JOHN SHEGERIAN: Welcome back to Green is Good, and we’re so honored to have with us Ken Fonville. He’s the owner of EcoSelect Furniture. Welcome to Green is Good, Ken.
KEN FONVILLE: Thank you for having me on.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: It’s great to have you on today, and before we get talking about your great company, EcoSelect Furniture, and your website, EcoSelectFurniture.com, please share the Ken Fonville story. You have a fascinating background in the furniture industry, Ken, and before you went into making eco-friendly furniture. You did a lot before and share with our listeners what you’re up to and what led up to you founding EcoSelect Furniture.
KEN FONVILLE: Okay. I spent almost 40 years in the furniture industry, most of it with high-end, high-quality companies, some of which were family owned and some of which were corporate. As I approached my retirement years, I came to the belief that there was a real opportunity for a greener product if you only started with that as a basic premise as you developed your processes and product for the consumer. It came from a fundamental belief that having a good life and living a good life were not mutually exclusive goals so the decision to get involved in green furniture or eco-friendly upholstery primarily was also a function of that belief as well as the feeling that there was an opportunity to bring the manufacturing of upholstery especially back to the U.S. after most of the furniture industry has migrate to Asia so those two things were the primary drivers behind the decision to start EcoSelect Furniture.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Gotcha, and for our listeners out there that want to follow along, I’m on your great website right now. Your website is www.ecoselectfurniture.com. It’s a beautiful website, has a lot of green on it and a lot of beautiful pieces of your eco-furniture and your beautiful upholstery so I suggest our listeners go to EcoSelectFurniture.com. Ken, what are the benefits of custom upholstery manufacturing and what you’re doing? Can you explain? You have such a great background in this stuff. Share a little bit about what are the benefits that first come with that kind of custom upholstery manufacturing.
KEN FONVILLE: Well, custom upholstery manufacturing or customer upholstery for the consumer is that you can really tailor it to your own lifestyle and your own desires so we can address those unique requests though, things like someone who wants an especially firm seating or someone that wants a very soft seat, someone that needs a little higher seating level if they’re especially tall or especially short. We can accommodate that. We can also make most all of our chairs into reclining chairs. We can make virtually all of our sofas into sleep sofas so if someone needs the extra bedroom, as it were, so that we’re able to take these basic styles that are traditional and classic and then customize them to the particular wants and needs of our customers and to their personal style.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: What are the costs involved with custom upholstery manufacturing versus buying something off the rack? Is it much more expensive than just going into the store and just buying something off the rack?
KEN FONVILLE: There are some tradeoffs. We have to hire and use higher skilled manufacturing employees and workers. Our upholsterers, in man cases, are second and third generation craftsmen and they are very much steeped in a quality culture. Each piece is custom made to order so that it must take a little longer time and it’s probably not as efficient from a cost standpoint as making ten of the same kind or 500 of the same kind like some of the big manufacturers. It’s a little slower, so we ask our customers to wait a few weeks to get their upholstery rather than having it tomorrow, but we think those tradeoffs are more than offset by both the quality that we can provide as well as the ability to personalize it.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Ken, since the name of your company is EcoSelect Furniture and you make eco-friendly furniture and especially, upholstery, can you share with our listeners, why are your furniture products and upholstery considered greener than just stuff that you could just go in and buy at a regular furniture store? Explain the differential greener elements.
KEN FONVILLE: As I mentioned earlier, it was really starting with the premise that if you plan for green manufacturing from the beginning, there’s not a lot of additional cost to do it. For example, all of our frames are made from solid lumber. It’s hard wood lumber locally sourced in the mountains of North Carolina near our factory so that we don’t put any plywood in it, which as all the chemicals associated with plywood manufacturing. The springs we use are made from recycled steel. It was just a matter of finding the right source for it. The foam that’s used in our cushions is a soy blend foam. While it’s not a perfectly sustainable product, the fact that it has a soy oil component in addition to the petroleum based stuff means that it is a better product but it still has the performance, the durability, and the resilience that we think our customers need and then there’s something that you don’t typically think about making a product green but the fact that our frames and cushions are so high quality that the could be recovered so instead of sending your sofa to the landfill, you can put a new fabric on it or give it new leather. The leather in itself is a green product in the sense that it lasts many, many years. In fact, it can last a lifetime if well cared for so those are the primary things. The other thing, obviously, is that because of the California flame requirements, in the foam, we elected to buy the foam supplier that does not put those toxic chemicals so that that complete issue is not a function of our upholstery at all so that you get none of that toxic flame retardant chemicals in our upholstery. Plus, even our fabrics do not have any treatments to them like the slow repellent chemical.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Gotcha. I mentioned your website, EcoSelectFurniture.com. You sell your products strictly online and you don’t have any retail stores. What was your business vision behind that decision-making?
KEN FONVILLE: A couple of things; the primary one being that we believed, and still do believe, that we could provide a higher-quality product to the consumer for the same price as they would pay buying a lower-quality product in a retail store. We’ve tried to remove those distribution channels out of our selling equation, out of our business model so that we don’t have any risk. We don’t have any inventory. We don’t have a lot of personnel costs. We do minimal advertising so that we’ve taken the cost that we believe adds to the product value to the consumer, to our customer, and tried to remove them from the equation so that we could provide a higher-quality product for a regular price. We like to say we give you a designer quality or designer product for a regular price.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Gotcha, and also, you have a lower carbon footprint by just selling online with no retail stores. You are greener just with regards to that because you don’t have any retail stores and have a bigger carbon footprint because of that.
KEN FONVILLE: Absolutely and in fact, we try to reduce our carbon footprint across the board. Fortunately, all of our materials’ components are sourced locally near the factory and our furniture product and upholstery is delivered directly to the consumer via a home delivery shipping company so that it doesn’t go to a retail store and then is reshipped so that all of those things help reduce the carbon footprint of the complete business.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Ken, can you share with our listeners a little bit about the new California upholstery flammability regulations?
KEN FONVILLE: Sure. Ever since the mid-1970s, California has required that all upholstery sold through retailers in state of California meets a very strict flammability requirements or fire-resistance requirement. For all of that time, there was an open flame test where actually, the fire was applied to the upholstery and it had to resist flaming up or burning for 10 minutes or so. I’ve forgotten the exact timeframe, but for a rather significant time. What wasn’t realized at that time was the toxicity of the chemicals that were required to beat that requirement, to make the foam and the upholstery flame resistant or fire resistant so as it was learned that the chemicals that were being added to the upholstery were actually worse for the environment, worse for the consumer because they off gas at home, and even worse for the firemen who are called to put out a home fire. If the upholstery is burning, it’s giving off all these toxic chemicals so they recently changed the regulation to go to a smolder test where a lighted cigarette is applied to the upholstery and the piece has to resist catching fire for some period of time but that has meant that all of the manufacturers have to retest all of their products to make sure they meet the new requirements. Plus, in many cases, they’re not quite sure how to meet the new requirements, whether a barrier coat is needed or whether some chemicals can be added or whether fabrics can be treated, plus the fact that the state has been sued by the chemical manufacturers so whether they can actually put the new regulation in place is up for debate and will probably take some time to get resolved and worked out.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: I see. For our listeners who just joined us, we’ve got Ken Fonville with us today. He’s the owner and founder of EcoSelect Furniture. It’s www.ecoselectfurniture.com. You know, we talked about the fact that you’re only online so talk a little bit about how people — I’m on your beautiful website now, Ken. How do people interrelate? They can call or email you and make orders and then how does delivery happen and how long does delivery take? Is it longer than typical furniture going into a store and is it coast to coast in every ZIP code across the United States? How does your website interact with the consumer and how easy is it to order furniture and upholstery off of your website?
KEN FONVILLE: Okay, well, that’s a lot of questions at one time.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: I know. Sorry.
KEN FONVILLE: The consumer can browse through the website. We try to answer as many questions as we can. The customer can certainly call me. I spend a lot of time talking to consumers on the phone and answering questions, explaining what we do, trying to help them make the right decisions. Once a decision is made about which style they want and which pieces, they can either order online — there’s an order form on the website and their credit card payment would go through the secure server but we don’t ever see it and then the order is placed and what I do is send them an order acknowledgement that I ask them to confirm that we got everything exactly right since there are so many custom options to the pieces that we sell and then the order is put into the production cycle at the factory and it takes about eight weeks for us to produce a piece from the order entry day and then another couple of weeks or so to get it shipped to the consumer. Our shipping process is nationwide. We ship everywhere. In fact, we’ve sent pieces to Canada and a couple of pieces to Hawaii and once, we shipped to Alaska, though those are more difficult because of the packing required.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Right, of course.
KEN FONVILLE: But for the typical customer in the U.S., we use a specialized white glove home delivery furniture carrier. They pick up pieces from our factory, pay another factory that delivers to our consumers, take it to their warehouse, which is about 75 miles away from us, and there they bundle up all of the products in a single truckload going to a single geographic area. The customer can track that process online through the shipping company and then when they have a truckload ready to go, they will call the customer to make a delivery appointment and then bring the pieces to the customer’s home, unwrap them, put them in place in the customer’s house and where she wants them, and then remove all the packing materials for recycling.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Got it. Ken, you’ve had a storied career in the furniture industry and now you are making eco friendly furniture with your great company and it’s really — is this a trend that you see other people like you, other veterans getting involved with making eco-friendly furniture and is there a furniture industry organization for green furniture?
KEN FONVILLE: Well, there is. Number one, I do see some other companies embracing green trends. In some ways, I’m sorry to see it because it’s more competition for me but I’m pleased that the customer is offered more green alternatives and green furniture for their homes. There is an organization called The Sustainable Furniture Council that I’m not only a member of. I’ve been through their green leader training and I keep that certification up to date. They are very, very effective and they have a website as well where the consumers can learn more about sustainability and furniture and even get the names of the manufacturers and the retailers who support the Sustainable Industry Council and their practices.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Gotcha, and with regards to trends, you’ve dealt with families now for decades, buying furniture and seeing what they want and what they really are excited about and what they’re not that excited about. Is this a trend that you see is here to stay with regards to people coming to you and really being interested in having toxic-free furniture, chemical-free furniture, in other words, eco- and green-friendly furniture?
KEN FONVILLE: I think it’s a rapidly growing phenomenon. In fact, most of my customer contact on the telephone is explaining what we do and why we do it and because of their interest in finding someone who could give them toxic free furniture. People are very concerned about what they’re bringing into their homes what they’re exposing their children to. The studies are a little bit scary about the chemicals that wind up in children’s bodies as a result of chemicals that are around us all the time so having the upholstery, which, number one, is gonna stay in their home for many years, having that toxin-free becomes very important to people and I think it’s growing in importance as people become more aware of it.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Gotcha. You know, you recently participated in the Green Festival. Can you share some of your thoughts about your participation with the Green Festival, Ken?
KEN FONVILLE: Sure. That was sort of a test for us. We had not done anything like that before in our advertising. We try to stay in many of the green advertising vehicles. The Green Festival is a show that goes around the country. There’s five locations, I think: New York, Washington, Chicago, LA and San Francisco. It’s a two- or three-day event where there are hundreds of vendors selling green products mostly for the home, but not totally and all kind of educational lectures and things about sustainability and how you can live a better life and what kind of products are green and some of the things that enable people or help them live greener lives. We had a little booth and talked to many, many customers. Obviously, people didn’t come to the Green Festival expecting to buy a sofa, but it was rewarding to be able to see people and talk with them and have them sit on our upholstery, which is one of the real drawbacks to selling online. We recognize it’s a real act of faith to make a 2- or $3,000 purchase of a product that you’ve never seen and certainly in the case of upholstery you’ve never sat in to make sure that it’s comfortable.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Got it. Ken, we’re down to the last minute. Any final thoughts or shameless plugs before we have to say goodbye today?
KEN FONVILLE: Well, I encourage everyone to take a look at the website. I’m available most of the time on the phone and certainly I’m available by email and all of that contact information is on the website. I encourage people if they’re interested to request some swatches. We’ll send them small pieces of the fabric’s colors or the leather and on the swatch request form, there’s a place for questions so if you have something specific that you want to know about more, absolutely give me a call or drop me a note. I would be delighted to share my knowledge with you.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Thank you, Ken, so much. Your website is, for our listeners out there, EcoSelectFurniture.com. Thank you, Ken, for making toxic- and chemical-free upholstery and for creating eco-friendly furniture. You are truly living proof that green is good.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Welcome to another edition of Green is Good. We’re so thankful to have with us today Felipe Moreno. He’s the Deputy Director of Phoenix Public Works. Welcome to Green is Good, Felipe.
FELIPE MORENO: Thank you for having me.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Hey, this is really great and this is the first time we’ve ever had Phoenix represented on Green is Good, but before we get talking about all the great things in sustainability and waste aversion you’re doing in Phoenix, share a little bit about the Felipe Moreno story with our listeners. Talk a little bit about your journey leading up to you becoming Deputy Director.
FELIPE MORENO: Sure. I started with the City of Phoenix over 14 years ago. I actually came in in the Human Services Department, so my background is actually more on the social work side working with youth and so I did that for about five to six years and then there was a great opportunity. Our City Manager at the time has a great intern program that allows you to really get exposure to public administration and the city government as a whole and so I was fortunate enough to apply and be accepted into that program and that really gave me a broad view of city management and it really gave me a passion for Phoenix and where I want to be and kind of grow my career and so out of that, I was able to do rotations in several departments and really learn from our top leaders. After that year was over, I was fortunate enough to land a position with the Public Works Department where I’ve been for the last seven years and progressively working in different areas within solid waste and in the last four months into my new assignment as Deputy Public Works Director over our field services, which is all of our solid waste collection and recycling collection, and aversion programs and so I’m very excited, very passionate about what we’re doing here, and I couldn’t ask for a better city and department to work in.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That’s awesome, and we’re so grateful to have you on the show today and talking about all the good things you’re doing in Phoenix. For our listeners who want to follow along with all of Felipe and his colleagues’ great work in Phoenix, you can follow along on their website, www.phoenix.gov/publicworks. I’m on the website now. It is really a fun and practical website and I think it’s really well done and I think our listeners out there would find it to be very informational and things of that such. Let’s get right into it, Felipe. Let’s talk a little bit about the mayor and the city council and what they did last year in terms of setting an aggressive waste aversion goal. Talk a little bit about what the new standard is in Phoenix and what direction you’re headed in with regards to sustainability and waste diversion.
FELIPE MORENO: Absolutely. We’re very fortunate to have a mayor, Greg Stanton, who is forward thinking in the way of sustainability and actually, in his 2013 State of the City address, he challenged the city, and when I say ‘the city’, it’s not just us as the organization but the city of Phoenix, to increase our waste diversion rate to 40% by the year 2020 and so that’s very aggressive because currently. Phoenix is at a 16% diversion rate, well below the national average. The national average is about 34%, and so we’re looking to exceed that average and get to a 40% diversion by 2020 and we’re really excited about that. That’s gonna be a lot of work ahead of us but we’re up for the challenge and that’s really looking at just rethinking how the city consumers and residents rethink their behaviors all the way to how we as a city in our solid waste operation have to overhaul ourselves to think differently and do things differently so we’re fortunate to have leadership from a strong mayor and our city manager and then all the way to our department. We’re all on the same page and up for the challenge.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: And, what is that initiative called again?
FELIPE MORENO: The initiative is Reimagine Phoenix and so that’s kind of our umbrella initiative that we’ve launched to support Mayor Greg Stanton’s initiative or diversion goal and so Reimagine Phoenix is really looking at transforming trash into resources.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Nice. I like that, and so talk a little bit about Phoenix as it stands today. What is your current diversion goal as the sixth largest city and how did you choose 40%? Where are the metrics here? Where are you today? I know you mentioned it a little while ago, but how are you gonna get from A to Z and why is 40%, which is, of course, higher than other U.S. metropolitan cities, why was that goal the chosen goal?
FELIPE MORENO: Well you know, like I mentioned, we’re at 16% and the national average being 34. It’s a little misleading with the national average because the one advantage some metropolitan cities have that we don’t is there’s a lot of mandates. Some cities are mandated to recycle. It’s the law. Or divert certain materials, where Phoenix, we’re 100% voluntary in our program and even with that, we enjoy a high participation rate but we can do a lot better, as you can see with our low diversion rate and so we want to go to 40% because we really want to challenge ourselves to not just be average; we want to be leaders in the industry. We’re very focused on becoming a leader for metropolitan cities in diversion. We want to be the go-to city where people come and say, ‘What are you doing? How are you getting there,’ and so we wanted to challenge ourselves not to just get to the national average, but exceed it and so 40% was a good number that we felt was achievable but aggressive and the way we’re gonna get there is really through three focus areas, one being reevaluating and rethinking our solid waste operations; putting new programs in place that help residents divert more waste, looking at how we operate within the city to divert our own waste better, and then the other piece is community outreach and communication, bringing more awareness to the public on diversion and the importance of diversion and that triple bottom line that you hear about sometimes of the economy side, the environmental side, and then just cost so we’re looking at really bringing awareness, doing the outreach, just engaging the public to be true partners with us in this process, and then the third area that we’re really focusing on is community partnerships and business partners, reaching out to the private haulers who are in the business that we are in as well as our corporate business partners out there in other municipalities looking at it from a regional approach too. We can’t do this alone. We realize that in the Public Works Department, if we were to overhaul our operation, it will only get us part of the way there. We really need to bring in Phoenix partners, businesses, school districts, everybody, to get on board, to see how they can change their business, their operation, how they can contribute to the diversion goal and really get creative and create some synergy amongst all of us to reach that 40%.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That’s so interesting. When you talk about communication, Felipe, obviously we live in a Facebook and Twitter world. What is your communication strategy? I assume it’s not as black and white as the old Mad Men days where you could buy some billboards or buy some radio or television time. How are you leveraging the new media also, social media platforms, and what does your communication strategy look like in terms of getting out new recycling opportunities and waste and diversion opportunities that you’re creating in the city of Phoenix?
FELIPE MORENO: Yeah, that’s a great question. We have to stay current and I think the big areas that we’re looking to focus on with our community outreach is kind of a four-prong approach. The city is fortunate enough to own a lot of our own media so we have our website. We have newsletters. We have inserts that go out with the city municipal services bill, water and solid waste bills. We have list serves and then we do have social media component. We have Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and so we’re hot and heavy on making sure we’re maximizing our city owned media and staying up to time with the social media but then we’re also utilizing paid media so we still utilize the radio spots, the TV spots, billboards out there, things that are gonna bring awareness, Spanish media is very important to us and then not just looking at the multimedia approach but really making sure we emphasize our grassroots approach so we have over 50 environmental specialists that their role is kind of code compliance and enforcement out there and engagement with the community on solid waste, making sure they’re following the rules, making sure they’re answering their questions and so we’re really gonna encourage their existing staff to be out there interacting with the public every day and promoting this program, promoting this initiative, kind of educating the public on how we can achieve that goal of 40% by the year 2020 and then also just community events. Our mayor, Greg Stanton, has a lot of events out in the community. Our city council members have events in their districts. We tag on to those things whenever possible to have a presence there to reinforce the message. Our elected officials are very good at promoting that for us so making sure they’re educated on what we’re doing so that they can be our torchbearers out there with our constituents and so it’s just really a combination of that grassroots approach to make sure we’re just out there face to face with the public combine with our city owned and paid media, that’s also important to us.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: For our listeners out there who have just joined us, we’ve got Felipe Moreno on with us. He’s the Deputy Director of the Phoenix Public Works Program and to learn more about what Felipe and his colleagues are doing in Phoenix, go to www.phoenix.gov/publicworks. I’m on your great website now and I’m on the recycling and diversion program area and you have so many things you guys are recycling there from Christmas trees to election signs, composting and green organics, household hazardous waste. You’re really making recycling and diversion a very, very landmark part of your new sustainability Reimagine Phoenix program, huh?
FELIPE MORENO: Absolutely. You know, in a perfect world, I think where we want to head is to be out there collecting less garbage that we have to bury and more materials that we can repurpose and turn into resources and that’s really the focus of Reimagine Phoenix is not looking at trash and garbage as something that just goes away and needs to be buried but really looking at the multitude of possibilities of what we can do with that and turn it into resources that can be repurposed and reused and put back into the economy locally and so we would like to be less in the business of being the garbage man and more in the business of collecting things and turning them into something useful for the public.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: I love it. Felipe, you mentioned a couple minutes ago that one of the key elements of Reimagine Phoenix was to get involved and get businesses more involved with the success and with your new goals of 40% diversion by 2020. Talk a little bit about how does that look even and why did you choose to build relationships with businesses and help the initiative move forward?
FELIPE MORENO: Right. You know, the importance of community partnership and business partners is critical to achieving our goal. Again, we could do everything possible within public works’ power to change programs and add new programs but we can’t do it alone and so we recognize that we really need to reach out to some experts in the field in the area of sustainability. Arizona State University is a big partner of ours. They have a school of sustainability and they’re the think tank to help us strategize and figure out new emerging technology, how we can stay cutting edge in the way of waste diversion, how we can take the theory and put it into practical application. They’re working with us closely to help us develop the programs that we’re trying to implement to kind of research and develop new emerging technology to help us get there and then we have other universities that just looking at how they do things on their own campuses, Grand Canyon University, for instance, is another one of our partners and they’re partnering in a different way in that they’re really looking at just how they become more sustainable as a campus, anywhere from how they purchase materials to how they use materials and how they repurpose things and so those are lots of students on those campuses. That’s a big impact in the city of Phoenix and then we also have our school districts that are looking to work with us to figure out how we can implement diversion programs just within all the schools. Paradise Valley School Districts is one of our new partners and working with them, we’re gonna reach over 30,000 students just on how to be better educated and practice good diversion practices within their schools and even at home and so we also have some major sports teams, the Diamondbacks, so we’re looking at really trying to bring awareness but also to help other people who have a large impacts and employ large amounts of people to figure out how they can do good on diverting their material and helping us achieve that goal together.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: You know, Felipe, talk a little bit about your current solid waste services that you offer today, your baseline and what you’re planning on rolling out, your new solid waste services that you’re planning on rolling out in July 2014 and how did they look differently and why did you choose new services and a new program to roll out this year?
FELIPE MORENO: Absolutely. Currently, our baseline solid waste services are not unlike most cities in the country. We offer a regular garbage and recycling service. We’re fully automated, so it’s an automated truck that picks it up with the grippers and dumps it and puts it back down at the curb. It’s collected weekly and then we also offer quarterly bulk trash, which is uncontained, kind of your bulky items, your green waste, your couches, things like that. Quarterly residents can put that out to the curb and we have crews that come out with a tractor and a truck to pick that up and so we’re at a point now where that’s all well and good but that’s not gonna get us to a place of 40% and so we are rolling out two exciting new programs in July. One is a reduce and recycle program. We call it State R and R and that really allows residents the option to downsize their garbage container to a medium size container, which allows them to throw away less and recycle more and they’ll realize a $3 discount per month on their bill, that they were able to do that and so we’re excited about that. Sign up for that rolls out July 7, and that’ll just be collected just like the normal service. It’s just a smaller garbage container. The other program is our curbside green organics collection so we’re adding a third container for those who would like it and that really allows residents to throw away green waste so yard clippings, things around the house that are your landscaping material. Rather than put it out for bulk trash to be buried, they can put that in that tan container and out trucks will go by weekly and collect that as well and then all that gets diverted away from the landfill and it’s mulched and grinded and turned into compost.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Wow, and you expect these two programs to start making the dent in getting you from the 16 to the 40 and starting that rise immediately?
FELIPE MORENO: Absolutely. It’s just the beginning. These are two programs we’re kicking off and again, we’re gonna continue to research and develop new emerging technologies and figure out ways to enhance that but we’re starting here at the very base service for our residents that they can take immediate advantage of and we can see some immediate diversion. A lot of what we bury though is organic. It’s green waste and it’s sad because that’s stuff that can be reused and turned into something valuable by way of compost.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Felipe, many cities now, we hear about food waste and composting becoming the new thing and something that’s getting done more and more across cities across America. Is that something Phoenix is focusing on and is food composting becoming more of your DNA and culture as well?
FELIPE MORENO: We want to get there. At this point, with our green organics program, it’s pretty basic and so there are many types of food waste. ASU, as I mentioned, they’re working with us to help develop a good food waste program down the road and we’re gonna get there. That is definitely a part of our plan and that’s a big part of what we throw away as well so if we can get that food waste out of the landfill as well as the green organics, we’ll definitely be on the right track towards that 40% diversion goal.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: We have a couple minutes left, Felipe, and I want you to touch on the Reimagine Phoenix initiative and some other opportunities in sustainability. What other things are you doing with regards to energy management and other things with regards to sustainability in the Reimagine Phoenix initiative?
FELIPE MORENO: Well, under Reimagine Phoenix, we’re focused on a lot of our solid waste programs that but we do have in the public works department, we don’t just do solid waste. There’s another side, which is fleet and facilities management and they’re very aggressive with looking at making the city’s fleet alternative fuel, CNG, things like that, so getting off of the dependence on just regular gasoline and then also, we have some greenhouse gas emission goals as well as our buildings. We’re looking to make buildings LEED certified whenever possible, be very energy efficient, and solar, we’re doing solar projects around the city so solid waste is an important piece but it’s one piece of a bigger puzzle in the city and so everybody’s really forward thinking with the mayor, again being very focused on sustainability so he’s really challenged all our city departments and operations to think outside the box and do what we can to reach that goal.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Well Felipe, with all the great things you’ve laid out today, I’m sure you’re gonna hit your goal of 40% diversion by 2020. I applaud all the great work you’re doing in the city of Phoenix with your colleagues and for our listeners out there that want to learn more about what Felipe and his colleagues are doing in the Phoenix Public Works Department, please go to www.phoenix.gov/publicworks. Thank you, Felipe, for being an innovative sustainability leader. You are truly living proof that green is good.
FELIPE MORENO: Thank you.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Welcome back to Green is Good, and we’re so honored to have with us today Helena Molin Valdes. She’s from Paris, France. She’s the Head of the Secretariat of the Climate and Clean Air Coalition to Reduce Short Lived Climate Pollutants. Welcome to Green is Good, Helena.
HELENA MOLIN VALDES: Hi. Great to be with you today.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: It’s wonderful, and thank you for taking the time across the world to come on our show today. We’re so honored to have you on and before we get talking about all the important work you’re doing at the Climate and Clean Air Coalition, Helena, I would love you to share your story and your biography first with our listeners and how you even came to this very important organization and the very important position you have as Head of the Secretariat.
HELENA MOLIN VALDES: Well, my background is as an architect and urban planner or working in urban context. I’m originally from Sweden. I moved out from Sweden maybe 30 years ago, went to Latin America, worked for many, many years in different countries, and also, my long history has been in a field that is often referred to as disaster risk management, disaster risk reduction and resilience building of communities and in that context, I worked a lot with climate and extreme climate events and how to deal with these with practical solutions and also working on environmental issues and I worked a lot with different communities and different expert groups and scientists but also planners and city officials and government officials and that brought me close to where I’m working now, which is related to climate and clean air quality, something that is also causing many extreme events actually if you think about it and I’ve been here in Paris working on this particular project since July last year and I really, really like it because I can see that we can do a big impact in people’s lives.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Before we get talking about all the important work at the Climate and Clean Air Coalition, can you please explain what it is, what kind of partnership it is, how many countries belong to it so our listeners fully understand how big this organization and how important this organization really is?
HELENA MOLIN VALDES: Well, we are a coalition and it’s climate and clean air so we are really focusing our efforts on two big, big things that are very connected. One is air quality and clean air and the other is climate, including our efforts to curb global warming to diminish climate change so this is the focus of the coalition. It was started off only two years ago with six countries and the United Nations Environmental Program as a big concern of how to be able to work on these two issues in a combined effort focusing on action, on very practical things to do to reduce air pollution and at the same time improve climate and among the six countries that started this was of course, the United States with Hillary Clinton who took these very strong to her heart but also, Sweden, Canada, Mexico, Ghana, and Bangladesh and this was in February, 2012 and since then, we have grown to more than 90 partners. Countries, roughly half of them are. International organizations including many of the development banks, The World Bank, the International European Bank, etcetera, and also NGOs, non-governmental organizations, especially those concerned with clean air, climate, and also cities. We have the C40, for example, which is the combination of many mega cities in the world concerned with climate. We have other city networks that work with us as well and we have increasingly some NGOs as well that are working on these issues. Altogether, 90 partners, 91 to be exact, and half of them are countries.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: You have a big organization and you have an important role to manage here so this is very important stuff. For our listeners who want to learn more about Helena and her colleagues’ great important work and what they’re doing and how to get involved, please go to www.unep.org/ccac. I’m on your site right now. It is a beautiful site and there’s a lot of information there and I want to get to it. Let’s talk a little bit about short-term climate pollutants. That’s not something I hear or read about a lot. What do you mean? When you say that and when you’re trying to tackle the problem of short-term climate pollutants, Helena, what do you mean by that?
HELENA MOLIN VALDES: We started off a little bit in the context of climate change, which as you know, is a long term process caused mainly by carbon dioxide, which has hundreds of years in the atmosphere before the full impact of the global warming can be achieved. At the same there is many not so long lived, actually short lived, only for a few days, a few weeks, a few years in some occasions or a few decades, gases or air pollutants such as black carbon, for example, from cars, from vehicles, from diesel fumes. There is many different components there that are 1) toxic or harmful to health and at the same time, harmful to climate, warming the globe and these gases are quite a few but the ones that we have focused on are, as I mentioned, black carbon, which I mentioned. It’s black. It comes out of diesel and combustion, basically, not fully realized so there are many things that link to transportation, burning of wood and biomass, burning of agriculture, brick kilns. When you see these big black fumes coming out of any burning, that’s black carbon and that is very, very harmful to health but at the same time, it’s very climate forcing. It’s warming the atmosphere a lot and by improving some of these sources of the pollutants, you can have an immediate effect. That’s why we say short lived and near term because it’s immediate. You see the results within weeks, months, or years and so it’s black carbon. It’s something called methane that comes out of oil and gas production, leakage. It comes out of solid waste. It comes out of agriculture, manure, livestock, rice paddies, etcetera, and the third big gas that we are working on is the hydrofluorocarbons, which is HFCs, which is used for cooling and refrigeration and air conditioning, which is very, very potent greenhouse gas and because many, many countries and people around the world now are getting more access to (which they should) refrigeration and air conditioning, this is exponential in the future how this can be used so we’re working on finding alternatives and promoting the use of alternative gases to cooling that will not be harmful for the climate so these are the three big things we’re working on and that’s why it’s called short lived climate pollutants. It’s only living in the air for a short while from days to years to decades and it has an immediate improvement so basically, if you clean up your fleet of diesel fumes, within weeks you will have results in the air quality and you’ll be seeing it in your cities or where you live and this is, of course, something that’s mainly felt in an urban context where you have many people together and the production of these things coming together in a dense area.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: We were talking at the top of the show how big your coalition is and, like you said, it’s 91 countries now and so many organizations and why have so many countries gotten involved so quickly and why has the growth been so fast in just a short couple of years? Is it because this is the most critical issue when it comes to climate and clean air and climate change, these short-term climate pollutants? What is your mindset with regards to why your organization has grown so fast with so many countries from around the world?
HELENA MOLIN VALDES: Well, when we deal with climate change, this is important to stress. The most important thing to do that the whole world should be working on a carbon low economy, let’s say. We should really work on carbon dioxide to be eliminated or reduced because that’s the only way in the long run over hundreds of years in the future that we can reduce climate change and keep the temperature livable for human beings basically so we are all working towards that objective. As we know, it takes time and we are already in crunch time for the temperature to reach bearable limits and that’s why we have a big global community working on this and all the governments are discussing how to do this in a consistent way. However, in addition to working on this long-term CO2 reductions starting now obviously, but results down the line, by working on not only this long lived and long term solutions, we can address the short lived ones, the immediate ones, with multiple benefits so we are here talking about climate, of course, and by reducing black carbon or methane or hydrofluorocarbons, indeed we can almost have the projected warming over the next few decades and that’s immense so if you talk about climate change and you’ll probably follow the many discussions around what actually happens, how long it will take, what kind of activities to do, but if you say that say that working on 10 or 20 different practical solutions, you can actually have the projected warming for the next decades and that’s what you’re doing by working on these short lived kind of pollutants, on methane, on black carbon. It’s soot actually and HFCs and that is very attractive. A few years ago, a big report came out from the organization that my secretariat is hosted by, which is the United Nations Environmental Program. They released a report which was done by many, many scientists from around the world and U.S. EPA has been very much in the forefront, among others, to do various studies on this. That said, by introducing 16 particular control measures or activities- for example, putting filters in diesel cars and improving low sulfur diesel, improving brick kilns and changing some of the kilns, using existing technology- up to 80% of all these emissions could disappear, could be eliminated and by taking these very practical measure, which are all doable, it’s all about existing technology, you would have not only, as I said, the climate benefits, but you would also have very strong health benefits; much less asthma, respiratory diseases of different nature, cardiovascular disease, cancer even, skin cancers and others, which are now also being more and more researched around and you can see the direct relationship between the air quality and what is called non-communicable diseases and premature death. Just recently, The World Health Organization released figure that tells us that almost 7 million people a year have premature death due to air pollution. It’s a huge amount of people and you have many studies in the U.S. that have looked at this health impact also so there is an increasing number of studies and research that makes the linkages to not only climate but also health and then also agriculture and crops. Many of the crops are hampered by essentially black carbon or ground level ozone, which comes from the release of these short lived gases like methane that I mentioned before so up to 50 million per year of basic crops like maize, wheat, etcetera, is being lost due to these pollutants because the process of the plant cannot fully develop because it’s hampered by the pollutants so you’re actually having a triple win. You work on reducing and improving air quality and you have happier people because it’s always nice to have fresh air to breathe. You have healthier people. You have better crops and air consistency in general. You have huge impact on global warming and the climate and at the same time, in many of these solutions that we are talking about, it also gives energy efficiency gains, which means that you save money. You save energy, which is something that we all are trying to achieve as well.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Got it. Well, Helena, there’s two big events coming up. In September, 2014, there’s the so-called climate summit coming up in New York and I’d love to understand how your organization, The Climate and Clean Air Coalition, is going to be involved there but also, on a bigger scale, back in your hometown in Paris, back in the city that you live now, let me just say, in 2015, there’s gonna be one of the major climate negotiation sessions where leaders from around the world are coming to and we know that that’s never worked out in the last three or four sessions, that we’ve gotten a lot of talk but not a lot of action. These next two events, what do they mean to you? What do they mean to the Climate and Clean Air Coalition and what do you expect to be the results and your role in these discussions and negotiations and what do you hope comes out of them?
HELENA MOLIN VALDES: Well, in the meeting you mentioned in September in New York, it’s the United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon, who has called on Heads of States at the summit of the leaders of the world to come together to demonstrate not only the will, but also demonstrate what countries, companies, CEOs of companies and other civil society organizations are willing to commit to do in practical terms to reduce global warming and what we are going to do by September in our coalition, we are working on many of the initiatives that we engaged in and I can talk a little bit more about them in a while if you want. We are looking especially at three or four of those initiatives to bring to the summit with a big number of countries and companies behind committing to practical action and that we can actually calculate into a big emission reduction, which will help the climate while at the same time having all these other benefits I mentioned before and the areas that we will bring to the table is around green freight and you have in the U.S. something called the Smart Way Program, which is very, very innovative and functioning well. It’s something that we are working on expanding to the whole world and with many other countries and it’s really to work also with many other companies that do move goods around the world and how they can, through different measure in their supply chain and their logistic chain, really make it greener so green freight so we are going to bring that to the table and we are working on right now and this particular initiative is led by the United States, Canada, something called the International Council for — ICCT, can’t recall what it’s called now — ICCT, International Council on Clean Transportation, and also the organization that hosts our organization, which is UNEP, and we are working with many countries to create a global action plan where companies can trace national governments but also city officials and other civil society organizations have very clear goals in terms of achieving this green freight chain in a big, big scale, building on the green practices that already exist so that’s number one. Number two, we are working with oil and gas industry to sign up to a framework that we have developed together with big chunk of the industry to reduce methane leakage out of the production and more than 8% of the natural gas production actually is lost annually to venting and leakage and flaring and it’s lost, which means lost production and lost income, but it also means that there’s a big impact on climate. Almost 20% of all the methane in the world from human made methane emissions comes from this particular industry so working with the industry to reduce this leakage gives them, in theory, income back, but most importantly, it makes a big difference in the climate and then we’re also working on agriculture and facing down this HFC and the cooling chain so these are the initiatives.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Helena, we’re gonna have you back to talk about the success of the New York event and then we’ll have you back to talk about Paris and what’s going to be happening in Paris in 2015. We thank you for your time today and to learn more about what Helena’s doing with her colleagues at the Climate and Clean Air Coalition, please go to www.unep.org/ccac. Thank you, Helena, for being an inspiring leader on the critical issue of climate and clear air. You are truly living proof that green is good.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Welcome back to Green is Good, and we’re so honored to have with us today Major Darren Mudge. He’s a pastor, an administrator and a businessman running the Salvation Army Adult Rehabilitation Center in Springfield, Massachusetts. Welcome to Green is Good, Major Mudge.
MAJOR DARREN MUDGE: Thank you, John. It’s good to be here.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Well, it’s good to have you on. We’re huge fans of The Salvation Army and all the important and good work that you’re doing there, but before we get talking about The Salvation Army and more particularly about the adult rehabilitation center programs, I want you to share, Major Mudge, your journey, your story, because it’s a fascinating one and I would love the listeners to learn all about your before we get talking about The Salvation Army.
MAJOR DARREN MUDGE: Well, I’ve had an interesting life journey and it began at the age of 13, when I became interested in The Salvation Army. I play a musical instrument and some friends learned that I play a musical instrument and invited me down to listen to The Salvation Army band and I was so enamored with it that I brought my trombone in and enjoyed the band and made The Salvation Army my church and since then, I’ve done some traveling playing with different Salvation Army bands here in the United States and became a Salvation Army Officer in the late ’80s. I decided that that was God’s call in my life and so I was trained to be a Salvation Army Officer and stationed in the New York area for 15 years before I went to South Africa and served with the Salvation Army over in South Africa for three years, returned from there, worked in York, Pennsylvania, for five years and now here in Springfield, running the Salvation Army Adult Rehabilitation Center so that in a nutshell is kind of my life since teenage years, since coming on to The Salvation Army.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Wow, and thank you for that great service, and I’ve learned so much about The Salvation Army over the years since I was a little boy in New York watching the Christmas collection. As an adult, I’ve learned so much about it and as you said, Salvation Army really is an amazing church and it’s just an amazing structure and we’re so appreciative. This is the first time we’ve ever had you on Green is Good and we’re so honored that you are representing The Salvation Army today on Green is Good so thank you for that. Thank you very much.
MAJOR DARREN MUDGE: Well, I’m honored to be here and any time I can talk about The Salvation Army, I’ll do it.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That’s great, and now getting into what you’re doing at The Salvation Army, you in particular are involved with the adult rehabilitation centers, the ARCs. Can you explain what the ARC really means at The Salvation Army and how long has The Salvation Army been operating adult rehabilitation centers?
MAJOR DARREN MUDGE: The Salvation Army has been operating adult rehab centers for over 100 years. It’s gonna be close to 120 at this point, and really, what it is, it’s a ministry to folks that don’t have anywhere else to go for drug and alcohol rehabilitation and we do a lot of counseling with them as well as working with them through their addiction and trying to get a hold of their addiction and getting them into recovery and becoming contributing members of society and so The Salvation Army started this so many years ago and the way we support it is through our thrift stores so any purchases that are made through our thrift stores go to support the ministry of rehabilitation and the ministry is free for those who need it and come in for it and part of what we call their work therapy is to help us to get those thrift stores stocked and clothes hung and get items on the shelves and that sort of thing so it’s really kind of an all-around program where a person will come in and receive counsel and receive support in overcoming their addiction and as a result, they give us support and help in moving things out to the stores and then that money comes back in to pay those expenses so it’s a wonderful ministry. We really enjoy it.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Major Mudge, I’m on your website now and for our listeners out there that want to follow along and learn more about the important and great work The Salvation Army is up to or to donate to The Salvation Army, it’s www.satruck.org. It’s a beautiful website. There’s a lot going on here so as we look at this website, and you guys have created wonderful technology for a modern world that is so technology based and make it easy for people to donate, talk a little bit about the business side of running the adult rehabilitation centers. You just spoke about the spiritual and the people side and saving these lives and doing the great work that you’re doing but what’s the business side look like?
MAJOR DARREN MUDGE: Well, the business side really is asking people to donate clothing and furniture and that sort of thing to The Salvation Army. We then send our trucks out to pick them up and bring them back here to our warehouse. They’re sorted. They’re gone through. They’re hung. Those things that aren’t fit to be sold, we recycle those and put those off into the recycling stream but the things that are able to be sold, we move those off into our stores. They’re sold in our stores and then that money comes back here to our center and supports the other work that we do and so for me, it’s a great business model because we’re relying on the public to support us and then in turn, we’re able to invest that money into folks that are less fortunate in the public arena and helping them to become contributing citizens and contributing members of society and so I like to say we’re not just recycling clothes and recycling furniture and recycling electronics but we’re recycling people as well. We’re trying to redeem lives and one of the illustrations I use is when you want to redeem a bottle, you take it in and you get some worth out of it and so we want to take these folks that really are struggling really, in many cases, don’t have a lot of self worth and saying to them you are worth it and we want to redeem your life and help you to become a good citizen and a good member of our society.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: So, you recycle all these materials; the furniture and cars and electronics, and there’s a money making aspect to all of that. That money gets reinvested into your adult rehabilitation centers and therefore, then you’re able to recycle lives.
MAJOR DARREN MUDGE: That’s right. That’s exactly how it works and it’s pretty ingenious. We are a nonprofit so we’re not in the business of making money. We’re in the business of making people whole.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: So, talk a little bit about, you know, Salvation Army is, of course, here in our great country in the United States but it was truly founded, I believe, in another country and can you share a little bit? Because I know you’ve traveled the world. How do the arcs work in other countries as well? Where did it start and where is it now around the world? Can you share some of your own personal experiences and what you’ve seen around the world?
MAJOR DARREN MUDGE: Sure. The Salvation Army is in over 125 different countries right now and really, what happens is, and what happened here even in the United States when it came here, people were exposed to The Salvation Army in England where it started and then moved all over the world and kind of brought The Salvation Army with them and one of the main tenets of The Salvation Army is if there’s a need, we’re gonna try to meet it and so here in the United States, of course, we still have the need for alcohol and drug rehabilitation. We do that here. In South Africa, which I’m most familiar with, we do have a rehabilitation center there as well and they operate very similar to the model we have here where they have a thrift store that supports them and that sort of things but in other places in South Africa, we have a lot of orphanages for children with AIDS and that are suffering from HIV and that sort of thing. It depends upon the need of the country what we end up doing there. Many times, our entree to the country is the country approaches us and says can you help us with this issue that you have some experience with and we’ll go in and start helping with that issue and then lo and behold, our churches begin springing up and people begin seeking spiritual counsel and spiritual life through The Salvation Army as well so it was a grassroots organization from the beginning and continues to be so as people are moving out into different countries.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Culturally, Major Mudge, how different are the arcs around the world? Do you recycle different materials at different facilities around the world given the different societies and cultures you’re working with and then how similar are the centers also around the world so is there some differences that you’d like to point out but also, some baseline similarities also, which the church element, I’m sure, and the spiritual element is always the baseline but can you talk a little bit about similarities and differences?
MAJOR DARREN MUDGE: Sure. One of the challenges we have in South Africa is the culture there is not necessarily really geared towards philanthropy and giving and so one of the major obstacles we had there in South Africa was trying to get people to understand the mindset of sharing with your neighbor and helping your neighbor out. That culture is very family oriented and so families help families out and so you rarely see people put into nursing homes and that sort of thing because they’re kept at home and they’re cared for by their families and so one of the struggles we had there was kind of getting people to understand if you can give us your old clothing, if you can give us your old furniture and your old electronics, we can then pass those on to other people and so that was a real education process for us there and a lot of it is so dependent upon the culture in the country and what people are used to as to what we can do and how we can help other people and getting other people to help other people, those who are more fortunate in some ways to help those who are less fortunate.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: For those listeners who just joined us, we’re so honored to have with us today Major Darren Mudge. He’s the Pastor, Administrator, and businessman who runs The Salvation Army Adult Rehabilitation Center in Springfield, Massachusetts. To learn more about what Major Mudge and his colleagues are doing at The Salvation Army, please go to www.satruck.org. You could get involved. You could donate and also, you can just learn just so much more about The Salvation Army. Let’s get talking about the recycling element of the adult rehabilitation centers. How has that evolved over the years? You’ve had a fascinating journey with The Salvation Army for many, many decades now. How has recycling just even here in the United States evolved with regards to becoming a profit center for The Salvation Army’s great works that you do?
MAJOR DARREN MUDGE: As times have changed, we’ve been recycling clothes and been very green, as it were, for as long as we can remember. That’s something that we’ve done and helped people to do and seeing the value in. In recent decades, we’ve come to find that looking for more ways to recycle is gonna help our bottom line and help us financially, especially where in the past, we would literally bring old electronics and stuff that we could not sell and would not sell- it was broken and it couldn’t be repaired- we would take those to the landfill and that became a huge issue for us because we were seeing a lot of stuff going into the waste stream that really didn’t need to go there. There was value in it and we’ve found local companies that have come alongside and said to us, ‘Listen, we will be able to purchase some of your recycling materials and then that helps our bottom line and of course, helps the environment by putting those into a recycling stream rather than right into the waste stream.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Got it, got it, and when it comes to recycling lives, how does the program work and do you cover both men and women?
MAJOR DARREN MUDGE: Many centers cover both men and women. About a third of our centers here in the eastern United States cover men and women and the program works by a person calling up and saying, ‘Listen, I have a problem. I’m an addict or I’m an alcoholic and I need some help,’ and many of them have gone through traditional treatment programs but out program is usually seven to nine months where a person comes in and lives with us and goes through what we call work therapy every day so they’re waking up at a certain hour, they’re given a work therapy assignment, whether that’s working in our warehouse or working on our trucks that go and pick up the things or working in the house doing housekeeping or doing cooking and that sort of thing . They do that every day for five days a week. They work 40 hours a week and that gets them into a routine, which many of them have not has in years and gets them to work on discipline and we work on character issues and spiritual counseling with them through our counseling staff and so as they’re working with other people, some things are coming up for them. We’re able to help them talk through it, some talk therapy and that sort of things where they’re able to share their feelings and share their experiences and many of them come into us and they’re feeling worthless. They’re feeling like they have no meaning in life and through our spiritual counseling, we’re able to say to them, ‘You have value. You can redeem your life. You can move yourself into a different way of life so you’re not dependent on drugs and alcohol,’ and so we find that at the end of seven to eight months, these folks are prepared to go back into the world and become contributing members of society and for me, it’s a redemption of lives. That really is the best part of the ministry. I enjoy the business. I enjoy the work that we do but seeing the changed lives where a person comes in and they can’t look you in the eye. They’re feeling so bad about themselves and what their addiction and alcoholism has done to their lives and all the loss in their lives and to see them stand up on their graduation day and say, ‘I’m ready to go back out into the world and I’ve reconciled some relationships and redeemed some relationships with my family and those who are close to me and they see now my worth and I see my worth and I’m ready to go back into society,’ that’s the most rewarding part of the work that we do.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Major Mudge, is The Salvation Army the largest recycling life conservation company in the world that helps rehabilitate people as a nonprofit? Is there any organization that even comes close to this or is this the number one recycling life organization in the world?
MAJOR DARREN MUDGE: I hesitate to say that because I don’t know all of the other groups that are out there doing this sort of work, but I’d definitely say we’re one of the largest redemptive ministries for people that are drug and alcohol dependent. We have 70 people here in our house in Springfield and throughout the eastern United States, we have thousands of people that go through our programs every year.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: I was honored years ago. I was asked to speak at one of your Oakland adult rehabilitation centers and they were giving me a tour after I made some comments and got to meet the residents at that point and they walked me into a room that looked like a church setting and I was sort of stunned and as I then continued my journey throughout the building, I said, “That was like a little mini church in there,” and I said, “Explain this to me,” and they said, “John, The Salvation Army is a church and that’s how we look at ourselves.” Major Mudge, is that church-like setting in many or most of the adult rehabilitation centers across the United States and across the world?
MAJOR DARREN MUDGE: That church setting is in every Salvation Army adult rehabilitation center. That’s the focal point of what we’re doing. We’re trying to redeem lives spiritually as well as getting them off their addiction and off their alcoholism, that sort of thing. The spiritual aspect, for us, is very important.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Of course. It was so moving and it just changed my whole approach to understanding The Salvation Army because it’s one thing to see the beautiful red cans during the holidays and see the fundraising but then to see the church from the inside out was just really a wonderful experience. We have a few minutes left. Major Mudge, I want to give these two minutes to you. Talk a little bit about the major challenges that you face at work and what you do personally but also, share one or two of the greatest rewards that you’ve gotten in the whole journey that you’ve been on at The Salvation Army.
MAJOR DARREN MUDGE: The major challenge we face today is really competition for recycling goods. We’re doing it from a nonprofit standpoint and relying on people’s generosity and goodness to give us the materials that we need to operate our system and operate the centers and there’s more and more competition out there, especially for clothing, and if you drive through your neighborhood, you will see different clothing boxes in many different areas and these really are kind of moving into The Salvation Army’s area and we’re running out of product to sell to then use that money to help people in the rehabilitation of their lives. The greatest reward for me, John, is literally to stand next to someone who’s graduating and to realize that the work that they have done on their lives and the work that we’ve been able to do with them has really changed their lives and changed their mindset and changed their understanding of who they are and changed their relationship with God and with other people and that, for me, is the most rewarding part of the ministry that I do.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Well, it’s been unbelievably rewarding having you, Major Mudge, on Green is Good today. I’m so honored to have you on and for our listeners out there, to do more, to donate your clothes or other items that you have to help save lives, please donate to The Salvation Army, www.satruck.org. Major Mudge, thank you for your inspiring work in saving and sustaining people’s lives. 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 Doctor Kathryn Mengerink. She’s the Senior Attorney and Co-Director of the Ocean Program at the Environmental Law Institute. Welcome to Green is Good.
DOCTOR KATHRYN MENGERINK: Thank you, John. It’s great to be here.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Kathryn, you’re doing so many exciting things and we’re gonna be talking about the deep ocean today, a subject we’ve never covered on Green is Good before, but before we get talking about that, you have a fascinating background. First of all, you’re unbelievably educated. You have both your J.D. and your Ph.D., and your background is fascinating to me, and I would love you to share some of your journey and story with our listeners before we get talking about all the great work you’re doing at the Environmental Law Institute with regards to the deep ocean.
DOCTOR KATHRYN MENGERINK: Oh, sure. I started off my career, my journey through school, interested in science broadly and zoology in particular and became passionate about marine biology when I spent a bit of summer and spring in a marine station in Florida and that led me to come out to Scripps Institution of Oceanography and get my Ph.D. in marine biology and I spent about six years studying sea urchins of all things. I spent a lot of time on the water and in the water and became really interested in marine conservation so I switched gears again and moved on to get a degree in environmental law and was lucky enough to land at the environmental law institute where they gave me the opportunity to establish an ocean program and we’ve been at it now for about eight years and it’s focused on science-based decision making and how we can support good management.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That’s fascinating, and we have never covered the issue of deep ocean before. In the last years, it seems like we’re talking more and more about the ocean with regards to how polluted we’ve made it, what we could do to make it better, what some solutions are, and what’s going on today so it’s so timely and it’s so important and I’m so thankful for your coming on the show today to talk about what you know and your great work at the Environmental Law Institute and for our listeners that want to follow along as we interview Kathryn today, if you want to go and check out her website and everything that’s going on at the Environmental Law Institute, please join me now because I’m on it. It’s a beautiful website. It’s www.ELI.org. Kathryn, let’s get right into it. Deep ocean — I’ve never heard that terminology before. I’ve heard a lot of other things with regards to the ocean. What is the deep ocean and how big is it and what does it really mean?
DOCTOR KATHRYN MENGERINK: Sure, yeah. The deep ocean is, most scientists define it as an area below 200 meters in depth so think about a football field and that’s about 100 meters long so a couple hundred meters is two football fields below the surface. It’s also typically beyond the continental shelf so as you go under water, there’s the continental shelf, which is gradually getting deeper and deeper and then it drops off into the depths of the ocean. It is, in fact, the largest living space on earth because not only does the ocean itself make up 71% of the surface of the earth, but if you think about the ocean period, you’re talking about a three-dimensional living space so by far, the largest living space on earth and the average depth of our ocean is over 4,000 meters in depth, so most of the ocean is deep ocean.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: So, it’s the largest living space on earth, which already blows my mind in terms of vastness. Talk about what makes it so special then besides bigness. What are the key elements that you’re working on with regards to the deep ocean? What’s your focus and the Environmental Law Institute’s focus with regards to the needs of it and what we can do to make it a better place?
DOCTOR KATHRYN MENGERINK: Sure, yeah. There’s a lot of things that make the deep ocean special. It’s a place of extreme, so it’s extreme size, extreme depth, extreme pressure, extreme darkness, and extreme unknown so I can unpackage that a little bit for you and help you think about some of the aspects of the deep ocean that make it special. We’ve talked about size. If you think about depth, the deepest part of the deep ocean is almost seven miles deep so that’s the Marianas Trench and think about Mount Everest. Mount Everest could fit inside of the Marianas Trench in terms of the depth so it’s deeper than Mount Everest is high. You’re talking about incredibly deep ocean and as you get deeper, pressure gets extreme so think about swimming to the bottom of a pool. You can feel the pressure on your ears. Swimming to the bottom of a deep ocean, it would be like holding something like 50 jumbo jets on top of you. That’s the kind of pressure that you’re talking about when you get to the deep ocean. Because of that, it is extremely challenging for scientists to access and work in the deep ocean. It’s a high cost for the technology to work in the deep ocean and there’s certainly substantial dangers to working at depth so while we rarely and only twice have sent people down to the bottom of the Marianas Trench, more typically, we send nets or remotely operated vehicles to go down and explore those deep depths but it makes it really challenging and so that’s another important aspect of what makes it special because this challenge means that we don’t know a lot about the deep ocean so there’s so much unknown. Some people have said that we know more about the moon than we know about the deep ocean. At the same time, the deep ocean is a really diverse place so it’s not a place where we have a single habitat. It’s not all one type of environment but there’s lots of different types of environments in the there have been amazing discoveries just in recent decades so we’re still learning really new things about the deep ocean and we like to think about these as the unknown unknowns and so what I mean by that is that 50 years ago, we didn’t know about hydrothermal vents and now we know that they are these amazing places where hot water is coming up into the ocean and you have these communities of crazy creatures that are living in these extreme environments and we have things like seamounts that are mountains under the water that have deep sea corals that are very different from shallow water corals that we see that host a variety of life so it’s a really special place.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Excuse my ignorance on this, but I know everything is interrelated and we’re all one big part of an ecosystem. What are the important issues regarding the deep ocean and uses of it and how does it interrelate with us above ground and how do you then tie the uses with our whole ecosystem together? What are you looking at on a regular basis and what are you trying to improve?
DOCTOR KATHRYN MENGERINK: Yeah, so we’re interested in understanding what makes the deep ocean special and how we can effectively manage it. I’ve been involved with a group called the Deep Ocean Stewardship Initiative that is an international collaboration of scientists, policymakers and others who are people from industry, people from academia who are focused on thinking about how to effectively manage this space and to utilize it in a way that supports our life on earth so there’s a lot of things that we already derive from the deep ocean. We have fisheries that are getting deeper. The more that we exploit shallow water environments, the deeper we look for other types of materials so some of these fisheries- for example, seamount fisheries- have received a lot of pressure from fishermen and the challenge with that is that many of the fish on seamounts are slow growing so they can be over 100 years old and take a long time to reach maturity so when they’re fished and depleted, it means it’s going to be a long time, potentially longer than human lifetimes, for such populations to recover. Other types of activities that we have in the deep ocean include oil and gas development and the existing deepest well is something like 2,800 meters in depth and that’s more than a mile and a half beneath the surface and while the footprint of oil and gas development is small, done correctly, the impacts are minor, deep water horizon is an example, the oil spill in 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico, is an example of what happens when something goes wrong or can go wrong at depth and that was a deep ocean oil spill. A lot of our focus has been on the impacts to what’s happened along the coastline. Animals that have been oiled like pelicans and sea turtles or habitat that’s been disrupted like sea grasses or marshlands but a big part of the impact was in the deep ocean and we know very little about what was there to begin with and how that impacted those resources. Other existing uses of this deep ocean are things like waste deposition so in Norway, for instance, they’re putting mine tailings that are taken from land into the deep ocean as an alternative to depositing the waste on land. In terms of future use then, people are thinking about things like carbon storage so how do we store carbon dioxide? Maybe we can inject it into the deep ocean or deep sea diving, which is a big issue that people are thinking about right now as regulations are being put in place and people are starting to look towards mining the deep ocean.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: For our listeners who have just joined us, we’ve got Doctor Kathryn Mengerink on with us today. She’s a Senior Attorney and Co-Director of the Ocean Program at the Environmental Law Institute. To learn more about all the great work she’s up to and her colleagues are up to, especially with regards to the deep ocean, please go to www.eli.org. I’m on the website now. It’s a beautiful website. There’s tons of information here. Let’s go back to impact. You know, you see all these specials now on television now, Kathryn, with regards to this sort of soupy plastic we’ve so hurt our ocean with, so impacted our ocean itself with. Is it safe to assume that this soupy, horrible, pollution mix of plastics that we’ve created in the ocean are now impacting also the deep ocean as well?
DOCTOR KATHRYN MENGERINK: They’re certainly present there, and in fact, as part of my job, I actually do some work with Scripps Institution of Oceanography with their Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation and we had a master’s student this spring, Meredith Epp, who has developed an app and the app is her deep sea marine debris app and she’s requesting that scientists and others who are operating in the deep sea help identify debris in the ocean while they’re doing other types of research. So often, you hear anecdotally stories from various scientists talking when they were trawling or doing research in an area of the deep ocean that they’ve seen different types of marine debris and in fact, there was a study recently done near the Monterey Bay area that focused on the deep sea and marine debris down there and evaluating the types of things that you find in the deep ocean so it’s certainly down there. We’ve certainly made our mark. I think there’s a question now about what kind of effect does that type of marine debris have on the deep ocean and, like other things, our knowledge about that is very limited.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: What I keep understanding from you is that this is still an ongoing journey of studying the deep ocean and that you’re in the middle of it with your colleagues. With regards to studying it, that’s one thing. Who manages it though? It’s, you say, the largest place on the planet, and really, in terms of its vastness and bigness, under whose domain does it fall and who’s in charge of it?
DOCTOR KATHRYN MENGERINK: Yeah, so all nations actually have a role to play in managing the deep ocean, certainly all coastal nations and all nations involved with the law of the sea treaty. Deep ocean is both in national waters and in international waters so, for example, if you’re off the coast of California, you could be a couple miles out and beneath you is deep ocean so it can be that close to shore. In other places in the world, it’s much further, tens of miles off shore before you really start to see deep ocean but it is both an international and a national issue so each nation has a role to play in managing the deep ocean as well as international bodies. In terms of how then it’s managed, most nations, and in an international context, we manage things in a siloed way and what I mean by that is we manage specific activities on an agency-by-agency basis or on an institution by institution basis so if you’re looking at the United States, fisheries are managed by or in accordance with the National Marine Fisheries Service. Oil and gas leaking falls under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management so those things are separate and while there’s some interaction between different agencies, they’re really occurring in silos and that’s one of the big concerns from a management perspective is when we’re managing things on a one by one basis, we can really run into challenges because different decisions can affect things in different ways. In international waters, we see a similar situation. We have what’s called Regional Fishery Management Organizations and they manage the fish. We have the International Seabed Authority and it’s tasked with managing and leasing the deep seabed for deep sea minerals so in part, our challenge is how do we integrate management across these different sectors.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: And, if you were the boss for the day, like you could just wave your wand and make things better, what would you do to make the management more seamless and more comprehensive and get everybody on the same page? What would be your stroke of genius to pull this together?
DOCTOR KATHRYN MENGERINK: There’s a few different approaches to potentially integrate management. People have been looking into and actually have been implementing what’s called marine spatial planning. That’s essentially a forward looking process that is supposed to be across agencies to make a plan for how to utilize a particular place and base decision making then on sort of like a land use plan. If you live in a city, you may have a plan for how to develop that city. We can do the same thing in the context of the ocean if we work collaboratively to decide how we want to utilize that space and the rationale for that is the you could imagine that for one agency that’s managing fish, for instance, they may want to protect an area because they recognize it as an important nursery ground so they may say no fishing in that area because we think it’s an important nursery to establish and make sure that the fishery is sustainable. At the same time, there may be another decision by the energy agency to exploit that area for some sort of energy development so we want to avoid that kind of thing.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Right, right. That makes sense. Talk about mining in terms of deep ocean mining. We’re down to the last couple of minutes. Is that part of the future of the deep ocean and if it is, how do we do deep ocean mining without further degrading the deep ocean it destroying it or hurting it further? Is there a way to do it while being sensitive to the ecosystem of the deep ocean?
DOCTOR KATHRYN MENGERINK: That’s a big challenge that we face so certainly people are interested in mining the deep ocean and we’ve increasingly seen interest in this so, for example, New Zealand, right now there’s a group that is interested in mining the Caltham Rocks Phosphate Site and have submitted and developed an environmental impact assessment for that area. In Papua New Guinea, there’s a company that’s already obtained a lease to mine on hydrothermal vents so there’s a lot of interest and efforts in that direction. There are right now in the international arena exploration leases so there’s companies out there looking at exploration and they’re now developing exploitation programs under the various agencies so that is up and coming. It’s an issue that is a very real issue that we have to address and in terms of the things that we think need to happen to address it, we need to put measures in place like protecting habitats, requiring appropriate environmental assessment, minimizing the impact to the region by avoiding special sites, by developing the right technology so that we’re not causing too much impact, but the big question and another important piece of it is to move with precaution and to be very precautious about how we move forward in the deep ocean because we have such little knowledge so we have to at the same time we are exploring the area and considering it for exploitation, we really need to focus on expanding our knowledge so we can make smart decisions.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That’s awesome, and Kathryn, thank you for coming on the show today and sharing so much about the deep ocean that I never knew, I’m sure our listeners never knew. We’d like to have you back on to continue this story. For our listeners out there that want to learn more about Kathryn and her colleagues’ great work, please go to the Environmental Law Institute’s website. It’s www.eli.org. I love the tagline; “Environmental Law Institute makes law work for people, places, and the planet.” Thank you, Kathryn, for being an inspiring sustainability deep ocean expert. You are truly living proof that green is good.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Welcome back to Green is Good, and I’m so honored to have my friend back on the show, Eva Radke. She’s the President and founder of Film Biz Recycling, and you can check out all the cool things Eva’s doing at FilmBizRecycling.org. Welcome back to Green is Good, Eva.
EVA RADKE: Thank you for having me, John. I’ve missed you.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Oh man, I miss you, too, but I’ve been following you and you’ve been blowing it up. You have been blowing it up in Brooklyn and I’m so excited and I’m so proud of what you’ve been doing. Before we get into all the cool things that you’ve been up to over the years and the awards that you’ve won, I want you to share though for our listeners that didn’t hear our first show together about five years ago now, I want you to share a little bit of the Eva Radke story, how you even came to this place and you started this amazing company, Film Biz Recycling.
EVA RADKE: Okay, I’ll put it in a nutshell for you. So, I was in the film industry, mainly in the art department, for 15 years. I saw a lot of our props and wardrobe and stuff going into landfills. I knew that it was wrong. I knew that there were families that needed these items and I knew putting it into landfills was wrong, creating pollution and not on my watch so the first thing I did, I started an online group so we could share things virtually. Then I realized it also needed a place to go so we got a brick and mortar space. That’s when you and I first spoke. It was 2,100 feet up two flights of stairs. Five years later, we’re in 11,000 square feet and we have 11 employees and we’re diverting waste in 11 different cities using that platform that we used before.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Unbelievable, and I’m so proud of you and so excited for you, but there’s even some bigger news. This year, you won the EPA’s Environmental Media Award for Environmental Quality. What does this really mean for you, for your company, and for all the hard work you’ve put in over the years?
EVA RADKE: It was the ultimate validation, I have to say. When you have no model, when no one has done this before, when you don’t have anyone to guide you in the right direction because it’s a new idea, you don’t know if you’re a fool or if you’re a genius or on the right track and so when the EPA reached out to this for their Environmental Quality Award, I was stunned and surprised and happy for the entire industry. Obviously, the EPA is going to recognize the efforts of reuse and redistribution and keeping things out of landfills as an industry as a whole, then yes, let’s keep going and it’s a great way to convince others in the industry that aren’t quite hip on what we’re doing yet that what we’re doing is legitimate and we’re actually making a difference. I have to say it’s my proudest moment.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: It’s like one of the coolest websites on the planet. For our listeners out there who want to follow along like I am, it’s FilmBizRecycling.org so Eva, for our listeners out there that didn’t have the benefit of first learning what you were doing when you started your company, what are you doing actually? What is the business model and what are you doing every day?
EVA RADKE: Okay, so our input into our warehouse is a very niche market. It’s only from film, television, theater, any sort of production where you like build a circus and you tear it down. We take all of our materials in, most of which goes to our charity partners. For instance, we have a women’s shelter that gets our towels and appliances and things that they need to run a house because they’re starting their lives over and they need these packages. Anything that is animal related goes to our shelters so we divide it all up. If we need to recycle it, we take it to the e-waste warehouse. If it’s clothing, we take it to a textile recycler that we’ve partnered with so we just make these strategic partnerships and take everything in, send it down the right chute, but to create revenue for ourselves and pay our rent, etcetera, etcetera, we also have an amazing shopping experience of 11,000 square feet in Brooklyn where you can come shop the props.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Wow, so when shows are done using clothing and props and furniture, they all go to you?
EVA RADKE: We’re open to do that. We definitely don’t capture 100%. I wish that we did. I probably would need a bigger warehouse, but since 2008, we’ve collected over 500 tons and it’s about 10 tons a month now that comes in and at the end of the week, there’s only half-a-bag of landfill. It’s like tape and photographs and chip bags and that’s about it, so we find a good home whether it’s recycled, reused, redistributed for every single little bitty thing down to the last toothpick.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: For our New York listeners or our listeners in the New York metropolitan area that want to come to your warehouse, if they come to your warehouse, what’s the experience gonna be like? Give us the virtual tour of the store right now today on the show of the warehouse. What’s it gonna feel like and what can they buy or see in your warehouse today?
EVA RADKE: Well, first of all, it’s a visual extravaganza. This all comes from film and television and from the art directors’ eye so it’s all really amazing. There’s like vintage furniture, trees painted bright orange. There’s flora everywhere. We have wonderful clothing straight from the 80s that we’re having a party for on Friday. We have artwork and we have vintage phones and media. We have everything from VHS to records and we have tape decks, lighting, carpeting, neon. Crème de la crème of the most beautiful and interesting, it’s here. I have heard more than 10 times that this is people’s happy place. This place is gorgeous. It’s interesting and fascinating and it’s a look into sort of the bowels of the film industry. What do we do with all this stuff? It’s unbelievable. I can’t wait for you to come in here.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That is so cool. I’m coming this year and I’m coming this summer and I can’t wait to go for a tour and I’m just so excited because what you’re doing I think is so important for our important and it’s so important for all of us in terms of a sustainable economy and a sustainable world. I think it’s just so great and talk a little bit about you just had the Golden Dumpster Awards. What is that and what are they and who’s won the Golden Dumpster Awards?
EVA RADKE: Well, we had our second annual Golden Dumpster Awards and I have to say this is the perfect fantasy of mine. It’s a little tongue in cheek. The entertainment loves to pat itself on the back but we recognize people, productions, and businesses for environmental achievements so for instance, Emily O’Brien of Earth Angel, who’s boots on the ground diverting the waste on films herself. She started this little company, an ecopreneur, and we recognize her because she is providing us with metrics, which is something we really need. Metrics are so important. We really recognize the PGA who out a fascinating report that proved over and over and over again that going green in film will save you green. They said no more excuses, producers. It’s not more expensive to go green, to be sustainable. Pulp Art Services, they produce a recycled product that replaced the PVC that Phoenix used so it was like 40,000 gallons of oil are now saved because of this recycled paper product. Then, Noble Lumber, which is our local lumber company in town, switched their lewon to only FSC-certified lewon, which is huge so when we see that our peers are doing these and making these strives, we have to recognize them and it’s a great excuse to get all of these green babes and babettes and dudes in the same room with a cocktail dress and a drink and celebrate and energize us to keep going and go on further.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Of all the stuff that you get out of just the New York studios and all the New York television and movies that’s being filmed or do you also get stuff from other parts of the country and other parts of the world?
EVA RADKE: Just New York. If someone said, ‘I’m in LA and I want to give this to you,’ I would say, ‘Just give it to your local reuse,’ because the carbon to get it to me isn’t worth it. I don’t want that. I want it to be local.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: But it’s just so amazing how big you’ve grown the business and it’s just New York based and it’s just so fascinating, from 2,700 feet to 11,000 square feet. That’s just a great story and all the awards and this year’s EPA Environmental Quality Awards is just amazing. Talk a little bit about this year’s upcoming in the fall the Eco Expo. What is that, and who’s gonna be there in the fall and what does that all mean?
EVA RADKE: Well, this will be our fourth year of The Golden Dumpster and now we do the Eco Expo in November and that is just an industry-centric outreach and education evening out so last year was lumber and so this year, we’re gonna talk about fuel. We’re gonna talk about trucking. We’re gonna talk about biodiesel so we’re inviting the teamsters. We’re inviting the generator companies. There’s some that will never go bio, they say, and some that are trying really hard. They’re going B5 or B10 so we just want to have this conversation. We talk about idling. I’m actually gonna have a visual like here’s what a cubic ton of carbon looks like. It’s this size and every five minutes is this so we’re just gonna make it easy to understand why when we say stop idling, it isn’t because we’re bossy. It’s because it’s important.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Got it. For our listeners who just joined us, we’ve got Eva Radke. She’s the President and founder of Film Biz Recycling. To check out more of what she’s doing, it’s FilmBizRecycling.org. Eva, when I first met you, you only had a couple of employees. How many employees do you have now?
EVA RADKE: We have 11 now, 11 wonderful, wonderful guys.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: So, now since you are the big boss, since you are the President and founder, talk a little bit about being an ecopreneur, a woman ecopreneur, a leader in sustainability. What’s your management style with your 11 employees as you grow and continue to scale your business?
EVA RADKE: I would say that my management style is first of all, I’m gonna hire people who are genuinely good people who believe in what we’re doing because I think you can teach anybody everything and then what we do, once we do that and we get them trained, I give them a challenge, I give them creative freedom, and then I get out of their way with the knowledge that I still have veto power. I think that when you are satisfied with your work, you put more into it. I’m not a micromanager so I’m not really sure if my femininity plays into this but I like to feel like we’re a family and that we’re an organism and people’s lives are going to go into their work and their work is gonna go into their lives and if that’s seamless and it’s not painful and people can cry at their desk or have a bad day or need a day off or whatever it is, of course, because we’re all humans that work here and without that human element, you’re not going to have the greatest customer service. I want people happy. Their happiness is important to me and in fact, I remember there was someone who just wasn’t quite happy. I was like, ‘Well, we need to work on finding you another place to go that you will be happy,’ and I really feel that way. I guess I care a lot about who comes in here because their little pixie dust goes everywhere and it affects everybody. The way I see it is we’re a living organism and the health of it is up to me. I have to feed it.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Because Green is Good now, we’re so lucky it’s played nationally on Clear Channel coast to coast and then it’s updated on iTunes around the world, there’s lots of young ecopreneurs that want to be the next Eva Radke. What’s your advice for them? Say you had them in a room today and you’re teaching them how to be a great president or CEO or leader of your organization. What’s your one or two pearls of wisdom that you would throw out to them and say do this, it’s gonna be good?
EVA RADKE: I would say the first thing you’re gonna have to truly understand is there are going to be personal sacrifices. If you’re not willing to make those sacrifices, if you’re not willing to dip into your bank account, if you’re not willing to put your relationship on hold, if you’re not willing to take a chance, that just is what it’s going to take and you are going to have to be able to take a punch and get up the next day. There have been plenty of times where I look at myself in the mirror with tears in my eyes and say am I a fool? What have I done? What have I gotten myself into? And then the next day, there is something to celebrate so it’s just keep on doing it, believe in it, educate yourself, but also realize you have to surround yourself with people that are smarter than you and people who believe in it. You don’t have employees. They’re all partners so I want to keep the strata of boss and employee as understanding that we all need each other.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: What’s your strongest quality as a leader?
EVA RADKE: I think that I’ve been through it and I’m human and that I’ve also been a really hard worker, that my standards are high but I’m also understanding, and I also feel like I can really judge people and see into people and know what their strengths are. I can pull their strengths out and use that. Whenever you have to replace somebody for when somebody goes back to school or whatnot, you’re gonna get a new person. Instead of trying to fit the job description to the person, have the person build their own job description so using their talents you’re gonna get the best of it and breathe a breath of fresh air into your mission.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Like I said, Eva, at the top of the show, when we first met, you were 2,700 feet. You’re now at 11. What’s the next step for Film Biz Recycling and if money was no object, what’s your dream project to take this organization to the next level?
EVA RADKE: Well, I would love to be in Los Angeles, and I’d love to be in New Orleans. Those are some big hubs. I’d like to have a trucking fleet. If this is money no object question, boy, I could do that. I would like to be able to go to the set, pick them up. I would like to make it as easy for them as possible, take it back, deliver to our partner charities, to bring in more talent for development and outreach, to have monthly functions where we can really reach out to everybody in the film industry and empower them and tell them this is what kind of good we’re doing. It’s really having the ability to get the message out and to be in different cities and to franchise and to make it sort of a machine that every single person in the industry knows that no matter what project we’re working on, in the end, whether we’re winning an Oscar or a Rotten Tomato, my work is going to do some good.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Your work is always Oscar worthy. There’s no Rotten Tomatoes with you. What’s the next 10 years look like? How are you going to evolve this organization over the next 10 years? Do you really feel New Orleans and LA are in the cards and is it going to take five years? Is it gonna take two? What do you think are in the cards for you the next 10 years?
EVA RADKE: You know, for instance, to get New Orleans and LA off the ground, there’s going to have to be a superstar in that city that wants to make that happen with us as a partner so it’s gonna take some money, honey, and I’ve got the time. Right now, NBC has recognized that we’re the easiest city to shoot green in just because Film Biz is here so I want someone to say hey, I want that for LA, or hey, I want that from New Orleans, and those guys over in New York know what they’re doing, let’s franchise this, so that’s where I kind of see this, city by city by city and also in the U.K. There’s so much going on there, too, so I would like to just connect the dots and string this all together so it’s a movement and a household name.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Got it. Eva, we’re down to the last couple of minutes here or so. I’m on your website, FilmBizRecycling.org. I love your website and what I love about it is on it, when you click the button to talk about your charity partners, it just explains all these amazing partners that you do so much good for. How did you come to choose all these wonderful charity partners?
EVA RADKE: Sometimes it was proximity and whatever’s closest to us to keep the footprint smaller but for instance, Blissful Bedrooms, they redo bedrooms of severely disabled teens who never really leave their bedrooms too often so they make them super awesome and cool. We found each other on Craigslist. She was looking for paint and I was trying to give away paint. She came over and I saw what her mission was and she was just getting started and I said well, let’s be friends forever and so now, whenever they have a project, they raid our warehouse. They can have anything they want. Sometimes they approach us and sometimes we approach them and sometimes it’s a Google search. Sometimes it’s a meeting at a party. It just sort of all happens. We have these resources and we want to give them away.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That’s so cool. You’re such a leader in the sustainability movement and what I call evolution or revolution. If you could be EPA Director for a day, what would you change in terms of environmental policy that exists today, Eva, out there? What would you wave your magic wand and get changed with regards to our environment?
EVA RADKE: Oh my gosh, there’s so much. If it was EPA Director of the whole wide world, my first thought is let’s enough with the plastic. Enough with the Styrofoam. Enough. It’s choking us. It’s killing us. Let’s innovate our way out of plastic and Styrofoam unless it’s something that biodegrades and isn’t choking our oceans, thus ourselves. If I was in charge of policy for the film industry, I would say no more throwing things away that can be reused because there’s a social benefit added on top of the benefit of not creating pollution in a landfill and wasting that opportunity. You know, that’s my answer to that.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: I love it. I love it, and Eva, we thank you for coming back on. We can’t wait to have you back on a third time as Green is Good. For our listeners out there, support Eva Radke’s business, www.filmbizrecycling.org or go to her warehouse in Gowanus, Brooklyn. Eva, thank you for being the inspiring leading lady in the film and television industries. 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 Lisa Kitinoja. She’s the founder of the Postharvest Education Foundation. If you want to follow along while we chat with Lisa today, it’s www.postharvest.org. Welcome to Green is Good, Lisa.
LISA KITINOJA: Thank you very much. I’m happy to be here.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: You know, Lisa, you have a fascinating story that started back in my hometown of New York City and led to this great organization that you’ve created, the Postharvest Education Foundation. Can you share with our listeners your journey and your story, how you even got to this position on this planet and in your life?
LISA KITINOJA: Sure, I will. I’m getting to practice this a bit now that I’m running a foundation. I have to speak at various activities and give some background. It’s a story that started when I was a child in Staten Island and I was about 10 years old and there was this big announcement in the newspaper that said that there was gonna be a 25-mile walkathon to end hunger so I joined up and as a 10-year-old, I couldn’t quite make 25 miles, but I did my very best to raise money to end hunger. Of course, that was just the beginning and I learned more and more about it and how widespread it was in the world and what a big problem it was so as a kid and a teenager, I was really interested in learning about food preservation and food storage and different ways of reducing food losses so when I went to college, that was what I studied. I studied agriculture, horticulture, vegetable crops, and I was able to put together what I learned from my family and what I learned from school in my education at UC – Davis and then I went on to Ohio State and got my doctorate and what I wound up doing was specializing in two things. One was how to teach informal groups like farmers, not university or high school education, but field based education, practical things, and then second, I really wanted to learn about international agriculture and reducing food losses, so I put those two together and became a consultant, worked in over 20 countries all over the world with all kinds of activities and all kinds of different organizations and that’s what brought me to kind of the end of my career, semi-retirement in 2011, and a few of my friends and colleagues got together and launched this foundation. We decided that we were gonna teach young people around the world how to do what we learned how to do and that’s to reduce losses by identifying all kinds of post harvest problems, giving them skills and resources in order to help farmers in their own communities.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Well, it’s not really a retirement for you. It’s really a new beginning, right?
LISA KITINOJA: It sure is. I’m planning on working more now than before.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: It’s such a fascinating story, Lisa, because you spent your life around the world in developing countries working in small farming communities working and learning and teaching. Did you found the Postharvest Education Program because you found that there’s a lack of opportunity of others teaching what you needed to teach and teaching what you’ve learned out in the field in all these other countries around the world? Is there not a lot of what you’re doing now in other parts of the world, teaching this kind of thing?
LISA KITINOJA: Yeah, exactly. What I’ve found in almost 30 years of doing consulting work and working with all kinds of universities and the big donor agencies is that they have projects that are ostensibly designed to help farmers in countries but they send their experts in and out so fast that there’s really never any local capacity building or local expertise being developed and so I got to work on a lot of interesting projects and I got to solve problems and fly here and there and do all kinds of fun things but I wasn’t able really to stay long enough or to follow up anything that I had been teaching people and so what I noticed and what my colleagues noticed was that it’s just very frustrating for the people in these countries. They hear about these great new things they can do. They’re told that it’s possible but then the expert comes and goes so fast that they never get to actually do it so that was why we set up this foundation. It’s specifically designed to target these young people who want to become the experts in this field and work in their own countries and instead of having to fly an expert in from the U.S. or Europe to Africa or Asia, spend a huge amount of money, we can train 10 people for that amount of money and have them work in their own home countries and be the local experts.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That’s so great. That makes so much sense so talk a little bit about your foundation and for our listeners, again, who want to learn more about what Lisa is doing at the Postharvest Foundation, please go to www.postharvest.org. I’m on the site now. It’s a beautiful site. Talk a little bit what your attention is focused on there with regards to fruits, vegetables, and other types of agricultural issues.
LISA KITINOJA: Basically, we have one big program that we work on every year. We recruit in November of each year a new batch of people that we call our Global E-Learners and we developed a program that doesn’t require a lot of money or a lot of travel but it does take a lot of time so we have young people every year who are interested in learning about reducing food losses. Almost all of them are working with fruits and vegetable crops because this, we found, was the most neglected of the crops. They are all working in developing countries so it’s open to anyone around the world. They’re all working with small farmers and basically, what we found was there’s plenty of private organizations that work with big farmers or governments even, projects that work with big farmers, so we are gonna work with the small ones and then we also target young people because they need jobs. They need skills to get into the workplace. We target women because they often are the ones who are handling the food for their families. They sometimes grow it, often work on processing it to things that can be stored longer and in places like West Africa, they’re even the marketing people so the women are really important and then also we look at organic food a lot of times because in these poor resource or low resource places, people are naturally producing organic foods only because they can’t afford the pesticides and fertilizers and so it’s easy for us to jump in and show them how they can maintain an organic production and handling system, thereby gaining more money for what they’re selling if they can get into that niche market and in the meantime, they can keep their foods really safe to eat locally so we target people who want to work with those groups and what we’ve found is there’s hundreds of them, thousands of them out there. Every year, we get a batch of applications and we take the top 20 or 30 and we work with them for a whole year so they work with us online. We do assignments with them. They write reports. They get feedback. We have chat sessions and LinkedIn group sessions. They get mentoring and if they complete that program, they get a tool kit that has all kinds of tools that they can use to measure quality and to help reduce food losses. Every year, the foundation holds a clothing workshop for this group of young people that finish their program and so last year, we went to Tanzania and we had a group of about 12 come from different countries around the world. This year, we’re hoping to have a workshop in West Africa, and two years ago we went to India, so we’re trying to get them not only to work with us in this clothing workshop, meet the experts we have from the U.S. and other countries that we have on the board of the foundation, but we want them to meet each other because then, they form this lifelong network where they help each other with things or they answer each other’s questions. They do projects together. The last few years, there’s been quite a bit of funding opportunities coming around for Postharvest projects and so they write project proposals together. They get funding to do training in their own countries and then the foundation just stays in the background but provides support. We’ll send them resources. We’ll send them information if they need it. We’ll help them design a project or help them find resource people.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: For our listeners out there that just joined us, we’re so honored to have with us today Lisa Kitinoja. She’s the founder of the Postharvest Education Foundation. You can check out all the important work she is doing with her colleagues at www.postharvest.org. Lisa, now wait a second. You laid out a fascinating business model for your foundation so what you’re saying is everything that you’ve learned from your field around the world the last 30 years, you’re able to have started this foundation but really leverage the technological revolution to influence so many more people now with all of your knowledge using online teaching and online tools to spread the knowledge that you’ve learned over all these years.
LISA KITINOJA: Yes, right, and what I’m amazed by myself is the low cost of this. Just for example, I’ve worked on projects where we’re given some funding to do training of trainers or capacity building. It will often cost maybe five, six, seven thousand per person to do a weeklong workshop and they barely get a glimpse of the field and how to become a professional or an expert. I’ve also seen organizations that offer workshops and short courses and they attract people from around the world. They’ll charge $5- to $10,000 for one week of education and so it’s completely out of the reach of these young people in poor nations so what we wanted to do was offer a program that was really reasonably priced so that everyone who wanted to participate could participate. We’ve kept the fees very low. In fact, I don’t want to advertise this too loudly but if someone tells me they can’t afford the fees, we just sort of waive them or find them a sponsor or something. We don’t turn them down because they can’t afford the fee. At the end of the program, we give them a tool kit that’s worth more than what they paid as their fees and so it turns out to be something that’s very low cost and very easy to access for people. We haven’t found that to be a barrier to do this educational activity. The main thing for me is that I want to make sure that by the time I retire completely that there are young people in all these different countries who can pick up the work that I had been doing and I love the idea- and this happens to me now after four or five years of providing education- when the phone rings and someone from a country in Africa asks me, ‘Can you come and help us on such and such a day for such and such a time?’ and I look at my calendar and I say, ‘No, I’m sorry. I can’t do that. I’m busy.’ I can follow it up by saying, ‘but there’s a local person that we have trained and has gone through this year of foundation training in postharvest specialist. They have tools, they have knowledge, they have skills. Please call them and they can help you’ and so that happens to me regularly now and it always puts a big smile on my face.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: With your program at the Postharvest Foundation, you’ve in many ways democratized the learning process of the skills that you want and need these young people to learn by putting it online. It’s fascinating. Lisa, can you share a little bit about the whole importance and the foundational issue of your program? Why is it important for all these women farmers and young farmers and small farmers to learn to produce all this harvest, losses, and food waste, just so our listeners understand the importance why this is so critical to make a better and a more sustainable world for all of us to live in?
LISA KITINOJA: Okay, well, thank you for that question because most of my education and my career where I was working on postharvest food losses, I often had to start out by explaining just what that was. What is postharvest handling and why am I working on food losses? More recently, some of the bigger organizations of the world have started to look at this and what they’ve documented is that globally, food losses are about 40 to 50%, so about half of the food that we grow is wasted. It just doesn’t get from the farm to the people who need to eat it. In countries where I’ve worked, it’s even higher than that. There are places where they don’t have electricity. They don’t have any way to cool something or put it in a refrigerator so they can have losses of 80% or even all of it can be lost if it’s attacked by pests or if it decays so what we have been doing is we are letting these young people document the losses in their own country first so that they’re sure that they know that this is a really big problem and then once they understand the scope of these losses and how to measure them, they know how to reduce them so it’s really becoming a great career opportunity for all of them.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: And, for people that want to help your great mission and help the Postharvest Education Foundation train more young people around the world to be postharvest specialists, what’s the best way to help you and your mission, Lisa?
LISA KITINOJA: Well, you’ve given the website address and that’s exactly the way to do it. We have a donation page and we’re trying this year to raise about $20,000 to bring our current batch of e-learners. We have 32 enrolled this year. We want to bring them to a closing workshop in West Africa and so that’s our goal for the year. Even bringing one is a big success story and the more we can bring, the better.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That is great and I hope that can happen and for our listeners out there that want to contribute to Lisa’s great mission at the Postharvest Foundation, please go to www.postharvest.org. Thank you, Lisa, for being a visionary sustainable farming evangelist and ambassador. You are truly living proof that green is good.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Welcome back to Green is Good, and we’re so honored to have with us today Jim Barber. He’s the Managing Partner of Luke’s Toy Factory. Welcome to Green is Good, Jim.
JIM BARBER: Thank you for having me on. I really appreciate it.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: You know, Jim, you have a fascinating background that has nothing to do with the toy industry really. Can you share your journey and your story leading up to the founding of Luke’s Toy Factory?
JIM BARBER: Well, sure. My main business for most of my life has been as a photography. I’m what’s known as a still life photographer. I do products. I do annual reports, advertising, all kinds of business to business photography so while I haven’t had direct contact with a manufacturing environment, I’ve had a lot of interaction with people in those businesses and as you’re sitting in the studio working on things, you spend a lot of time talking about the business so I kind of got a little background into all that and then a few years ago, I met someone who was in the toy business and we started talking about things and he told me about how all these toys were being recalled and my kids were all grown by that point so I thought this was a good chance to get rid of these toys and I was looking at them and I noticed that all of these toys were made in China and not only that but a couple of them, I think it was the Thomas the Tank Engine toys, were some of the toys that had been recalled and when you see something like that, there’s kind of a feeling of this isn’t right. These guys had to know they were doing this so that’s kind of where I got started with the idea of maybe there’s a better way to approach the whole toy industry.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Gotcha, and so how did that evolve and for our listeners out there that want to follow along as Jim and I have a chat today, you can go to his great website. It’s www.lukestoyfactory.com. How did that discussion and your epiphany evolve bringing in your son, Luke? How did that all come about then to making a business out of this?
JIM BARBER: Well, there was a few false starts. We originally what happens is 85 or 80% of the toys are made in China that are sold here in the U.S. Generally, for a wooden toy, that involved like a team of 30 to 40 people, each who have a specific job, and they’re low paid, hard working, but they’re extremely low paid workers in China and that’s how these companies are able to make their profit on these toys even though they have to ship them halfway across the earth to get them here so what I started looking at was how can you make a wooden toy here economically? And at the same time, I had found out about this process. It was really being used for decking and outdoor furniture. It’s called wood plastic composite so what that is is you take a plastic material and you replace between 30 and 40% of it with wood, with sawdust from basically a waste stream and where we’re getting ours is from furniture from factories out in the Midwest and the interesting thing is is that that material, even though a big part of it now is wood, it can be injection molded. The injection molding process makes it much easier to make a toy without having to have a team of factory workers. Your injection mold is a big part of the process. You still have people that run the machinery and there’s a lot of support people but it’s not quite the same as the massive numbers they throw into toy production in China.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: So, now technology has allowed an entrepreneur like you to transcend the old practices and really create a sustainable toy factory for the 21st century, a sustainable toy model for the 21st century?
JIM BARBER: You know, the interesting thing too is that at the same time that this was developing, the whole 3D printing revolution was getting underway. I had actually gone to a national plastics convention down in Florida and that was the first place I saw a 3D printer. In the past, if you wanted to design a toy, you’d have to send it to some model maker and it would cost thousands to have them mock up a model. Now, you put it on a 3D printer and for less than $100, you’ve got a toy, so you can check it and make sure that it works.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That is really interesting. I’d never thought of that. All right, so now you get going and at what part do you bring Luke? You’re talking to your son, come on and join and let’s do this together. Where does that happen? Where does that magic happen? Because that’s exciting, to bring your son in, and when did that happen and when did you guys realize with this new technology, you can create a business that can make profit and you can enjoy but also a model that can withstand and to grow, together as a real business model?
JIM BARBER: I gotta say, there’s starts and stops to this whole story, and originally, the guy who I had as a friend who was in the toy industry was gonna go in with me on this whole idea and he was a designer and I thought well, he’ll be the one to design these toys but his process of design was completely different from the much more highly technical process of injection molding design and it wasn’t something that he was really comfortable with and he had other issues and just decided that he was gonna bail out of it so I was left with this 3D printer that I had leased and an idea but nobody to follow up and my son, Luke, had just graduated college and it was at the time when no one was getting hired for anything, like three years ago, so I said ‘Luke, come and learn this 3D Cad program and see if you can figure it out,’ and he’s always been interested in toys and he’s always been interested in that area of things but he’s much more literal mind in terms of how you do things so he actually took to this program really well and within a couple of months, he had some pretty nice designs. In fact, the fire truck was one of the first things that we had designed. Our thinking was that if worse comes to worst and we can’t sell them any place else, we could go around to individual fire companies all around Connecticut and we can sell them like 100 at a time as a promotion. There’s always a fallback and it involves throwing these things in the back of our car and driving around from store to store.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That was your B plan?
JIM BARBER: Yeah. There’s a B plan, there’s a C plan.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: I like it.
JIM BARBER: That’s how I got my designs going and once I found out what Luke could do and he’s the one that came up with this idea of how they fit together and so we’re aiming for like preschool kids because in terms of the toy business, that’s when they’re still playing with toys. By the time they’re 6 or 7 or 8, all of a sudden, there’s computers and iPads and that really pulls them away so we wanted to make a toy that was a little bit of a challenge so that they didn’t just sit and watch it play, which it what happens with so many toys now. They push a button and the toy buzzes and rides around and does whatever it does. To us, we want the kids to make the sound and we want the kids to push it around. We want to get back to the simple wooden toy that has kind of fallen by the wayside with all of this fancy electronic stuff so Luke had this all in hand and then it was up to me to figure out how do we make these things and I went around to a bunch of injection molders and what I found out was for the most part, anybody who made this kind of stuff went out of business 20 years ago when everybody switched to China and most of the injection molding businesses now are in high end things, medical, aerospace, automotive, and getting someone to even talk to me was really difficult but eventually, I met this guy up in Southington here in Connecticut and he was willing to talk to me and as soon as he saw the toys, he was like okay, I’m in, I love them, so he’s been a real guiding star in terms of how you actually make this happen. He put us in touch with a mold maker up in Massachusetts and he put us in touch with the company that’s supplying our materials and so he’s really made huge difference.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: If you just joined us, we’ve got Jim Barber. He’s the Managing Partner of Luke’s Toy Factory. You can check out what him and his son, Luke, are doing at LukesToyFactory.com. So, let’s talk about this. You and Luke have a green toy product. It doesn’t have all of the hazards that the old toys had and it’s made out of recycled materials, recycled plastic, you said, and sawdust. Is this the magic sauce that you’re making your products out of?
JIM BARBER: Well, here’s the thing. The recycled part of it at this point is the sawdust, which comes from furniture factories. I would like to say that I’m using recycled resin but at this point, I have to work with what’s available. The problem is you have a very rigorous testing procedure you have to go through with toys. Each toy, each color, each part of the toy, they actually scrape and test and take out bits of the material and test for heavy metals and arsenic and things like that, which, believe it or not, are in colors, especially the old colorants that were coming from China. Everyone is pushing to get rid of that but in terms of the plastic, no one wants, at this point, to certify to me that they can give me recycled plastic that is clean and can pass these tests so at this point, I’m using virgin plastic and recycled material so between 30 and 40% of this product is recycled. I wish I could say it was 100% and we’re working towards that but again, I’m a small guy. It’s me and my son, Luke, and so what happens is you gotta take what you can get. On the other hand, this company that makes our material, a company called Raytech out in Michigan, they actually flew two people over here to meet us and sit down with us and show us colors and have really been open to all of it so we’re trying to work on a way to get a stream from a post industrial source instead of post consumer source, which can then give us a chain of custody so we know this is where it was and this is how it got to where it is.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: You know, Jim, in your new business life as an ecopreneur with Luke, talk a little bit about the fascinating balance between building a sustainable product but also safety and then also price because as we’ve done this show now over five year, whether you’re talking to Walmart or Coors or any of the other amazing and big and iconic brands from around the world or ecopreneurs like you that are really the innovators of the new generation and of the new economy, balancing sustainability with price and safety has become a journey. It’s never perfect. Can you talk a little bit about the balancing act that you always now have to adhere to and continue to watch while you build your business model?
JIM BARBER: Well, that’s one of the reason, again, why we started with the idea of injection model, just to start an overview, is to make a wooden toy here , there are great people here in the U.S. that make wonderful wooden toys and I take nothing away from them. There are terrific handmade wonderful things. My daughter goes to college up in Vermont and you see these companies up there making these great things but they’re handmade and so that’s expensive and you have to pay a premium for that. What I’m trying to do is I’m trying to compete with the $15 to $20 toy that comes from China and to those people that are buying those toys, they can look at a $45 handmade wooden toy and it’s great but they’re not gonna buy that for their kids because they just can’t. That’s just the way of the world today so by using the injection molding process, you take out a certain amount of the need to make everything out of hand so you can injection mold it and the color is in the toy so you don’t have paint on the surface. We’ve designed them so there’s no metal axles, there’s no screws, nails, anything like that. When we test it, we have to use materials that are safe, which is why we have to balance the recycled plastic at this point with the virgin plastic but again, I think as we become bigger, we’ll have a better chance to say to these companies here’s what we want, solve the problem, and these companies will do it. They’re making this material without a buyer. They’re making it to lead people and that, I think, is a great thing.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Listen. When Steve Jobs built the iPhone, he didn’t know whether it was buying and you’re doing the same here. Talk a little bit. Are other toy companies green like yours and where is the toy business changing right now and where do you see it going in the months and years ahead, Jim?
JIM BARBER: Well, I think if I had to say one toy company that I look on as a role model, it’s a company called Green Toys. They’re out in California. They make their toys out of recycled milk bottles, HDPE, and they make a different product. They make a completely different thing from us. They make a pure plastic toy. They make a toy that’s done in the style of plastic toys. What we’re trying to do is make our toy in the style of wooden toys with a little more detail than you can afford to make as a wood worker but they’re a great company. There was another company that briefly was using wood plastic composites here in the U.S., but again, with more of a plastic style but then they got bought by a Chinese company and they’re gone so basically, as far as I know, it’s us and Green Toys and then the great number of more handmade things. There’s certain kinds of things that it makes more sense to make here in the U.S. and there’s a lot of things that are made by more handmade kinds of methods that are great products. There is a whole world of American toy manufacturers but you have to look for them.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Right. Are you worried about others copying your idea?
JIM BARBER: I don’t want them copying our designs, but if they copy the idea of making toys here in the U.S. sustainably and in some way I have a small part of making that happen, I’m perfectly happy. I’m not trying to become rich off of this. I’m trying to make toys for people who can afford them here in the U.S.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Are most of your sales now online or eventually, are you gonna into more of the traditional toy sales companies that are retail or are you gonna mix a balance of retail and online? What’s your vision and Luke’s vision on that?
JIM BARBER: Right now, we’re gonna be mostly online and the biggest reason for that is two things. Creating a retail package is difficult and expensive. It’s a tough thing to do and right now, we don’t have the resources to do that and the second things is managing a retail environment where you have 5,000 retailers who each take 12 toys each means that that’s a lot of phone calls and a lot of billing and a lot of following up, whereas you can go for online retailers, which is where the business is going. Amazon and large retailers are killing the local market so that may change. It’s all in a state of flux, but right now, that’s where it’s going.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: You know, Jim, with regards to doing business, right now, your business is all in the family with you and Luke. What other sustainable things are you guys doing now that you’ve got green on your mind with Luke’s Toy Factory in your own household?
JIM BARBER: With the company ourselves and with us as a family, what we try to do is we try to buy locally. We try to work locally, keep that whole distance thing down to a minimum.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: So, buy local and buy your toys from Luke’s Toy Factory. Jim, we’re gonna have you back on and hopefully, maybe even have Luke on with you one day. To learn more about the story of Luke’s Toy Factory or buy their toys, go to www.lukestoyfactory.com. Jim Barber, thank you for being an inspirational sustainable toy innovator for the 21st century. You are truly living proof that green is good.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Welcome to another edition of Green is Good. We’re so honored today to have Colleen Patrick-Goudreau. She’s an author, speaker, teacher and compassionate crusader. Welcome to Green is Good, Colleen.
COLLEEN PATRICK-GOUDREAU: Thank you, John. Thank you for having me.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: If you’d like to follow along as we get the honor of talking with Colleen today, you could go to her great website, www.joyfulvegan.com. Colleen, before we get talking about all the great work you’re doing in terms of thought leadership as vegan royalty, can you share your story? What was your journey leading up to your great leadership in the vegan world?
COLLEEN PATRICK-GOUDREAU: Well, you know, I’m like everybody else who grew up eating animals. I grew up on the east coast. I grew up in New Jersey, though you’re not supposed to hear that in my voice anymore because once I moved to California, you lose your accent. I grew up in New Jersey and I grew up in a family. I love animals. I loved my dog. I would go to the zoo. I loved clothes that had animals all over them. I always read books about animals. I watched movies about animals. In every way, I was taught that animals were a huge part of my life and my development and I didn’t know I was being fed animals. I had no idea and when I was starting to get the idea, I was given some pretty lame excuses and reasons and nothing ever changed and I continued to eat them and I don’t think I could say that I just went on eating them happily because it just really something in the back of your mind feeling uncomfortable with it and I think that’s where our excuses come from. If you’re comfortable with something, we don’t have to make justifications for it so when I was about 19, I read Diet for a New America and it was the first time I made the connection between the animals I was eating and the violence that I was contributing to. It started me on my own journey of learning everything I could about these issues and the most immediate thing I could do was not participate and so I stopped eating land animals and eventually I stopped eating anything that came out of the sea and then eventually anything that came off of or from an animal and I would say that moment when that happened, when I actually became vegan, it’s such an interesting phrase we use but it really is this moment of awakening and it was that for me. It was this moment of absolute awakening where I looked at the world through a completely different lens than I had before, completely different in the sense that it was very clear to me, not completely different in that this was a new feeling. I had been a compassionate person. Compassion was a huge part of who I was just as a person, even when I was eating animals. What happened when I became vegan was that all the blocks to enabling me to live compassionately unconditionally were removed and that’s really how I equate becoming vegan was that I literally started manifesting the values that had been inside of me in my behavior.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: So cool. So, wow, back at 19, so you started really early.
COLLEEN PATRICK-GOUDREAU: I was 19 when I stopped eating land animals. It took me a good seven years before I became vegan.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Right, gotcha, and you know, you’re the prolific author of six books and I’ll name some of them; The Joy of Vegan, which has become the Bible of vegan baking, The Vegan Table, Color Me Vegan, Vegan’s Daily Companion and all these books for our listeners out there, I own all of them. I highly encourage all of you to go on Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com or find them at other fine bookstores wherever you’re at. You’ve become a shining star and a huge beacon of hope in the vegan world. What is it like to be a force of nature and what are you up against in terms of conceptions and challenges that are thrown at the vegan industry or people who want to eat this way. What are you fighting in terms of misconceptions and other lies that have been just propagated out there against people who want to take us into the future and the right way of eating?
COLLEEN PATRICK-GOUDREAU: Well, it’s really frustrating because people are so disempowered and my work is really dedicated to letting people kick back and get the information they need to feel empowered, to manifest their values of compassion and wellness. Whatever reason people are motivated to stop eating animals and anything that comes out of an animal, whatever reason they’re motivated to do so, I want to be there to debunk the myths and to give them the tools they need to do it. That’s really the gist of my work. It’s been the foundation of my work from the very beginning and I think I’ve been successful because I’ve been so clear in that mission. I’m not trying to do anything other than give people what they need. I always say I’m not asking you to merge with my values. I’m just asking you to live according to your own and it’s just really an incredible joy and honor to be part of these transformations. What’s frustrating is that from the outside, it looks like this is something that’s difficult, something that’s hard, something that’s niche, something that’s alternative when really this is about something we all care about and that really is compassion and most of us would never do to animals what we’re paying people to do and people think that there’s some sort of agenda and there’s something outside of what they’re used to and really, we’re talking about fruits and vegetable and nuts and seeds and beans and grains and herbs and spices, things that people are already eating but they don’t call vegan so everything I do is to kind of debunk those myths and demystify what people think of “vegan” and recognize that it’s something that’s already part of their lives. They just don’t label it vegan and that approach really worked for people because my work is very much based on accessibility and familiarity and quite literally, joy, so that’s what I try to bring to the table and it attracts people and it really works. The frustration is that I don’t have the millions and billions of dollars that the industries who are persuading people to buy their products have and that’s what we’re up against but I don’t dwell on that to much because I’m just trying to do my work and just kind of cut through all the noise.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Gotcha, and speaking of, you mentioned ethical and farming practices and what’s going on with animals right now is we had the founder of the sanctuary on a couple weeks back. Talk a little bit about your stance on ethical farming practices and what’s going on with animals now with regards to feeding America, feeding the world, and how can we be better steward of the planet by treating animals better than we’ve treated them historically?
COLLEEN PATRICK-GOUDREAU: Well, you know, for me, the foundation of my work, especially around animal protection, comes from the belief that I don’t believe animals are here for us and I think so much of what has gone wrong in our society for the last several hundred/ thousand years, because we haven’t been farming animals for more than a thousand years, but that’s part of what the problem is. We’re missing that connection with animals and with nature and we see them as here for us and that, to me, is the problem and the solution isn’t that we’ll treat them better. The solution is don’t use them and they’re not here for us. They have their own desires and their own needs and their own lives and their own bodies and their own offspring and they’re not here for me so for me, I would rather see us move in the direction of getting us away from these very old strange practice of impregnating animals so that we can force her to lactate so that we can take her milk for what? We don’t even drunk our own human milk into adulthood. It doesn’t even make any sense. The animals whose milk we’re taking, their offspring don’t even drink their milk into adulthood. It doesn’t make any sense. Why would we go through that? Why would we go through the animals to get to the nutrients that the animals have in their flesh and secretions because they’re eating plants? So, we need to skip the middle animal and go directly to the plants for our nutrition and for everything we need rather than use all the resources that it takes to keep and to use and to kill animals. It’s not good for them. It’s not good for us so I don’t really think there’s a way to do it in a way that really honors (a) what we really do care about and (b) that honors the animals themselves and their own autonomy and ( c) the resources that it takes to farm animals.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: For our listeners who just joined us, we’re so excited to have Colleen Patrick-Goudreau with us today. To learn more about all of Colleen’s important and great work, you can go to JoyfulVegan.com. You can learn more about what she’s doing. There’s podcasts there. All of her six books are there to buy and lots of other resources. Colleen, one of the top things now that are being discussed in society and in the media is this whole paleo versus vegan thing. What do you make of this whole paleo versus vegan? It sounds like almost like a UFC cage fights and it’s like it’s all or nothing to the death and paleos don’t want to hear anything about vegans and they think that that’s all wrong and vegans are really not too keen on this whole paleo publicity trend. What’s your take on this?
COLLEEN PATRICK-GOUDREAU: You know, it’s just another diet and it’s so frustrating because people think there’s more credibility to it because you use buzz words like traditional and ancient and artisan and ancestors and paleo. You use these words that have these romantic notions associated with them and so then people think there’s something more credible about it. It’s a diet. It’s a diet just like the Atkins Diet is a diet and I don’t have to — that’s all it is and yet it’s taken off like crazy. The difference for me is that I don’t look at vegan as a diet. I don’t. For me, vegan is just a manifestation of compassion. It’s just another word for living compassionately and so for me, that’s the foundation of veganism so it’s talked about in the media a lot as a diet. It doesn’t have to be complicated. People are so confused. It comes back to what I said before. They’re so confused. They’re so disempowered. They hear all of these different things in the media about what they should eat, what they shouldn’t eat, the news study that came out that coffee’s good, that coffee’s not good, that wine is good, that wine’s not good, that this is a power food, oh blueberries, they’re the new power food. Just eat plants. It doesn’t have to be more complicated than make the foundation of your diet whole foods. Make the foundation of your diet whole foods. That’s the principle behind my book, Color Me Vegan. I’m not spouting a particular kind of diet. Here’s what I’m spouting. Eat by color. That’s all you need to do. That’s all you need to do is when you go to the grocery store, choose as much color as you can, as much variety of colors as you can because in the colored plant foods is all the phytochemicals and those phytochemicals affect different parts of our bodies in a really positive way so we’ve heard of beta carotene. Everyone knows beta-carotene in carrots. We know that the beta-carotene is really good for our eyes. We’ve heard of lycopene in tomatoes. We know lycopene is really good for the prostate so when you pick these different colors and eat these different colors, it affects the different parts of our bodies in a really positive way. You don’t have to follow a plan. You don’t have to buy certain recipes and certain books. It doesn’t have to be more complicated than eat by color and eat whole foods.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: We love to give solutions on Green is Good and you bring up a great point. Coach some of our listeners out there that are thinking of making the switch and think that it’s too daunting of a process. Can you give some tips for making the switch to a plant based diet from an animal based diet and also some of your favorite tips that you integrate into your life? Are supplements necessary? Are any type of vitamins or any other type of things necessary? What should people do if they’re really on the fence right now and they really do want to make a switch and they’re just a little bit nervous to do so?
COLLEEN PATRICK-GOUDREAU: Sure. First of all, I want to mention the 30-day vegan challenge because I have an online program right now called 30DayVeganChallenge.com. That’s where they can go. The book is coming out in January, 2015 and it answers all of these kinds of questions about supplements and cooking and making the time to cook and getting in the kitchen and chopping vegetables and eating out and traveling and all of it but to your question the first thing I would say is start where you’re at. A lot of people say, oh my God, I could totally give up chicken and meat. I could totally give up all of that but I could never give up X, right? It’s usually cheese so they say I could give up meat but I couldn’t give up cheese and I say okay, well give up meat and don’t give up cheese. Start somewhere but don’t do nothing because you can’t do everything. Do something and that’s the first thing I would say to people. People think that they have to do everything and so that’s why they feel like they can’t right away. They do nothing at all. Don’t do nothing because you can’t do everything. Start where you are. The second thing is I would say start supplementing things that are familiar to you, that’s part of your daily diet that are easy switches so start using plant based milk. The only beverage we have a requirement for is water but we’re so used to having milk in our culture so we’re so used to animal milk and of course, people know that there are a ton of plant milks out there. There’s soymilk, there’s almond milk, there’s hemp milk, there’s rice milk, there’s cashew milk, peanut milk. You can make milk from any grain, any nut, any seed, so start switching out the milks that you’re using, maybe for your cereal, maybe for your coffee, maybe for baking, and same thing with butter. Earth Balance is an amazing, wonderful — it’s a non-dairy butter and people say, oh, it’s fake butter. No, it’s butter. It’s just made from plant fat rather than animal fat, so start switching out those things that you can so it means you’re still having all of the familiar things in your repertoire but you’re just having more healthful, compassionate versions so those are the places I would start and raise the bar a little bit. Get back in the kitchen. People complain that they don’t have time to chop vegetables. We have the time to chop vegetables. We’re not making the time to chop vegetables. It doesn’t take more than 15 minutes a day to chop some vegetables, put them in some containers, put them in the refrigerator so that when we come home and it’s time for dinner, we go oh, it’s chopped up. I can make a soup. I can make a stir-fry. I can make something healthy rather than just pulling out a frozen pizza because we think we don’t have time.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: You know, Colleen, we’re down to the last four minutes or so, and there’s so many questions I want to ask you and I want our listeners to learn more about you but more specifically, we’re going into interesting times in terms of leadership roles and folks that are really showing us a better way and I’ve been a huge fan of yours forever and you are a force of nature. Who writes six books? Most people are just happy to get one book out in their life and you’ve done six so I’m just fascinated and I know our listeners would be interested. What gets you up out of bed in the morning? What drives you? How have you become such an important force of nature in this new food evolution, which has really, in so many ways, become a food revolution, but it’s the appropriate evolution , and who has been your heroes? Who has inspired you to go do the great work and the important work that you’re currently doing?
COLLEEN PATRICK-GOUDREAU: Well, thank you. You know, what gets me out of bed in the morning is the animals. I do this for them. This is all for the animals and that includes human animals and what drives me is that I know that to be their voice is such an incredible honor. They don’t have a voice and they need us to speak for them so to be able to get up every morning and make that the main thing on my to-do list, that’s pretty motivating and then the second thing is that I know that in doing that, it’s working and I hear from so many people all around the world who tell me that their lives have been transformed because of a podcast of mine that they listened to or a book of mine that they’ve read or a talk that I gave that they heard and how can I not keep going? I know something’s working for people so that really motivates me. My inspiration aside from the animals are the people who are open, the people who say I want to be better. I want to do it differently. I’m open. Tell me how I can do this differently. We’re not gonna be perfect. None of us are perfect. This is not about purity. This is not about a certification in perfection. This is about doing the best we can to make the most compassionate choices and I know there are millions of people out there who want to make the right choices. Those are the people who are my inspiration who come and say I’m open, just tell me. Guide me. And that’s what motivates me. It’s the most beautiful thing. I know people are good people who want to do the right thing and I’m just honored that I can provide some guidance, provide some tools to make that possible for them.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Colleen, we’re down to the last two minutes or so. Talk about your latest campaign around the 30-Day Vegan Challenge, which is your new book coming out January 2015. Share what you did with that and how that’s going so far.
COLLEEN PATRICK-GOUDREAU: Yeah, that’s really exciting, so the 30-Day Vegan Challenge is coming out in January, hopefully maybe the holidays of 2014 and I decided to go to the public, our community of amazing people who believe in this work and who know how important it is and we funded to publish the book and I’m in the process right now of editing and doing the photography and I’m on the hiring out all of the professionals to do all of the work to make this a beautiful special book and this is a book that literally guides people, gives them the tools they need to make this transition and to do it joyfully and healthfully and confidently so it was pretty amazing. I’ve had books published by, obviously, traditional publishers including Random House and it was just an honor to go directly to my public and say let’s do this together. That way I don’t have to ask anybody else for their permission. I just need your support so it’s been amazing.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: We’re gonna have you back on to further discuss the 30-Day Vegan Challenge and to buy all of Colleen’s great books, you can go on Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, or go into one of your local bookstores and buy and enjoy her great books and start cooking vegan. Go to JoyfulVegan.com to learn more about Colleen. You can buy all of her books there or listen to her podcasts. Thank you, Colleen, for being an inspiring visionary vegan-preneur and compassionate crusader. You are truly living proof that green is good.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Welcome back to Green is Good, and we’re so honored to have with us Cliff Feigenbaum. He’s the founder and Managing Editor of GreenMoney Journal and GreenMoney.com. Welcome to Green is Good, Cliff.
CLIFF FEIGENBAUM: Great to be here.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Hey, we’re so excited and honored to have you on today. You’re doing really important stuff but before we get talking about your great brands, GreenMoney Journal and GreenMoney.com, which by the way, for our listeners out there, I’m on GreenMoney.com right now. You can follow along as we speak with Cliff today. It’s a great website, GreenMoney.com. Before we get talking about all that though, Cliff, talk a little bit about your story and your journey leading up the founding of the GreenMoney Journal and GreenMoney.com. How did you even get here?
CLIFF FEIGENBAUM: Well, you know, I was learning about money in my life through watching my father go through a lot of financial success and then the opposite and he ended up going bankrupt and dying of a heart attack at 46 of extreme financial stress and it really taught me some lessons about looking at my own relationship with my money and my own financial thoughts and feelings so then I was working at a hospital in the northwest and I was trying to be more aware of my financial situation and so I discovered that the 401(k) program that I had chosen some years before was full of mutual funds full of tobacco stocks and I thought for a health care institution, this is really inappropriate and I don’t want to profit from tobacco and I don’t want this in my portfolio so it was really an awareness that if I’m having trouble making basic, informed financial decisions, there’s probably lots of people who are and that’s kind of how I ended up starting GreenMoney.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Wow, and how many years ago was that?
CLIFF FEIGENBAUM: That was 1992.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Oh my gosh. Wow, that’s incredible. 1992.
CLIFF FEIGENBAUM: Well, it’s been a really incredible journey , as you call it, and we have felt very strong about people getting a stronger relationship and understanding of what moves them about their business, thinking about what they want to do in the world. What do they want to profit from in their investments and what don’t they want to profit from, really, to me, an important question that no one asked me when I got started but it’s part of our conversation really with our readers.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Wow, and I want to also mention how did you and Bloomberg Press get together? And you wrote a book called Investing With Your Values: Making Money and Making a Difference. Share a little bit about that story and how that went and how’s that book going so far? And for our listeners out there, please go to Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, or your local bookstore and buy Cliff’s book. This is important stuff, everybody. How’d that happen?
CLIFF FEIGENBAUM: Well, I had been publishing the GreenMoney Journal for about five years and the phone rang and it was Bloomberg Press and they said, “We’ve heard about you, we’ve heard about socially responsible investing, and we want to do a book about this,” and I said, “Well, I’m not really sure that we can work together because you believe just in profits and we believe in principles and profits,” and they said, “No, no, no, no, we see this coming. We really want to be on the forefront. We know that you’re a leader. We won’t hardly edit the book at all because you know more about it than us so we really, really want you to do this,” and so that was in 1997, and it was a great honor to have a Wall Street firm acknowledge sustainable investing, socially responsible investing, in this way so it’s not available right now because it’s long since past but a friend of mine is writing the second who co-wrote the book with me. He’s writing a book called The Resilient Investor and that’s coming out in January so that’s gonna be kind of a part two to what we were writing because every chapter that we wrote in the book, the different aspects of green investing and sustainable investing, became so big and so expansive that each chapter could become its own book and so it was a very exciting and very interesting time but each of us who wrote the book, I wrote it with two other folks, Hal and Jack Brill, and we all just, our businesses just blossomed after that and they manage money and so we never got back all together to write another book but it was really quite a thing to go to Bloomberg Headquarters and everything and launch the book.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That is great, and so for our listeners out there again, go to Cliff’s great website, www.greenmoney.com. I’m on it right now. It has so much amazing information that’s important for everybody out there who’s managing their own household income and their personal finances and trying to make a future for themselves. Talk a little bit about what are the different elements of green and sustainable investing, Cliff?
CLIFF FEIGENBAUM: Well, there’s really three parts to this, and I really wanted to say that people who are managing their own investments or if they have a financial advisor or planner or money manager, they need to know about this because they need to know about people’s values and what they want to profit from and what they don’t want to profit from and so the three aspects to sustainable investing, which is kind of the second part of what started as socially responsible investing, has kind of morphed into and grown and matured into sustainable investing and the first part of that is where you kind of look at screening out things. What don’t you want to profit from? For me, it might be tobacco, alcohol, gambling, weapons, slave labor, things like that. For me, I don’t want to profit from it. On the flip side, you look at what do you want at what do you want to profit from? What company, what practices do you want to make money from? For me, it’s renewable energy. It’s organic and natural foods and those industries are doing really well and I think those are leading to a more sustainable, green future and I mean green as both environmentally as well as in my wallet. The third aspect is shareholder activism whereas through the socially responsible sustainable mutual funds that are out there, they vote your shares in a more responsible way that can influence corporate behavior and influence boards in a way that, again, is more sustainable for our future, is more sustainable for our bottom line because all of these issues that we’re talking about are bottom line issues; the well-being of your workforce, the well-being of what you’re putting out there as a product. What are you creating in the world and is it healthy? Is it good for the environment? If it’s not, you shouldn’t be doing it.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: How is it different from socially responsible investing, Cliff? I get confused. Socially responsible sometimes is interchanged with green and sustainable. How do you differentiate those terms?
CLIFF FEIGENBAUM: Well, sustainable is much less about social issues and it’s much less about what not to do. Sustainable investing is much more about investing in a positive future. What are the good companies to invest in? So, it’s a more on the positive side of the investing curve than the negative, just staying away from bad companies, so that’s one of the major differences and the other part of sustainable investing that I really like is called community or impact investing where you invest locally in banks or credit unions, loan funds that are in your own state or in your own community or even internationally. Calvert Foundation is one of those that’s really been a leader in this area and so it’s something I actually wrote the chapter in the book on, community investing, and so it’s something that we talk a lot about. How do you have more of an impact with your money in your own community? And, I can give you an example of here in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where I live, we have something called the Home Life Investment Fund which helps people understand how to get their family economics in line to be able to buy a house, get their credit in order, understand what’s happening in their financial lives, so they have to go through a lot of financial literacy before they qualify for a Home Life home and so it’s a really great program and they have investment notes so it’s something that I personally invest in and it’s something that happens to be in my community, which I like to support not just mutual funds that are on Wall Street, but how do I have an impact in my own city?
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That’s so interesting, investing locally like that. Your website, again, is just amazing. I’m just entranced with it while talking to you here, www.greenmoney.com. You talk about everything from investing to shopping. Why that kind of range? Why isn’t it just straight blocking and tackling, investing, return on investment, things like that? Why do you branch out into these different issues, Cliff? Why is that important holistically speaking?
CLIFF FEIGENBAUM: We wanted to really talk to people about where their money interfaces with the world and everybody shops. Everybody goes to the grocery store. Not everybody invests. Maybe they invest a little bit. Maybe they can only afford a Pax World fund that starts at $250. Maybe some of our listeners have $100,000 or more to invest so we really try and speak to everybody because we have a little something for everybody, I believe, and so we don’t manage money; we manage information and that’s always been GreenMoney’s focus is to help people understand about their relationship with their money. Where is it going? Who are they supporting? Because they can really make a difference with their shopping dollars. Seventy percent of our economy is based on shopping and consumer so you can really shift companies by where you put your money, who you support. I happen to be a big supporter of Whole Foods and so I shop there and invest in the stock, which for me, is an exciting way to do both so it’s something that in fact, our newest issue is on sustainable agriculture and organics because that’s a topic that really matters a lot to a lot of people and a growing number of people.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Share a little bit about that. Share about the June issue talking about sustainable ag and organics. Share a little bit about why is that important and why does that affect really so many of us and all of our listeners?
CLIFF FEIGENBAUM: Well, I’ve really liked organics and sustainable agriculture for a long time as an investor and as a shopper because it affects our economy on so many different levels from even the environment to the farmer to not using as many chemicals to farm worker health to our own personal health to animal welfare. It has so many different aspects that we can align with if we want to be more aware of our personal health. I really feel that supporting my own personal health through buying organic is part of my health care plan.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Got it. Cliff, why is it important for people to become aware of what business practices and products they are willing to profit from and what they are not willing? You’ve given some great examples in terms of guns and tobacco and alcohol and you’ve given another great example on the other side of Whole Foods. Talk a little bit about how you deal with people emotionally and how you help guide them to become conscious investors and more conscious with regards to their interrelationship with money.
CLIFF FEIGENBAUM: Well, I think one good example of that is like right now, Monsanto is a company that’s very controversial. It’s in the GMOs and so does somebody believe that genetically modified organisms and GMO food is good for the world or not good for the world? Maybe Monsanto is in their mutual fund and they don’t even know it yet or just going and buying organics, make sure that you are not buying anything that’s a GMO so to me, that’s just a real quick thought but for me, the idea of asking yourself what do I want to profit from and what don’t I want to profit from is really money is an individual decision about how we spend it, how we invest it, how we manage it, and just getting clear about that and asking yourself. It doesn’t happen all at once. It didn’t happen all at once for me. It was really this continues to be an evolution for me personally as well. I write about things and bring in writers and topics that I care about, that as I see as the next topic and edge to pay attention to and so we write it in a very inviting yet challenging way. We really are so well connected after 20 years that if we invite somebody to write on a topic, we pretty much get them to say yes and I’ll just say that we approached the organics industry, it’s now a $35-billion industry, so 25% of the carrots sold in America are now organic, even at a Safeway and normal grocery stores, so it’s an expanding marketplace and that’s where we want to be.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: We’ve got about four minutes left, and you just brought up a great topic. You just said the next edge. I see that in July, your topic is the next generation of sustainability leaders, same thing as the next edge in many ways. What do you see as the next edge of industry? What are the mega trends and who are the leaders that are gonna take us there? We got about four minutes left so I’d love you to share with our listeners your crystal ball on the future of sustainability investing.
CLIFF FEIGENBAUM: Well, it is an exciting issue for me. In fact, I’ve actually asked a guest editor to invite his young up-and-coming friends to share their views on the future business world and so I can’t give away too much but I have to tell you this is gonna be one that people want to read. I’m excited. In fact, later this week I get the new articles in and so it will be on the website, GreenMoney.com. The July issue will be up there as well as people can sign up for our e-journal for free and so they can read this issue but people like Elon Musk of Spacex, to me very fascinating, and Jeff Bezos of Amazon. There’s really, really interesting people out there doing interesting things. I can’t keep anymore. I am so excited that sustainability has just exploded. It just blossomed so much. I’m paying attention to local food and the local food movement as well. I think that’s a key part of sustainability is understanding where our food and our water comes from because those are essential to our life and having that supply and clean water and clean food, that’s a sustainability edge that not only can we look for, but we can invest in and I think that sustainability should be the kind of companies that make money and not just companies doing bad things making money.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: We’re down to a minute or so. Any last thoughts for our investors out there who feel that it’s hopeless, that they’ve invested too much already? Any last thoughts on how to turn it around and that it’s never too late to turn around their finances and become conscious investors?
CLIFF FEIGENBAUM: Well, you can start really small, and also, I don’t want this to intimidate people that there’s actually a mutual fund company out there that has kept their initial investment of $250 the same since 1970. It’s the Pax World Fund. They’ve got great returns. They’ve got a great family of funds, even emerging markets, green technology funds, as well as their Pax World Balanced Fund. It’s where I suggest everybody to start because it’s a low minimum. It creates an avenue for your wealth to go to and be created so that’s one of my suggestions and I look forward to anybody asking a question of me. They can email me at [email protected] as well.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That’s wonderful, and you can subscribe to Cliff’s great, great newsletter at www.greenmoney.com. Just hit the subscribe here button and get with it. Become a conscious investor. Thank you, Cliff, for being a financial sustainability investment evangelist and leader. You are truly living proof that green is good.
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