy them.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Louis, at Green is Good, we love to give our listeners advice that they can use so is there any things that they shouldn’t be doing? Is there any types of investments or strategies our listeners should be avoiding?
LOUIS BERGER: Right. Well, I think it’s really important if you’re gonna invest in a socially responsible mutual fund, which is often the most common approach that we see out there, you should take a close look at their investments and make sure their screening criteria matches your values and make sure that the underlying investments are also companies that you’re comfortable investing in. Another thing is you really have to consider the fundamentals of investing. You can’t just ignore them because you’re doing socially responsible investing. You have to look at risk tolerance, at time horizon. We’ve come across prospective clients in our practice where they’ll say, ‘Yeah, I’m socially responsibly invested. I have all of my money in a solar stock,’ and that may be something that’s socially responsible but it’s fiscally reckless so we want to make sure that your listeners know that diversification is important, that risk tolerance, that time horizon should all be considered in addition to the screening criteria we’re talking about.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Louis, is it your experience that socially responsible investing is changing the way that companies actually do business?
LOUIS BERGER: Yeah, absolutely. I’d say it’s similar to the movement in conscious consumerism that we’ve been seeing so any time a person becomes aware of where their money is going and starts questioning it, it forces a company to change the way they do business so SRI is forcing companies to rethink their business practices because they want to start appealing to SRI investors and shareholder advocacy, which I mentioned earlier, has been a great tool. It’s changing, kind of moving the needle and forcing corporations to start changing their business practices and there’s absolutely still a long way to go and the challenges we’re facing aren’t going away anytime soon but we’ve definitely been seeing a lot of progress and I think as SRI continues to grow, we’ll continue to see pressure put on companies to address a lot of the issues that consumers are concerned with.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Louis, Washington Square Capital, what do you do different than other socially responsible investing financial firms are offering right now today?
LOUIS BERGER: Sure, so I mentioned mutual funds earlier and a lot of those types of approaches will use kind of a set strategy, what we view as a one size fits all strategy, and mutual funds can absolutely be a good way to invest socially responsibly and it’s often appropriate for smaller investors or investors that are new to investing and want to outsource the management of their portfolio to a manager that’s going to follow their values and their mandate but what we have encountered and what we’ve found is that managing a portfolio with individual stocks and bonds will actually more closely mirror what an investor is looking for so rather than going with a mutual fund where you don’t really have any choice — you can’t call up the manager and say, ‘Hey, I’d really love to invest in a solar company,’ you’re kind of at the mercy of the investment decisions they make — if you work with an advisor like us and we build out a customized portfolio, you have a lot more control over where your money goes; what type of companies, what industries, what asset classes and what we’ve found is our clients tend to be a lot happier with that because they know exactly they have full control over where their money is going and they have full control over what companies they’re invested in.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: You know, we’re down to the last minute or so, Louis. What do you think of the future for socially responsible investing and is it gonna really become more of the mainstream and will your firm continue to benefit from that and grow in the years ahead?
LOUIS BERGER: Yeah. You know, I think it’s absolutely on that path. We’ve seen significant growth in recent years so if you look back to 1995, there were only about 55 investment funds with an SRI mandate and as of 2012, that number has grown to 720.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Whoa.
LOUIS BERGER: It’s grown quite substantially and actually, as of 2012, SRI investments represented about one out of every eight investment dollars in the U.S. and that number has probably grown since 2012. Another thing we’ve been seeing is a generational shift. We’ve seen millennials become very interested in applying SRI to their portfolios so oftentimes, we’ve seen younger investors, millennials, inherit money from a grandparent or parent. They’ll inherit their grandparent or parent’s advisor and often times, that advisor will not be interested or be able to invest socially responsibly. They may not be equipped. They may not follow the funds that they need to so a lot of these investors are being underserved and they’re looking elsewhere for guidance and what we see is a shift from the boomer generation. As they age, they’re gonna be leaving money to the younger generation and that generation’s gonna investment in socially responsible investments so yeah, we think it’s gonna grow and be more mainstream in the future.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Thank you, Louis, and for our listeners out there that want to learn more about what Louis is doing or contact Louis, go to www.wsqcapital.com. Thank you, Louis, for socially responsibly investing in companies that can help make the world a better place. You are truly living proof that green is good.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Welcome to another edition of Green is Good, and we’re so honored to have with us today Cheryl Dahle. She’s the founder and Executive Director of Future of Fish. Welcome to Green is Good, Cheryl Dahle.
CHERYL DAHLE: Thank you for having me.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: We’re so happy to have you on. This is a very important topic we’re gonna be talking about and something we haven’t covered really in depth before, but before we get talking about Future of Fish, can you please give a little bit of the Cheryl Dahle back story and journey leading up to — let me just say it this way. Can you talk about your journey, Cheryl, from becoming a journalist — a well-known journalist, by the way — to the fish lady?
CHERYL DAHLE: Absolutely. I think I’m the least likely person to be known as ‘the fish lady’ being that I grew up in the Midwest, so I didn’t see the ocean for the first time until I was 17, I’m deathly allergic to shellfish, and I get seasick just looking at a boat, so I didn’t really have much of a marine science background or aspirations to explore or scuba dive or any of that so I came to this topic by way of exploring through writing, so I spent about 13 years as a journalist writing about social entrepreneurship, which led me to then think about, you know, it’s interesting to write about people who are trying to change the world but maybe it might be interesting to go do that myself and so I started working for a nonprofit and the work I did for them was similar to what I did as a journalist, which was looking for patterns in the work of social entrepreneurs that we could then distill into investment advice for foundations and as I was doing that work, a foundation approached that worked in green fisheries and trying to promote sustainable fish so they asked me to do an analysis and that led to a product that then also became The Future of Fish and so I came to this by way of falling in love with contact systemic problems as opposed to falling in love with fish, although I can say that that has been a follow-up of that and consequence of that.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Now, I’m on your website and it has so much great information and for our listeners out there that want to follow along as we visit with Cheryl today, go to www.futureoffish.org. Can you please set the show up by just talking to us about The Future of Fish’s journey as an organization? What is the model and what does it really look like as a nonprofit?
CHERYL DAHLE: As probably many of your listeners know, we have a chronic problem with overfishing globally. About 80% of the world’s fisheries are fished at maximum or over maximum levels and our mission has been to figure out how do we enlist industry as a partner in ending overfishing and we looked specifically at what are the cultural practices behind this equation that keep driving the practices that cause overfishing so our research began with sending anthropologists into the supply chain to observe day to day activities and understand what does it mean to live in the industry and what are the motivations and the incentives all the way through the supply chain so having that information and that knowledge, we decided that probably the most useful thing we could do would be to stoke more innovation in the seafood industry so Future of Fish is an innovation hub and we work with entrepreneurs in the supply chain who’ve come up with new ideas that drive better practices and all of these target levers that we’ve discovered in our research look at energy practices, some of the supply chain behaviors and markets and how that all works so we have about 30 entrepreneurs who we work with and we organize them into kind of teams or pods that work on different issues. We have about four or five pods going now and a bunch of entrepreneurs who are flexing their muscle to figure out how do we get the market to drive better outcomes for the ocean?
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That’s an amazing mission and so exciting and I’m so glad you’re on the show but let’s step back. Our listeners out there either eat fish themselves or they have loved ones, family, friends that eat fish. Let’s talk about where acceptable fish is now coming from and non-acceptable so for instance, the wild fisheries. What is the problem with wild fisheries right now?
CHERYL DAHLE: So, as I mentioned, I think one of the big issues is that we haven’t done a great job historically monitoring how much we take out of the ocean and so we take out so much in some fisheries that the resource doesn’t have a chance to recover so there are various regulatory systems across the globe. In North America, the systems are really quite good so if you’re buying domestic wild fish, either U.S. or Canada, those are typically well-managed fisheries. The same is true of Europe in many instances. I think when you’re starting to get toward fish that’s gonna be questionable, it’s gonna be fish that comes from what are called highest use fisheries so that’s international fisheries so it’s the space between all of the fisheries that are technically owned by respective countries to kind of the broad ocean out there and so fish that are in the high seas that are migratory fish such as tuna, they don’t belong to any one country. As they swim through different territories, the fishery exists in multiple different domains and the problem there is that it’s really hard to police the high seas, right? It’s a huge ocean, and so we often wind up with illegal fish coming in from those fisheries. About 25% of all fish is actually illegally caught or not reported and it’s easy for that fish to hide in this illegal supply chain because we actually don’t do a great job of labeling our legal fish so in North America, about a third of all seafood is mislabeled, meaning it isn’t the species of fish you think it is or it didn’t come from where you think it came from and that’s a problem, so I think a big challenge for consumers is that even if you come into a restaurant or retail location with your iPhone app from the Monterey Seafood Watch program and you’re looking for what fish are green listed or red listed, often even if you made the right choice based on the guidelines, you’re not actually getting the fish that you thought you were getting anyway.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Unbelievable. I never even heard that before and I’m sure our listeners listening right now are in shock like I am. When you’re talking to friends, family on an elevator with somebody who knows what you’re doing and they ask you, ‘What is then, Cheryl, safe fish? What can I eat as a “clean fish”?’ Is there such a thing now?
CHERYL DAHLE: There are several types of fish that are safe fish, so Wild Alaskan Salmon is always a good choice and domestic fish here in the U.S. is very well managed and so that’s always a good choice. I’d say there are certain places you can get fish where you get the story with the fish and some restaurants will actually tell you what boat the fish came off of and in those cases, often the supply chains are shorter and they have a direct relationship with fishers and so places where you can get a story about the fish; how it was caught, where it was caught, who caught it, you’re more likely to be getting real information. Those are all recommendations. I also quite honestly tell people if you do one thing, stop eating foreign shrimp.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That’s good to know for our listeners out there. We love giving things like this out to our listeners and this is great information. Tell us why.
CHERYL DAHLE: So, foreign shrimp is first of all, if it’s farmed, the conditions of the farming often are not great or very sanitary and the other piece of this is that the shrimping industry, particularly in Southeast Asia, particularly in Thailand, is well known for having human slavery in the supply chain and so what you’re getting with your fish is not just cheap fish. The implications of that because of the cheap labor involved is that you’re subsidizing modern day slavery.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Human rights violations, got it. For our listeners out there who just joined us, we’re so honored to have with us today Cheryl Dahle. She’s the founder and Executive Director of Future of Fish. You can check them out at FutureofFish.org. Cheryl, let’s go back to the top of the show. You started talking about the innovators that you work with and in the whole seafood supply chain and how you’re working with them to get it from fish to dock to plate. Talk a little bit about innovation with regards to fish and transportation and sustainability and what are some of the biggest barriers that you see out there that you’re trying to overcome.
CHERYL DAHLE: So, I think one of the biggest barriers we’re trying to overcome is that mislabeling that I mentioned so in order for fish to be labeled properly, we need better labeling systems and there’s a lot of cultural and cost related barriers to that in the supply chain and so what we look at is how can we make this new technology a win for industry? One of our examples is a company called CalTech Fisheries, which is based in Hawaii and also Seattle and they’re a global distributor and importer of fish and they decided it’s not okay that we’re not able to track our inventory when we want to and at that time, there were very few types of software or platforms out there that could actually track the disassembly of a product within the factory, which is essentially what happens when you’re processing fish. You take a fish and you cut it into parts so you need to be able to track those parts to the whole, which is the opposite of what happens in a computer assembly factory where you have all the parts getting assembled into one thing so all the specifics and the design of that are different so they invented their own system and went through the very tough process of pioneering that and troubleshooting all the problems that came up in the invention process and now they have made that available to their supply chain partners so the result is that they can actually track a fish that has a barcode with it as it comes into the factory, as it turns into multiple filets and products and goes out the door and that means that at any point, you could look at the barcode that’s on the package and know what boat your fish came from and the implication for them as a business is that they’ve reduced their over time cost by 80% and they’ve also reduced their cost of goods by 2%, which in the fishing industry is pretty huge so what they wind up with them is a business win for them and then also, it’s an environmental win because the supply chain’s actually tracking what it should track and the implications of that for the system is that if we actually had a level playing ground where all of the food was accurately labeled, consumers then could value things like I know this fish came from a fair label environment or I know this fish actually was sustainable or I know what it’s quality control conditions were and they could actually decide to pay more money for those things because they were worth something. In a situation where the whole market is mystery fish or mislabeled fish, you as a consumer can’t decide what means anything because you are looking at mostly a void of information and compared to that, an extra buck-fifty a pound for fish may seem unjustified.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Now, I’m starting to get it, and I’m on your website and tying what you just said with what I see on your website, the term, ‘storied fish’; I’ve never seen that before speaking with you today and your website. Can you then tie what you just said in terms of tracking with your terminology called storied fish?
CHERYL DAHLE: Yes, so what we’re looking for is beyond eco-label — and there are several eco-labels out there — we’re interested in the dimensions of a fish that have to do with the community where it was harvested, the economics of the local fishery, all the pieces that are the story behind how that fish was harvested and what we have found is that consumers don’t really relate very much to the term sustainable. It’s kind of a sciencey term. No one really knows what it means. Even most nonprofits can’t agree on what the actual definition of sustainable is and so if you talk to consumers about what matters to them, they’ll talk about things like is the fish healthy? Or they’ll talk about things like is the fish local? Can I meet the fisher that caught my fish? Or am I supporting a local economy that I care about and I live in? So, some of those pieces start to be an important component of the story of the fish and what we like to do is say if you build a story around a fish and can have enough data to tell a story, it’s easier to align that with good, responsible harvesting practices versus saying something is eco-labeled doesn’t actually verify any of those other dimensions that consumers care about and it’s trying to sell consumers based on what the nonprofits and environmentalists care about as opposed to what matters to consumer when they’re walking through a store so for us, the big issue is get enough data to tell a story because if you have enough data to tell a story, you’ve got technology that prevents the whole chain from committing fraud.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That is just great. I love it. I also see on your website a term called, ‘breakthrough aquaculture’. Can you explain what that means and how that relates to storied fishing, the transparency, and sustainability that you’re working so hard on driving at your organization, FutureofFish.org?
CHERYL DAHLE: Sure. Most of your listeners have probably hears historically that they should avoid farmed fish, which for large industrial farms is actually typically true so many large farms, particularly ones that are large nets so they’re in the ocean and the fish are kind of penned, can have some bad practices, which include things like feeding the fish antibiotics or food with dye in it to color the flesh of the salmon. You also wind up with issues like salmon is a carnivorous fish so it eats other fish so farmed fish has to be fed pellets that are made from wild fish so you end up decimating forge fisheries of anchovies and herring to grind up that fish to make food pellets for salmon because we’re much more accustomed to eating salmon than we are to sardines and herring so there issues with farming traditionally. There are new models of farming that are looking at how can you replace fishmeal and fish oil in the meal? How can we look at the environmental practices around the density of pens or even having fish on land in land —based tanks to avoid some of those environmental consequences? So, we’re actually working to convene a group of innovators in the farming industry for fish farming to help evolve some of those models.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Gotcha. So, really, aquaculture deals with fish farming and making fish farming more sustainable and more traceable and trackable as you were sharing with our listeners with regards to storied fish and things of that such?
CHERYL DAHLE: Absolutely. Knowing the stories behind the farm tells you whether the farm is a sustainable one or not and whether you would want to consume that fish.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: How do you go now from the research portion of what you’re doing at Future of Fish to the entrepreneur? How do you now scale some of the things you’re learning and finding out and innovating into bigger ventures so we can all have cleaner, more storied fish to eat and enjoy and not poison ourselves with?
CHERYL DAHLE: That’s a great question so a lot of what we’re trying to do is a combination of how do we scale practices and how do we scale companies so I think it’s true that it’s hard to grow a small company into a large, influential player. However, these small, disruptive companies have ideas that start to reshape markets that the big boys have to play in so for instance, if you look at the cluster of entrepreneurs that we have who are telling stories about their fish, they’ve grown substantially in the time that we’ve worked with them and they’re making more money from selling storied fish because they’re making the case to consumers that it matters whether your fish was harvested or not. It matters whether your fish was caught locally or not. Most people don’t realize that the typical supply chain for a piece of fish that you buy in the supermarket that’s frozen, it goes around the world and back because most frozen fish that you buy in the supermarket was processed in China because that’s where it’s cheapest to put those fish so these small players banding together and proving that storied fish is more profitable starts to create some market pressure in the industry on other players so that’s one way that we think about it. Another way is to look at the technology pieces and so we have several entrepreneurs that we work with who’ve come up with disruptive technologies or new ways of sharing information and once those start to proliferate in the supply chain, again, it starts to put pressure on some of the bigger players.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That’s great. We have about a minute, minute and a half left. Cheryl, can you share with our listeners some of the things that they can do right now to support seafood sustainability?
CHERYL DAHLE: I would say one of the first things you can do is every single time you go purchase fish, whether it’s in the supermarket or whether it’s in a restaurant, ask where the fish came from and if you don’t get a good answer, let the person know that you’re talking to that that wasn’t a good enough answer. Giving that feedback to the retail level of the supply chain starts to set in motion some pressure for there to be better information served up to those outlets. It’s frustrating to engage when you don’t get the answers you want or people shrug their shoulders but even asking the question is important and for you to stay connected that way is really important. Second, download to your phone either the Android or the iPhone version of Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch app. Download that app because it lists all the kinds of fish that you would want to eat and whether they’re red or yellow or green. Red means don’t eat it. Yellow means it’s a fisher that’s improving but has some issues and green means it’s a good fish and there’s a sushi guide in there as well for those of you who are addicted to sushi.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Wow. Cheryl, listen. Thank you so much. I’m so glad you went from journalist to fish lady because there’s so much that we learned today and so much that we need to learn but we want to continue to support your great work. For our listeners out there to learn more and to support Cheryl’s great work, go to www.futureoffish.org. Thank you, Cheryl, for being an aquaculture visionary and sustainability superstar. You are truly living proof that green is good.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Welcome back to Green is Good, and we’re so excited to have with us today Peter Sanchez. He’s the CEO, and I mean Chief Elf Officer, for Elf Boxes. You can check out Elf Boxes at www.elfboxes.com. Welcome to Green is Good, Peter Sanchez.
PETER SANCHEZ: Thanks, John. Thanks for having me.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: You know, Peter, just like most great entrepreneurs and innovators that we get to have on Green is Good, there’s never a straight line from point A to point B to point Z one day. Can you share a little bit with our listeners before we get talking about your great brand, Elf Boxes? Can you share with our listeners the Peter Sanchez journey leading up to founding Elf Boxes?
PETER SANCHEZ: Sure. I think the seed for Elf Boxes started with that old entrepreneurial thing about scratching your own itch so we moved a lot when I was a kid to New York, Connecticut, Florida, and then I moved to Illinois for law school and back to DC and moving was always a horrible, painful process and things get broken and you’re dealing with cardboard boxes. Where do you get them? What do you so when they’re done? And so that’s sort of where the seed started and then in college about 20 years ago, I had seen a friend of mine who was using and was using these plastic totes that would use in CVS or sometimes in supermarkets and they would store them behind the store and she would borrow them and use them for her moving and then return them because why would you need these plastic bins? And so that’s sort of where I got the idea that you could use them for moving and then I had seen this actually used for office moves. I work in an office. I’m an attorney during the day and sometimes, when people would move offices, I would see them using these plastic crates and so when I moved the last time I moved, I checked to see if this was a product available for consumers and it wasn’t and I thought, wow, this would be good for residential moves, not just office moves. Why isn’t this around? I had that thought but I didn’t do anything about it and then when I was thinking about setting up a company, my girlfriend works for an environmental nonprofit and so we had talked about starting a company and we wanted it to be something green and my dad, who lives in Florida and does custom cabinets, he’s getting a little old to keep doing construction so we wanted something that he can do so he had the warehouse and the truck and some reliable people so we thought hey, this would be a great idea to do where you can provide this service to deliver these plastic moving boxes, which can be used hundreds of times and are green, and deliver them to people, pick them up when they’re done. It’s very easy, very convenient. It’s much stronger than cardboard. These hold 100 pounds each and there’s no messing with tape or assembling them and they’re one size so you can stack them one right on top of another very quickly in a moving truck. You don’t have to play box Tetris or box Jenga so all the pieces sort of fit into place and then it took a while to get it going because I had to get the supplies. I had to get the website going and get the ducks lines up but it’s been really well received and everyone loves it and I’m really happy with the results.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: What year did you start this again?
PETER SANCHEZ: We started this last year. It’s been almost 12 months exactly.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Gotcha, so you started a year ago, and let’s talk about it and for our listeners out there that want to follow along on your laptop, desktop or your iPad or other tablet, you can go to www.elfboxes.com. I’m on your site now. I love your site. It’s really green and blue, the colors of the earth. It’s very colorful. It’s also sort of it keeps you going because there’s movement on the site and everything else so share a little bit about what you’ve created here and your boxes. First of all, can these boxes be recycled?
PETER SANCHEZ: Yes, they can so they can be used 2- to 400 times and when they start to approach the end of their useful life, they start cracking or whatever, they can be recycled and turned into more boxes.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Wow, and are these made in the United States or are they made in China or how does this work?
PETER SANCHEZ: Absolutely. They’re made in the U.S. There’s a company in Florida that manufactures these and a company in Virginia and we had looked at sourcing this because these are the same industrial boxes that are used by shippers at supermarkets and pharmacies and they buy these boxes in bulk and a lot of them get them from China and that’s not something that we wanted to do because we do believe in the green part of it and we wanted to keep it local and keep it green. I think it’s more important to stay true to your mission than to save a few bucks in the short run.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: So, they’re made here in America and so talk a little bit about other brands out there. We don’t have to go into any specifics, but there is a big reuse and recycling cardboard market nowadays. Do a compare and contrast about using recycled or reused cardboard boxes versus your green Elf Boxes.
PETER SANCHEZ: Sure. Well, the most you can use a cardboard box is about two to three times and then it’s very weak because it gets crushed and you put tape on and tear it off so you get about two to three uses out of cardboard no matter what and as I said, these can be used up to 400 times so you’re getting a lot more use out of it, which makes it greener and also, the cardboard that you get is gonna come from cutting down trees, which lead to deforestation, and when it does come time to recycle, it takes a lot of energy to recycle cardboard and it takes 90% less energy to recycle a pound of plastic than it does to recycle a pound of cardboard so 90% less energy plus 400 uses versus three uses. This come out way in favor of using these products over cardboard.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: And, so these are made out of industrial-strength plastic?
PETER SANCHEZ: Right. They’re industrial-strength plastic. They’re the same kind of totes that people use in industrial shipping, shipping stuff from one supermarket to the warehouse and back. They hold 100 pounds each. They have handles and attached lids so it makes it very easy to use.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: And, they don’t require tape or any of that kind of stuff?
PETER SANCHEZ: Right, there’s no tape required. The lids are attached. They’re interlocking lids so you just flip it closed and it’s ready to go and they’re nestable. One fits inside the other so when they’re not in use, they don’t take up a lot of room and then when you do use them, you fill them up. Because they’re rigid, you can put your wine glasses in the box on the bottom and your kettle bells in the box on top and it won’t matter what order you put them in, which makes loading the truck a lot quicker. If you’re moving you don’t have to worry about these are fragile, they need to go in on top. You can just stack them one right after the other and the fact that they’re the same size, 27 by 17 by 12, then you can just stack them up like Lego bricks and you don’t have to play box Tetris or box Jenga and try to find something to fit in that little hole.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: And, easy to keep clean, I take it?
PETER SANCHEZ: Yes, very easy to keep clean. After we get them back, we inspect them, take off the labels, clean them with an air compressor and a green cleaner so that they’re sanitized before they go out again.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: And, this is not only just for consumers, Peter, but these are also for businesses, I take it?
PETER SANCHEZ: Yes, so this industry got started with the commercial office market and like I said, the reason I got into it was that no one was servicing the homeowners so we do like this as a residential product but we also do some small- and medium-sized office moves and that’s been very well received also. We’ve got about 15 video testimonials on our site from people that have used them for home or office moves and everyone seems to love it.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: For our listeners out there that just joined us, we’re very happy to have Peter Sanchez with us. He’s the CEO, and as he calls it, the Chief Elf Officer, of Elf Boxes. You can check out all the great things he’s doing to make the world a greener and better place at www.elfboxes.com. You know, I’m on your website right now and I would love you to share with our listeners a little bit about the opportunity here to use your boxes, Peter. If you don’t live in Florida and you want to use your great green moving boxes, where do we find the moving boxes in California or another state or another city?
PETER SANCHEZ: Well, the good news is that this idea is catching on so it actually started on the West Coast and if you’re in a large city in the U.S. or Canada and you Google ‘plastic moving boxes’ and the name of your city, you should be able to find one. If you’re on my website, I actually have a link on the bottom that says ‘partners’ and there are a bunch of different box operators in other cities like California, New York, Illinois, Chicago, Texas, places like that, and if you’re in an area where we’re not because we’re only in Florida, you can check that link on our website and I’ll direct you to somebody who’s probably closer to you who can handle it and we’re not getting a kickback from any of these people. I just want people who move to use this product because I want them to move green and have a better moving experience.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: You’re doing it all for the right reasons. I just clicked on it and all these partners came up and it’s really easy to use so for our listeners out there, it’s www.elfboxes.com and you click on the partners at the bottom and up they come. What I also love about your website- and we were talking about this off the air- but it’s something for our budding entrepreneurs and other ecopreneurs out there to hear that you’re doing, Peter, and it’s really unique and really important is I noticed the phone number on the website is your phone number and can you share a little bit about why you did that and why you do that?
PETER SANCHEZ: Sure. It’s actually my cell phone and I’m a big fan of Tony Shea of Zappos and I’ve read his book where he talks about wowing people with customer service. One of things when I look at websites that I hate is when you need to talk to somebody and the contact info is hidden. You have to click around just to find a phone number to call because they don’t want to encourage people to call but I have the phone number on the top on the home page and every other page so that if somebody has a question, they can just pick up the phone and call me and any question they have, I can answer and I think this is a big part of this business is gonna be customer service and to get people to switch from something they know which isn’t as good, cardboard, to something more eco-friendly, we’re gonna have to make it as easy for them as possible so I’m more than willing to talk to anyone and that’s why I have the number on there.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Peter, I think that is just awesome. You’re giving the customers the wow experience that Tony Shea has taught us all about at Zappos and I think that’s a great way to lead Elf Boxes to the next level. Talking about the next level, there are so many interesting great entrepreneur shows out there now, especially Shark Tank. Is this something that you’ve ever thought about? Would you ever go on Shark Tank or a show like that to pitch your concept to further grow it?
PETER SANCHEZ: We’ve had that question from a lot of customers that say you should go on Shark Tank, this is a great idea, it should be on there, and we don’t have a desire to do that. We’d like to keep it family owned and operated so as I said, my dad does the deliveries. My nephew helps him and actually, if you look at the pictures, there’s a little picture of a baby in an elf hat in one of the boxes and that’s one of my other nephews. We’d like to keep it in the family. I do love Shark Tank and I did hear that another box operator in New York — I forget the name — has just auditioned for Shark Tank, so even though we’re not gonna be on it, we like the fact that somebody else is gonna go on it because the biggest obstacle to keep it from spreading is that people don’t know this exists so people find us when they’re searching for moving boxes but not necessarily Googling plastic moving boxes so if somebody goes on Shark Tank, which is one of the most watched shows on TV, with another plastic moving box company then if you’re in another city, you might say let me see if this is available in my area and then that’ll help spread the word and introduce the idea of green moving to people where they might not have known that green moving even exists and there are other green options besides the moving boxes. There’s definitely new innovation like the soy peanuts and the eco-friendly wrapping paper so I think the more green companies that get on shows like Shark Tank, the more it’ll help all of us.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Are you gonna be offering those other green products that you just mentioned?
PETER SANCHEZ: We are. We just got a sample batch of the green wrap. There’s a company in North Carolina called Giyami. I may be mispronouncing the name but they make wrapping paper from renewable resources and we’ve tried it out and we really like it so we’re gonna be adding that to our website soon.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: And, how much weight can each of these boxes hold?
PETER SANCHEZ: The boxes are really strong. They can hold 100 pounds and you can stack them one on top of the other. Even though they hold 100 pounds, we do tell people to try to keep it to 50 pounds each because people don’t realize that when they load it up with books, it can hold 100 pounds, but it’s a lot harder to carry 100 pounds than you think, especially when there are stairs involved and stuff like that.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: And, Peter, how does that compare to cardboard?
PETER SANCHEZ: A cardboard box will hold about 25 to 35 pounds depending on if it’s a new box and single walled or double walled, so it actually holds anywhere from three to four times as much weight as a cardboard box.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Got it, and what other advantages to your Elf Boxes have over cardboard if you were just doing a pitch right now and we were on an elevator together?
PETER SANCHEZ: I think the biggest advantage is that we’ve heard from customers is that it’s delivered and picked up. People are very busy. They don’t have time to scrounge around looking for free boxes, which might not be as clean as they like, and buying boxes is expensive and you still have to go to Home Depot to get them so we deliver these to the home and pick them up when they’re done. As I said, they’re stronger than cardboard. You don’t have to mess with tape. You don’t have to put them together. They’re ready to go and they’re stackable so it loads the truck quickly and it keeps things from getting broken. That’s another feedback that we keep getting from customers. Several customer have told us this is the first time I’ve moved where nothing is broken and then they’re really happy about that.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: What’s your vision, Peter? I know your dad and your nephew work with you and that’s a wonderful thing to have a family-owned-and-run business down in Florida, but are you planning on, do you want to expand to other cities with Elf Boxes?
PETER SANCHEZ: I’d like to expand it a little in Florida. Right now, we’re servicing Palm Beach County and a little bit of Broward, but I’d like to keep growing it and get down as far as Miami and serve that whole southeast part of Florida. I wouldn’t want to take it national and grow it and have it expand beyond where it’s just family and people we like and trust in the business. I think it’s a great model for somebody else if they want to franchise it, but that’s not why we got into it. We didn’t get into it to become incredibly rich and make a dent in the universe. We just want to help people with their move and operate a green business that leaves the world better than when we found it.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That’s wonderful, because every entrepreneur’s vision is different and that’s a great vision and more power to you. We’re down to the last two minutes or so, Peter. Can you share a little bit about what were your biggest challenges starting this business and what are your final thoughts and pearls of wisdom you could leave for the young listeners around the United States and around the world that listen to Green is Good that are inspired by you and want to be the next Peter Sanchez innovator in the green and sustainability field?
PETER SANCHEZ: Well, I think the biggest challenge to growing this has been public awareness about the product because everyone that’s used it loves it and they tell their friends about it but how do you get that critical mass when people don’t know this exists? So getting the word out is key and that’s where places like your radio show, I think, are helping the cause because getting the word out helps all these box operators and in terms of what somebody else can do to get involved in the green industry, I think that the best things you can do is just start. There are so many new green businesses that are starting now and green used to be this and now it’s mainstream and everybody wants to do good for the planet so there’s tons of businesses you can start on the green space and the best thing you can do is just get started. There’s always gonna be things popping up that you didn’t anticipate and you’re gonna learn along the way but you’re gonna learn a lot more by doing than you ever will by reading about it so I would say just start.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That is just great advice. Just start. I love it and for our listeners out there that want to just start moving green and moving more sustainably and supporting Peter’s great business model, you can go to www.elfboxes.com. Peter Sanchez, we thank you for coming on the show. We welcome you to come back on anytime you want to share the continued journey of Elf Boxes and we thank you for being a visionary ecopreneur. You are truly living proof that green is good.
PETER SANCHEZ: Well, thanks for having me, John.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Welcome back to Green is Good, and we’re so honored to have with us today Jon Coleman. He’s the Fleet Sustainability and Technology Manager at Ford, and you can check out Ford at Ford.com. Welcome to Green is Good, Jon.
JON COLEMAN: Hey, thanks for having me, John. I appreciate it.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Hey, we appreciate you coming on the show today to talk about all things green that’s going on and all things sustainability at the legendary iconic Ford brand. Before we get talking about all those things though, can you share a little bit about the Jon Coleman story leading up to joining Ford and what got you into sustainability to start with as a kid or as a young man?
JON COLEMAN: Sure. I’d love to. I was brought up in a family where giving back to the community was something that was expected and something that was part of everyday life and as I went through school and all the way up through grade school and high school and as an exchange student, I saw opportunities everywhere to try and find ways to do more good rather than trying to do less bad, which is the philosophy that I try and work with so instead of trying to get to zero or looking at trying to reduce bad things that people are doing, I was taught that we ought to try and find better ways to do things so that helped shape everything that I’ve done in my life and when I joined Ford over 20 years ago, I looked at it as an opportunity to try and find out what I could do with the automotive industry from the inside so over the course of the last 20 years, I’ve had opportunities to work with Ford and the United Nations working with the Clinton Global Initiative and actually went back to school to get my doctorate looking at how large corporations make sustainable business decisions so with all of that background, it’s enabled me to work now in a capacity where not only am I helping Ford improve sustainability, but as a Fleet Sustainability and Technology Manager, I engage with all of the large fleets that we work with, whether it’s Enterprise Rent-a-Car or UPS or U-Haul, any company that operates a large number of vehicles and try and work with them to improve their sustainability and their environmental footprint as well.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: I love that, and I love your statement — doing more good, not doing less bad. I’ve never heard that before and I love it. I think it’s a great way to wake up every morning and to approach business and sustainability and I think that’s fantastic. You know Jon, we’re gonna get to talking about all the great things that are going on at Ford but I also wanted to chat with you a little bit about our great friends over at The Green Festival and your relationship with them. How long has Ford been part of The Green Festival and what was the impetus for you guys to get involved with them?
JON COLEMAN: Well, we first engaged with The Green Festival back in 2010, and we really were interested in joining the community that The Green Festival had set up and the people who were operating The Green Festival were this no compromise activist group that were really critical over the last few years in helping Ford close a gap in customer perception about the reality of what we are doing as a company and their perception of Ford Motor Company and the auto industry in general as being dinosaurs, if you will, so working with The Green Festival and helping us engage at the grassroots level with the activist background that The Green Festival had enabled us to help bridge that gap and it gave us the opportunity really to let people know that it’s much more than what we’re doing with electric vehicles and much more than we’re doing with renewables. It really is a holistic approach at Ford Motor Company that has really been well articulated by our Executive Chairman, Bill Ford, the great grandson of Henry Ford, who was made sustainability a key part of Ford’s strategy for operating in the 21st century.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Gotcha, so at The Green Festival, you have a test drive event. Talk a little bit about how does that look and feel and what kind of cars can consumer who come to The Green Festival see and what can they actually sit in and maybe even give a test drive to?
JON COLEMAN: We have a wide portfolio of vehicles available at The Green Festival for test-driving. We have our hybrid vehicles, the C-Max and the Fusion. We have our plug-in hybrids, which are the C-Max Energi and the Fusion Energi. If customers are interested in an all-electric vehicle, we have the Focus Electric and for a lot of people for whom electric doesn’t make sense or the hybrid doesn’t make sense, we also have vehicles with our eco-boost engines, which are advanced gasoline turbocharged engines, which enable much better fuel economy without sacrificing performance, so we have all these different vehicles out there for people to actually see what we’re doing materially with our products along with the display that we have at The Green Festival that talks about all the other sustainability actions that Ford takes.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That is wonderful, and do you get to sit in it or test-drive it or how does that work? They’re all there but what’s the interaction with the consumer that come to The Green Festival test-drive the wonderful electrified Ford cars?
JON COLEMAN: The interaction is driving it, sitting in it, whatever makes sense for the customer, whatever information. We have product experts out there who can answer technical details about the car or if you’re just interested in how the vehicle drives, how it accelerates, what it feels like to be in a car that can shift seamlessly from electric only to a gasoline engine, back and forth, all of those things are available, even the advanced park assist, which when you get back and you’re finished with the test-drive, the car will park itself.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Oh my gosh, this is great, so just another great reason for our listeners out there to come to the upcoming Green Festivals in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago to test -drive and to touch and to really get a great feel for your electric cars. Like you said, the C-Max Hybrid, the C-Max Energi, the Focus and the Escape, a great opportunity to really interact with these great vehicles.
JON COLEMAN: Definitely.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: You know, you mentioned Bill Ford, the great grandson of Henry Ford. What are the real guiding principles to Ford’s commitment to environmentally responsible manufacturing and just sustainability overall and how do they interrelate with a legacy brand like Ford, Jon, and all the technologies that are coming up in front of us every day? How do you mesh those and who’s driving that at Ford right now?
JON COLEMAN: Meshing it is surprisingly easy in theory. In practice, obviously much, much harder, but when you look at the legacy of Ford Motor Company, when people think about Henry Ford, they think about innovation. They think about putting the world on wheels. They think about the moving assembly line and aspects that truly changed how the world functioned in the twentieth century and when Bill Ford became Chairman and CEO back in 1999, he issued a challenge to the company to find out what that would be in the 21st century so when you look back at the 20th century manufacturing, almost everyone who’s taken a history course and looked at the Industrial Revolution has seen a picture of the Rouge plant. It’s in almost every history book out there as a model of vertical integration in manufacturing and it was a plant where raw materials came in at one end. You had rubber, you had sand, you had cole, you had iron ore, things like that came in at one end and the other end, cars came out but when you look at it now, it’s not as much an example of the vertical integration as people look at it as what the environmental impacts of that type of production was so back in 2003, we’ve unveiled the new Rouge assembly plant, which was a retrofit that showed the world what 21st century manufacturing could be so it’s got a green roof. It’s got permeable parking lots. It has skylights to provide natural lighting in the workspace, all those types of things, so for manufacturing, we’re able to make that shift and we’re applying those same principles every new plant that we build. Whichever of those principles make the most sense, we’re applying. When we look at vehicles, obviously the Model T was the car that put the world on wheels and it was affordable for everyone and that’s one of the key aspects as we look at vehicles in the 21st century is we’re not interested necessarily in putting out the world’s most environmentally friendly car that cost quarter-of-a-million dollars. That’s not really what the blue oval stands for. The blue oval is about providing mobility to everybody and so the average wage earner can afford the type of mobility that is provided by a Ford vehicle so when we look at environmental solutions for vehicles, we’re looking for things that we can sell at what is currently prices the market will bear for these advanced technologies so we have a broad portfolio, everything from electric to natural gas to biodiesel and everything in between but when we look at making a meaningful impact, the eco-boost engine, which I talked about earlier is this advanced technology engine, we’ve sold millions of those compared to tens of thousands of electric vehicles and plug-in vehicles. Now, the plug-in vehicle is a fascinating technology, but given the choice of selling 10,000 plug-in vehicles or selling 2 million eco-boost vehicles, we realized that eco-boost was a solution in the near term to provide fuel savings of up to 20%. It’s like everyone walking to work on Fridays if you think about it for 2 million people rather than having 10,000 people that can plug in and are generating less emissions that way.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That’s a fascinating point, Jon. I never thought of it that way, that you get to not only be one of the greatest innovation companies in the world, but then you’re the democratizer of that innovation and you bring it to everybody. You make it affordable to everybody and that makes a lot of sense. You get to really change the world that way, like you said, and selling two million cars of a certain great type of electric car than 10,000 makes a lot of sense. For our listeners out there who have just joined, we got Jon Coleman. He’s the Fleet Sustainability and Technology Manager at Ford. You can check out all the green and sustainable things that Ford is doing at Ford.com and check out all of the great electric cars that Ford is producing for all the consumers out there in the United States at the Green Festival in Los Angeles September 12th through the 14th, Chicago October 24th through the 26th or San Francisco November 14th through the 16th. You can come and see Ford’s great cars there. You can take them for a test drive and you can ask all the questions you have. Come to the Green Festivals and check out all of Ford’s great lineup of green cars. Jon, going back to consumer demands, where is this going? Obviously, we’ve seen a huge rise in consumer demand for hybrid electric vehicles in previous years. Where do you see this going? Because you’ve been now at Ford for 20 years. You’ve got great visibility, not only backwards but now forwards. Where do you see this going in the years ahead?
JON COLEMAN: Well, we see continued growth for hybrid vehicles and it’s not just the Ford Motor Company. It’s the whole industry. Hybrid vehicles used to be something that was unique, just kind of a random vehicle for tree huggers. It’s become mainstream to the point where we’re selling double the number of vehicles in the last couple of years than before and it’s starting to increase as a percentage of the total industry. It used to be that hybrids were only 1 or 2% of the industry and over the last year, we’ve seen that creep up to about 4% of the industry so obviously, that means 96% of the industry is still not hybrid, but it’s to the point now where if you drive a hybrid, people don’t think anything different about your identity than if you’re driving a pickup truck. It doesn’t have the same reference point to a lot of people as hybrids did when we introduced the Escape Hybrid 10 years ago.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Gotcha. That makes a lot of sense. I’ve been reading recently that not only are your engines and all this hybrid technology being implemented in your cars, but also, from a sustainable holistic point of view, you’re making your cars and your vehicles out of more recycled materials. What does that mean with regards to Ford and can you share what kind of materials you’re using in the recycled material process to then implement into your new vehicle manufacturing?
JON COLEMAN: I’d love to. We have a lot of recycled materials that we use in our vehicles and for a long time, they were in parts that the customer never saw, so we recycled plastic into battery casings and different components under the hood and a lot of the sound bustles and things that people don’t even realize are on their cars but we were able to reuse the plastics and recycle the materials for those types of things. Obviously, the metal in cars has been recycled for a while but the introduction of the new 2014 F150 being mostly aluminum, that will improve the recyclability of vehicles significantly, not because you can’t recycle galvanized steel, but recycling galvanized steel is a lot more difficult and deals with a lot more chemicals of concern, if you will, than aluminum so when we look at recycled materials, in the past, it’s been things that the customer didn’t see. Now we’re starting to put it in things that the customer does see like the sheet metal but also, in interior components like seat fabrics. We use a tremendous amount of recycled plastic that’s coming into seat fabrics and we’ve got projects that we’ve worked with different companies where we are putting the seat fabric in and then also, we look at renewable materials as well so we use soybean foam in our seat cushions and we recycle denim into our firewalls. There are all kinds of recycled and renewable materials that we have in our vehicles and we’re not stopping what we’re doing now. We’ve got things like we’re using dandelions to find a new type of rubber so that kind of white goo you’ve got on your hands when you were a kid and you were playing with dandelions, turns out we can use that to make rubber so every time we do that — we’re cultivating dandelion fields with Ohio State University so that we can provide rubber from plants instead of from petroleum so we look at things like that. There really are all types of things that we are working with a new group called the Bio Feedstock Alliance, which is companies like Heinz and Nestle that have waste from their food production operations that we’re looking to turn that waste into raw materials for our product so when you talk about renewable and recyclable, they’re starting to blend together a little bit because these renewable materials that are raw materials, raw feedstock, but waste from someone else can then be recycled as well so we’re trying to follow the same idea from Bill McDonough of cradle to cradle where there’s always someone using the waste product from one process as the feedstock for another.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That is awesome, and like you said, some of it’s very overt and some of it, you never even see but it’s in there anyway, so Ford products are being made out of more renewable and recyclable materials. That’s just a great message. For our listeners out there that are interested in purchasing a Ford fuel-efficient vehicle, are there tax incentives, Jon, that exist both nationally and on a statewide basis?
JON COLEMAN: We have incentives on almost all of our vehicles and there are also state and federal incentives. The best place to go is the Department of Energy has a website, afdc.energy.gov, and if you go to that website, it will provide all of the information on incentives, rebates, and it’s not just money on the hood. In a lot of places, if you buy a plug-in vehicle, you get HOV access or access into the high-speed lane so there are all types of incentives to try and get people to purchase hybrid vehicles, vehicles that run on natural gas, and like I said, we’d much rather rely on a third-party source to provide people that information and also, if you check with your local dealer, most of them know all the incentives that are available as well.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: I love it. We’re down to the last two minutes or so, Jon. Can you share just some of your favorite milestones of progress of innovation that has happened at Ford and then talk a little bit about the future? Take our listeners into the future of Ford vehicles.
JON COLEMAN: One of the things that I’m most proud of at Ford Motor Company is what we’re doing with conserving water. We started looking at water as a sustainability issue almost 15 years ago. It was one of the first ideas that we’ve looked at when we looked at manufacturing in the 21st century and realized that water was not something that we should be putting a price on, that it was a truly scarce resource and it was more valuable than petroleum and with that type of mindset, we’ve managed to cut our water use by over 60% since 2000. That’s over 10 billion gallons a year, and we’re continuing, as I said, with every new plant we build and the types of paint we put on the vehicles, everything we look at with an eye to conserving water because living without petroleum would be annoying. Living without water is impossible, and it’s that same type of mindset that we’re looking for moving forward and trying to understand what are we doing with air quality. And, it’s not just carbon emissions. It’s all the other VOCs and all the other chemicals of concern. What are we doing with human rights? How are we making sure that everyone who is on the planet has an opportunity has an opportunity to be part of the formal economy and earn a living wage? What are we doing to ensure that they have clean water to drink? All of these things are interrelated and that’s the challenge for us moving forward.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Thank you so much, Jon, and for our listeners out there that want to come test drive one of Ford’s great hybrid vehicles, come to The Green Festival in LA September 12th through the 14th, Chicago October 24th through the 26th and San Francisco November 14th through the 16th. Thank you, Jon Coleman. Go to Ford.com to learn more about all of Ford’s great hybrid vehicles. Jon, thank you for your inspiring sustainability work at Ford, which helps make the world a better place. You are truly living proof that green is good.
JON COLEMAN: Thanks very much.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Welcome to another edition of Green is Good, and we’ve got today Doctor Corinna Basler. She’s my friend, and she’s also the President of The Green Festivals. You can check out more of what’s going on with The Green Festivals at GreenFestivals.org. Welcome back to Green is Good, Corinna Basler.
DOCTOR CORINNA BASLER: Thank you so much, John. I’m really honored and thrilled to be back on Green is Good radio, so thank you so much.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: We are honored to have you on, and you’re doing so many great things and we’re gonna get to talking about all the exciting things that are happening with The Green Festivals, how well your spring festivals went, and what’s happening in the fall, but before we do that, for our listeners that didn’t have the opportunity to hear your first visit on Green is Good, can you please share with our listeners your journey and your fascinating story leading up to becoming the President of The Green Festivals, Corinna?
DOCTOR CORINNA BASLER: Sure, absolutely. Thank you once again, John. Well, I’m a very passionate vegan and I deeply care about our planet and about animals and about giving back to the community, so I honestly have to say that this is such a wonderful opportunity and also a life dream to give back to everything that really matters to me and that’s not just a job from nine to five. It’s truly a passion and I feel also deeply honored to have the opportunity to run the Green Festivals and to move them forward. My background, I grew up in East Germany many, many years ago and I always felt very connected to nature and animals and you know, like most people do, I started business management and basically took the typical culprit. I move through Mercedes-Benz and several other companies. I worked for them in New York and I did my Ph.D. in business science and I had the opportunity also to travel on business to over 90 countries, which allowed me to connect with many, many different cultures and to meet so many inspiring people who are willing to make a difference and I honestly have to say that that really inspired me and suddenly, there I was. There was this opportunity to get together with one of the leading sustainability trade show organizers to continue working with Green Festivals and basically, this is where I can really use my passion and also, I feel like giving back and doing good and promoting the sustainable lifestyle, that’s also a very good future business approach so I think that this is not just a trend. This is so important to protect our lives, to protect the next generation, and to save the planet so this is, in a nutshell, my little story.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: It’s a great story, and we’re so thankful that you’re back on Green is Good and we’re also thankful that you’re now the President of the Green Festivals, so let’s start talking about the Green Festivals. Last time when you came on the show, we had the whole year in front of us and now, we’ve already had the spring shows. Can you talk a little bit about the highlights and the most exciting parts of the spring shows? What was your favorite parts of them and what can our listeners expect in the fall shows coming up?
DOCTOR CORINNA BASLER: Sure, absolutely, John. It’s actually pretty tough to select a couple of highlights because we had so many new and exciting things coming up from the spring shows, Green Festival 2014. The spring shows took place in New York and Washington, DC. For example, in New York, we launched the new Green Festivals Awards series for the first time ever, and I honestly have to say it was such a huge success. We had VegVoyagers voted to Green Festival’s New York brand award winner, promoting that traveling sustainably and responsibly as a priority for all our consumers and also the New York Coalition for Healthy School Food, they won the Green Festival Community Award. It’s a $5,000 grant and it was just wonderful to see all the support from the community for those local organizations and I have to say it was such a difficult choice and we had to support those great judges to help us to make the decisions. Also something very exciting was that we launched our first Green Festival Saves Lives campaign. We partnered up in Washington with the Washington, DC, Humane Society. What that means is we had the Adapt Force One truck on the floor plan, on the floor live where our Green Festival attendees were able to adopt homeless pets, cats and dogs, basically on site and I was so thrilled, John, to see that almost half of the animals found new homes and got adopted and that was wonderful but next to our Green Festival award series, of course, we had so many partners, sponsors, organizations, nonprofit partners, and exhibitors who promote the best in green and living a green lifestyle. It was just so wonderful to see. We had in New York and in DC over 250 exhibitors and we had so many attendees experiencing, tasting and trying and sampling everything that’s related to green from good food, from sustainable beer and wine, to green pets, green building, green media, everything that you could imagine to integrate to your everyday life.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That is so wonderful. So, upcoming in the fall in Los Angeles from September 12th through the 14th, and Chicago October 24th through the 26th, and San Francisco November 14th to the 16th are the Green Festivals, and for our listeners out there that want to learn more about these wonderful Green Festival events that you’re putting on, they can go to GreenFestivals.org. Share a little bit about what you expect to be happening at the LA, Chicago and San Francisco Green Festivals.
DOCTOR CORINNA BASLER: Well, The Green Festival is America’s largest and longest-running green living and sustainability event, and at each event, in LA, in Chicago and in San Francisco, you will find a dynamic, vibrant marketplace and the widest selection of green products where people can shop, taste and enjoy eating vegetarian foods and learning how to live a healthier and sustainable lifestyle and we have so much to offer. We have a wonderful program put together with educational activities and also very inspirational speakers and celebrities so basically, Green Festival has something for everyone. For example, for families, what we offer is you can shop for eco-friendly children’s clothing and toys as well as natural organic and GMO-free foods, household supplies for the entire family so you can play green with eco-inspired arts and crafts activities and the kids come and have a wonderful time so we have live performances and activities for them and they will be just thrilled. For foodies, I have to admit that the food court is one of my favorites because the vegan/vegetarian food court is just amazing so you could enjoy healthy eating, cooking demos. You’ll find the latest on superfoods and eating for a sustainable lifestyle and also our beer and wine garden is growing bigger and bigger. We have some great brands joining us in vegan wine and beer and it’s really tasty and you can just come and have a wonderful time.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: No kidding, so even vegan/vegetarian national and local brands are represented at each Green Festival? So, it’s local and national brands?
DOCTOR CORINNA BASLER: Absolutely, and it is very important for us that we embrace the local companies and that we provide them a very good opportunity to showcase their wonderful products and also to give them from a business perspective a nice market platform that the can grow and extend their business model, but we also have, as you already pointed out, very exciting national brands who showcase their product, so it’s a nice blend and it’s an interesting mix of local and national companies and brands.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: So, for our listeners out there that just joined us, we’ve got Doctor Corinna Basler on. She’s the President of the Green Festivals and you can check out more about the Green Festivals at GreenFestivals.org. They’ve got three great festivals coming up in Los Angeles in September 12th through the 14th, Chicago October 24th through the 26th, and San Francisco November 14th through the 16th. Corinna, talk a little bit about if we had a retailer or a wholesaler who was with us today, what would you be saying to them in terms of why they should come and be at the Green Festival and why is the Green Festival the best platform for companies that want to highlight their products in the green space?
DOCTOR CORINNA BASLER: Absolutely, John. I’m delighted to point that out. Well, nowadays, in an area of growing environmental concern, consumers are way more selective about the brands they use and the companies they support so for more than a decade, Green Festival has been the largest platform for green companies connecting over a million consumers so as a marketing platform, Green Festival offers unique benefits and added values to our sponsors, partners and exhibitors and we have grown many benefits for retailers and wholesalers who can find new and innovative green products for their businesses so this is very, very important as we are adding that new business to the business element because we want to help our exhibitors to basically reach the next level and we also have wonderful specific events, networking and sales opportunities to basically increase our responsibility efforts and sustainability impacts.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Got it. You have a very fascinating background. You’ve been involved with sustainability for many, many years and you’re very conscious and thoughtful about all these topics. Can you start talking a little bit about the green economy? What do you feel that’s going on right now. You’ve seen for the past 10 years or so. What do you feel that’s happening in the green economy and what trends or shifts are happening for the years ahead of us, Corinna?
DOCTOR CORINNA BASLER: Sure, John. Well, in the past, basically, living a green lifestyle was more considerate and very, let’s say in a casual way, very granola style and personally, I’m vegan as you are, and we’re both happy to hear that. That’s a trend but nowadays, it’s not just a trend anymore. This is really the future and it’s the future to really make a difference and everyone can make a difference. Difference doesn’t mean that you have to make a huge contribution, but every day everyone can make a choice for a healthier lifestyle and I deeply believe that we have reached a time that, again, it’s not just a trend. This is the future that everyone will contribute to help our planet, basically to survive and also, to provide a nice platform and just wonderful life for upcoming generations.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: And, I couldn’t agree with you more that even now, as we were discussing off the air, being a vegan might even feel a little bit crunchy and granola-y to people that we meet along the way. Do you feel that the Green Festivals and is it part of your mission that the Green Festivals are making green now more mainstream in terms of socializing it and democratizing it to the people of the United States and the world?
DOCTOR CORINNA BASLER: Absolutely. John, it’s not just about living vegan or vegetarian. That’s not what The Green Festival would like to do. We would just like to offer something for everyone in spring or in the fall in three days. We put together such a wonderful marketplace where everyone; vegan, non-vegan, non-vegetarian, meat lovers, can come and just taste and enjoy wonderful range and a variety of products and see that you do not have to sacrifice passion and joy for life because for me personally, it’s very important that things are tasty and enjoyable and you do not have to sacrifice anything and this is really what Green Festival is about. We have something for everyone, for every age and for every sector and category and that’s what’s so wonderful and thrilling about Green Festivals.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: I love that — something for everyone. That’s a great way of talking about The Green Festivals. Let’s give a little bit of shameless plugs to some of your great supporters and exhibitors. Can you share with our listeners who are some of your sponsors and supporters and upcoming exhibitors this fall so they can get a little taste of who they’re gonna see and who they’re gonna be exposed to at these great festivals coming up in Los Angeles in September, Chicago in October and San Francisco in November?
DOCTOR CORINNA BASLER: Absolutely. Well, of course I would like to see more and more best practice from our green brand sponsors of the Green Festival but we are very happy and very, very proud to have one of the best global green brands. For example, the Ford Motor Company is ranked as the second greenest global brand and we’re so thrilled to have them as a long-term partner and sponsor so you can come to our show. You’ll have the opportunity to enjoy a Ford test-drive with their hybrid and all-electric cars and of course, this is free of charge for all of our attendees and visitors and this is one of our highlights and I personally know that many, many people just enjoy doing that and experiential marketing is so important nowadays that you cannot just see what’s going on but also experience and then make a personal decision and next to Ford, we have also Clif Bar as an established long-term sponsor. There’s a wonderful brand called Mojo, wonderful trail mixes and bars, which are so easy to adopt for your own personal lifestyle, and Daiya foods. They have really good vegan pizzas. They’re just adorable, and also Rudy’s Bakery is one of our partners, and we have Organic Spa Magazine, Sierra Club, Mother Jones. We have so many exhibitors also contributing; Vegan Warrior and Kitchen Crest and Two Moms in the Raw. It’s just the time is too short now to mention the variety of our partners and sponsors and, John, what’s really important is to see what large companies showcasing their green offering, but also small exhibitors like small startups and companies who would like to showcase their product and this diversity is so important to the Green Festival.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That is so nice. So, it’s big and small. It’s big, beautiful and amazing iconic brands like Ford and Clif Bar, and it’s smaller local companies and bakeries and food companies that are also innovating and are also well represented at The Green Festivals.
DOCTOR CORINNA BASLER: I would also like to highlight that Green is Good Radio is one of our new highlighted media partners for our fall shows in Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco, John. This has been wonderful. Our whole team is just thrilled to partner with Green is Good Radio and to tighten our collaboration and to all the Green is Good listeners, we would like to offer a special promotion code. Go to our website, GreenFestival.org/tickets and you can enter a special code, GREENGOOD14, and it enables you to get the tickets for 50% off.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Wow, that is so generous of you, and I have to say to you, Corinna, we are equally honored to be partnering with the Green Festivals. We hope this is for this year and for many years to come because the Green Festivals are really the premiere festivals in the world when it comes to sustainability and green living events and for our listeners out there that want to learn more about the Green Festivals, go to GreenFestivals.org or please come to Los Angeles or Chicago or San Francisco. LA is September 12th through the 14th. Chicago is October 24th through the 26th and San Francisco November 14th through the 16th and come to one of these great Green Festivals. Thank you, Corinna, for being a visionary sustainability leader. You are truly living proof that green is good.
DOCTOR CORINNA BASLER: Thank you so much, John. Thank you. I appreciate it.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Welcome back to Green is Good, and we’re so excited to have with us today Jaime Nack. She’s the founder of the Women in Green Forum, and also the President of Three Squares, Inc. Welcome to Green is Good, Jaime.
JAIME NACK: Thank you so much. It’s a pleasure to be here.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Well, we’re excited to have you on. You’ve got a lot to share with regards to the great work you’re doing at Women in Green Forum and also as the President of Three Squares, but before we get talking about your two great organizations, I want the listeners to hear about the Jaime Nack story and how did you even get to this position and what led up to this time where you’re running these two great organizations?
JAIME NACK: It was not a straight path. I speak to a lot of college classes and try to give advice as best as I can, but I went to UCLA both undergrad and grad, studied public policy so my focus back then was how to impact the world around me through a policy but I knew that I didn’t want to work inside government. I wanted to somehow affect change from the outside and I started while I was in school with the City of Santa Monica here locally and was a program supervisor, ran a lot of programs. One happened to be an environmental program working with the bay and coastal cleanup day and so we grew over about five years our beach cleanup or environmental cleanup to be the largest one on the west coast and I really enjoyed it and I thought it was a great way to both engage with the community and have an impact and so I started focusing heavily on environmental. Shortly after I graduated with my masters, I joined another environmental consulting firm here in Santa Monica. We focused on education so I did a lot of work just to educate myself on everything about clean vehicles, electric vehicle transportation, infrastructure, worked with the ports, really love the idea of the trade component and how to reduce emissions from all of the different pieces of port related activities from trucks to planes and trains and ships and was having a great time but I felt like I was hitting a ceiling at the firm that I was at and in 2008, a really ripe economic time, I decided to go out and launch my own firm, Three Squares, Inc, and so I did that shortly thereafter. I left to serve as Director of Sustainability for the Democratic National Convention in Denver and that was the first time ever the DNC had an environmental initiative like this and actually hired a director for sustainability and so it was a great project, really put us on the map, and we’ve been having a successful ride on the environmental consulting side for the last six years and about five years ago, I decided that I wanted to see more women and that I would find a way to bring more women into the field and that’s when we decided to branch out and to curate this conference series, the Women in Green Forum.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That is just amazing and you’re a very humble person. Along the way during your journey, you also, in 2007, won the Young Global Leader Award by the World Economic Forum and in 2013, the Environmental Conservator of the Year Award given out by the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce so you’ve had quite a journey there, Jaime.
JAIME NACK: I have. I have to say the young global leader community is a really vibrant, really amazing community to be a part of. We meet annually once a year. Last year, it was in Myanmar. This year, it was in Mexico and the group consists of everyone from we have Chelsea Clinton. We have Will I Am. We have leaders from across the globe. You have to be under 40 when you’re nominated. It’s a very competitive process but it’s also served to be a great both networking group for me and also just I’ve made some of my best friends through this group as well.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: You know Jaime, for our listeners out there that want to follow along and see a lot of the great work Jaime’s working on, please go to www.womeningreenforum.com. I’m on your website now but before we get talking about Women in Green Forum, let’s talk a little bit about your environmental consulting business. You said it’s been really busy for the last six years. Where is it now? Obviously, in 2014, the world has changed so much from Inconvenient Truth and all the success that Al Gore had in terms of the visibility, in terms of Emmy Award, Academy Award, and all that kind of great stuff, Nobel Peace Prize. Where are we now with regards to the sustainability journey and how your environmental consulting business works and what’s your visibility on the next 10 years in front of us?
JAIME NACK: Yeah, so I’m happy to report that I feel like we have a lot of work to do to get ahead but we’ve come a long, long way so we’ve served for a number of different companies almost as an outsource to a sustainability officer partly because five, 10 years ago, that title didn’t exist so major corporations didn’t have a person managing their sustainability efforts so it was either piecemeal or you couldn’t really find anything that talked about sustainability on their website. Now today, we have tons of conferences talking about sustainable brands and Newsweek lists their top greenest companies and so it’s really almost a race to the top and people want to showcase what they’re doing but a lot of companies don’t know how to take the first step so we’ve worked with them along the way and then in the last year or so, we really realized that there was a need to help these folks who were now taking on this role of sustainability officer, help them with this new big job ahead of them and so version 2.0 of Three Squares is we started developing out using technology a tool to help sustainability officers train and engage their employees in sustainability and so we launched a sister company called One Drop Interactive last year and that is an online employee engagement tool which educates, trains, engages employees so they’re part of this sustainability effort and part of both environmental savings and cost savings.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: How is that working and who are your type of clients for One Drop Interactive?
JAIME NACK: When we were building out the tool last year, we assembled a founders’ circle of chief sustainability officers from major Fortune 500 companies. They range from companies with employee bases of about 2 million all the way down to a thousand and they gave us feedback as we built out the tool and now we’re running pilots. Many of those companies then also here in LA, just because of our relationships. The City of LA is interested. Metro is interested so we really thought this would be something for corporations with large employees but when we started to talk with some of the folks we work with locally, cities and government agencies, they also have a need to educate their employees and part of it is there’s ISO 14,000 and 26,000, which are environmental management systems which demand that you have a process in place for continual education and continual improvement and so this allows them to align their people element with their strategies as well.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Very cool, so One Drop Interactive is a product that came out of Three Squares and you started the beta and you expect that to be adopted at a lot of the companies that you’re introducing it to because they all need a sustainability program in house to socialize their employees to all these type of regulations and ISOs and other things that are out there right now.
JAIME NACK: Exactly. Yeah, and one of the things I’m sure many of your readers have seen something that’s been really popular in the news lately is the solar roadways Kickstarter campaign with the solar so what’s great about that is we have a partnership with a really cool film company called Focus Forward. It’s GE Focus Forward Films and they develop these really slick clean tech videos on new technologies and innovation and so with each One Drop Course; with energy, with water, with recycling, we have a quick focus forward film on a new innovation in that space that the employee can get excited about what the future holds so Solar Roadways is actually our film that’s featured in our energy course so it was really neat to see it pick up some mainstream support via that Kickstarter campaign.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Wow, and will One Drop be something that you think is gonna be picked up nationally or it’s something you feel that the beta is working also in international companies as well?
JAIME NACK: Exactly, so a lot of our big corporates are multinational and also thankfully, through my network with the Young Global Leaders and the World Economic Forum, we know a lot of corporate sustainability officers from multinational corporations with headquarters abroad so we’ve launched the platform in English. I’m also reminded by our British colleagues that it’s American English but phase two is to roll it out in other languages with culturally sensitive content because as you know, if we have a recycling course here for the U.S., the content will be very different if we take that course to Argentina or to India, for example. Their recycling infrastructure is very different.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That is so cool. I’m on your One Drop website right now and it is so cool in terms of all — I’m looking at solar roadways. I’m looking at your 1.0 series and built in game mechanics and teen challenges. It’s fascinating what you’ve built here. This is really exciting stuff.
JAIME NACK: Yeah, it’s great. The behavior change — I studied international economics as an undergrad, but behavioral economics, to me, is just a fascinating field and Harvard has really done some great work in this space about how to motivate people toward the behavior you want or toward the behavior that could have a greater public good so we’ve tried to bake in a lot of those nudge. Nudge is a popular blog or website about a book that was written by some Harvard professors but you can create little nudges that get people toward a behavior that can really have a lot of positive impact.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: I love it. So, now let’s move on and talk a little bit about the founding of Women in Green so go back to the epiphany. What was your real aha or epiphany moment for the founding of Women in Green Forum and when did that come about again and explain the whole impetus behind that launch.
JAIME NACK: Sure. I remember it very vividly. On the Three Squares side, we produce a lot of sustainable events and environmental conferences and we were producing one that was a clean tech venture conference and about 800 attendees in Pasadena in 2009 and we were at the conference and one of the things that I noticed and my staff noticed is that as much as we try to separate names of folks, we know for the agenda that the people at these conferences end up being 99% male speakers and so I was there at the conference greeting one of the keynote speakers. His name was John Picard. He was one of the founding members of the U.S. Green Building Council. He’s a really well known environmentalist and architect and visionary and we were having a conversation and he was showing me photos of his daughter and talking about a trip that they had just taken where he was explaining to his daughter the importance of being educated about climate change and he said, “I really hope that my daughter grows up to have a career like yours in this space,” and then he said, “but when I look around at these conferences, it’s all men and they all look the same,” and I said, “I know. It’s something that we struggle with as well,” and he said, “You need to do something about this, Jaime. You need to create a space and you need to start to encourage more women to come into this field so they can see what a vibrant space it is,” and I said, “You know what, John, I agree and I’m gonna take on that challenge,” and so that was the conversation that started it all, John. He gave a keynote at the first Women in Green Forum that we had so we brought him back to speak at the first forum. He actually was at the next one as well. He was brought to tears. A lot of people in the audience were as well when he was telling that story because it was really something that was close to his heart and he was so happy to see that there were 500 women in the room supporting the concept year one as well.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: I love it. For our listeners who just joined us, we’ve got Jaime Nack. She’s the Founder of Women in Green Forum and also the President of Three Square, Inc and to check out more of what Jaime’s up to, please go to www.womeningreenforum.com. So this year’s forum is called Design Your Impact. Explain what that means.
JAIME NACK: Sure. Every year, we like to have a theme and we like to challenge our attendees and so this year, what we’re doing is we’re realizing that there are a lot of people who might not have sustainability in their title but they want to figure out a way to bring it into their work or to their home or to their community and so what we wanted to do was focus on how every person can design their own unique impact within their life and within their spheres of influence so a lot of speakers will be talking about how they’ve been able to work sustainability into their day to day so for instance, there will be a speaker from Honda who will talk about how their focus was on dealerships and the dealership experience but they were able to develop and design this whole program on how to green their dealerships and then they want to open source that and push it out to a larger audience so it’s great how if you have these ideas and bring these new ideas and bring these ideas to a more traditional space, especially I think because the market has opened up to that idea of sustainability and understand the benefit from environmental savings to cost savings, that you’re able to have a greater impact in your work, whether it has an environmental focus spelled out or not.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Got it. The next conference is on August 26, this year, 2014, in Los Angeles. Is it for both men and women or just women only?
JAIME NACK: Definitely, so it’s open to everyone, all ages, all career levels, men and women attend every year, so it’s a really great, vibrant, energetic audience. We’re also for the first time this year, we always like to have something new so we always have a clean vehicle ride and drive where guests can check out the newest models of clean vehicles but then we also are launching a wellness lounge this year so attendees will be able to walk through the wellness lounge and try out different products and samples and try out tasty treats from local sustainable chefs and so it’ll be a really great experience in addition to the content.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That sounds awesome. I’m getting excited just hearing about it so talk a little bit about who the speakers are besides the Honda person. Who else is coming to speak at this year’s Women in Green Forum?
JAIME NACK: Sure, yeah. What was really interesting, I’d like to highlight one of our male speakers actually. Council member Mike Bonen from the City of Los Angeles, his office actually reached out to us and said that the council member was really interested in being a part of the event and supporting it so we’re excited that he’s going to be there to open up the day. Again, the event is open to men and women. We need the united front to help bring more diversity into this space. We also have a great partnership with Care2. Care2 also awards a Trailblazer Award to a leading woman in this space and so we can’t announce who that awardee will be yet but Care2 also helps us give out the Care2 Impact Award to the same awardee who we give out our Trailblazer Award to. In addition, Care2’s site is all about impact so Care2 is a petition site where they have about 25 million members and what they do is they help nonprofits and causes raise support and kind of create a ground flow of support around their initiative and so what we’re going to do is feature several just everyday people who created petitions around environmental causes and they were able to have a major impact by launching a petition on Care2, getting the signature, and affecting change that way so that’s something new this year.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: I’m looking at your whole schedule. It’s fascinating and for our listeners out there, you gotta go. Men, women, if you can make it, go this great forum. This sounds like a great event and you gotta be there to see it in person and also, support Women in Green Forum. This is great stuff. Jaime, we’re down to the last couple minutes, unfortunately, and there’s a lot of listeners around the United States and around the world, young ecopreneurs, young students in waiting who want to be the next Jaime Nack. In the last minute and a half or so, give a couple pearls of wisdom on how to take the first step to getting a successful environmental career going or any blogs, books, or any inspiration that you could leave behind for our young listeners out there that want to become the next Jaime Nack.
JAIME NACK: Okay, great, fantastic. I love engaging with youth and the first thing I would say is make sure you have a profile on LinkedIn and then make sure connect with me on LinkedIn. I always will accept someone, especially if you mention that you heard me on the radio show today. That’s fantastic. I’d be happy to connect with you on LinkedIn. Make sure that your profile is as professional as possible so a professional photo. If you’re young and you don’t have a lot of job experience to list, that’s okay. You’re just starting out. Go ahead and list your educational experience. This is also a great time to start interning or finding someone that has a job that you think you want and just see if you can schedule an informational phone call or coffee with them and really get to know people and start to build your network now.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That is awesome. That’s great advice and Jaime, I really appreciate you coming on the show. I want you to feel free to come back on anytime you want and continue to do all the great work you’re doing and highlight Women in Green Forum and for our listeners out there that want to learn more, please go to www.womeningreenforum.com. Sign up, go if you can, and support all the great things that are going on right now in the sustainability world. Thank you, Jaime Nack, for being a visionary, an inspirational leader, a woman in green. You are truly living proof that green is good.
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