John Shegerian: Welcome to another edition of Green is Good. We are so honored to have with us today, Mollie Engelhart, she is the owner and chef and founder of Sage Vegan. She is also my friend, and my brother and I are business partners with her. We’ve invested in her amazing food products. Welcome to Green is Good, Mollie.
Mollie Engelhart: Hi, thank you for having me.
John Shegerian: Mollie, we’re so excited to have you on today. I just have to get that disclaimer out there because I never want people to think otherwise of why we have people on and things of that such. But you are one of the premier restaurateurs in the United States. Sage has taken it by storm in Los Angeles, in Silver Lake and now on Culver City. And, it also is a vegan restaurant but before we get into talking about how you founded these two great restaurants and also your delicious ice cream brand KindKreme. I’d like you to share your journey. How’d you even get to this place. What made you want to go into the restaurant business and become a vegan?
Mollie Engelhart: I was raised vegan. I was vegan from the womb. So, there is no, where I came to a big epiphany about the animals and then stopped eating meat. When I was 12 I tried meat because I was like “Oh, it’s like destroying the environment and we’re getting cancer. We’re getting heart disease, all this stuff I knew. And we’re abusing animals by the millions. So, I was like this stuff is going to taste like… I thought the heavens were going to open up and gold was going to rain down on me when I tasted it. Because I knew the impact before I had even tasted it. And I was like “it’s kinda chewy and I’m good on it. And, I never ate it again. So, I did try meat once when I was twelve. I tried a little tiny bite of chicken and little tiny bite of a hamburger. But I was in a lot of things before I was in the restaurant business. I went to Cal art for film making right out of high school. So that’s how I got to California from New York. And while I was in college for film making my neighbor was in A and R at Sony and he hired me as his personal assistant while I was still at college. I went full time working for Max Stuss who’s now at desk GM but at the time was at Sony and I was his assistant for a brief period of time, a year or so, and then I opened my own recording studio in North Hollywood. I did that and was fairly successful at it for several years and then the music industry had a crash between pro tools and downloading the whole recording industry changed. People could record music for much less money and people were not selling albums the way they use to because people could steal music from the Internet for free. Because my business was still fairly new, five years old, I couldn’t weather that storm. We had so much expected so I sold everything. I sold my house and paid off all my debts. I was back down to zero. I was professionally a poet for several years. So, I was on HBO def poetry, toured the country. Was at every college from podunk nowhere to Harvard performing poetry. And, that was cool but that was not much money. Then I grew medical marijuana briefly for some years. And then my best friend Uni, and business partner got pregnant. She was an actress and she was like, “I want something more steady.” And I was like, well I don’t want to tour any more and it was lonely on the road. You do one hour of poetry and then you’re by yourself for 24 hours. So, we opened the ice cream shop and that pretty much very fast brings us to today. The ice cream shop led into Sage.
John Shegerian: And, the ice cream shop is called KindKreme, right?
Mollie Engelhart: Yes. KindKreme, vegan ice cream. And, it’s an all vegan, with the exception of honey, ice cream parlor and we have multiple different sweeteners. Not just honey but agave, and coconut palm sugar and maple syrup options and with the exception of the soft serve it’s all raw and it’s all organic.
John Shegerian: Unbelievable.
Mollie Engelhart: We started with that and that quickly led to opening the first store in Studio City and then from Studio City we opened one in Pasadena. And the same time we were opening one in Pasadena the opportunity for Sage happened. And I guess what really happened with Sage was that these guys were opening a restaurant and they asked me if I wanted to buy the restaurant opportunity. They had opened a restaurant and it failed. They asked me if I wanted to buy the restaurant opportunity, I said “yes.” They said that they have to give the chief a chance to buy it out. And I said, “ Oh sure, go ahead.” And then I didn’t hear from them for like along time. In the mean time I was opening the store in Pasadena and I was doing a movie that went to Sundance with Mark Webber. So I had like spent a bunch of money in that time. So then they called back and I was like “Oh, I don’t have the cash any more to buy your restaurant, sorry.” And they called me back like a week later and they were like “Okay, we have another idea. What if we open a vegan restaurant and you take the front area and do KindKreme because you’re already so popular and will be a draw to our restaurant. Because we already tried one vegan restaurant and it failed and they were going to try with a different chief. So, we were like it’s such a good neighborhood I couldn’t say no. And everybody was mad. My husband at the time, everybody was like, “Are you crazy? You’re just through making a movie, we don’t have any money.” Everybody was mad. My gut tells me we have to do this. We can’t not do it. And, very quickly I realized these guys, bless their hearts they’re from Palestine and they’re into making money, but didn’t know anything about vegan food. And they were sneaking like croissants from Costco in and I was like “whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa”. I started to see what was happening. So, I started policing and never wanted to leave the restaurant because I was scared that that restaurant was going to impact on my name. So, finally I approached them, I’m working like every day. I’m so freaked out. Teaching you guys what to do, I’m needing to buy into the restaurant and I need to be part of it because I’m working as hard for your restaurant as I am for the ice cream portion of the situation. So, I bought in. I eventually bought them out. Right after I bought in they felt secure enough to go to Palestine on vacation for three months and I took care of everything. In the time the chief quit that he had hired. He was like, you have to redo the menu. It’s my intellectual property. So, pretty much over night I redid the menu at Sage, my own menu. By the time they had gotten back, food cost was down about 14% and sales were up 22%. So, there was no arguing that I had changed everything. And, I eventually bought them out and owned it outright. And that’s how that all happened.
John Shegerian: And, then you made that a huge success down in Silver Lake and then you opened up Culver City last year.
Mollie Engelhart: Yes, we opened Culver City in September of last year. I was very excited. I at first said no and I didn’t think it was a good location, but as I researched that area I started to think it was. And a different area of the plaza opened up and we were able to have a beer garden and it just all started to fall together. So, I decided to do that location and I did the offering to people like you and we raised the money in I think ten days or something like that. Very quickly. Almost all, with the except of Woody Harrelson and Jason Mraz, who are the sweetest most supportive friends a girl could have, all the other investments are customers. And, Woody and Jason are customers too but I knew them prior to them being customers. But all the other investors are customers, I feel honored by that because it means people came and ate the food and believe in the product. And invested in me.
John Shegerian: It’s the absolute truth. That’s was worked for my brother and I. For our listeners out there, we have Mollie Englehart, she’s the owner, chief and she’s the visionary behind Sage Vegan. You can check out all Mollie’s great food at www.sageveganbistro.com. And, if you’re in Los Angeles go to one of her two locations. It’s amazing. Of course I’m bias, but her food is some of the best in the whole United States, vegan or non-vegan. It’s some of the best food. Mollie, you took it into a whole new direction when you opened up Culver City. You had the vision for the organic bar and beer garden, which not a lot of vegan restaurants have done. Why did you have that vision and how’s it worked out so far?
Mollie Engelhart: I had the vision because I’m not a didactic vegan. I’m not like everybody should be vegan. Everybody should do whatever is best for them and remember that we are all roommates on a rock flying through space with limited resources. But it’s not for me to tell other people how to live but if we know that eating less meat and dairy as a numbers game is what has to happen. Not like everybody has to be vegan, but we have to eat less meat and dairy as culture, as a society, as a planet, not just up here like people in China. Everywhere has to do. It has to be delicious, it has to be accessible and it has to be fun because nobody wants to yell that. Nobody wants to be told what to do. So, I wanted to create a place that lets say you’re vegan and you want to have your birthday party. You have 25 people come out and you guys have cocktails and buffalo cauliflower, hot wings and nachos, and potato salad if that’s what you want. Everything. and then you’re friends say that place was great and the drinks were great and I’m going to go back there. I have a 80% non-veg customer base. Which means 80% of my customers would normally be eating meat in that meal and they’re not because they’re eating at my restaurant. That is actually my goal is to have more regular folks not eat meat because it’s a numbers game. I’m not trying to sell it to the vegans, the vegans are going to come. I’m trying to sell it to everyone else that’s been turned off to it, thinks its not possible, thinks it’s hard. And so if I’m going to do something I want it to be organic, I want it to have the least impact on the planet. So then I said lets go all organic cocktails and all of our beers are almost all organic or unique sustainable practices by the brewery. So, some of our beers aren’t certified organic but the brewery are like all wind or solar power or all their spent hops goes to feed cattle. There’s a lot of other ways the breweries are doing other stuff. And, all our hard alcohol is certified organic with the exception of bourbon, which is just certified non-GMO.
John Shegerian: Got it, got it. So, the organic bar and beer garden has turned out to be, every time I’m there, they seem to be a wild success for you as a business venture.
Mollie Engelhart: Yeah, I mean it’s really great. It’s not like if I owned a regular restaurant; it’s not the 30-40% alcohol sales like other restaurants. But that’s okay because people that are eating this way are not getting smashed with their meal. They’re having a glass of wine; they’re having a cocktail. But it is a great success in that it’s doing well financially and that people are coming and gathering with their friends. Every night we have a reservation of 20 or for 15 we even had to make up a special way to do, because we had a reservation for 60 and how to deal with these large parties. People love to congregate there, in that space and that is a real success.
John Shegerian: You know, Mollie, of course I’ve gotten to know you over the last couple of years and you’ve become a friend and a good friend at that. And, I know this is really your DNA and culture. Sustainability and environment and as you say you’re a vegan from the womb, you know, talk a little bit about how you are DNA related with regards to how you operate your business, how things are locally grown. How you’re very involved, politically speaking, non-GMO and other things that you really believe in and everything you’re doing and how you really try to push the movement forward every way you can.
Mollie Engelhart: Well, I’m super anti-GMO because I actually think that maybe, I don’t know for sure, maybe the motivation behind GMO way back in the beginning, had integrity and it was to feed more people and whatever like that. It is lost its way. It is not a good idea and really to know what we’re eating. We don’t even have the opportunity because there haven’t even been labeling passed. Unless we’re constantly educating ourselves on the 11 foods that are genetically modified and now it’s 13 foods, now salmon is genetically modified, and we have to consistently updating yourself on what could be genetically modified and then only buy those for organically certified sources because that’s our only option really. I don’t want people to feel scared that they’re eating rat DNA on their lettuce, I want them to feel secure, so I only buy my produce from small and local farmers that are certified organic or some of them are too small, financially, to be certified organic and they are growing specifically for me. I even have this one family, it’s a Latino family, they came to me and said they wanted to grown for me. You know what I would need for you to grow for me. They were like, we don’t even know about this. So, we spent time to teach them about how to farm differently and I have purchased seed for them so they knew where to buy non-GMO tomato seeds, non-GMO zucchini seeds and now they grow for farmers markets and all this other stuff besides me. They’re growing all organic and all organic practices and they’re one of my big contributors as far as produce goes every week. My father’s a huge contributor. My dad’s taking it to the next level. He’s a biodynamic farmers. He went a step further than organic. My dad brings produce for Cafe Gratitude and Sage every single Wednesday night. He has a huge refrigerator van and he comes down, him and my two uncles take turns who’s going to go and bring the produce down. It’s nice I get to see my family and they bring fresh produce and we’re constantly educating ourselves about what’s next and what’s important for the environment. Right now my family’s main passion is composting. Since we’ve realized about the exact amount of carbon that’s in the air that’s out of whack with the normal of the ups and downs is missing out of the top 8 inches of topsoil. So, it’s really clear that the only way that we can put that back in is to create healthy soil and they only way to create healthy soil is composting.
John Shegerian: Wow! Mollie we’re down the last three minutes or so. Can you share with our listeners, you know so much about sustainability and where things are today, because this is how you live. Can you share three simple things, solutions for our listeners out there that they can do right now that aren’t that expensive that can make a difference?
Mollie Engelhart: Yeah, it’s sometimes so overwhelming as to what to do. There are some small things you can do that make a huge difference. The first thing I always tell people it hygiene products. The soap that you use for your laundry, the soap you use on your body because A: that is taking direct contact with you as a human and your body and health. But it’s also going directly down into the ocean. We’re washing our clothes and everything. I always recommend, there’s some very inexpensive eco brands out there, even Costco now has some environmentally friendly brands and stuff like that. I always tell people the plastic bag things the plastic thing is gnarly. Just don’t buy plastic. Just commit to no more plastic water bottles. I’m going to bring my own water bottle and I’m not going use plastic bags. Just that is a huge amount of plastic that in one year you stop using. I would also say just food. People think it’s so hard to eat organic but at least within the bigger cities, Trader Joes has made it really easy to buy inexpensive organic food, farmers markets are a great place to get inexpensive organic foods. What we spray on our food is super important and it really matters and that is also just getting washed off and is going directly into the ocean. Cutting back on meat and dairy is super important. It’s a numbers game.
John Shegerian: Mollie, where are you going to be 10 years from now? Where are you going to take you and your restaurant chain in the next 10 years? What’s your vision? We have one minute left and I want our listeners to hear what your vision is for the future.
Mollie Engelhart: I’d like to open a few more Sages the way that it is with the beer garden.
John Shegerian: Sure.
Mollie Engelhart: In prominent cities, in Los Angeles. And, I would like to open a smaller casual concept that fits in 1,500 square feet, inexpensive to open that I can put everywhere so that more people can have access to healthy organic food.
John Shegerian: Well, I hope that happens, Mollie, because more people need access to healthy organic food and your food is some of the best in the whole nation. For our listeners out there that want to learn about Mollie and her great food it’s www.sageveganbistro.com Thank you Mollie for being a visionary culinary and sustainability superstar. You are truly living proof that green is good.
Mollie Engelhart: Thank you so much, John.
JOHN : Welcome back to Green is Good, and we’re so excited today to have my friend, Maya Volk. She’s the founder and CEO of Global Hyperbaric. Welcome to Green is Good, Maya.
MAYA VOLK: Hi, John. How are you doing?
JOHN : Great. I’m wonderful today, and I’m so glad you’re coming on the show. You have such an important story to share and a business and you know, listen. Before we get going, a couple things, a little housekeeping. I want to first give our listeners, I’m on your website right now. It’s very informational and I want to give our listeners your great website. It’s www.globalhyperbaric.com. Please go to the website. You can learn more about what Maya does and the important work she does in terms of helping people heal. Maya, before we get talking about Global Hyperbaric and the great business you’ve created, talk a little bit about your story and how you even came up with this amazing idea and how you got started.
MAYA VOLK: Well, I was very, very fortunate to have met Doctor Heuser. Doctor Heuser is the most known neurotoxicologist/immunotoxicologist in the field and I walked into his door about 15 years ago and I’ve been blown away and fascinated when I had a little tour in his office. First of all, it did not look like a regular doctor’s office. There were lots of cut-up newspaper about mold exposure and there were lots of posters on the wall with the brain functions and the spec scans before and after, as I know right now, hyperbaric oxygen therapy. There were posters about ADD and ADHD improvement. There were posters about immune functions, anti-aging — you name it — and it was very interesting and then I’d been introduced to hyperbaric oxygen chamber and was in one of those and I remember my reaction to that. I was like, “What kind of submarine is that?” and my business associate told me, “You’re going to be young forever,” and it was like genie was out of the bottle at that particular moment because I knew what I’m going to be doing for the rest of my life because as a woman and living in Los Angeles, we all would like to stay young and look our best and I was very, very fascinated and impressed with what Doctor Heuser had done over the years and that’s how I got started learning from him and trained by him and introduced to his wonderful hyperbaric oxygen therapy.
JOHN : And, I have to just say to our listeners you’re not only a friend of mine, Maya, but I’m also a client of yours. When I broke my nose, you’ve helped me get well. When my wife broke her foot, she used the hyperbaric oxygen to make sure the foot healed correctly and also much, much faster than it would have ever healed on its own so let’s go into a little bit how your system works. How does the hyperbaric oxygen work? How do people enjoy the benefits of it? Do they get into a chamber or how does it work? Explain to our listeners how the whole thing works.
MAYA VOLK: Well, Global Hyperbaric is a provider of the complete solution, so it’s betterment of life through the natural pressurized oxygen therapy. The person usually comes over or I come to them and they go inside. I would say it looks a big tanning bed, but it’s soft and it has a very soft cushioning inside. It’s very comfortable. It’s very roomy, and the person lays down inside and they breathe highly concentrated oxygen while lying in a pressurized chamber. Oxygen penetrates deeply into all pores, lungs, brain function, and revitalizes all the cells.
JOHN : And, the people who are in the chamber, because I’ve been in the chamber so many times, it’s not only very comfortable but you could either sleep or read or talk on your phone or listen to music and really, it’s a very comfortable and enjoyable experience.
MAYA VOLK: Yes, well, we are very, very equipped with all the tools needed. You can bring your computer inside and work. You can lie down and read a magazine or book because everybody’s different. I prefer to sleep. As soon as I lay down in the chamber, in about five to 10 minutes, my whole body is completely relaxed and I feel great and I take the time to rejuvenate and revitalize all my cells and when you get out of the chamber, John, you know your skin feels like butter and you look great and all of the muscles — if anything hurt in the body, it doesn’t hurt anymore.
JOHN : You know, Maya, your business model for Global Hyperbaric is very unique. Can you share with our listeners why and how you did something different and how you have set yourself apart in the hyperbaric oxygen healing industry?
MAYA VOLK: We’re living in a city of beauty. Los Angeles is the standard of all the beautiful. The people are looking to look their very best in Hollywood and also, everybody loves the service, so I combined both. I created the model of mobile hyperbaric oxygen services to you because I’ve had a lot of immobilization when clients were injured or they couldn’t basically come to me so that’s how we created mobile services and I’m the only one in Southern California who provides the mobile unit to any location; houses, movie studios, hotels, medical facilities and so forth.
JOHN : What a brilliant idea. In a city of cars, you’ve made it very easy for people to get well faster by bringing them your great hyperbaric oxygen therapy.
MAYA VOLK: Yes. Everybody’s busy, especially people that don’t have time in traffic to lose a couple of hours to come to me, so in order to be easier for their life and provide superior services, we come to them and it takes only a couple of minutes to set up and people are very, very pleased to have perhaps hyperbaric chamber in their own house.
JOHN : You know, Maya, you’ve had many, many fascinating and interesting clients over 10 years. Because you’re my friend, I’ve got to hear about them, but recently, I saw Hillary Clinton on Diane Sawyer talking about her concussion of a couple years ago. Can you share a little bit about what clients come to you with what kind of ailments and are concussions something that could benefit from your Global Hyperbaric oxygen therapy?
MAYA VOLK: A lot of clients from concussion. I would say the boxers. Everything that has to do with contact sports. People have concussions. Let’s say the boxer is boxing. They’re getting knocked out in their face and the blood goes to the brain and the blood goes to the face, so after the concussion, you place somebody in the chamber and it helps to reduce the inflammation from the brain and the body. Also, there is perhaps a lot of people who have been in a car accident and they are getting concussions, so it’s very well helping concussions. The boxers, as I said, lots of people who do pro sports, such as hockey players, wrestlers, martial arts, basketball, baseball, you name it, so it is helping tremendously, not to help concussion, but also it helps your endurance, performance, duration, and so forth, so if you run, you might run faster. If you jump, you will jump higher. It can increase your reaction time, concentration, consistency and the brain would be the one great aspect because everything comes from the brain, same as people have depression and anxiety and hyperbaric seems to be doing wonders with that as well.
JOHN : And, you don’t have to be a professional athlete. You could be a weekend warrior and still get tremendous benefits from the hyperbaric oxygen, correct?
MAYA VOLK: Absolutely. Anybody who has taken pride to look their best and exercise, they can benefit from that. Not only that, every college student, because there is lots of young kids who are starting their career and they need a little boost of energy, they need the vitality, they need to increase their productivity, and most of all, they need to relax their muscles and be able to go the next day again and perform at their best. That’s when they’re coming over here, not to mention the concentration level, which will help them to study for the tests, so it’s beneficial.
JOHN : How about people getting ready for surgery or who come out of surgery, elective or otherwise? How beneficial is hyperbaric oxygen pre and post surgery for people and what have you seen with your clients, Maya?
MAYA VOLK: Well, my largest clientele base is from known doctors, plastic surgeons, sports injuries, I work with lots of doctors in the field. Not only that, but people find me because it is incredible. Healing is complimentary to any sports injury or plastic surgery. The person is always recommended to have one session before because it oxygenates them and it’s easier to go through any procedure and eliminate the bruising, swelling, pain, and also a lot of people go through anesthesia and one of the greatest factors is the detoxification/oxygenation. It will be easier for people to recover from plastic surgery or a sports injury and it is increasing tremendously healing and it’s basically much less pain. I have a lot of people who come after sports injuries. I’ve been working with pro athletes including Lakers and they all talk about it. It’s everywhere from ankle surgery recovery to a minor twist of an arm or leg.
JOHN : And, you’ve even worked on Olympic champions.
MAYA VOLK: Yes, I did. It was a great pleasure to prepare one of my clients and I can talk about because he put the testimony on my website and anybody can read about it. He was preparing for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and he came to see me because he had a bad back injury and he didn’t know if he was even going to swim in the Olympics at that time, so being in my chamber for seven days, two hours a day, and I was with my mobile services so it was much simpler for him. He didn’t have time and it was hard for him to move. He left for Beijing in about a couple of weeks or so and then he came back with a testimonial, “Maya, thank you so much for letting me accomplish my dream and win a gold medal in the Olympics,” which was the best reward. In order for me to keep somebody healthy and accomplish their dream, that’s what I’m here for.
JOHN : Well, I know that for a fact. For our listeners who just joined us, we’ve got Maya Volk on with us today. She’s the founder and CEO of Global Hyperbaric. To learn more about what Maya does and her important healing with the Global Hyperbaric system, go to www.globalhyperbaric.com. I’m on your website right now and, Maya, first of all, I love your website and I love how much information is there, how transparent you are, but there’s a beautiful picture on it, right on the landing page, and it shows Doctor Oz and Oprah Winfrey and it says the benefits of hyperbaric chambers was featured on Oprah by Doctor Oz, so this is something that is not just a news piece from the 1980s with Michael Jackson, who was using it for all the right reasons also but this is actually now being accepted by great leaders like Doctor Oz and Oprah Winfrey and other people who see the benefits of this hyperbaric therapy, correct?
MAYA VOLK: Absolutely. Not my hyperbaric, but hyperbaric was featured on Doctor Oz and Oprah, and it’s being talked about and let me just refer to you, Michael Jackson. I don’t know how many people know, but Michael Jackson was placed in a hyperbaric chamber because he burned his head in a Pepsi commercial. It was an explosion, and he got injured and after that, he was very fortunate, as a matter of fact, because doctors knew about it and his head got completely restored and was over many years after that, but he was an absolutely great performer as far as dancing and singing and so forth, so Michael Jackson is an actual great example of how the hyperbaric healing works, but if you put Michael Jackson aside, there is lots of great performers who I’m dealing with on a daily basis and everybody looks great, feels great, and oxygenation to the body helps in every form.
JOHN : The media didn’t talk about the healing to the skin. They just said he was in the chamber so now you make sense. There was real science behind him going in the hyperbaric oxygen. It was to heal the burns from the Pepsi commercial. That makes a lot of sense and speaking of Michael Jackson, you know, Maya, I have the benefit of you being my friend, so I know some of these great stories. Share your favorite story. We’re down to the last three minutes or so. Share your favorite story with regards to someone coming to see you and getting better because of your great therapy.
MAYA VOLK: Well, in plastic surgery, there is the term ‘dead skin.’ Dead skin occurs when there is no circulation to the skin and basically, I had a case where one lady came to me and she had a breast enlargement procedure and one of the breasts has just become dead skin and everybody in town, including highest doctors, they were telling her that one of her breasts would be amputated and her doctor referred her to me and after two weeks, two hours in a hyperbaric chamber, she got her breast sensitivity and tissue and everything back, so there was no amputation. There was no discomfort to her life after that, and everybody was absolutely wonderfully amazed with what hyperbaric can do as far as plastic surgery. I also have different people. It’s always on my mind because there are so many different people who are needing it. One of the clients had a stroke and she came over here hardly walking and her right side was not having any sensitivity. It was paralysis to the right side and she tried the hyperbaric chamber first for one hour and when she got out of the chamber, her right side sensitivity had come back. She could move her arms and facial movement…it blew me away. She would continue coming for quite a time for two hours every day because, as Doctor Heuser was talking about, consistency is the key and amount of hours but it was a great improvement every day, more and more and more and more and I can tell you lots of stories because I have different people. I had a guy in a wheelchair and he was walking very slow and hardly walking and then with my mobile services, I was at his house and every day he was going in the hyperbaric chamber and the next day, he could walk a little and better and better and better.
JOHN : Well, I know it works. I’ve used your great services to get my nose better. Tammy used hyperbaric oxygen to get her foot better faster, so we know it works. Again, thank you for coming on today, Maya. We’re going to have you back, and for our listeners out there that want to learn more about Maya’s great work, www.globalhyperbaric.com. Thank you, Maya, for being a visionary holistic healer and leader. You are truly living proof that green is good.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Welcome back to Green is Good for a special edition of Green is Good. We’re so excited to have my friend on today, Robin Wiener. She’s the Executive Director of ISRI. You can learn more about ISRI at www.ISRI.org. Welcome to Green is Good, Robin.
ROBIN WIENER: Thank you, John. I’m excited to join you.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Oh, it’s so nice to have you on, and I know how busy you are, so thank you for taking the time to do this interview today — and a little disclaimer for our listener out there: My company, Electronic Recyclers International, is a proud member of ISRI for over eight years. Robin’s a friend of mine. I get to work with her and she just does amazing work in so many areas with regards to the scrap and recycling industry, and this is truly an honor because today is your first turn on Green is Good. So, thank you, Robin, for being on the show.
ROBIN WIENER: You’re welcome. Thank you.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Before we get talking about what you do at ISRI and especially today about The Jason Project there, I want you to share your fascinating and important journey leading up to the Executive Director leadership position you have at ISRI and how you even got here, Robin. Share with our listeners a little bit about your story and your journey.
ROBIN WIENER: Sure, I’d be happy to. I actually started in ISRI back in 1989. I have an engineering background and was working for an environmental consulting firm in DC and started going to law school at night and just simply needed to find a job closer to the law school on Capitol Hill and ISRI was working for someone to do environmental compliance work and so I joined ISRI. Didn’t know anything about the recycling industry, but came on board, thought I’d be there for just a couple of years and go on to a law firm, but I fell in love with it and ISRI is a great place to work. The industry is fascinating. The issues are fascinating and it’s just what I love and I’ve been here ever since.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That is so great and you’ve done such a wonderful job leading the scrap and recycling industry and you’re seen around the world as truly one of the greatest leaders, both in thought and also in action, and so we’re just lucky to have you running ISRI and I’m so happy you’re there. Let’s talk a little bit about this very important project called The Jason Project. For our listeners out there, like I said at the top of the show, you can go to www.ISRI.org. You can click on the education button, which I’ve done. I’m on my iPad today and if you want to follow along, you can do the same and then what’s going to come up when you click on the education button is something called Jason Learning. Share a little bit about how this came about, Robin. What was your inspiration and epiphany leading up to the creation and partnership with Jason Learning and what is now called The Jason Project?
ROBIN WIENER: Sure, I’d be happy to. Well, Jason is a joint effort of National Geographic Society and Sea Research Foundation. We found them about three years ago when, believe it or not, I was at a talk that was given by Doctor Robert Ballard, who is the oceanographer and the explorer who discovered The Titanic several years ago and he talked about how after he discovered The Titanic, he began receiving thousands of letter from middle school students asking to join his next expedition and that resulted, for him, in The Jason Project, which was named after the myth of the Argonauts, who were a group of adventurers who traveled with the hero, Jason, to explore the ancient world and it basically inspired him to start Jason and to help children in their adventure in learning about the sciences and math and technology and it’s from that that Jason resulted and I heard him talk about this and how excited he was and we, at the time, were thinking about developing curriculum for recycling and the truth is we’re not experts in curriculum development. Jason is and it seemed like the perfect group to partner with and so in 2012, we began the three year collaboration and the purpose is to develop primary and secondary school curriculums focused on recycling so the partnership is a great opportunity to educate the next generation about the important role that recycling plays in the global environment and in the economic life of the U.S. and the whole world and hopefully, it’s going to inspire students to think about careers also in recycling and give them the scientific and technical background that these jobs require.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Talk a little bit about this curriculum development. Who was at the table when you actually started envisioning out what the curriculum should look like, how you should activate it, what topics should be covered, and then what specific activities are then set up to engage the students in, so can you just walk us through who was at the table after you and leadership from Jason put this amazing and important project together?
ROBIN WIENER: Absolutely. Right after we began the partnership, we created a member task force to work with Jason to develop the curriculum and educational tools and the task force led by our then communications chair, Tom Kiniple with SA Recycling, and we brought together members representing a cross section of the industry so representing all the different segments of the industry, representing electronics recycling, plastics recycling, tires, metal, the full range, so that they could work with the curriculum development experts with Jason and provide the industry expertise and so over the course of the last two years working with Jason, we’ve been able to develop 25 different lesson plans that include activities and commodity readings on aluminum, ferrous metals, textiles, fluids, glass, precious metals, rubber, the full range of commodities, and we’re so excited about this program. Actually, right now, the 25 lesson plans are divided into three grade bands. There’s K through four, grade five through eight, and grades nine through 12, with each of those lesson plans including hands on activities as well as two- to four-page classroom lessons based on the life cycle of each commodity.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Wow, and so now you’ve developed this curriculum. You have all these activities. Where is it being taught? Is it being taught in a couple of beta cities or is this now spread across the nation and beyond?
ROBIN WIENER: Well, one of the reasons why we are so excited to be working with Jason is that Jason has a network of more than 2 million students throughout the country and actually, they have the ability to reach audiences of more than 6 million through the content that they distribute through their partner organizations such as National Geographic, a number of museums they work with, aquariums, and different government agencies. They also are in every state and they’re internationally in more than 150 different countries but more specifically, with regards to our program, what we’ve been able to do is actually pilot the program in two cities. We’ve piloted in Baltimore as well as in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: When you rolled it out in Baltimore and in Kalamazoo, what then happens on a local level? Because big ideas happen where you said, in DC, and this partnership launches but then how important is local recycling in terms of the collaboration when you launch in specific cities?
ROBIN WIENER: That’s a great question because it is very important for students to actually understand the practical side of the industry as well and to have contact with local recyclers so we actually work with our members in their local community so that the local recycler can be involved to provide tours of their yards and be there to be a resource to students in that community and we also made available through Jason a community outreach kit for members so they can have available to them sample letters and press releases and other resources so that they know how to actually push this program out into their local community.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: For our listeners out there who have just joined us, we’ve got Robin Wiener on. She’s a friend of mine. She’s the Executive Director of ISRI. To learn more about the great things that ISRI is doing all the time, please go to www.ISRI.org. It’s the Institute of Scrap and Recycling and we’re talking about The Jason Project today. Robin, you know, I’m on the website and when you go on ISRI’s website and you click on education and I see here you have these scrap maps. What does the scrap map mean? And it says, ‘Scrap Map Interactive, Scrap Map One, Scrap Map Two’. Can you share how are these tools important to the socialization of the goals that you have with the Jason partnership?
ROBIN WIENER: Thank you for pointing out about those scrap maps because they are a very valuable part of what we’re offering to teachers. Essentially, the scrap maps are posters that can be used by the teachers in their classrooms that depict the life cycle of the various commodities that are specifically handled in the recycling industry and as you pointed out, there’s interactive scrap map, which is an online tool that students can use on their computers, on their desktops, on their laptops that depicts the recycling chain for each commodity and shows how you can take something old and create a new and useful product so some examples that one can experience through the interactive scrap map or even see on the posters are how steel from an old car becomes a new bridge or scrap tires are recycled into road insulation or crash barriers and rubberized asphalt that’s used to make highways safer and quieter.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: I’m on your interactive scrap map now. It is amazing. You’ve got tires, textiles, non-ferrous, plastics, glass, fiber, electronics. Everything’s covered so literally, students can dive in wherever their interests are, wherever they’re fascinated, and get a tremendous education right on their iPad or their tablet or some other type of interactive electronic tool.
ROBIN WIENER: And, that was so important to us because, as I’m learning with my own children, I have two young girls who are five and ten, school is so different than when we were kids. When we were kids, we took home our textbook every night and our backpacks and now, they are so tied to their iPads and their laptops and we needed to make sure that we provided the tools that were useful to students today.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That is so great. Let’s talk a little bit about your Champions of Recycling. What does that mean with regards to the Jason partnership? And share with our listeners how that is important in terms of bringing great attention to all the important work that this partnership is trying to accomplish.
ROBIN WIENER: Well, the Champions of Recycling was one of the most interesting aspects of Jason’s approach to education and it’s one of the reasons why I was so interested in working with them. What Jason does is they try to use profiles of scientists and engineers and other professionals within the curriculum to engage students because unfortunately, many students today look towards celebrities and athletes for their role models and so the hope is that by showing the diverse backgrounds and skills of professionals in our industry, that we can create role models for today’s students so what we’ve done working with Jason is develop a series called Champions of Recycling, which provides a library on recycling industry career models, again, with the hope that we’re creating role models for today’s students to educate the next generation about the recycling industry’s contributions and so for example, one of the Champions of Recycling is Tracy Blazek, who was a high school Honor Society leader. She got an engineering degree and when she was recruited for a job in the recycling industry, she said she was sucked right in and today she’s the Clients Director at Synergy Recycling in Atlanta, Georgia, which is part of the electronics recycling industry that’s seen growth from about $2 billion in size back in 2001 and it’s now well over $20 billion. It’s the fastest growing segment of the recycling industry today.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Wow. That is just incredible and you bring up a great point, Robin, with the example of Tracy. Recently, I had the honor and pleasure to come to your ISRI convention and the keynote speaker was Hillary Clinton and Hillary Clinton potentially is going to run for president and potentially be our next President of the United States, which doesn’t make us the first in having a woman president. We’re sort of catching up. We’ve typically been the leader with regards to democracy and the freedoms that reside within great democracies but we’ll definitely be overdue in an important milestone that we hit. Let’s take what’s happening with Tracy and then tie it together with Hillary Clinton and also you. You came into as a freshly minted lawyer, ISRI, which was historically a guy’s or a dude’s industry, and you broke through so many ceilings yourself and now your leadership and your role model mentoring has allowed other women to come into this great industry and become leaders and become owners themselves. How do you see this rolling out now and in the future? And look back a little bit and share some of that experience as a woman leader in what was historically an industry not led by women.
ROBIN WIENER: Well, it’s interesting you raise that. I have to say, first and foremost, I’ve always felt very welcome in the industry, though you’re absolutely right. It’s very much a male dominated industry. I never encountered any issues and, if anything, it was, again, very welcoming and a very exciting industry to join but you’re right. It’s slow progress and there are definitely more women in the industry today than there were 23 years ago when I started but I’ve learned personally it’s important to have role models and mentors and I’ll tell a story. About 10 years ago, I was giving a presentation at a chapter meeting and I went into the restroom and there was a young woman there who was a trader for one of our member companies and she said to me how wonderful it was to see a woman as head of ISRI because it set a good example for her. Let’s put it that way and I hadn’t thought of it before, to be honest, and I think about that with my young girls and how important it is. My oldest is part of an accelerated math program at her elementary school and the teacher has talked to me about how important it is to encourage her because even today in elementary school, they’re seeing girls drop out of these math programs because they don’t have people encouraging them so it’s still an ongoing issue.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That’s so interesting but we’re so lucky to have you, Robin, because you really broke through so many of the glass ceilings and because of your leadership and your visibility, there’s people like Tracy Blazeks, who feel very comfortable coming into this growing industry and this growing opportunity so I just felt it was important to bring that up because you’ve done such a wonderful job and been such a great role model that it’s just we’re living in interesting times and I think women are going to continue to break through the final glass ceilings and take on more and more leadership roles in our industry and other industries, hopefully also with our country too.
ROBIN WIENER: And, I have to give credit also to there are a number of other women in this industry who were there before me. I look at Shelly Padnos, for example, who was the first female Chair of ISRI’s board back around 2000 and she was a great role model for me and still is a mentor so there are a number of very strong women in this industry that I feel very fortunate to have worked with.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That’s so interesting. We’re down to the last minute or so. Can you share your final thoughts on the Jason partnership and where your vision is, where you want it to go in future years? You’ve already had tremendous success. Where is it going to go and where do you want it to go in future years, Robin?
ROBIN WIENER: Well, I just have to say that I am so very excited about the potential of this project to help change the image of our industry over the long term because, when you think about it, what better way is there to make sure that the next generation of Congressmen and State Legislators and journalists and law enforcement officers and businessmen and businesswomen, I should say, understand and appreciate our industry than to integrate recycling into the classroom experience? So, I have such hope for this program. Already Jason’s reached over 620,000 students with the recycling curriculum and we’re hoping to train more in the future.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: And, to learn more about The Jason Project and all the important and great work that Robin and her colleagues are doing at ISRI, go to www.ISRI.org. Click on the education button and it’s all there. Robin, you’re a great friend. You’re a great leader of our industry. Thank you. You’re a visionary sustainability superstar and truly living proof that green is good.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Welcome to another edition of Green is Good. Today we’re so honored to have with us Keith Anderson. He’s the Director of the District Department of Environment, and this is in Washington, DC. Welcome to Green is Good, Keith.
KEITH ANDERSON: John, thank you for having me.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Hey, Keith, before we get talking about all the great stuff you’re doing in Washington, DC, with regards to the environment and sustainability, can you please share with our listeners your story, your journey leading up to this great position? How did you even get here and what were some of your inspirations and epiphanies along the way?
KEITH ANDERSON: I graduated with the Energy Office here in DC government and a few years later, the Energy Office merged with a few other administrations within DC government and they created the Department of the Environment and I essentially just rose through the ranks, John, and now I’m the Director.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That is so great, and such a great tribute to your mom that she was one of your main inspirations to be doing the important work that you’re doing right now, Keith. And, just for our listeners out there, is you want to follow along on your iPad or your other tablets or your laptop or desktop while we get to enjoy some time with Keith today and want to check to check out the great work he’s doing in Washington, DC, you can go to www.ddoe.dc.gov. Keith, this is one of the most important cities in the world. It’s where our White House is. It’s where our government leaders are and this is a very important role that you have. When was the tipping point in DC for you and your colleagues to decide we gotta make DC green and a sustainable city because we are the shining light that the world is watching? When was that point?
KEITH ANDERSON: That’s absolutely correct. That point was a few years ago, when DC was, and it still is, experiencing a tremendous economic boom. I don’t know how many of your listeners have been to DC or haven’t been here in a while, but if you haven’t been here in a while and you come back today, you would not recognize this city. There are neighborhoods where there were once parking lots. There are office buildings where there were once bad neighborhoods, so to speak. This city has experienced a tremendous turnaround in the last five or so years, and we noticed that with this economic development, we have to balance the needs of environmental protection and community equity and so that’s when we realized that we have to make sure this city, as we experience this economic development here, this booming economic development, is a sustainable city, that we do not further cause harm to our environment and that we make sure that the long term residents who have been here for 20 plus years experience or are able to enjoy the new city that we have here today and so that was the tipping point when we said, ‘You know what, we have to put something together to ensure that this is the greenest, healthiest, most livable city for everyone here in Washington, DC.’
JOHN SHEGERIAN: And, that’s so important, Keith. That’s a great point is that it’s not just about growth. It’s about sustainable growth; so, if that’s what you’ve done there in terms of your leadership and that’s what you and your colleagues are trying to accomplish, how do you then define sustainability in Washington, DC?
KEITH ANDERSON: Oh, we define it as balancing the needs of environmental protection, economic development, and community equity. That’s how we define sustainability here in DC and so it’s just absolutely important that folks reap the benefit of our tremendous city here in Washington, DC, and not only those who live here, those who come visit and work here as well and it truly takes not only the residents, but the businesses, the visitors to make smart decisions. We want people to take recycling, for instance, not as just the right thing to do but the smart business practice so when the city is growing at the rate that Washington, DC, is, John, we have 1,100 people moving here every month and I think when you look around the country, that’s just unheard of. We have to ensure that the new residents coming in and the old residents that have been here for a while, we have to ensure that our city is sustainable and can sustain that growth.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: So, you made that decision a couple years back. What were some of the goals you put in place and what’s the progress been to date, Keith?
KEITH ANDERSON: We put together the Sustainable DC Plan and for your listeners out there, they can view the plan in its entirety at SustainableDC.org. Again, that’s SustainableDC.org, and in our plan, we have 143 actions that we believe will make DC the most sustainable city in the country, if not the world, by 2032 and what we did, John, is we recognized that there were some inherent challenges in our city that we had to deal with and those challenges consisted of jobs and the economy. We want people to be healthy, we need equity and diversity, and we have to address climate change and environmental factors and so those were some of the challenges that our city faced when we looked at this Sustainable DC Plan and the solutions that we came up with, John, are in seven areas and that consists of the built environment, energy efficiency, food. You’d be surprised that in a city like this, that you’d have neighborhoods where our children or some residents do not have access to healthy food. We call those food deserts and those are some serious issues that probably not only Washington, DC, but every major city in the country faces. We found that nature was one of our solutions, transportation, a very big issue here in the Washington area, how we deal with our waste and how we deal with our water, especially the stormwater runoff here in Washington, DC. It’s a major contributing factor to our rivers and streams that are quite frankly polluted. Currently, for those out there who are familiar with Washington, DC, it’s no secret that the Anacostia is probably one of the most polluted rivers in the country. Unfortunately, over 3 billion gallons of untreated stormwater flows into the Anacostia every year and so these are things that we have to address to ensure that our city is sustainable in the future and for future generations to come.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: For our listeners who just joined us, we’re so honored to have with us today Keith Anderson. He’s the Director of the District Department of Environment. This is in Washington, DC, one of the most important cities in the entire world, and for listeners that want to learn more about the important work that Keith and his colleagues are doing, you can go to SustainableDC.org or to www.ddoe.dc.gov. Keith, talk about now, lay it out, and I’m on your site, SustainableDC.org, now. This is a beautiful site, very simple to understand, very colorful, and it’s very clear but you’ve laid out these seven major initiatives and they’re wonderful and they’re important. Now, what’s the reverse side of this, Keith? How do you then champion and get public participation in your great sustainability goals?
KEITH ANDERSON: Well, you know what, John, that is an excellent question. When we first started this movement with Sustainable DC, we reached out to every community group that we could think of because quite frankly, we’ve talked to over 6,000 residents here in the city over the last two years when it comes to Sustainable DC and we planned a meeting one day at the convention center. If you go online, a lot of the goals, the solutions, the challenges, those actually came from our residents. We received, I can’t even remember, John, over 2,000 suggestions from our residents of, first of all, some of the challenges in the city and things that they thought would turn the city around and make it a sustainable city as we grow and that night, we thought we would be lucky if we had 50 people to show up at that community meeting. John, we had over 400 people that one night, that first night, that we wanted to talk about how to make DC a sustainable city so from that night, we’ve had over 125 community meetings. We actually have what we call Sustainable DC Ambassadors. These are people from the community who may be able to reach folks at a deeper level than perhaps someone with a government ID can walk into a community meeting and do and explain to them exactly what sustainability means, how it affects them, and how they can help and that’s just for the residents. It’s going to also take our businesses, John, and we’ve experienced a tremendous amount of help from our businesses because they recognize the importance of sustainability too. Here in the District of Columbia, we have several business improvement districts and they have been tremendously helpful in ensuring that the neighborhoods that they are responsible for put in certain measure to make sure that that neighborhood is sustainable, whether it be recycling programs, whether it be ways to control our stormwater runoff, or just quite frankly, educating the residents, so it takes much more than government. It takes public/private partnerships. It takes educating the residents. It also takes educating those who visit this city. I think in this city, the last I heard, we have over 20 million people who come here every year to visit the nation’s capital and to see the marvelous museums and things that we have here in the National Mall and about the city so it really takes a village, so to speak, John, to make sure that we reach our goal of making DC a sustainable city.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: You make some great points, Keith. It can’t just be pedantically the government saying this is how it’s going to be. You’re getting the whole movement and the evolution and the revolution going from the ground up, like you said, from the people’s participation to the business participation and what a great point. You have that many million visitors from around the world every year. Your leadership is so critical on green and sustainability because everybody’s watching. The world is watching.
KEITH ANDERSON: That’s right, John, and if we don’t get that level of participation, John, quite frankly, we will fail and we recognized that early on and so it’s been a pleasure to see though, how folks want to be involved, from folks who just moved here three weeks ago to folks who’ve lived here 30 years. Folks recognize the importance of environmental protection. They recognize that climate change is here. It’s not a hoax. It’s not a joke. We’re at the point now where we have to build our cities to be resilient to climate change. Here in Washington, DC, our summers are hotter, our storms are stronger. I never heard of a polar vortex until last winter. It’s something that we experienced. We had one of the toughest winters that I can remember and I’m a native Washingtonian, John. I’ve been here 38 years, so now we have to ensure that not only Washington, DC, but our cities across the country are resilient to climate change so if folks are understanding that and folks are seeing that and folks are waking up and saying whoa, wait a minute, I have to make a difference. My family has to make a difference. My block has to make a difference. My neighborhood has to make a difference. This city has to make a difference and it’s just been delightful to see the level of participation of our residents and our businesses here in the city as we move forward with Sustainable DC. It’s been a wonderful thing to recognize.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: So, Keith, what we say in business is, ‘What’s measurable is manageable,’ so talk a little bit about where does DC rate in terms of other cities right now, in terms of your progress, in terms of green and sustainability initiatives, and how competitive is it among other city leaders and other department heads that you get to interrelate with nationally and internationally for the biggest green halo and the biggest green kudos for all the great wins that you’re getting every day?
KEITH ANDERSON: Right, right. Excellent question and, John, in many ways, the District of Columbia is leading the pack. We have the highest amount of square footage when it comes to green roofs in the country. Keep in mind, DC is only 69 square miles. We’re not that big of a city. Sixty-nine square miles; we have 642,000 residents and counting, but we have the highest amount of green roofs nationwide when it comes to square footage. We have the highest amount of LEED-certified buildings per capita in the country and so in many ways, John, when it comes to green initiatives, we’re leading the pack and another thing that I’m very please with is the way we deal with our stormwater, John. Like I mentioned, stormwater is a major contributing factor to the pollution of our Anacostia River, a river that connects two sides of our great city and pursuant to our new stormwater regulations and our municipal separate storm sewer permit, we have developed a stormwater credit trading system. John, this is the first in the country, if not the world, where here in the District of Columbia, for new developments that disturb more than 5,000 square feet of land, developers have to adhere to certain stormwater regulations and part of that means they have to retain up to a 1.2-inch storm on the property so that’s normally water that would just go down the drain and go to our wastewater treatment facility and in many cases during certain storms, those sewer lines overflow and this is when you get the combined sewer overflows into our rivers and tributaries and so with the stormwater regulations in place, developers have to at least meet up to half of the 1.2-inch requirement and then they can purchase credits for the other half. They have to do 0.6, but there are some developers who go above and beyond of duty and they may create one point seven inches of retention on site and they can sell that 0.5 on the open market and so it’s a wonderful system. It’s just got off the ground. It’s moving and I’m very proud of the team here at DDOE for creating this stormwater credit trading system. John, the world is looking at it. The world is looking at it.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: And, others are going to follow it. Keith, we’re down to three minutes or so, unfortunately. You’re the head of this very important Department of the Environment in DC. How does it interrelate with the mayor’s office and with other government agencies and how much latitude are you given to continue to lead in this very important city where all eyes are on around the world?
KEITH ANDERSON: The good news here, John, is that The Sustainable DC Plan is an umbrella and it actually touches almost every agency in DC government from the Department of Parks and Rec to our Department of Public Works to our Department of Transportation. Every director, every agency has a role to play in making our city sustainable and if your listeners would go to our website, SustainableDC.org, you will see the 143 actions and then you will also see what agencies are responsible for certain actions in that plan and you will notice that it affects almost every agency in DC government so we all have a role to play. As a matter of fact, the mayor has commissioned a green cabinet that is made up of 27 other directors. my colleagues, to keep us accountable to ensure that we’re moving forward with accomplishing these actions in the plan.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: So, it’s become really part of the culture and the DNA of Washington, DC, to make it a more green and sustainability driven city across all your agencies.
KEITH ANDERSON: Absolutely. It has.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Awesome. Well, that’s great and Keith, I just want to say thank you again for coming on Green is Good today. I want to share with our listeners two ways to find out more of the important work Keith Anderson and his team are doing in DC. Go to www.ddoe.dc.gov or SustainableDC.org. They’re beautiful websites. You’ll learn more. You’ll get inspired and we can do more to save the planet. Thank you, Keith, for being an inspiring sustainable leader. You are truly living proof that green is good.
KEITH ANDERSON: Every day. Thank you.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Welcome back to Green is Good, and we’re so honored to have with us today Lynelle Cameron. She’s the Senior Director of Sustainability at Autodesk and she’s the President and CEO of The Autodesk Foundation. Welcome to Green is Good, Lynelle.
LYNELLE CAMERON: Thank you. Hello, John.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Lynelle, before we get into talking about all the great things you’re doing at Autodesk, both as the Senior Director of Sustainability the President and CEO of their foundation, I want you to first share the journey and the story of Lynelle Cameron leading up to these two very important roles that you’re playing at Autodesk.
LYNELLE CAMERON: Sure, yeah. I’ve had a fun life and career getting to this point, so I’m probably one of those rare people that in college majored in subjects that I’m still pursuing today 25 years later, so I studied sociology and environmental science and the intersection of human systems and natural systems and that’s exactly what I find myself doing in my role at Autodesk but just to backtrack a little bit, I spent 10 years in the nonprofit sector working on the front lines of conservation with local communities, primarily in mountain regions so thinking that that was the greatest impact that I could have was to work with mountain people as stewards of globally significant resources and then of course, I realized that the corporate sector down below, if you will, in the cities and urban areas was having a huge impact on the natural resources of the planet and so at that point, I left the nonprofit sector and went back to business school and then I’ve been working in the corporate sector in sustainability roles ever since, first with Hewlett-Packard and now with Autodesk.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Wow, so you really have mastered the straddling of both the public and the private and putting it all together in your two roles at Autodesk, you get to do both really.
LYNELLE CAMERON: That’s exactly right. That’s the excitement for me is that I do get to work with nonprofit designers and the whole nonprofit sector while also working with all of our mainstream customers to help both design our future on this planet and to help to really be intentional about what we’re putting on the planet for next generations.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Lynelle, for our listeners out there that aren’t familiar with Autodesk, can you just share a little bit of what Autodesk and what their core business model is before we get going into all the green things that we’re going to talk about today?
LYNELLE CAMERON: Absolutely. Autodesk is a leader in 3D design technology. What that means is we provide the software for architects, engineers, industrial designers, people in construction, even personal makers. We provide the software that enables people to design quite literally anything on the planet so if you’re designing buildings, highways, cars, manufactured goods, even special effects in animation and film. Each of those projects can use some piece of Autodesk software so our mission as a company is to help people imagine, design, and create a better world and that’s essentially what we do and my team, as the head of the sustainability effort on Autodesk, is really focused on a better world. What does that mean and how do we help people to imagine, design, and create this better world that we all want in the future?
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That is awesome; so let’s now talk about the green difference. Since you wear two different hats, Senior Director of Sustainability and also President and CEO of The Autodesk Foundation, talk a little bit about the green difference that you get to make wearing both hats and the impact that Autodesk gets to make with regards to green.
LYNELLE CAMERON: Sure. Well, if you think about where we’re headed as a species really, we are expected to have 9, maybe 10 billion people living on the planet in 2050. That’s not very far away and when you think about the indications of that, we’re going to need to provide more for people while demanding less from the planet and from our natural systems and with more and more people moving into the cities and a growing global middle class, they’re going to expect a lot more services and quality of life and so we are fundamentally going to be redesigning how we’re living on the planet and that is a perfect opportunity for designers. Design is almost like a secret weapon that can help us figure out how we can live on this planet with this many people and change the future that we’re creating so that’s what we get to think about is how do we equip our customers with the right technology, the right mindset, the right access to tools to start to think differently about everything that we’re designing.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That is so interesting so recently, you spoke at the Fortune Brainstorm Green Conference and you spoke on the idea of design led revolution. I’ve never heard those words together. Can you share and define that term for our listeners out there and for myself so they understand where you’re taking us and when you’re speaking of design, what does design led revolution really mean?
LYNELLE CAMERON: Sure, so I think about the last few decades kind of in three eras from a sustainability perspective. The first era in the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, even ’90s was the era of the NGOs, the nonprofit organizations, the activists who were calling attention to some of these sustainability issues, environmental issues, social issues and then around 2000, the era of the corporate started so corporate sector waking up to sustainability, sustainable design, sustainable development, the rise in the number of sustainability reports. A couple years ago, almost every Fortune 500 company was writing a sustainability report. They all have CSOs, Chief Sustainability Officers, and now what we’re seeing as we look to the future is the era of the designer where it’s this rise in the power of designers to step in and make decisions which seem small on the one hand in terms of the impact but actually can radically change the trajectory that we are on and so the design led revolution is about this rise in the power of designers to use their talents and skills to change the future and the design led revolution is not an Autodesk thing. It’s not a revolution of our making. It’s something that we see happening. We are simply calling attention to it in order to accelerate the power of designers and we provide the technology and we want to put forth the very best design solutions that make it easy for our customers to make better decisions about everything that they’re making, whether it’s energy, water, materials impact of their design, or the implications for people and human health and improving people’s lives and so we have an important role to play in the design led revolution but it’s something that is much larger than Autodesk that we just are really inspired by and we want to help accelerate.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: For our listeners who just joined us, we’ve got Lynelle Cameron on with us. She’s the Senior Director of Sustainability at Autodesk. She’s also the President and CEO of The Autodesk Foundation. If you want to follow along, I’m on their websites right now. There are two amazing websites, one for the foundation. It’s www.autodesk.org but they also have a really fascinating website. It’s www.autodesk.com/designledrev and I’m on that site right now and it’s really, really first of all, visually beautiful. Second of all, it has lots of great information and I’d like to ask you some questions with regards to the information on this. First of all, when you talk about the term ‘impact design’, what does that mean, Lynelle, and how does that tie into the design led revolution?
LYNELLE CAMERON: Great question. Let me back up a step and then we’ll get to impact design so the key component of the design-led revolution, as I mentioned, is the rise in the power of designers specifically to solve today’s most epic challenges so again, whether it’s an environmental challenge of climate, energy, water or it’s health, education, poverty, some of these huge epic global challenges and we use the word epic because these challenges are very interconnected systemic ones. You can’t solve them in isolation. They truly are epic in nature and so we are helping people solve these epic challenges. Impact design, you mentioned Autodesk.org website so a couple months ago, we launched something called The Autodesk Foundation, which is the first foundation focused exclusively on design and we did this because we really saw a number of design driven organizations within the nonprofit sector who are having tremendous impact on some of these epic challenges and so we decided on a foundation that was focused entirely on impact design so impact design is about using design to have impact on some of the greatest epic challenges so that’s the connection, if you will, between epic design, the design led revolution, and solving these epic challenges and we are so inspired by the kinds of organizations that we’re finding within the nonprofit sector but even more broadly through the social enterprise and the social sector broadly and I’m happy to give a few examples of those if that’s helpful.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Please. Yeah, that would be wonderful.
LYNELLE CAMERON: Okay. There is a whole list of these organizations on Autodesk.org for people who want to know more about them but just to highlight a few, we a couple months ago hosted a team of engineers from Kenya from an organization called Kickstart International. This is an organization that makes irrigation pumps for small farmers across the African continent and they believe that there’s not necessarily a water problem but there’s an irrigation problem and extending the growing season so that we can irrigate farms during the dry season is really the big opportunity and so we brought these engineers to San Francisco for about three weeks where they could learn all about our design technology. get trained in it, visit Pier Nine, which is our fabrication lab, tech shop, which is another fabrication maker space that we gave them access to, and so these people were able to radically change their whole design process, which used to take a matter of years to improve an irrigation pump and actually get it to market, down to a matter of days because they could iterate in the computer, optimize their design, and then print it with a 3D printer and be ready to have something to field test in the market so it’s organizations like Kickstart that we want to support. I’ll just throw out a few more. Mass Design is a nonprofit architectural firm that builds hospitals and pools in remote underserved communities and so again, it’s exactly the kind of organization that we want to support because they are using design to solve some of the most epic challenges. Similarly, an organization called BREV, which is a nonprofit organization that sets out to health and medical technologies to people who live on less than $4 a day so we supported them to do a field testing of a prosthetic knee and they are truly demonstrating the power of design to serve a whole new set of people at the bottom of the period so these are the kind of organizations that we support through the foundation but I’ll just highlight that another similar effort that we’ve been doing at Autodesk for many years is our partner program and that’s a similar effort but it’s targeting the clean tech early stage entrepreneurs so any company that’s starting out that has a business that’s specifically tailored to address an environmental challenge can have easy access to Autodesk technology and so again, it’s a really simple online application process but the goal for us is to get our technology into the hands of the people who are having the greatest impact in solving these epic challenges and so that’s where I get to spend my time doing every day is working with really inspiring creative people who are not afraid to tackle some of the thorniest most epic challenges.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Right, but I’m on your dot-org site now, the Autodesk.org site, and I’m looking at some of these stories that you were just talking about, helping farmers grow their income and improving mobility for amputees, building affordable efficient homes, but then below that, you have then designing solutions to epic challenges and then you have all the buckets that are how you see the epic challenges; water, climate change, urbanization, energy, land and resources, and health, so where in the world are the greatest opportunities for designers to make a difference or is the opportunity just almost limitless? Because in terms of epic challenges, mixing design and leveraging your design capabilities and your great software to help solve some of these epic challenges seems like you’re covering a lot of ground here.
LYNELLE CAMERON: You hit the nail on the head. The opportunity is everywhere and that’s the really exciting part and there is nothing that is designed on our planet that doesn’t yield an incredible opportunity from a sustainability or impact perspective and I think that’s the real message that we want to get out is whether you’re designing a building or a product or a transportation system, energy, even whole cities, there is an incredible opportunity to think differently about what you’re designing and about how you’re designing and we’re doing that ourselves as well. A month ago, we announced an intention to produce a 3D printer and we’re thinking a lot about what kind of materials do we want to be printing with. Do we want recycled material? Do we want non-toxic material? How can we optimize our own 3D printer just as we’re advocating our customers to do? And I think that’s the message is we all have a role in the future, whether we’re a consumer or a designer, or a policy maker, and we each have a really important role to play if we can think differently about each of our roles and find the change that is most meaningful to you or your company or your organization so the opportunity really is everywhere. The future is our design brief and it gets really exciting when you think about millions of people thinking differently about the role of design and their role in shaping the future.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That is so true. Can you give us a little history? We have a couple minutes left unfortunately, but why has Autodesk chosen the convergence of their business model, which happens to be design software, and why are they so passionate about these amazing causes that you’ve gotten involved with with regards to the foundation and everything you’re doing with regards to sustainability and the foundational work? Talk about the passion and where does it come from at Autodesk.
LYNELLE CAMERON: Well, we’re talking about our collective future and what’s not to be inspired about having a hand in shaping the future and I think when you talk to CEOs of most large companies today, they understand the planetary situation. They understand that we will soon be living in a carbon-constrained world. It’s inevitable. What we are really inspired to do is to help people understand this reality in an inspiring way. We all know about the epic challenges but sometimes they seem too daunting to really take personal action against and we are at the nexus of design professions in the broadest sense and that is so inspiring to us to work together with creative people every day to design the solutions that our future, our children and their children, need so it’s a pretty obvious position for Autodesk to take and I think we are on the verge of a breakthrough as a society over the next 10 years to get where we need to be.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Thankfully, you’re leading the way, both wearing your two hats as Senior Director of Sustainability at Autodesk and as the President and CEO of The Autodesk Foundation. For our listeners out there that want to learn more about the foundation, it’s www.autodesk.org and go to www.autodesk.com/designledrev. Thank you, Lynelle, for being an inspiring leader of the design led revolution and using the power of design to create a better world. You are truly living proof that green is good.
LYNELLE CAMERON: Thank you, John.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Welcome back to Green is Good, and we’re so excited to have with us today Nil Zacharias. He’s the co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of One Green Planet, and you can check out all his great work at OneGreenPlanet.org. Welcome to Green is Good, Nil.
NIL ZACHARIAS: Thanks so much. Thanks for having me on the show.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Oh, it’s an honor. We are huge fans of OneGreenPlanet.org, so we’re so glad you’re on today. Before we get talking about all the great things you’re doing there, though, talk a little bit about Nil and your background leading up to the co-founding of One Green Planet please.
NIL ZACHARIAS: Sure. Happy to. You know actually, in fact, if you had told me a few years ago that I’d be running a site like One Green Planet today, I’d probably think you were joking and the reason for that is I’m not food, environmental, or animal activism space. In fact, far from it. I started my career as an intellectual property lawyer in India and so I worked for a law firm for a couple of years and moved to New York to do my masters in law and ended up getting into the online media space so I worked for a company called Double Click, which was acquired by Google. I went on to work for a big consulting firm and then ended up at Yahoo where I spent a few years and made my way up to the leadership team of Yahoo’s online advertising technology business so as you can imagine, I was on my way to a potentially long lasting relatively cushy corporate career when I decided to change course and the reason for that decision, what really triggered that, was a bit of an aha moment that I had a few years ago so the back story on that is when I moved to New York from India, I found myself very quickly trapped in the American culture of consumption and it started. The biggest change I noticed was I was starting to eat a lot more meat. Now, I did grow up eating meat but it paled in comparison to what I was starting to do here. It reached a point where I was literally eating meat with every meal and feeling really uneasy about the whole thing so one day I told myself I have to make a change and I decided I was going to cut down on my meat consumption and that one simple decision, little did I know that it would actually have a profound impact on my life so it set in motion a chain of events. I started to read about food production, about animal agriculture and the more I read about the ways that the food I was eating made its way to my plate, the less of an appetite I really had for it and eventually, I made the connection between these industries and their impact on the environment, about health and importantly, the connections between animals I grew up loving and the ones I was eating so that was the moment for me and my wife and I decided to do something about it so we looked at our lifestyle choices and we said how can we minimize our impact and when we looked around, we really couldn’t find one resource that was giving us everything we need, whether it’s vegan recipes and cooking tips, expert insights, or even news and updates about what’s happening in the animal environmental space. There were some conversations happening in pockets. You could look at many of the blogs run by nonprofits and to a certain extent, even sites like The Huffington Post started to talk about these issues a few years back but we felt that a lot of the important ideas were getting lost in this online media noise and what was really needed was one platform that brought all these issues together, made the right connections, and gave us the tips, advice, and the answers that we were looking for so in many ways, One Green Planet started because of our desire to find answers and we’ve just been very lucky that there’s so many people out there who are actually looking for the same things today.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Like I said, I’m a huge fan. I’m a vegan. I’m a huge fan of your website and all the great information and tips that I learn from it so for our listeners out there that want to always stay hooked into One Green Planet, it’s www.onegreenplanet.org so I just have to ask you this at the top of the show. I’m on the website now. It’s just a beautiful website. Why did you choose the headers? And also, for your titles such as your title, Monster-in-Chief, why do you use the word monster? How did that come to be? Where was the epiphany for the use of monster?
NIL ZACHARIAS: Right. That’s a great question. If you visit the site, as I said, we have a lot of general lifestyle categories. We talk about food, health, DIY living, animal issues, and environmental issues but in fact, underlying all of it is this focus on activism and every piece of content that we create is crafted to inspire some sort of action and change so obviously, we attract a very passionate and action oriented community and we wanted to come up with a way to describe them and we lovingly call them green monsters and you’re probably wondering what that means so what we think about it is a green monster is someone who is concerned about the impact of meat on the environment, on their health, wants to choose more meatless vegan recipes. A green monster is someone who wants to buy products that are fair trade. A green monster is someone who cares about the environment, about animals, that wants to do something about the issues. I think green monster is essentially someone who wants to bring about change because we inherently believe that given the right tools, information, and resources, anyone would choose to be a green monster and actually make more conscious choices.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That’s awesome. That makes so much sense to me. Again, for our listeners out there, it’s OneGreenPlanet.org so you’re connecting all the dots between lifestyles, environment, animal issues. Why do you think you have such a large audience base now? Do you feel that veganism and that this subject matter is just a mega trend that’s going to continue to grow or the media is pushing this or share your thoughts on why this convergence of activity around this subject matter now?
NIL ZACHARIAS: That’s a good question too. I think when we started out, we just happened to start at the right time and talking about the right issues. I think people are generally starting to get more concerned about the issues surrounding health and animal welfare and impact on the environment and they just are looking for more trusted resources where they can learn how to make better choices and I think it’s just reached a bit of a tipping point right now and we just happened to be, I think, at the right place at the right time so I have to acknowledge that but we also have approached it in a very different way, which has helped us.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That’s awesome. You know, we had the founder of The Sanctuary on last week and I have people come up to me and ask me how you become a vegan and I start sharing some of the tips and then before you know it, people start feeling better when they stop eating meat and they just start cutting dairy out of their life and stuff like that so I’m sure the feedback that you’re getting from your audience has been very, very positive.
NIL ZACHARIAS: I think one of the things that’s helped us too in terms of how we’ve grown so fast, and we’ve only been around for two years and so we’re in many ways just getting started, but what’s really helped us is, as I said before, we started the site to be a discovery platform where this emerging conscious generation like my wife and myself could find answers so in many ways, we not only think like our readers. We are them so we’re in this together with them. We’re learning and we’re growing so I think it helps us. We didn’t start the site as experts. We are not experts so actually we’re looking for the same answers everyone else is and that’s really been beneficial for us.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: For our listeners out there that want to start changing their life, what we love to give on the show, Nil, is solutions so what’s the one choice that you think has the biggest impact for people, animals, and the planet that they can make?
NIL ZACHARIAS: Yeah, that’s easy. It’s a choice that we make three or more times a day, the food that we eat. You said this too. I think meat is unsustainable. I think everyone knows the facts. Meat is a big contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, depleting our natural resources, polluting our air and water. Bottom line, it’s a destructive force and the best way to counter that destructive force is to reduce meat and dairy consumption and eat more plant based food so that one choice that I talk about always, which is simple yet is so challenging and difficult for some people to take on, is to eat more plant based foods because that one choice has the maximum positive impact, not just on the environment but also on your health and obviously on the lives of animals.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: For our listeners out there that don’t have the ability to look at Nil’s website right now while they’re listening to the show, it is so beautiful and colorful and you cover so many topics. I’ll just give a couple on the header: Earth Monster, all about the earth; Food Monster; Health Monster; Recipe Monster; What’s the Current Buzz Monster; Life Monster and then you have Video Monster so you do a great job of taking thought provoking and controversial topics like factory farming, which we covered a couple weeks back, animal rights, vegan lifestyle viral. How do you do it and deal with skeptics and people who want to throw spears your way and arrows your way? How do you deal with the critics and the people who are very much against what you’re trying to propose and shed some light on?
NIL ZACHARIAS: For the first part of your question on how we actually take these controversial issues like factory farming and take it viral, there’s a few principles we follow which have helped us. Firstly, we focus on the positives. It doesn’t mean we don’t talk about the wrongs but for every wrong we talk about, we try to highlight two more rights so we always are talking about how activism is working and change and we’re really changing our habits today so whether it’s people’s opinions about keeping wild animals in captivity people reducing their meat consumption and eating more vegan food, both of which are really happening today, we’re always highlighting those positives. Secondly, we’re very inclusive so while we do create a lot of resources that are very helpful for people who are already making conscious food choices, eating vegan or buying eco-friendly products, we spend probably double the amount of time thinking about ways to reach people that don’t care about these issues and really haven’t had the time to think about it and thirdly, we have a sense of humor. I think one of my favorite Mahatma Gandhi quotes, and I’m paraphrasing here, is, ‘If I didn’t have a sense of humor, I probably would have committed suicide a long time ago.’ I think there’s really an important lesson in there for activists because sometimes it feels like we’re banging our heads against the wall. There’s so many skeptics and it seems like these unjust industries will never change, at least not in our lifetime, so it’s important to not take yourself too seriously sometimes so we do that as a team but we also bring that across in our content and you see that across the site. On the issue of skeptics, we’re not selling products so we can’t use marketing tricks and gimmicks to get people to click and buy things. We’re trying to change people’s minds, which is an incredibly tough thing to do so yes, there are a lot of skeptics out there but the way I think about these issues and the choices that we talk about, I think it’s part of an inevitable future we’re heading towards and people probably don’t realize this but the future is coming here quicker than we anticipated. You just have to look at how, in recent years, companies like Beyond Meat started Ethan or Hampton Creek Foods by Josh, not only are they creating great products and are plant based but they’re getting backed by venture capitalists like Bill Gates and the Founders of Twitter so that’s just one example of a shift that’s starting to happen and I think it’s very exciting so skeptics, we welcome skeptics because we believe it’s not really a question of whether they’re going to change. It’s a matter of when.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That’s great. For our listeners who just joined us, we’re so excited and honored to have with us today Nil Zacharias. He’s the co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of One Green Planet. You can check out all his important and great work at www.onegreenplanet.org. Nil, you know, scale. When you start a website and a web property, scale and visibility is so important. What was your plan? When you and your wife started this venture, what was your plan and how has it worked in terms of getting visibility and scale when there’s so many other websites out there in the world now fighting for the eyeballs and the minds and the hearts of the audiences out there. How did you go about it and how come you’ve risen above the din so successfully?
NIL ZACHARIAS: I think back to what we mentioned, we started the site because we ourselves were trying to create a resource that we could go to. That was one thing. Secondly, not being from The States has helped us because we brought in a fresh perspective on issues. We had time to develop our own original editorial voice that’s independent and fair and that’s appreciated by all the nonprofits and businesses we work with today because they know we’re unapologetic about our mission and our editorial voice can’t be influenced very easily. My wife and I, if I haven’t already mentioned, she’s my co-founder. We both built our careers in the online media space so we’ve worked for online publishers. We understand how to build products. We understand technology. We understand the business issues. We’re just very lucky to be able to use all that skill, that knowledge, and that experience and apply it to something that we truly feel passionate about so we brought that in too and as I pointed out at the beginning, we happened to be talking about the right issues at the right time. In terms of how do we approach this issue, we considered getting investors initially and we did spend some time thinking about that issue and we thought we had two choice. We could spend two months or maybe more than that talking about potential and convincing them we had the right idea or we could use the same time and build it ourselves so obviously, we chose the latter. We built this independently and we’ve, in many ways, surprised ourselves. We are now as big as some sites that have millions in investment and we’ve done it by just staying committed to our vision and running a very lean operation but we’re definitely open to investors. We’re open to strategic investors, especially those that understand what we’re doing and our mission and would love to partner with us.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: What’s the next steps? Speaking about strategic investors, I understand that. What’s your goal? When you and your wife are done with the day and you go have a meal together and you’re talking about where to take this, what’s both of your collective vision and how far do you want to go with this and how big can it get?
NIL ZACHARIAS: We think of One Green Planet as not just a content publishing website. We have a bit of a different take on it. We think of ourselves as a technology platform that’s powered by content by that has tools and resources that can empower nonprofits in the space as well as these emerging new businesses that are trying to do good and consumers who are trying to make better choices and as I said, we’re just getting started in many ways. Our goal is to build a long-lasting brand in the space and that takes time and we’re ready to put the time and commitment. This is not just a business for us. It’s our life’s work and we’re working on some exciting things in the short term that will be launching later this year. I think it’s just going to take out site to the next level but we want to create a longstanding brand that’s associated with this emerging conscious consumers and economy that’s rising.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Nil, you know, we have so many young people from around the world that listen to this show and they get so inspired by great people like you who are doing such important and relevant work. Do you have any advice for other people now, other social entrepreneurs in training or other social entrepreneurs in school that want to go and become the next Nil and go found the next One Green Planet or the next Beyond Meat or other great brand? What are some of your favorite tips for social entrepreneurs out there that want to be as successful as you are?
NIL ZACHARIAS: You know, I think you probably know this, John, too but entrepreneurship is not easy and it’s not for everyone and I think some people probably are of the opinion that idealism has no place in entrepreneurship, especially if you’re trying to build a startup that’s focused on growth, but I believe that idealism actually makes me a better entrepreneur and I say that because no matter what business you start, even if it’s not focused on social good, you’re going to have skeptics. You’re going to have people who will question the long term viability of your product, about your business plan, about your judgment and possibly even your sanity and when that happens, it’s very important to stay strong and I think being an idealist makes you strong inherently because you’re driven by a cause that’s bigger than you. You’re driven by more than just money and this is going to happen no matter what business you start. You’re going to have those dark days where you’ll have to dig deep and find inspiration and push on no matter how hard the task ahead seems and I think that’s when idealism really helps and so I really believe at the core of any good entrepreneur is an idealist so social entrepreneurs or those focused on creating really good products have an inherent advantage but obviously, that’s not the only thing. I think you have to balance that sense of idealism and that desire to change the world with the ability to go ahead and build stuff and do something so even at One Green Planet, from day one, we’ve just been committed to building a great product and we work day and night to improve that product, whether it’s the feature on our site, whether it’s our content, our approach to social media. We are obsessed with trying new things, failing, learning from our failures, and trying again until we get it right and I think this obsession is almost to the extent where we hardly do any marketing. This is one of the rare interviews I’ve ever given because we think that if we build a great product, it’ll speak for itself so to sum that up, I think the magic formula, if there is any, and I’m still working on it myself, is idealism plus the ability to build stuff.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: I love it, Nil, and we’re so honored and thank you. I know this is one of your rare interviews and we’re so honored and thankful that you came on today and we want you to come on again in the future and continue to share the journey and the great story of One Green Planet. For our listeners out there, please join The Green Monster community at One Green Planet at www.onegreenplanet.org. Thank you, Nil, for being an inspiring green monster and sustainability superstar. You are truly living proof that green is good.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Welcome to another edition of Green is Good. We’re so honored to have with us today Mark Kohorst. He’s the Senior Manager for Environment, Health, and Safety at NEMA. NEMA stands for National Electrical Manufacturers Association. Welcome to Green is Good, Mark.
MARK KOHORST: Happy to be here, John. Thanks.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Hey, Mark, we’re going to be talking about lamp recycling today, and for our listeners out there that want to follow along, they can go to LampRecycle.org. But, Mark, before we get going and talking about the importance of lamp recycling, I’d love you to share a little bit about your bio and journey leading up to becoming the Senior Manager for Environment, Health and Safety at NEMA.
MARK KOHORST: Well, sure. I’ve been here for nine years so I’ve basically been involved in environmental public health issues generally for upwards of 25. I’ve done work related to legislation, regulation, litigation, and I started my career, actually, at the U.S. EPA in the Office of Water way back in the ’80s.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Wow, and how’d you end up at NEMA? What pushed you in that direction?
MARK KOHORST: Well, I was doing a lot of consulting on environmental issues, primarily in regulation and legislation and then saw this opening and it was a great fit with a very good sort of important and progressive industry so it just happened from there.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Got it, and so talk a little bit about NEMA. Who is NEMA? So our listeners out there get a good background on who NEMA is as an organization.
MARK KOHORST: Well as you said, we’re the National Electrical Manufacturers Association Basically, we are the principal U.S.-based trade group, we’re a trade association, for manufacturers of electrical products from A to Z and that basically means anything used to help generate, transmit, distribute electricity as well as end use products as well so if you’re a U.S. based company and you manufacture something that helps bring electricity to the world, you probably should be a member of our association.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Got it, and since you guys are the National Electrical Manufacturers Association, what is your role with regards to lamp and lamp recycling?
MARK KOHORST: Well, one of our divisions, one of our product sections, is lighting products and within that, we have what we call lamps. That’s the traditional industry term for a light bulb. When you say lamp and you’re in the industry, you mean the bulb and that goes all the way back to Thomas Edison so we represent the major manufacturers of light bulbs and all the other components of lighting and that’s GE, Philips, Sylvania, all the household names.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Got it, got it, got it, so in terms of lamp recycling and I’m on your website now and it is really a really food and educational and really colorful and well done website and again, for our listeners out there that want to follow along, it’s LampRecycle.org. What are mercury containing lights and why is it necessary to recycle them? I’m a little bit confused because there’s so many different opportunities out there in terms of lamps and light bulbs. Explain to our listeners where is there mercury and why do we have to recycle these lamps?
MARK KOHORST: Yeah, those are important questions, John, and you’re right. The whole lighting world is in a period of great transition. It’s been changing an awful lot over the past decade or two. Mercury containing lights are basically lamps that are based on a technology that requires a very, very small amount of mercury to work and the important thing about them is they’re very efficient. They produce light in a far less wasteful way. They use far less energy when they do so, so the traditional old incandescent lamp, the Thomas Edison bulb that we all know, they do not contain mercury but they’re highly inefficient and for that reason, as you and your listeners may know, the federal government is phasing them out. They’ve established standards that manufacturers have to meet that basically are making those old bulbs obsolete. Their current replacement for the past decade or so has been these squirrely what we call compact fluorescent lamps or CFLs and you’re probably familiar with them. Manufacturers and people have been buying them for a lot of years now and they do contain a very small amount of mercury and they’re far more efficient. They last a lot longer and they use a lot less energy than the older bulbs. Also, when you say fluorescent lights, you also mean the tubes, which are probably over your head right now and in virtually every big commercial building in the world so why do you need to recycle them? Because of the fact that they contain mercury and you don’t want those kind of products going into a landfill. It’s a very, very small amount of mercury but generally it’s something that you want to dispose of properly so that mercury doesn’t go into the environment.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Wait a second. So, CFLs, fluorescent light tubes, should all light bulbs and lamps be recycled? Is that the general proposition or just these certain categories?
MARK KOHORST: Just these types that contain mercury, so that would be CFLs. It would be the linear tubes, the long tubes, and then it would be the other types of outdoor lights and stadium lights and what we call HID, High Intensity Discharge. Very few of them are used in homes so people don’t generally need to know about them. Those are commercial products but yes, if it’s an efficient fluorescent light bulb, it has mercury in it and we strongly recommend that they be recycled.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Got it, got it, so can you talk a little bit about what are the recycling opportunities for our listeners out there in terms of who can actually pick up these lamps or how do they send them back to a responsible recycler? How does this all work now?
MARK KOHORST: Well, you can basically divide the world into two sectors. One is the big commercial industrial institutional world, commercial buildings and so on where you have all the linear tubes and the industrial lighting and so forth. Those lamps and the disposition of them is controlled by federal law. Any large generator of lamps, in other words, any large building, any large institution must, by federal law, recycle those lamps and there’s a whole industry of lamp recyclers that services those generators so if you’re a commercial building owner or manager, if you work for a university, a school system, and you have large numbers of these commercial lights to get rid of, you call a recycling company. They will service you anywhere in the country and they have all sorts of services to get those lamps from you and then recycle them properly to recover the mercury. The other half of the world, and that’s what we’re dealing with here, are the homeowners, you and me, and we’ve got our CFLs and we’ve got our light bulbs in our home and we take them out because they burn out and now we have the question of what to do with them and there are opportunities. There are options available to consumers but laws such as this one in Washington that we’re going to talk about today have to increase the number of those opportunities, make the recycling more convenient and available to consumers.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Okay, so let’s go into the laws then. Can you share with us and our listeners the Washington law? What does that mean and what do the laws look like across the United States?
MARK KOHORST: Well, Washington was the third state to pass a law to do this and what it does is it sets up a framework by which the industry is going to set up a statewide system of collection points and they will be in retail outlets such as Home Depot and Lowe’s and places like that, many of which are currently doing this voluntarily, by the way. They’re already recycling but this will increase the number. It’ll broaden the network. It’ll make sure that there are options available across the state in all counties and basically it’s aimed at plugging that gap that I mentioned before to ensure that consumers, homeowners have a place to go that’s relatively where they can drop these lamps off and make sure that they’re properly disposed. That’s the intent of the Washington law, to set up a statewide program, make it available, and make it apparent, do education and outreach so people know about it.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: And, you said it’s the third state that’s created a law like this?
MARK KOHORST: That’s right. Vermont and Maine also have laws in place but they’re a little bit different in terms of financing and certain complex elements of the law but Washington is certainly by far the biggest state and it’s a little bit of a different model than those two states.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: So, it’s going to be a little bit, sounds like, the takeback program that these states starting pushing back in 2001, two, and three with regards to electronics, banning those from landfills. Right, right, so what’s your visibility? Is this going to become a national type of law mark or is this going to continue to go state by state and just be the rage across the United States? How do you foresee this with three states on board now?
MARK KOHORST: Well, I suspect other states may want to pick up where Washington left off. They may see this as appropriate for our citizens as well, not quite sure. We’re going to see how that goes but the prospect of a national law is kind of tough. The politics are much more complicated and the one thing to keep in mind, the good news, is that the vast majority of lamps containing mercury and the vast majority of mercury in the lighting sector are in that big commercial industrial arena that I told you about. That’s really where the impact is. It’s important to get lamps from consumers but it’s the big generators, the thousands and thousands of linear lamps coming out of commercial buildings and so on that really need to be managed and they are. They’re already covered by federal law and many state laws.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: For our listeners that just joined us, we’re honored to have with us today Mark Kohorst. He is the Senior Manager for Environment, Health, and Safety for NEMA and to learn more about all the great work he’s doing and NEMA’s doing, you can go to www.lamprecycle.org. Let’s talk a little bit about stewardship. Obviously, this is good stewardship that these laws are coming into play and that large brands like you mentioned, Home Depot and others, are now going to be doing takeback programs to allow United States citizens to avail themselves and give them a convenient and accessible place to recycle their lamps from their homes. Mark, what is a stewardship organization mean with regards to lamp recycling?
MARK KOHORST: Well, that’s kind of a centerpiece of this law, John. The way it works is manufacturers, meaning my member companies, PE and Osram and Philips, and so forth, have to designate a stewardship organization to implement the law and a stewardship organization is a nonprofit. It’s sort of an entity created for the purpose of implementing the provisions and the law and they include setting up this network of collection sites, handling the financing, overseeing and implementing the education and the outreach to make people aware of it and so forth, so it becomes the sort of controlling body and, as I said, it’s a nonprofit. It will be funded by proceeds through a mechanism set up in the law and it will be sort of the face of the program in the state.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Gotcha, gotcha, and let’s talk about this. Obviously, thought leaders or industry leaders or environmental NGO folks thought this was a problem. Can you explain why these states have started passing these laws and how big is this potential problem, Mark, of inappropriate lamp disposal and what is the opportunity, commercially speaking, for the ecopreneurs and entrepreneurs out there that want to become part of the sustainability revolution and become lamp recyclers?
MARK KOHORST: Well, as I said, there is a network of lamp recyclers, the sort of industry already in existence. They have their own association. They’re mostly small businesses and they’re located around the country. It’s an opportunity like any other. When the laws such as Washington come into place, I guess there’s always an opportunity for those who want to come in and say we can come in and process this and manage these lamps better than anybody else and cheaper than anybody else and try to make their niche so it does provide that.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: How big is the problem?
MARK KOHORST: Well, the way I would say it is this: It’s hard to tell because we don’t really know how many lamps are being recycled. We have some data but we can say pretty certain that the percentage of lamps that are actually recycled of those that are out there going into the trash is pretty low and it needs to be increased and in Washington, that’s one of the motivators behind this bill. Consumers especially, there’s been a lot of work to get people interested in recycling behavior and on board with what they have to do but the numbers are still pretty low and everybody wants to see them increase.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Speaking of that, do you have sheer numbers on how many lamps are recycled each year?
MARK KOHORST: Well, we have them for certain states. Massachusetts has a program, for example, and the numbers are upwards of 6 million or so in the past couple years. It’s in that range and then of course, you have to measure that against how many are actually going into the trash and we don’t really know that. We only estimate it from past sales, but the percentage in Massachusetts is fairly good and it’s probably higher than it is in most places but certainly the numbers are in the millions.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Wow, and by the way, you mentioned there is already an industry of lamp recyclers and again, on NEMA’s great website, LampRecycle.org, there’s a button right at the top. I’m there now. You press the button and it says lamp recyclers and a whole list of lamp recyclers drops down. For those of you out there who want to recycle your lamps, both in a private or business setting, all the recyclers, all the resources are right there for you across the United States, so with regards to businesses, you spoke a little bit about this at the top of the show in terms of, let’s just take office buildings. I wasn’t quite clear. Office buildings are covered by the state laws or are they more covered by other regulations that have forced them to get with it and adopt good practices before homeowners.
MARK KOHORST: If they’re of a certain size, they’re covered by federal law for quite a while. There are laws that hazard waste of all types, not just mercury and lamps, so they have a federal law that they are required to comply with and that makes them set up arrangements so that when they are relamping, replacing lighting in their buildings, they have to make sure that those lamps are recycled and handled properly.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Got it, got it. I understand now. With regards to lamp recycling and light bulb recycling, Mark, what’s the visibility on the U.S. versus other countries? Are we behind? Are we ahead? Are we even? Compare us to Asia or Europe or Canada or South America. Where do we fall in the sustainability revolution? Do we have a lot of work to do ahead of us here?
MARK KOHORST: Well, as usual, it depends who your benchmark is. I would say in comparison with the European Union, we’re probably a little behind. They have a continental directive, so to speak. It’s like a law that governs across the entire European Union that requires electronics products of all kinds to be recycled, including lamps, and that’s been in place for a decade or so, so they are a little bit ahead. We have in this country done a lot of work, the industry has and activists have and states have, to generate lamp recycling over the last few years but we haven’t really put it in law as much as the Europeans have. Compare it again to other parts of the world and we’re probably quite a bit ahead so it really depends on the jurisdiction and so forth but concern over mercury is a global issue now so you’re seeing activity pretty much throughout the developed world and even in other lesser developed places.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Mark, we’re down to the last minute. Anything else people should know about energy-efficient lighting before we say goodbye?
MARK KOHORST: Well, the good news is this is a temporary problem because mercury lamps, as people know, are being replaced by even better lamps. LEDs are rapidly coming on to the market so as we get and take of these mercury lamps as they come into the trash, we’re all moving to even better lamps that last a very long time and provide great service.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Well, thank you for your service, Mark, and thank you for sharing the story today about lamp and light bulb recycling. It’s so important that listeners out there do so and please go to LampRecycle.org, find your lamp recyclers in your area, and recycle your lamps. Thank you, Mark, for shining a light on the very important topic of responsible lamp recycling. You are truly living proof that green is good.
MARK KOHORST: My pleasure, John. Thank you.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Welcome back to Green is Good. Today we’re so honored to have with us Manda Aufochs Gillespie. She’s the author and founder of the Green Mama. Welcome to Green is Good, Manda.
MANDA AUFOCHS GILLESPIE: Thank you so much, John. It’s great to be with you.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Hey, before we get talking about your great website, TheGreenMama.com, and your new book, Green Mama: Giving Your Child a Healthy Start and Greener Future, which can be found at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com and other great bookstores, I want you to share your story first. Give a little bit about your background to our listeners and how you even started this great website and came to write this wonderful book.
MANDA AUFOCHS GILLESPIE: Well, I probably got into the environmental movement sort of backwards because I grew up very poor, like poor-on-welfare kind of poor, when I was young in the inner city and green obviously was the last thing on my mother’s mind. She was a single mom, three kids, mixed-race family. We were quite the crew, but I was one of those kind of bookish, sensitive children and I really looked around me a lot and noticed the way the world didn’t seem very fair and where we lived was ugly and the things that happened to us, they weren’t the American Dream sort of summed up, but I was very aware that things didn’t have to be that way. I saw other people and how they lived. I read a lot and I saw that there were different ways and I began to really think a lot about the way things are connected and I felt there was always a stigma, like when you’re poor and you’re living on subsidies or on handouts, there’s this idea of don’t look the gift horse in the mouth. Don’t speak up for the things that you see that aren’t right. Don’t talk about the problems with the indoor air quality and the high asthma rate. Don’t talk about the food dyes and the chemicals in the food that’s given to you. Just be grateful. And so I ended up going to a very privileged and amazing university, Oberlin College, and there I worked with one of the early pioneers in the green movement as a positive movement, as a movement that builds things and starts companies and that was David Orr and I really took my early passion and my sense that things could be different for all people and starting directing it towards here are some concrete skills that you can learn and I ended up doing some really cool things from that. I worked on an urban eco-village project in Cleveland, Ohio, that worked with really diverse incomes and tried to green life for everyone. I got to work on a green residential project. I got to green a corporate daycare. I’ve even worked on greening an orphanage but all that still is somewhat theoretical. I felt really drawn to take my skill on holistic thinking and research and apply it to myself when I first became pregnant and that was really the foundation and the beginning of The Green Mama, both as a website and also as myself as a writer, researcher, and educator and that started about eight years ago when I was pregnant.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Wonderful, so you launched the website about eight years ago?
MANDA AUFOCHS GILLESPIE: Yeah, yeah, and at the time, there really was very little out there that was inspiring and directed towards parents but spoke to them like they were intelligent and capable of dealing with daily dichotomies of living green with your family.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That’s so interesting so that makes so much sense and your background leading up to this now is so inspiring and the evolution makes now total sense to me and to our listeners, I’m sure, so now that you got going and it’s eight years into it. What are you learning? I pick up The New York Times and I read about tiger parents and you read about helicopter parents and everything else that’s going on and I see with the younger generation, raising children is so much different than when, my children happen to be older now. They’re 27 and 21. What’s going on? Has the world changed or is parenting changing? What is your take on it? Because you’re right in the middle of it and you’re right in the middle of it in terms of not only your business enterprise and being able to aggregate all this information but also, you’re doing it yourself right now so what’s your take on all of that?
MANDA AUFOCHS GILLESPIE: The world really is more complicated and I think it’s so important for parents to hear that because we end up hearing a lot of the media that I really call that kind of blaming language that you hear in the media; helicopter parents, attachment parents, tiger parents, this sort of idea that parents are getting it wrong. Let’s look at parents today. Parents are more educated than they’ve ever been. They’re not dumb. They’re not disinterested. They care about their children. They care more than anybody about the future but the world really has gotten more complicated. We are seeing really frightening rises in things like asthma, obesity, diabetes, ADHD, autism, pediatric cancers. It’s not just in parents’ minds that those things are going up. Science is also showing us that those things are all going up and no, we don’t know exactly why because the world is complicated and it’s hard to point to one thing but it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to jump between the studies showing that these things are going up and the studies are also looking at the kind of profound implications of some of the things that we’re putting into our world such as today the 74 billion pounds of chemicals that are produced or imported into the U.S. every single day and that number is on the rise. That number is from 2005 and it’s rising and most of those chemicals are not tested. We have no idea what their effects are on human health.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Isn’t that amazing? That’s just amazing. For our listeners out there that want to see Manda’s great website as she’s sharing her thoughts today with us, go to TheGreenMama.com, www.thegreenmama.com. Manda, what’s green mean to you and what issues are you focusing on the most in terms of, we’re going to get to the book in a second but, in terms of the website. How are you sharing information and what’s your hot topics that you want to get out there and what does green mean to you?
MANDA AUFOCHS GILLESPIE: For me, I really try to focus on green as healthier for children and for the environment. Everything is sort of encompassed in there. We’re talking really not just about preserving rainforests and those kind of abstract ideas of pipelines and stuff like that. Really, what we’re talking about is why does your neighbor’s kid have cancer? What’s going on with ADHD? Why are you seeing this whole generation really struggling to kind of take their place in this world? That’s, to me, a sort of pertinent definition here and after years of having worked in the environmental movement before starting Green Mama, I got really used to this sort of negativity and skepticism around green. There was always this edge. You had to convince people why it was important and you had to convince the businesses that it would benefit their bottom line. You had to convince the developer how it could make their project more popular and then all of a sudden, I had my first class with parents and it was like nothing I said was enough. They wanted every single bit of it because parents care, not just because they have children but actually, when a parent becomes a parent and a child is born, they grow a new brain. Overnight they’re laying down these new neurological pathways to make all sorts of new habits so you can wake up in the middle of the night multiple times to deal with a crying baby and I always say, ‘Okay, if you’re going to be developing all these new habits anyway and you’re going to have all these worries and all these fears, what you want to do is throw in the things that are helpful. Throw in some good habits. Throw in some information that’s going to empower you and not scare you,’ so with my website, I try to stay focused on this idea that people want the information, that the information is complicated but that people are smart and if you give them a clear path through to the best of your abilities, we all benefit from that so that’s my focus.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Going green costs more, costs less? True or false? Going green costs more than just living our normal lives.
MANDA AUFOCHS GILLESPIE: I hate to say this because I think ultimately, we don’t need some stuff. My grandma, she was greener than me because she had her own garden, she never flew, and she had way less but let’s be realistic. I grew up on welfare. It is really hard for communities of people who are poor, who are entrenched on poverty and who are on welfare because, once again, we are left to protect ourselves. The government has dismissed a lot of what’s going on right now with the chemical industry and with aspects like that and we’re seeing corporations many times get out ahead of the government regulations and we’re seeing individuals way out ahead of it saying, ‘Okay, we know that there’s something not right here and until we kind of get on board as a society as a whole, we’re left to find the better products, to try to create healthier indoor air, try to protect our children from the worst of these exposures ourselves and it ends up being expensive.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Speaking of expensive, share a little bit about children’s products now. There’s rarely a time now when I go to a restaurant and I see kids, of course, now on iPads and I think man, if the iPad was developed when my kids were young, that would have been great but I’m not so sure of that anymore when I start talking to young parents and with regards to children’s products per se, are they better or worse in terms of your generation as you raise your children now? How has the evolution happened and where is it going?
MANDA AUFOCHS GILLESPIE: You know, the real answer to are they better or worse is both but really, we’re seeing such overwhelming quantities now. Clearly, I grew up poor. That’s not the same life experience that my children are having but I also take my kids every year and we spend part of the year in Guatemala, which is the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. It is a poor, poor country and guess what. Kids don’t have toys and guess what. They play outside all day long and it’s easy to romanticize that but I do the research. I look all the time and it’s true. Kids used to play more and playing, imaginative free play, there’s really beautiful research being done about how this is the number one indicator of your child’s future success in school, IQ even, all these kinds of things that we want for them. We want them to be independent thinkers and to succeed in the world and have the ability to lead others. This comes from imaginative creative free play and we also have interesting evidence to suggest that the more stuff that kids have, actually, the less play that they’re going to participate in. They get overwhelmed just by the sheer volume, even when it’s good stuff, not to mention that we’re throwing all sorts of toxins into kids’ toys that we know are a problem. Lead was one of the largest reasons for the recalls that happened over the last few years in plastic toys, not put on the wooden toys and the paint but in plastic toys, formaldehyde, all sorts of crazy stuff that are in kids’ toys and kids’ products that you’d think would be safe and the other thing that’s really interesting and that’s really hard to kind of get into with parents is the research on screen use with children and really, of all the research that I did for my book and that I do all the time for Green Mama, it is some of the most studied and clear evidence that’s out there that screen use harms children. It’s linked to everything from obesity to neurological issues to not being able to adapt as well socially, really clear linkages too like something like one more hour a day, 10% more of all sorts of these kind of negative impacts and most of those studies were done before i-things so our use, if anything, has gone up. We’re looking at young children having on average eight hours of some sort of screen use in a day and those were studies done before the i-things so I think this is a really big issue. It’s really important for us to take on but it’s also an equity issue. When you don’t have money, who’s watching your kids? Particularly if you live in a lot of the neighborhoods today that are entrenched with poverty, they’re not safe. They’re not kind of nostalgic poor like the neighborhoods when I grew up where kids went out and double dutched still. We lived outside and our neighborhood was poor and everyone was on welfare and it was safe. There were still problems but it was relatively safe and today I feel like, particularly in low income communities, there are real issues going on with lack of access to affordable care and even in really wonderful rich neighborhoods in cities like where I live, there’s real massive issues with access to affordable care and so what do people do? They plop down their kids in front of technology and we have to start talking as parents about the irony in feeling like we have no other choice but also knowing that this is going to cause lasting harm.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: For our listeners out there who just joined us, we’re so honored to have with us today Manda Aufochs Gillespie. She is The Green Mama and you can check out what she’s doing at GreenMama.com. She also just published a book called Green Mama: Giving Your Child a Healthy Start and a Greener Future. It’s available on Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and other great bookstores around the world. Manda, here’s the deal. I want you to give in the last five minutes or so your greatest tips from the book in terms of, you have such great chapters and I gotta share with our listeners some of the chapter names here. Of course, Greening Play, Greening Skincare, Greening Food, and I never thought I’d say this on the air; Greening the Boobs, Greening the Bum, Greening the Home and Nursery. Can you share some of your favorite and greatest tips and hints from the book, from these great chapters so our listeners out there get a little taste and then they go out and buy your book, which is going to be very important for parents out there now today?
MANDA AUFOCHS GILLESPIE: Thank you for all that. Some of my favorite tips are my favorite because they’re fun and they’re easy. One: cheap way to deal with indoor air quality issues. Take off your shoes before you come into the house or as you come into the house is another great way to reduce exposure, particularly when you have young children crawling around but also, it improves indoor air quality and wash your child’s hands frequently with plain soap, not that antibacterial stuff. I’ve got lots of science about why not to use that so just plain soap and water and buy less stuff. All those things will save you money. They’re easy, they’re fun, and they will have an actual health impact on your children. There are a few other tips that are a little harder that I think are also important. One is to learn to read labels and this gets into the overall thing that I think parents need to go away with, which is you are the expert in taking care of your own children. You are so whenever you run into a person, an institute, a label that confuses you, that tries to demean you, says things like oh really, it’s super green for you but then you look on the back and you’re like I don’t know what a single one of those words is, I can’t even pronounce them, be skeptical. You are the expert. Take power of your own expertness and trust yourself first and then a couple other more complicated things include buying organic, especially for meats and dairy. Learn the dirty dozen most contaminated fruits and veggies, which are all listed in my book, and then get outside to play. The beneficial effects of being outside and playing for your children, for you even, are so profound that they can really undo some of the negative stuff and harmful exposure that we get for the rest of our lives.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That’s awesome. That is really awesome. I know you live in Canada now, but you grew up in Chicago and you live in the beautiful city of Vancouver, British Columbia. Manda, talk a little bit about the differences in culture between Canada and the United States in terms of the green revolution. Who’s doing it better? Who’s doing it faster and where’s the bigger future?
MANDA AUFOCHS GILLESPIE: Oh no.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Loaded question, Manda.
MANDA AUFOCHS GILLESPIE: There’s a little hockey-like competition going on here, huh?
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Exactly.
MANDA AUFOCHS GILLESPIE: Are you going to ask me for my favorite team, too? You know, there’s this amazing thing that happened when I came to Canada. Before I moved here, I thought this was going to be the green Mecca land and there’s just endless amounts of water and forest and mountains here and people really do have sort of the green lifestyle. Everyone recycles. Everyone composts. It’s much easier in that way but there’s something about American innovation and also something else about Americans that I really think the whole world benefits from, which is this kind of indignation. Americans, when they see oh my goodness, our children are being polluted, not everyone but a lot of people get mad. They start nonprofits. They start organizations. They start education and advocacy groups. They spread the word. They write books about it. They get mad and they make a difference. I didn’t quite realize it before becoming an expat but the whole world isn’t necessarily like this. Canadians, I find, are more likely to believe that the government’s got your back, that things couldn’t possibly be that bad here, look how green it is outside my window.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: That is so interesting. What a difference.
MANDA AUFOCHS GILLESPIE: Good, solid American innovation. There’s a few things that they could learn from Canada too about supporting that innovation through, you know, health care.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: I love it. Manda, I want you to come back on. We have so much more to talk about. You’re doing great work and please go out and buy her book now, Green Mama; Giving Your Child a Healthy Start and a Greener Future, or go to her website and follow all the great stuff she’s doing there at TheGreenMama.com. Thank you, Manda, for being the inspiring
John Shegerian: Welcome back to Green is Good. We’re so excited to have with us today Nirit Hurwitz. She’s the Global Brand Building Communications Manager for SodaStream International. Welcome to Green is Good, Nirit.
Nirit Hurwitz: Thank you for having me.
John: You know, Nirit, before we get into talking about SodaStream USA and all the great stuff you’re doing, and you are the rage in the United States, can you give us a little bit of background about yourself before joining SodaStream and how’d you end up here?
Nirit: Sure, absolutely. So, I started out actually at Procter & Gamble and I was there for many years working on a lot of kind of very big and very established brands and after being there for a while, I actually had the opportunity to join SodaStream and it seemed like such an incredible place to work where you have a wonderful purpose when you come into work and you know that you’re working on a brand and that it creates better for you drinks and it’s better for the environment and it was just a wonderful fit and that’s kind of how I made my way through to SodaStream.
John: That’s wonderful, and I just have to give a shout-out to our listeners. This is a first today. You’re coming on the show from Israel. This is the first time we’ve had a great guest on from Israel, and I thank you for that. I thank you for the journey across today and being on the show from Israel and we have listeners around the world so this is great. Talk a little bit about SodaStream so people can connect your great brand so for our listeners out there who want to follow along online like I’m online, it’s SodaStreamUSA.com. How is SodaStream decreasing our carbon footprint? Explain that interrelationship.
Nirit: Well you know, the way that SodaStream works is actually very simple. It’s that you have one machine at home with a bottle that enables you to make any sparkling drink you want so you can make sparkling water, you can have flavored sparkling water, you can have sodas, you can have natural drinks, and it can all be made with the one bottle that you receive with the machine so instead of people going out and buying bottles and cans and throwing them out or recycling, which I’ll talk about in a minute about what’s really happening there, instead you can use this bottle and keep on reusing it and that’s really what helps us to really give something back to the environment and what’s incredible is that when you use the SodaStream machine, the amount of bottles you can save is actually amazing. The average family can save up to 2,000 bottles and cans a year. That’s what they’re using so by simply having this machine in its place, you get to go through and make sure that you don’t use any of those bottles and cans instead.
John: And, is this unique to you? Is this something that really you own this space compared to other brands? There’s no other brands that have that kind of value proposition in terms of saving that many cans and that many packages?
Nirit: Absolutely. When you look at SodaStream or the soda-making category where really, that’s synonymous with SodaStream, that is very much unique versus if you’re looking at kind of those other big companies, versus Coca-Cola or Pepsi. This is something very unique that we get to offer to our consumers is this ability to make the sodas at home and to not have to use bottles and cans so yeah, once you’re into the home soda making world, that’s it. You don’t have to take bottles and carry them home from the supermarket and then think about if you’re going to throw them out or recycle them and all of the carbon footprint that goes into that process. Instead, you just get to use the SodaStream.
John: Nirit, I gotta tell you something. When I go into different stores here in the United States and I see you guys have such great packaging and you have great visibility in the stores, I have never associated it with green, so I’m so glad you came on and you’re sharing with our listeners how green it is to use SodaStream. Can you share a little bit about the visibility on the future of the green revolution and SodaStream’s place in this space in the years to come?
Nirit: Absolutely. I think that part of it is also understanding kind of where we’ve been in the last few years, which is starting back a couple years ago, about five, six years ago, really the company started to better understand what kind of green composition we have and to try and help consumers to understand that as well because, like you said, not everybody knows that SodaStream is such an environmental product and it can save so many bottles and cans and not only that but we saw the consumers really when you go into the world, especially of beverages, people have forgotten the concept of reducing. They understand that they should maybe recycle but the entire idea, remember when we were little, we learned reduce, reuse, recycle but reduce and reuse have just been thrown out the window and it’s somehow turned into the world of recycling and recycling actually takes a lot of energy as well, whereas if you reduce and reuse, that’s really the best thing you can do so we understood that several years back and since then, have really been putting that in many aspects of the plan and it’s in our core and will continue to be in our core and as we move forward, you asked before is this something unique, and yeah, it’s something unique to the home soda making category so we will always have this green cause kind of in our core and in everything that we do.
John: I love on your website and again, for our listeners out there, it’s www.sodastreamusa.com. Right at the top of the landing page, two things that I love: saving the world from and it gives the amount of bottles you’ve saved the world, which is just so great. Having a bottle calculator right at the top of your website’s wonderful and then on the right side of your landing page, you have an earth friendly badge and that’s great to have there. I never would have gone and known that until you came on the show but this is so great. What great things you’re doing for the environment and for the world at large so give us a little visibility on the scientists at SodaStream. When you’re starting to do predictive analytics on the future, what’s your thought processes on your consumers and other consumers that you want to become SodaStream users? Are consumers becoming more friendly or is that talk right now in the media or is this really a revolution that there’s no going back and that they really do want to be more green and this is just another great way they can be more green?
Nirit: You know, I think that what we find is when you look at consumers, people definitely want to make decisions that are more green and that are healthier and people inherently have understood now that these are really important aspects of their lives but I think that really what we also understand is that it’s in human nature for people to want to also make sure that they’re getting good product and getting something that they’re going to enjoy so I think that that’s really the nice combination that you get with SodaStream is that you really don’t have to compromise. You get a machine that helps you to make any drink that you want. You can have the sodas that you’re used to having, go creative and make your own different cocktails, or make flavored sparkling water creations and really have fun with it and at the same time, you get to have something that is working well for the environment and that is doing better for the environment. Plus, you’re getting something, by the way, that our flavors are actually better for you. They have two thirds less sugar than regular flavors. We use no aspartames so it’s really also all those great benefits but in kind of a no compromise situation. You get to enjoy it all but also, when we think about our consumers that are coming up, we look and we say you could be using SodaStream and simply by using it, you could be reducing at least 65% of the carbon footprint every time you make a SodaStream soda instead of a regular soda so why wouldn’t you go ahead and make that small change to help the environment so as we continue to speak to consumers, that’s something that we hope will continue to happen that more and more people move into the SodaStream realm and start using SodaStream and we don’t have to create such a huge carbon footprint with every simple soda that we have to drink every day.
John: What I love on your website is that you give a whole analysis on why SodaStream is better than recycling. Can you just share a couple of the highlights from that analysis with our listeners? Because it’s really important that they understand the whole value chain. It’s just not the visible tangible bottles themselves but it’s also all the trucking and all the energy. Can you go into that a little bit, Nirit?
Nirit: Yeah, absolutely, so that’s part of what I spoke to before is the fact that we forget about reducing and reusing because we think that recycling is the solution but the problem with recycling is how much energy it actually uses so in order for a bottle to be recycled, it has to be picked up, taken by a truck, taken to a center. There’s energy that goes into creating new materials that is used with every new bottle and I’m not even going to talk about the incredible amount of money and funding that goes into governments to create the infrastructure for recycling and to build all those systems and all of that’s happening and part of it as well is that people, they recycle but unfortunately, we’re not seeing as high of recycle rates as we’d like to see around the world and unfortunately, we’re seeing much higher claimed recycling rates than actual recycling rates. In other words, people say they recycle far more than they actually do so not only is recycling not doing enough but people aren’t doing enough recycling so it really comes to a point where we say what else could we do? Because this part of recycling, it’s not the solution. We can’t keep on consuming and consuming more and then saying well, it’s okay because now I’ll have trucks pick it up and take it somewhere else and remake it with more energy into something else. We need to figure out how to actually drastically change our habits and using SodaStream is a way that changes your habits, not so drastically every day. It’s really a pleasant machine. It’s great. It’s easy to use and you don’t have to actually go and keep on recycling plastic. To be honest, having a recycling bin that gets filled every couple days is annoying. It’s nicer to not have to worry about that, not have to take it out to the trash.
John: Yeah, you’re right. For those of you who just joined us, we’re on the phone today with Nirit Hurwitz. She’s the Global Brand Building Communications Manager for SodaStream International. To follow along as we have this wonderful discussion, go to www.sodastreamusa.com. Just as a shameless plug, you’re really all over the place. Your products sell at Best Buy; Bed, Bath and Beyond; Costco; Walmart; Target; Macy’s; all these great, great stores; Staples; at all these great stores across the United States. It’s just the rage right now. Am I missing anybody big?
Nirit: I think you got most of the big ones, but yeah, we’re pretty much everywhere now, so it makes it really nice and convenient because you can go and pick up your SodaStream machine anywhere. We have over 60 flavors so you can pick up any flavor you like and then for people who aren’t aware as well, we try and reduce and reuse everything so we have even the gas in the machine, you can exchange so you don’t have to throw out the gas cylinder that it comes in. You get to go in and exchange it and we do that for a discounted rate as well and you can do that at any one of our retailers so we’re all over the place and nice and easy to reach as well.
John: Nirit, can you explain a little bit about your partnership with organizations like Five Gens and the Earth Day Network?
Nirit: Absolutely, so we’ve started to work with Five Gens and Earth Day Network, I believe it was about a year ago so we began a partnership with them and really, it was more with Earth Day Network where we were working on this particular project and then continuing also with Five Gen and then with some other projects but we’ve come to work with them. There’s a clear understanding of our joint work together in a joint purpose of helping the environment and that kind of leads me to one of the big campaigns that we’ve done recently, which is our Super Continent Campaign, which I’m not sure if you’ve seen or not.
John: No. Tell me about it. Tell us about it.
Nirit: If you go to SecretContinent.com, you’ll see that’s kind of our latest campaign that we’ve done because we’re always looking for new and creative ways to get our news out there and what we decided to do is with an understanding that we found a lot of people were kind of getting immune to the green messaging because they’ve just heard so much of it that stopping to pay attention so we came up with kind of a creative idea to get people involved so we created this place called The Secret Continent and it’s an imaginary location that we’ve created and we tell people to come to this incredible vacation destination and once they get there, they realize that it’s actually a place made out of trash and there are all sorts of different things that they can learn about the continent that they can see the animals that live there and the “culture” that’s there, everything that exists on this imaginary island made of trash but we’re actually here to represent The Pacific Garbage Patch, which exists near the coast of Australia and is actually twice the size of Texas and very much real and that is really what we’re doing here is trying to make a very serious point to life via kind of a little fun in a humoristic way.
John: Love it. I’m on it right now, TheSecretContinent.com, so tell me, when did you launch this?
Nirit: This was launched a couple months ago. We’ve launched it in many different countries so we had it from the U.S. to Australia to Japan. It was everywhere and the website is still there. We have it up and it’s for everybody to go and look at and enjoy and what this website does is really expose the horrific reality of The Pacific Garbage Patch because, unfortunately, besides the fact that this patch of garbage that is twice the size of Texas is floating around in the ocean, the majority of people just don’t know that it exists and what they don’t realize as well is that that’s where a lot of the trash is. Unfortunately, when the recycling rate goes down and when waste isn’t put in the right places, this is where it gets to and so this is what we’re trying to expose is to show to people the reality of certain decisions that we make as a global community and to show them what exists in The Pacific Garbage Patch and we’ve tried to do it, like I said, in a way that is a little bit funny and a little bit different than what they’ve seen normally when we talk about the environment so that we can really get people to come in, play a bit, laugh a bit, but also understand the serious nature of what they’re seeing.
John: You’re the Global Brand Building Communications Manager. Can you talk a little bit about SodaStream’s relationship and your first global brand ambassador, Scarlett Johansson?
Nirit: Absolutely. Scarlett joined us at the beginning of this year in January and it was a very natural connection that took place because Scarlett has actually been a user of the brand for years and a very passionate user, probably more passionate than any person I’ve ever met, and we actually got in contact with her because she got in contact with us. She was in Paris shooting and she needed extra gas for the machine and an assistant got in contact with us and then suddenly, we found out that it was her and we found out that she was a fan of the brand and she’d been using it and that seemed to make the most sense to us as a synergy for a brand partnership because we never wanted a brand ambassador who we paid to smile and say that they used the machine. We wanted somebody who really loves our product and who was a true user because we have so many passionate users that we want somebody who’s like that speaking for our brand and we were lucky enough that we got Scarlett to join us and she is not only passionate about our brand but really about the purpose of our product as well. She loves the fact that it’s environmentally friendly and she’s even said that she likes that when she throws a party; she doesn’t have to go and throw out tons of bottles and cans afterwards. There’s no big trash can that’s piled up and the fact that we have better for you products is also something that she connects to so it’s such a natural kind of partnership that came through and we’re very, very happy to have her as our brand ambassador.
John: That’s so interesting. In this world though, that has changed dramatically in terms of the Mad Men world that existed in the ’60s and of course, in the ’70s, Nirit, and now sort of the Modern Family world that we live in now in 2014, how do you use her? Because truly, this is part of her DNA and culture, using your great SodaStream product, how do you use her appropriately? In what platforms? In traditional advertising or is it more social media or how does that go when you make those decisions?
Nirit: We use her kind of appropriately as it comes around so we don’t have this specific plan that says that we’re only going to use her in one media but we did have her as the star of our super bowl ad, which is a very proud moment, but really, Scarlett is helping us to touch on many aspects of the brand so besides doing that TV ad, which we had, she’s also, whenever we come out with a product that she believes in, she’ll come and she’ll talk about it as well so that’s wonderful that we have her on our side for that so throughout the course of the next couple years of the partnership, you’ll see her in little places all throughout. Not too many details I can give away but you’ll see her.
John: Oh, that’s great, so we’re down to the last two minutes and I want to of course, plug your great product. Can you talk a little bit about what’s the most popular selling machine and why and again, all the different great yummy drinks that SodaStream can make, for our listeners out there around the world?
Nirit: Absolutely, so our flagship machine is called The Source Machine. It’s also the machine that you’ll see in the ad with Scarlett Johansson. It is a wonderful machine that is sold in the stores in the U.S. that you mentioned so you can find it pretty much everywhere and it’s a really, really easy to use machine. You just press on it. It shows you exactly how much you’re carbonating and you can pick exactly how much you want to carbonate so if you like lightly sparkling water or really, really heavily carbonated sodas, you can make that, whatever you want, whatever level, and with the machine, as I mentioned, you just need one bottle and you can create any drink you can imagine and, like I said, we have about 60 different flavors so you can make sparkling water. We have flavored sparkling water. We have fruit flavors. We have your kind of traditional sodas and then we even have cocktail ranges and you can mix and match and play as well and have fun and we encourage people to be creative at home as well and make their own drinks because you don’t have to have it the way that Coke or Pepsi said that this is what a drink tastes like. No, make it the way you like it. Have fun with it. Create your own drinks and it really is a fun machine to have at home. It’s good for the environment. As I mentioned, a lot of our flavors, they’re better for you. They have two-thirds less sugar than the regular flavors. Our diets have no aspartame and we have all natural drinks so go through. Go to our shelf. Play and have fun. That’s really part of it is to have fun with the SodaStream.
John: For our listeners out there, go to www.sodastreamusa.com and click on the where to buy button. All the stores are there. Buy SodaStream and save the planet. Thank you, Nirit, for being an inspiring green ambassador and evangelist. 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 Kevin Dooley. He’s the Chief Research Officer for the Sustainability Consortium. Welcome to Green is Good, Doctor Kevin Dooley.
KEVIN DOOLEY: Thank you so much.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Well, it’s so nice to have you on today, Kevin, and before we get going and talking about the important work you’re doing at The Sustainability Consortium, can you please share with our listeners a little bit about your background and your journey leading up to what you’ve been doing over at The Sustainability Consortium?
KEVIN DOOLEY: Sure. Well, my other sort of daytime job, so to say, is as a professor at the business school at Arizona State University and I go back a couple decades so I started off and was very lucky to get into both engineering studies and academia. At the same time, the quality movement was coming up and so that definitely excited me and so over the years, I worked on quality and innovation and worked on a few entrepreneurial ventures and for a variety of reasons, those came to a natural conclusion and I was looking around for what the next big thing to do is and a couple colleagues of mine asked me to participate on a paper about sustainable purchasing and I saw that there was not a lot of work done up to date and so I think I dedicated one of my summer reading lists a couple of years ago, maybe five or six years ago now, to really educating myself on what sustainability was and really, what the state of the world was around environmental and social issues in particular and really, that transformed my thinking and rather immediately led me to make a conclusion that I really wanted to dedicate the rest of my career towards this topic because it is not only very important but I think we have a sense of urgency to act and act broadly and largely.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: I’m just so happy you’re on because this is such a critical issue and you’re just doing such great thought leadership work on this. For our listeners out there that want to follow along with Kevin’s discussion today, go to www.sustainabilityconsortium.org. I’m on the website right now. It’s beautiful. There’s tons of information. Please share with us a little bit about The Sustainability Consortium, about the transformational process that you’re implementing there in terms of how we interact with consumer products and how they interact with us.
KEVIN DOOLEY: Great. Well, you are right in that our focus is around consumer products and consumer products offer us great both opportunity and risk. I think that we can all agree that consumer products give us a lot of the comfort and quality of living that we hope to achieve and indeed, when we look at the social aspects of sustainability, part of the goals that we have at a global scale is to bring up the living standards of people around the globe and consumer products can play an important role in that but we also know that consumption is going up as the middle class globally expands and that means that we need more energy to run factories. We need more water to manage farms and forests and we have more waste to take care of and so The Consortium’s focus is to help decision makers, whether they be product designers, supply chain managers, sustainability team officers, or even NGOs or governmental officials. To better understand what are the critical issues where we have the most challenge to improve the sustainability of consumer products and then what are the improvement opportunities that we can use to address those so to date, we’ve covered about 150 consumer product categories that represent about two thirds of the impacts related to consumer products on a global scale so just like many things, consumer products follow an 80-20 rule, where there’s a minority of consumer products that we buy and use all the time contribute to a majority of water and carbon impacts on a daily basis and so that’s where we’ve concentrated and we’ve also concentrated on the relationship between retail merchants and manufacturers and so we’ve developed some surveys that manufacturers can either use to assess how they’re doing in terms of product sustainability around particular categories like a computer, a laptop or a banana or a frozen convenience meal and then these surveys can also be used and are being used by the retailers to assess their brand manufacturers’ performances.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: You know Kevin, over the years, as I’ve hosted this show and I’ve had the honor to host this show, I’ve learned from people like you and other great leaders that sustainability is a journey. It’s not really an end. How has The Sustainability Consortium, now that you’re evolving as an organization — what, you’re in your fifth year or so right now?
KEVIN DOOLEY: Yeah. We just had our fifth birthday.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Right. So, how have you evolved and changed and how has the journey taken its different turns, some expected, some unexpected, over the last five or so years?
KEVIN DOOLEY: Well, I think we’ve probably changed just like any startup organization changes over its first five years. We were talking yesterday as we were looking at a slide pretty close to about four and a half years ago and we’ve stayed pretty true to our vision but I think perhaps more interestingly, there’s been change in the outside world so when we started, a key part of our mission was to essentially put labels on products that would communicate how sustainable an individual product would be and I think that consumers have changed over that time period so I think consumers have gone to a point where maybe five years ago, a lot of consumers who were interested in green products would say, ‘We need more labels. We need more information to make better decisions and we need information that’s credible so we can trust our decisions.’ Today, I think many of those same consumers would say, ‘We want the manufacturers and the retailers to make the right decisions and I want every potential product I could buy from this brand or from this retailer to be green,’ and so I think that they don’t want the decision. They want all the products and services that are offered them to be more sustainable so that’s one, I think, very significant change in the marketplace and then also from the manufacturer and retailer said, interestingly, we see that the consumers are not the only drivers of the need for green products. In other words, while there continues to be a small but significant and growing market for green products on the consumer’s side, there’s so much awareness that there are many other drivers that lead to sustainability being a good business proposition so businesses have shown that significant cost can be reduced because sustainability efforts tend to focus on waste and value added and yet, do so in a way that’s kind of different from the lean manufacturing and quality movements of decades past. They also offer access to markets and so both at a nation level and a retail buyer level, there’s new regulations that are being put in and so business is seeing advantage to staying ahead of that curve and then finally, businesses are very sensitive to supply risk so I think smart businesses see that for example, climate change is bringing change to where particular crops are grown and that’s going to cause adaptation to our supply chains to keep up with both dwindling supplies and movement of where supplies are available.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: So interesting. You know, you mentioned a little while ago the toolkits. Can you explain to our listeners how the toolkits work, specifically for the retailers, let’s just say, for example?
KEVIN DOOLEY: Sure, so the toolkits, we kind of look at maybe two sets of users in a retail organization. There’s the sustainability office and then most retail organizations, probably most organizations more broadly. The sustainability office is typically relatively small. I only have maybe a half dozen or a dozen people. Most companies want to distribute the responsibilities for sustainability throughout the organization and I think that’s healthy but there’s often some type of centralized team that offers a high degree of expertise and so we offer essentially knowledge about what makes a difference in different product categories and then how to address improving on those issues for that sustainability office so they can take that into their strategic planning and really say, ‘Okay, from our company vision, we know water is a critical resource that from a risk standpoint, if we have issues with access to water, that’s going to be problematic,’ and so they could use our knowledge base essentially to learn what product categories water criticality might be an issue or even, indeed, what type of regions geographically water criticality could be an issue, let’s say for crop growth, and then at a more detailed level, we have the merchants, the buyers, who go out and are responsible for purchasing particular products in different categories and they also are responsible for interacting with the manufacturers on an ongoing basis and where possible, helping them improve and so we’ve developed these surveys, these key performance indicators embedded in a survey, that then the merchants can send to the manufacturers to get a sense of where that manufacturer sits and then over time, see how that manufacturer progresses on particular critical issues and so in a way, these surveys serve as both a way to measure progress but also a way to start conversations and really, I think many people are surprised when they hear that perhaps conversations are more important in supply chain management than contracts are. It is true that a lot of supply chain management is done at kind of an arm’s length relationship but for example, retailers, they know who their critical suppliers are and they have very close and ongoing relationships with these suppliers and so anything that you can do to help focus those conversations and focus on where the best opportunity is, if you invest X amount of improvement effort, here’s where you’re going to get the biggest gain in terms of reducing environmental impact or improving the social condition.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: You know, for our listeners who just joined us, we’re honored to have Doctor Kevin Dooley. He’s the Chief Research Officer from The Sustainability Consortium. To learn more about all the great work The Sustainability Consortium is doing, please go to www.sustainabilityconsortium.org. Kevin, tell us a success story. You get to work with a lot of great brands and a lot of great people. Give us a success story from a member of your organizations who has integrated Sustainability Consortium product toolkits into their operations.
KEVIN DOOLEY: Sure, so one example that actually got written up by Harvard Business Review was that in our computer laptop category, we had identified that the energy consumption during the use phase of the consumer was what we call a hot spot. A very significant portion of all of the greenhouse gases and energy consumption needed to make a computer, all the way from the mine through the end of life, is because of the electricity that a consumer uses and one of the improvement opportunities that we surfaced was that many computers have kind of eco-friendly settings, that you can go into the operating system and set your battery on a power saving mode and maybe the screen goes dim after a certain amount of time or the computer goes to sleep after a shorter amount of time, etcetera, and these can make a great impact on reducing the energy consumption of the laptop. However, most users are unaware of this feature. Even if they are, they don’t necessarily know how to go about changing it and so a merchant at one of our large retailers, Walmart specifically, had the idea of basically asking the computer manufacturers to ship their laptops with the eco-efficiency mode already turned on kind of as the default mode and I think this happened during the last Christmas buying season so all the laptops that were sold by Walmart were shipped to consumers in a more eco-friendly mode and I think that ended up saving, over the lifetime of the computer, several hundred thousand tons of CO2 that would have been generated otherwise by electricity consumption.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Kevin, we’re down to the last three or so minutes and I want to just ask a couple more questions about your growth. Now that you’re evolving, can you share a little bit about you just opened an office in China? Explain why China and not other countries and what kind of work is taking place there in terms of the appropriate evolution of your great organization.
KEVIN DOOLEY: Sure. Well, China is important globally, both as a nation of consumption and a nation of supply and so for example, if we look at both North America and Europe in terms of where products come from, many of our durable products are manufactured in China and so we have opened a China office in part to expand our research team because we would like to get researchers who are on the ground in China working with Chinese industry to understand better the particular improvement opportunities that exist there. We’re also doing capacity development in terms of training and really, we’re seeking out a business model so we know that our opportunity to contribute value is going to be different in different countries and so we’re letting some of the entrepreneurial spirit work its way and figure out what is the best way for us to add value to that particular economy and culture.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: And, what city did you open up in there?
KEVIN DOOLEY: Nanjing; so we’re partners with Nanjing University.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Oh, wonderful. We’re down to the last two minutes or so and we love to give solutions on Green is Good, Kevin. Talk a little bit about what opportunities do organizations that are listening to the show have to interact with The Sustainability Consortium and how do they begin the process?
KEVIN DOOLEY: Well, we are a member-based organization, so people can go to the website that you’ve provided and look at our membership information and we’re happy to engage conversations about membership and whatnot and we’re also happy to engage in other ideas that people might have about partnership so a lot of the value that we believe that we add to our members and participants is through our networking opportunities and we’re still in our own entrepreneurial mode so we’re always interested in hearing ideas that people might have about interesting ways that we can partner.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: And, talking about that, talk a little bit about the crystal ball, the future. In the last minute or so, Kevin, where is The Sustainability Consortium going in the next five years?
KEVIN DOOLEY: Well, we’re going to continue our products and services, especially around product sustainability and measurement and reporting and I think that also, we’ll put a lot of effort into helping companies implement this work and really drive towards impact. I think on the sustainability scene, we see companies already having increased interest in resilience and adaptation, in particular, climate change adaptation, a lot of interest in the circular economy, which is something I think you know a lot about, and also interest in how products become more and more like services and what impact that has on product sustainability so there are a lot of changes that we have now coming up to 2020 and I expect TSE will be continuing to ride that front wave.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Well, we wish you continued success and luck and we want you to come back on Green is Good to talk a little bit about the more and great things you are accomplishing at The Sustainability Consortium. For our listeners out there who want to join or just interact with The Sustainability Consortium, please go to www.sustainabilityconsortium.org. Thank you, Kevin, for being an inspiring sustainability leader. You are truly living proof that green is good.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Welcome to another edition of Green is Good, and we’re so honored to have with us today Doctor Kevin Dooley. He’s the Chief Research Officer for the Sustainability Consortium. Welcome to Green is Good, Doctor Kevin Dooley.
KEVIN DOOLEY: Thank you so much.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Well, it’s so nice to have you on today, Kevin, and before we get going and talking about the important work you’re doing at The Sustainability Consortium, can you please share with our listeners a little bit about your background and your journey leading up to what you’ve been doing over at The Sustainability Consortium?
KEVIN DOOLEY: Sure. Well, my other sort of daytime job, so to say, is as a professor at the business school at Arizona State University and I go back a couple decades so I started off and was very lucky to get into both engineering studies and academia. At the same time, the quality movement was coming up and so that definitely excited me and so over the years, I worked on quality and innovation and worked on a few entrepreneurial ventures and for a variety of reasons, those came to a natural conclusion and I was looking around for what the next big thing to do is and a couple colleagues of mine asked me to participate on a paper about sustainable purchasing and I saw that there was not a lot of work done up to date and so I think I dedicated one of my summer reading lists a couple of years ago, maybe five or six years ago now, to really educating myself on what sustainability was and really, what the state of the world was around environmental and social issues in particular and really, that transformed my thinking and rather immediately led me to make a conclusion that I really wanted to dedicate the rest of my career towards this topic because it is not only very important but I think we have a sense of urgency to act and act broadly and largely.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: I’m just so happy you’re on because this is such a critical issue and you’re just doing such great thought leadership work on this. For our listeners out there that want to follow along with Kevin’s discussion today, go to www.sustainabilityconsortium.org. I’m on the website right now. It’s beautiful. There’s tons of information. Please share with us a little bit about The Sustainability Consortium, about the transformational process that you’re implementing there in terms of how we interact with consumer products and how they interact with us.
KEVIN DOOLEY: Great. Well, you are right in that our focus is around consumer products and consumer products offer us great both opportunity and risk. I think that we can all agree that consumer products give us a lot of the comfort and quality of living that we hope to achieve and indeed, when we look at the social aspects of sustainability, part of the goals that we have at a global scale is to bring up the living standards of people around the globe and consumer products can play an important role in that but we also know that consumption is going up as the middle class globally expands and that means that we need more energy to run factories. We need more water to manage farms and forests and we have more waste to take care of and so The Consortium’s focus is to help decision makers, whether they be product designers, supply chain managers, sustainability team officers, or even NGOs or governmental officials. To better understand what are the critical issues where we have the most challenge to improve the sustainability of consumer products and then what are the improvement opportunities that we can use to address those so to date, we’ve covered about 150 consumer product categories that represent about two thirds of the impacts related to consumer products on a global scale so just like many things, consumer products follow an 80-20 rule, where there’s a minority of consumer products that we buy and use all the time contribute to a majority of water and carbon impacts on a daily basis and so that’s where we’ve concentrated and we’ve also concentrated on the relationship between retail merchants and manufacturers and so we’ve developed some surveys that manufacturers can either use to assess how they’re doing in terms of product sustainability around particular categories like a computer, a laptop or a banana or a frozen convenience meal and then these surveys can also be used and are being used by the retailers to assess their brand manufacturers’ performances.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: You know Kevin, over the years, as I’ve hosted this show and I’ve had the honor to host this show, I’ve learned from people like you and other great leaders that sustainability is a journey. It’s not really an end. How has The Sustainability Consortium, now that you’re evolving as an organization — what, you’re in your fifth year or so right now?
KEVIN DOOLEY: Yeah. We just had our fifth birthday.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Right. So, how have you evolved and changed and how has the journey taken its different turns, some expected, some unexpected, over the last five or so years?
KEVIN DOOLEY: Well, I think we’ve probably changed just like any startup organization changes over its first five years. We were talking yesterday as we were looking at a slide pretty close to about four and a half years ago and we’ve stayed pretty true to our vision but I think perhaps more interestingly, there’s been change in the outside world so when we started, a key part of our mission was to essentially put labels on products that would communicate how sustainable an individual product would be and I think that consumers have changed over that time period so I think consumers have gone to a point where maybe five years ago, a lot of consumers who were interested in green products would say, ‘We need more labels. We need more information to make better decisions and we need information that’s credible so we can trust our decisions.’ Today, I think many of those same consumers would say, ‘We want the manufacturers and the retailers to make the right decisions and I want every potential product I could buy from this brand or from this retailer to be green,’ and so I think that they don’t want the decision. They want all the products and services that are offered them to be more sustainable so that’s one, I think, very significant change in the marketplace and then also from the manufacturer and retailer said, interestingly, we see that the consumers are not the only drivers of the need for green products. In other words, while there continues to be a small but significant and growing market for green products on the consumer’s side, there’s so much awareness that there are many other drivers that lead to sustainability being a good business proposition so businesses have shown that significant cost can be reduced because sustainability efforts tend to focus on waste and value added and yet, do so in a way that’s kind of different from the lean manufacturing and quality movements of decades past. They also offer access to markets and so both at a nation level and a retail buyer level, there’s new regulations that are being put in and so business is seeing advantage to staying ahead of that curve and then finally, businesses are very sensitive to supply risk so I think smart businesses see that for example, climate change is bringing change to where particular crops are grown and that’s going to cause adaptation to our supply chains to keep up with both dwindling supplies and movement of where supplies are available.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: So interesting. You know, you mentioned a little while ago the toolkits. Can you explain to our listeners how the toolkits work, specifically for the retailers, let’s just say, for example?
KEVIN DOOLEY: Sure, so the toolkits, we kind of look at maybe two sets of users in a retail organization. There’s the sustainability office and then most retail organizations, probably most organizations more broadly. The sustainability office is typically relatively small. I only have maybe a half dozen or a dozen people. Most companies want to distribute the responsibilities for sustainability throughout the organization and I think that’s healthy but there’s often some type of centralized team that offers a high degree of expertise and so we offer essentially knowledge about what makes a difference in different product categories and then how to address improving on those issues for that sustainability office so they can take that into their strategic planning and really say, ‘Okay, from our company vision, we know water is a critical resource that from a risk standpoint, if we have issues with access to water, that’s going to be problematic,’ and so they could use our knowledge base essentially to learn what product categories water criticality might be an issue or even, indeed, what type of regions geographically water criticality could be an issue, let’s say for crop growth, and then at a more detailed level, we have the merchants, the buyers, who go out and are responsible for purchasing particular products in different categories and they also are responsible for interacting with the manufacturers on an ongoing basis and where possible, helping them improve and so we’ve developed these surveys, these key performance indicators embedded in a survey, that then the merchants can send to the manufacturers to get a sense of where that manufacturer sits and then over time, see how that manufacturer progresses on particular critical issues and so in a way, these surveys serve as both a way to measure progress but also a way to start conversations and really, I think many people are surprised when they hear that perhaps conversations are more important in supply chain management than contracts are. It is true that a lot of supply chain management is done at kind of an arm’s length relationship but for example, retailers, they know who their critical suppliers are and they have very close and ongoing relationships with these suppliers and so anything that you can do to help focus those conversations and focus on where the best opportunity is, if you invest X amount of improvement effort, here’s where you’re going to get the biggest gain in terms of reducing environmental impact or improving the social condition.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: You know, for our listeners who just joined us, we’re honored to have Doctor Kevin Dooley. He’s the Chief Research Officer from The Sustainability Consortium. To learn more about all the great work The Sustainability Consortium is doing, please go to www.sustainabilityconsortium.org. Kevin, tell us a success story. You get to work with a lot of great brands and a lot of great people. Give us a success story from a member of your organizations who has integrated Sustainability Consortium product toolkits into their operations.
KEVIN DOOLEY: Sure, so one example that actually got written up by Harvard Business Review was that in our computer laptop category, we had identified that the energy consumption during the use phase of the consumer was what we call a hot spot. A very significant portion of all of the greenhouse gases and energy consumption needed to make a computer, all the way from the mine through the end of life, is because of the electricity that a consumer uses and one of the improvement opportunities that we surfaced was that many computers have kind of eco-friendly settings, that you can go into the operating system and set your battery on a power saving mode and maybe the screen goes dim after a certain amount of time or the computer goes to sleep after a shorter amount of time, etcetera, and these can make a great impact on reducing the energy consumption of the laptop. However, most users are unaware of this feature. Even if they are, they don’t necessarily know how to go about changing it and so a merchant at one of our large retailers, Walmart specifically, had the idea of basically asking the computer manufacturers to ship their laptops with the eco-efficiency mode already turned on kind of as the default mode and I think this happened during the last Christmas buying season so all the laptops that were sold by Walmart were shipped to consumers in a more eco-friendly mode and I think that ended up saving, over the lifetime of the computer, several hundred thousand tons of CO2 that would have been generated otherwise by electricity consumption.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Kevin, we’re down to the last three or so minutes and I want to just ask a couple more questions about your growth. Now that you’re evolving, can you share a little bit about you just opened an office in China? Explain why China and not other countries and what kind of work is taking place there in terms of the appropriate evolution of your great organization.
KEVIN DOOLEY: Sure. Well, China is important globally, both as a nation of consumption and a nation of supply and so for example, if we look at both North America and Europe in terms of where products come from, many of our durable products are manufactured in China and so we have opened a China office in part to expand our research team because we would like to get researchers who are on the ground in China working with Chinese industry to understand better the particular improvement opportunities that exist there. We’re also doing capacity development in terms of training and really, we’re seeking out a business model so we know that our opportunity to contribute value is going to be different in different countries and so we’re letting some of the entrepreneurial spirit work its way and figure out what is the best way for us to add value to that particular economy and culture.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: And, what city did you open up in there?
KEVIN DOOLEY: Nanjing; so we’re partners with Nanjing University.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Oh, wonderful. We’re down to the last two minutes or so and we love to give solutions on Green is Good, Kevin. Talk a little bit about what opportunities do organizations that are listening to the show have to interact with The Sustainability Consortium and how do they begin the process?
KEVIN DOOLEY: Well, we are a member-based organization, so people can go to the website that you’ve provided and look at our membership information and we’re happy to engage conversations about membership and whatnot and we’re also happy to engage in other ideas that people might have about partnership so a lot of the value that we believe that we add to our members and participants is through our networking opportunities and we’re still in our own entrepreneurial mode so we’re always interested in hearing ideas that people might have about interesting ways that we can partner.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: And, talking about that, talk a little bit about the crystal ball, the future. In the last minute or so, Kevin, where is The Sustainability Consortium going in the next five years?
KEVIN DOOLEY: Well, we’re going to continue our products and services, especially around product sustainability and measurement and reporting and I think that also, we’ll put a lot of effort into helping companies implement this work and really drive towards impact. I think on the sustainability scene, we see companies already having increased interest in resilience and adaptation, in particular, climate change adaptation, a lot of interest in the circular economy, which is something I think you know a lot about, and also interest in how products become more and more like services and what impact that has on product sustainability so there are a lot of changes that we have now coming up to 2020 and I expect TSE will be continuing to ride that front wave.
JOHN SHEGERIAN: Well, we wish you continued success and luck and we want you to come back on Green is Good to talk a little bit about the more and great things you are accomplishing at The Sustainability Consortium. For our listeners out there who want to join or just interact with The Sustainability Consortium, please go to www.sustainabilityconsortium.org. Thank you, Kevin, for being an inspiring sustainability leader. You are truly living proof that green is good.
Spotify
Apple Podcasts
Amazon Music
iHeartRadio
YouTube
YouTube Music
Audible
Pandora