Sustainable Nation

Ellen Mitchell-Kozack, AIA, LEED BD+C, WELL AP, SEED, has joined LEO A DALY as vice president, chief sustainability officer. She leads strategic initiatives in sustainable design worldwide, including Environmental Social & Governance, alignment with the UN Global Compact and Sustainable Development Goals, carbon footprint assessment and social impact. 

Mitchell-Kozack is a nationally recognized voice in sustainability and public interest design. As senior vice president, director of sustainability at HKS, she led the firm’s DesignGreen studio and founded Citizen HKS, an impact initiative focused on leveraging sustainable design to address growing humanitarian needs of communities around the world. She has managed certification of more than 60 LEED projects worldwide, totaling $2.8 billion in construction.

Mitchell-Kozack is co-chair of the American Institute of Architects’ Large Firm Roundtable Sustainability Group. She was named one of several “Heroes and Mavericks” by Boutique Designin 2018, a BD+C 40 Under 40 winner in 2015 and has won Emerging Leader Awards from AIA Dallas (2012) and the Design Futures Council (2013). Her work has been featured in Dezeen, Fast Company, Architectural Digest and Designboom. She is an accomplished public speaker with previous engagements at Greenbuild (2018), NeoCon (2018), AIA National Convention (2017) and SXSW Eco (2015).

Ellen Joins Sustainable Nation to Discuss:

• The impact of the built environment on climate change, and areas for growth
• The connection between climate change and social inequity
• Advice and recommendations for sustainability leaders

Ellen's Final Five Question Responses:

What is one piece of advice you would give other sustainability professionals that might help them in their careers?

It's not just sustainability professionals. It's anybody who is sensitive to what's going on with climate change and the environment, it's very easy for us to feel this sense of alarm. That's inevitable. But what happens sometimes is that sense of alarm translates into call to action and a passion, which is great. But if not approached with the spirit of generosity and patience, that passion and drive can often come across as a little bit sanctimonious. When that happens, we channel our enthusiasm into a level of judgment that can turn people off and actually work against us. So the advice that I have is that we have to look at the long game. We have to meet people where they are. We have to realize that if we're too far ahead, then nobody's going to follow us. It's really hard when you just see incremental progress happen project after project after project. But what I've learned is that sometimes that has to be enough. We can't let perfect be the enemy of good. This is a marathon and not a sprint. So we have to be very self aware and sensitive, and we have to be smart and crafty and thoughtful about how we are approaching this topic because it is politicized and it comes with a set of baggage that is working against us. There's an art of persuasion here that is really crucial if we want to get beyond just talking to the people who already agree with us.

What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability?

I want you to ask me the next question because I want to answer both of them together. 

What is one book you would recommend sustainability professionals read? 

The book that fundamentally changed the way that I thought about sustainability was Paul Hawkins' The Ecology of Commerce, which came out in the mid-nineties. It's maybe more relevant today. The basic premise is that in the capitalist society and the way that our economy is currently structured, companies are incentivized, for lack of a better word, to as efficiently and cheaply as possible take, make and waste. The companies that can do that the best are the ones that make the most profit while the rest of us are incurring the debt of environmental degradation and social degradation. Those things aren't monetized, but we are carrying that debt. In order for us to actually make some substantive, meaningful change, we have to look at our economy. We need to look at our economy more as a whole system. Typically what you would see in nature is that one plant or animal is creating waste that is nutrients for another organism. We've got to look at a circular economy where we're doing that too. There's a closed loop where the waste of one is the feed stock of another. We are never going to make enough progress if we're just trying to guilt people into recycling more, buying less single use plastic, turning off energy, turning off their lights, using energy efficient appliances. Some people are going to do that, some people are not. But it's never going to be enough in order for us to make the change that we need to make. In order for us to have a fundamental shift, we have to make the right thing, the default, the easy thing to do, and we need to fundamentally change our economic structure so that corporations don't define their success solely by their bottom line profit or their distributable profit to their shareholders. But they're looking at the full, common good in terms of environmental and social degradation. So that brings me to your first question about what excites me right now in the world of sustainability. The climate science has been conclusive that our economy has to fundamentally get off of fossil fuels. The realist and pessimist in me saw that come out in 2018 and then again in 2019. The realist and pessimist in me says, how are we going to slow down our economy long enough to remake it and get it off of fossil fuels? The technology is there, it's the collective will. I struggled to see how the powers that be, the corporations, the politicians, the leaders, and not just in the United States, but all over the world, I didn't see a lot of motivation on their part. I think Gretta Thornburg rightly has pointed that out many times. The collective will just wasn't there. I will say what has thrown a wrench in that is COVID-19. COVID, it's horrible, the amount of people that are coming down with it, the amount of people that are dying, the disproportionate effect on minority and socio-economic and disadvantaged communities. It's laying bare so many problems, but it's the wrench in the system that gives me hope that that maybe this is our chance. The timeline is right in front of our faces. The wrench in the system has occurred. We are all at home. Everything has slowed down. The economy is tenuous at best. It feels like this is the moment in time where we can fall on our faces forward faster. We can start to make up ground in a way that we might not have been able to had this not happened. I don't need to elaborate on this, but I think the administration change is the key to that whole thing happening. If we have four more years of the same administration, obviously this is not going to happen. So the moment in time is here, the stars have aligned in a weird way for us to really start to look at some meaningful, significant, and systematic changes to our society.

What are some of your favorite resources or tools that really help you in your work?

The thing that I have seen that is a little bit different about my niche of my industry, the sustainability professionals within the architecture industry, I don't know that I've ever seen in another group. Technically we're competitors, we're in firms that are competing each other to win work. Because we've always been a little bit of the underdog, we've been kind of on the outskirts. People are sometimes slow to listen to us and absorb what we're trying to say. But because of that, I feel like we have formed a pretty tight knit group of people. I can honestly say that I know personally most of my sustainability leader counterparts in most other firms. A lot of them have been my mentors, a lot of them I would consider my friends outside of work. It's because of groups like BuildingGreen. BuildingGreen is a website educational platform that is dedicated to all things sustainability in the architecture, engineering and construction world. They have a great database that covers everything from anything you'd want to know about LEED, to product specifications, to great articles that cover the gamut on all things sustainability, but they also facilitate groups like what started out as the SD Leaders. The SD Leaders, it's a safe space for us to come together and talk about opportunities for us to advance sustainability and high-performance in our industry together. We try to skirt around anything that might be proprietary or causes to divulge secret information about any particular firm, but allow us to collectively crowdsource what's working in your firm; what have you been doing that's helped people gain more knowledge around the built environment and materials or resilience or whatever the topic might be. The other group that's followed in the SD Leaders' footsteps that has created the Countdown on Carbon page that I referenced is the LMRT, which stands for a Large Firm Round Table. They have a sustainability group and that group is more specific to the challenges and opportunities for a large firm, but they've also been a bit more actionable in terms of what can we do to get together as the 60 largest firms in the United States to start to move the market or move collective positioning. Because we're the large firms it's been really great to see such camaraderie and aligning from groups that would otherwise be solely in competition. It's a unique network. The Large Firm's CEOs for instance hav

Ryland Engelhart is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Kiss the Ground, and is the producer of Kiss The Ground the Movie on Netflix. He has spent the last 15 years as an entrepreneur and love-activist, working in hospitality and building a family business of organic plant-based restaurants called Cafe Gratitude and Gracias Madre in Southern CA. He is also a co-creator of the award-winning, transformational documentary film, “May I Be Frank.”

Ryland joins Sustainable Nation to discuss:

• The state of regenerative agriculture
• The power of storytelling in sustainability
• Corporate actions on regenerative agriculture
• Advice and recommendations for sustainability leaders

Ryland's Final Five Questions Responses:

What is one piece of advice you would give other sustainability professionals that might help them in their careers?

I think we've heard this before, but it really is about building, strong, real, authentic, not transactional relationships. Deep, meaningful, connected relationships, and building coalition and community, community around your ideas and your initiative, is the way to be successful.

What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability?

I'm excited that regeneration and the term regeneration is really eclipsing the notion of sustainability, which again, we admire sustainability and we oftentimes say that sustainability is ahead of its time because we need to regenerate the broken systems before we can sustain them. So I'm grateful and I'm excited about that regeneration, that the principles of regeneration are becoming so widely understood.

What is one book you would recommend sustainability professionals read?

Project Drawdown. The hundred most substantive solutions to reversing global warming by Paul Hawken and others.

What are some of your favorite resources or tools that really help you in your work?

Well, it sounds kind of trite, but I've loved becoming an organization that operates with Slack as a team communication tool. It's been really, really effective and powerful.

Where can our listeners go to learn more about you, the work of Kiss, the Ground and the movie?

Please go to kisstheground.com and find your path. It's kind of our lowest barrier to entry way to participate in the regenerative movement is go to kiss the ground and find your path. It's a little genie or search wizard that essentially you can put your interests in, and it kicks you out a couple actions and places to take next steps to support the regenerative movement. And so I recommend to go to kiss the ground, and find your path. And then you can follow me @lovebeingryland, that's my Instagram handle. And then @kisstheground is our Instagram handle. And then we have an amazing, amazing course. It's like a masterclass course for anyone who's into sustainability and wants to really be whip smart in this arena. It's about eight hours of content that you can take over time. And it really has you be a regenerative agriculture expert and advocate coming out the other end and you can really be a powerful voice for the movement. And then lastly you can see the film Kiss the Ground on Netflix. It's available in 40 countries and 25 languages. And if you can't go to Netflix, you can go right to kissthegroundmovie.com and it's on there for a dollar on Vimeo.

James is responsible for leading P&G’s global climate change efforts along with their end to end supply chain sustainability program, helping one of the world’s largest CPG companies reduce their environmental footprint within energy, climate, water, waste, forestry, transportation, and raw materials. By integrating circular manufacturing processes across P&G’s supply chain including 150+ facilities in nearly 40 countries, James and team have been able to successfully decouple P&G’s global growth from their environmental footprint for more than a decade. James has personally championed some of P&G’s largest sustainability projects, including the recent shift to purchasing 100% renewable electricity across the US, Canada, and most of Europe, three of P&G’s largest global markets and over 70% of their purchased electricity.

James joins Sustainable Nation to discuss:

• Latest sustainability initiatives at P&G
• Decoupling growth from emissions
• Global renewable energy procurement milestones
• Advice and recommendations for sustainability leaders

James' Final Five Questions responses:

What is one piece of advice you'd give other sustainability professionals that might help them in their careers?

I think probably the single biggest piece of advice I could give is that some of the most sustainable solutions are also the ones that are smart business solutions. If I can create a product that delivers better performance for our customers, a cleaner home with a smaller footprint, a dish detergent that gets your stuff cleaner and faster, a razor that cleans your face better. Those types of innovations are the ones that are going to last. I'm not required to rely on the charity of the CEO or of a vice president somewhere. If it's smart business and sustainable together, those are the ones that are going to last the longest.

What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability?

I think for me as a global company, it's engagement. The fact that every region, every part of the world, whether it's developed, undeveloped, developing, it doesn't matter. Citizens, consumers, stakeholders, they're all demanding. I mean, not just asking, demanding more sustainable choices off the shelf. Like I said, at the start of the podcast that it keeps me up at night, it makes my job hard, but I love that more and more people want the products they buy to make a difference in the world.

What is one book you'd recommend sustainability leaders read

This summer I'm actually going back to an old, but a good book. I've read this book in the past, but it's been many years, which is cradle-to-cradle by Bill McDonough. Bill, I've worked with them, hand-in-hand personally in the past, he actually designed our touching plant in China, which we built around the concept of a Chinese water garden, but cradle to cradle, even though it was written almost a decade ago, still has some amazing insights on how you can think differently about materials, think differently about the products and really value the materials. One of our goals is to have a more circular supply chain. And so I'm going back and rereading cradle to cradle

What are some of your favorite resources or tools that help you in your work?

We're partners with the Ellen MacArthur foundation and I've been using a lot of their tool sets and online thought-starters around how to kickstart the circular economy. As I mentioned before, we're really doubling down on this concept of how do we stop just, you know, using Bill's words, how do you stop doing less bad and start focusing on doing more good. And so, as we think about closing the loop and our suppliers, closing the loop at our manufacturing sites, and then the way that we go to market, I've really been tapping into the Ellen MacArthur foundation. And if you've not been there, their website's got some great tools that you can look at, and some great inspiring videos, you can share with your teams.

Where can listeners go to learn more about you and the work being done at P&G.

I would love it if people went and checked us out. They can either just go simply to pg.com or they can go to pg.com/sustainability and find, amazing information, not only on the company, but more importantly, on the products that you use and love every day.

About Sustridge

Sustridge is a sustainability consulting firm providing consulting in sustainability strategy development, sustainability reporting, GHG emissions calculating and management, zero waste planning and guidance in a TRUE Zero Waste, B Corp, LEED and Carbon Neutral certification.

Christine Riley Miller is Director of Sustainability at Samsonite where she is launching the first-ever global sustainability strategy and program across nine brands. With more than 10 years’ experience mitigating risk and improving footprint from cradle to grave across retail, consumer goods, and food sectors, she is an issues expert in packaging, energy, animal welfare, and sustainable supply chains. Previously Christine led the sustainability team and the Corporate Foundation for eight years at Dunkin Brands Inc. Prior to Dunkin’ Brands, Christine developed integrated campaigns and strategies for communicating environmental sustainability at Cone Communications. She previously managed the CSR Initiative at the JFK School of Government at Harvard University. Christine has a graduate certificate in Leadership for Change from Boston College and a BS in Sociology from Brigham Young University. She currently resides in Boston and spends her free time training for half marathons and pursuing her love of interior design.

Christine joins Sustainable Nation to discuss:

• Process of developing a new sustainability strategy 
• Communicating sustainability through the product
• Product take back programs and circularity 
• Approach to addressing climate risks and opportunities
• Advice and recommendations for sustainability leaders

Christine's Final Five Questions Responses:

What is one piece of advice you would give other sustainability professionals that might help them in their careers?

The one piece of advice that I would say that I've found to be so helpful is rely heavily on internal stakeholder engagement. I've always in my career been either a sole practitioner as I am here at Tumi and Samsonite, or you know, I've had a very small team and you really need to get your colleagues engaged in the work. So, anything that you can do to include your colleagues as part of the development of the strategy, you know, understanding what your issues are, developing the goals and right now we're in the process of determining how we're going to collect and report data to demonstrate progress against those goals. Now, I have to send out a significant amount of you know, surveys with lots of questions and ask them to spend time to provide me with a lot of information. And so I'm following that same process that I used for the materiality assessment and for the strategy development and the goal setting to also do to the data collection. And they all have been part of that process from the beginning, they're already bought into the goals that we're setting and they feel really committed and invested in ensuring that we can report against those goals in a meaningful way, and that they're getting credit for the great work that they're doing. So involving your colleagues in any way that you can, at every step of the process is going to enable you to be so much more successful. I am not an advocate of setting a strategy and then handing it off to people and saying, go do this when they've not had any hand in helping you develop a process, that's actually gonna work for them because if it doesn't work for your colleagues, it's never gonna work for you.

What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability?

I am most excited about the growth in circularity and zero waste. So, you know, we are a consumer goods company. Consumers are always going to buy products. We hope that they always support and buy Tumi products, but at the same time, you know, we want to make sure that we're increasing the circularity of those products, whether we're partnering with other organizations to utilize materials and waste that they have access to that they can't use, whether we're looking at how to minimize the waste within our own manufacturing facilities, working with suppliers to minimize that waste. And then thinking about how do we use materials like the recycled PET so that we are helping to eliminate waste within the existing waste stream and repurposing it. I think that's one of the most exciting conversations that we're having here at Tumi is thinking about how do we design for circularity. How do we use recycled materials and recyclable materials in our products?

I love it. What is one book you would recommend sustainability leaders read?

So the book that I would recommend is not a sustainability book per se, but it is one of my favorite books and I think inspired me to get into the work that I do. And that is the, it's a classic Walden by Henry David Thoreau and in full transparency I did work with the Walden Woods Project and I have lived in the Boston area, very close to Walden, and it is one of my very favorite places in the world. And I think that, you know, it has a lot of valuable messages that really resonate with the work that sustainability professionals do, but it often reminds me everyone should have their Walden. Everyone should have the place that they go, where they can reconnect with what's most important to who they are and what they do. We're quickly losing those places. We're quickly losing the beautiful places of this world. And I think, you know, it's the work that we do, to me, the work that we're really committed to is how do we protect and preserve those places for travelers of today and tomorrow so they can go find their own Walden. Then they can go to a beautiful beach in Bali and it's not covered with plastic bottles, but rather they're carrying a bag that helped divert those plastic bottles from that scene. And so, you know, it really does inspire me to continue to do the work that I do so that everyone can have their own beautiful place like Walden.

What are some of your favorite resources or tools that really help you in your work?

So I referenced it earlier and I am a big proponent of the materiality assessment. And it's perhaps because, you know, in the work that I've done, I've often come into organizations as the first director of sustainability and I think it's a great tool. One to ensure that we're not talking to ourselves about the issues that are important to us, you know, it enables you to really identify what's most important to your business what's really going to have the most impact. It helps me learn about the organization and the industry as well. If I'm new to that organization and industry, it gives me an excuse to talk to my colleagues and to educate them about sustainability and say, hey, this is the first step you're going to be part of this journey that we're on to develop our sustainability strategy. I'm here to ask you to tell me what you think is most important to our business. And so it also, as you evaluate and revisit the materiality over time, it enables you to really determine what's most important to your business so that you can use your resources wisely. I mean, all of us especially right now, but in particular in sustainability are often resource constrained, whether that's budget or time. And there can be so much noise in the sustainability space that it allows you to really say, these are the issues that we're going to focus on. We're going to focus on, you know, product innovation, we're going to focus on driving supply chain, we're going to focus on carbon action, we're going to focus on people and yeah, there's a lot of other important stuff out there, but this is what we're going to focus on right now. So, I really love the materiality assessment.

And finally, Christine, where can our listeners go to learn more about you and the work being done at Samsonite and Tumi?

Sure. So you can learn more about all the great work that Tumi is doing in this space and you know, the merge Alpha Bravo and devote collections that we're launching. The Tumi difference page of the Tumi website and then you can read our annual sustainability report, which thank you for doing that. You've referenced it a couple of times, and that's on the investor relations page of the Samsonite website. I am on LinkedIn. You can find me there. It's my full name Christine Riley Miller. Christine Miller is fairly common. So you might find a bunch of them, but Christine Riley Miller.

About Sustridge

Sustridge is a sustainability consulting firm providing consulting in sustainability strategy development, sustainability reporting, GHG emissions calculating and management, zero waste planning and guidance in a TRUE Zero Waste, B Corp, LEED and Carbon Neutral certification.

Sheehy brings to clients, 20 years of project and program management experience. She manages a range of advisory projects including sustainability training initiatives, sustainability risk assessments and greener market positioning support.

Sheehy’s other work experience included updating and growing the Corporate Equality Index for the Human Rights Campaign and served as director of Corporate Benchmarking Services at the Investor Responsibility Research Center, where she provided social and environmental screening data on companies to institutional investors.

Sheehy holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Notre Dame, an Master of Business Administration from the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, and is a certified Project Management Professional.

Catherine joins Sustainable Nation to discuss:

• Background on UL and Catherine's role within UL
• Health impacts and reopening workspaces during Covid-19
• Sustainability certification space and importance of pursuing certifications
• UL 3600 (circularity) standard
• Advice and recommendations for sustainability leaders

Catherine's Final Five Question Responses:

What is one piece of advice you would give other sustainability professionals that might help them in their careers?

I think that sustainability professionals exist everywhere in an organization, whether or not they have a title with sustainability in the name, but for those who are a sustainability by title, I would say, n my experience, a lot of folks are influencers more than they are purse holders, right? So they are advising and guiding the organization toward the tools and the solutions that are going to help make a difference to their organization. And so, learning about change enablement and, being engaged in networked in your organization is going to be key to the success of any sustainability professional. When I've talked to those who hold those kinds of roles in organizations, one of the things that recurs in terms of what they describe as their role, it's that of an influencer it's that of, a person who's really skilled at change enablement and someone who is trying to help people see a different way of viewing the same information. So, network influence, be connected within your organization.

What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability?

Hmm. I think I mentioned earlier when my excitement is really about what I see as the potential for integration, hearing the investors talk about ESG, the way that they are, it's not about necessarily making the world a better place, but that obviously is part of it. Those are the outcomes that we're all trying to achieve, but they really do see this as part of investment risk analysis is simply the non-financial data that they need to incorporate into that analysis. I see product managers, human resource managers all now having that conversation about these issues that some of us have been working on for decades. So to your point, you know, what has happened over the past 10 years, I've seen a sea change and I'm hopeful that that's going to accelerate because it needs to, because the issues that we're all also trying to address are pressing and urgent.

What is one book you would recommend sustainability leaders read?

Yep. I think in light of recent events, I am trying to educate myself about equity issues. More than some of the issues I've paid attention to, to date. So certainly I'm engaged as an employee in my organization, in our diversity and inclusion efforts. I've focused a lot of attention on sustainability or environmental issues, and I've known that there are environmental justice issues that relate to those things, but I'm not very well educated about those things. So I've actually just started this book by Mary Robinson. Who's the former President of Ireland, a UN special envoy on climate change and UN commissioner for human rights, titled Climate Justice: Hope, Resilience, and the Fight for a Sustainable Future. She published last year. It's an engaging read and so I'd recommend that. I will say I'm on my own journey and finishing it, but it's so far it's good and engaging and really good connector across the issues that we're all much more aware of these days in light of Black Lives Matter. And some of the reasons that people are in the streets protesting.

What are some of your favorite resources or tools that really help you in your work?

I look at a lot of blogs and this was hard for me to think of because I look at a lot of blogs. I look at a lot of articles from various publications. I go back to a lot GreenBiz waste dive because we have a strong practice in circular economy. We're looking at the recycled content, newsletters, and magazines. So those are the ones that I go to with regularity.

And finally where can our listeners go to learn more about your work and the work being done at UL?

Well, the main website, ul.com is where you can find a lot of information. We have a presence on LinkedIn and a Twitter account as well. And we show up on other sites like GreenBiz and elsewhere. So I'd start at ul.com and go out from there.

Kevin Wilhelm is the author of "How to Talk to the Other Side" and CEO of Sustainable Business Consulting and is one of the world’s pre-eminent business consultants and speakers in the field of sustainability.

Kevin brings over 20 years of experience working with 165+ businesses ranging across 37 different industries including clients such as New York Life, Expedia, IAC, Nordstrom, REI, Alaska Airlines, The Seattle Sounders, North Face, Tommy Bahama, the Northwest Seaport Alliance.

He has spoken hundreds of times, taught 13 different business courses on sustainability and is the author of three acclaimed books in this field including:

• Return on Sustainability: How Business Can Increase Profitability & Address Climate Change in an Uncertain Economy
• Making Sustainability Stick: The Blueprint for Successful Sustainability Implementation
• Sustainable Jobs: The Complete Guide to Landing Your Dream Green Job.

Kevin joins the Sustainable Nation to discuss:

• Kevin’s new book – How to Talk to the "Other Side": Finding Common Ground in the Time of Coronavirus, Recession and Climate Change specifically about the power of listening, engaging in a difficult conversation, polarization of climate change, and the power of allyship
• Evolution of sustainability consulting over the last 16 years
• Advice and recommendations for sustainability leaders

 Kevin's Final Five Questions Responses:

What is one piece of advice you would give other sustainability professionals that might help them in their careers?

Well, I would say anything you can do right now, especially over the next 18 months or two years, where, when you are trying to talk about sustainability, if you can get some training in how to make the business case, how to, show the financial benefit of, you know, whether it's cost savings or enhanced revenues that you might bring in by using sustainability. It's really important to have that because as we head into another period of economic uncertainty in the fall, and certainly into Q1 next year, if you want to jump into the profession, it's great to have all the skills to do the work, but if you can also have the skills and speak the language of business, you're going to be a little bit more successful.

What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability?

I think the reality that things that seemed impossible in February now are just taken from the norm. I think that the change in mindset on the idea of working from home on the idea of needing travel to business meetings, needing to, you know, go to actual conferences in person, as opposed to speaking by video, I think it really fills me with a lot of excitement because I think it breaks down a lot of the norms which were in the offices. And I think it might lead to further innovation on other great challenges that we need to address.

What is one book you would recommend sustainability leaders read?

So Josh, can I plug my own two books or do I need to throw another one? I would say that if, if you're trying to make that business case, one book that, you know, was put together with about 65 different other thought leaders kind of on sustainability about how to actually implement sustainability, it's called Making Sustainability Stick. I will shamelessly plug my new book. It's called How to Talk to the Other Side, which is about finding common ground in a time of coronavirus, recession and climate change. And really the reason why I wrote this last book and I'd recommend it to your listeners is that people know what we need to do. You know, people know it just like with the masks and dealing with the pandemic, people know what they need to do, but emotion overtakes reason. And it's the same thing as trying to get people to take action on issues like climate change. They know we need to take action, but they just, for some reason don't. And so my book breaks down kind of the why behind it, and then how to actually engage people on a more personal and human level on an issue rather than trying to hit them over the head with science and facts.

What are some of your favorite resources or tools that really help you in your work?

Gosh, that's a great question, Josh. Well, I'd say, certainly check out this podcast, and follow it on the news. But I would say a lot of the resources I go to are, you know, sustainable brands, environmental leader, triple pundit, and using those, you know, not only bookmarking them, but make sure that the newsletters are coming to your office. You don't have to search for it and they're hitting your inbox. And then as far as tools, I think that, one of the most important ones for any audience listener to understand is how you really, especially as we lean back into climate and as we come out of the pandemic is how to do a greenhouse gas inventory. So if you can go to the World Resources Institute or the WBCSB, just get familiar with, you know, what is a carbon footprint, how to do it, because it'll take away some of the mystery to you. And if you're able to kind of understand that you'll be able to take a greater step towards helping organizations take action on climate change, which is what we all need to do not only after the pandemic, but we can even start doing right now.

And finally Kevin where can our listeners go to learn more about you and your work, and maybe find your new book?

Yeah, thanks, Josh. You can go to learn more about my company and myself you can go to our website, which is sustainablebizconsulting.com. There you'll also find resources on, you know, in blogs and other things that you can follow as a listener. And then to find my book it's available on Amazon. So you can either search by my name, Kevin Wilhelm or How to Talk to the Other Side in books. And I will just put the, you know, you gotta get the tagline on it, which is about finding common ground and the time of coronavirus, because there are some other books that are out there called how to talk to the other side. And it's about how to talk to people in the afterlife and things like that. And don't buy those books. When I was searching for my title it didn't pop up. And then a few of them were published like that. And I was like, oh, maybe I should've changed the title, but I'm not talking to people in the afterlife. That's for sure.

About Sustridge

Sustridge is a sustainability consulting firm providing consulting in sustainability strategy development, sustainability reporting, GHG emissions calculating and management, zero waste planning and guidance in a TRUE Zero Waste, B Corp, LEED and Carbon Neutral certification.

Mark Lewis has more than 20 years’ experience as a financial analyst covering energy and environmental markets. He joins from Carbon Tracker, an award-winning think tank, where he was Head of Research. Previously, he was MD and Head of European Utilities Research at Barclays, Chief Energy Economist at Kepler Cheuvreux, and MD and Head of Carbon Research at Deutsche Bank. He was also a member of the Financial Stability Board’s Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures from May 2016 to May 2018. Prior to his career in banking, Mark was an academic at the University of London at Royal Holloway College. Mark has an MA in German from King’s College London, an MPhil in Latin American Studies from Cambridge University and a BA in Spanish & German from Sheffield University.

Mark joins Sustainable Nation to discuss:

• Process of integrating ESG metrics into portfolio evaluation
• Importance of weighting E, S, and G differently for each sector
• Current status of the TCFD and its evolvement
• Advice and recommendations for sustainability leaders

Mark's final five question responses:

What is one piece of advice you'd give other sustainability professionals that might help them in their careers?

Never give up. I think in fact, you know, one thing I say a lot these days is every single day gets easier to make the case because the economics have changed fundamentally in the last five years. I feel now as if we're pushing on an open door, that door was only very slightly ajar 15 years ago. And we've had to do a lot of pushing over the last 15 years, but it's really opening up now and we just need more people to join in and keep pushing and keep developing. I'm much more optimistic than I was 10 years ago that we can build a better world. It's not to say it's guaranteed, but it's in our hands. The technology is there. We need policy makers to develop and for that we need as much enthusiasm and human energy as possible to keep pressing forward. So never give up and keep pushing.

What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability?

I mean, for me personally it's just the tremendous possibilities that are opening up with energy storage and also hydrogen is back on the agenda because I think, you know, renewables can only get you so far if you don't have a way of storing, solar and wind energy. And I think the good news is we're starting to see breakthroughs in the cost of storage. Europe has just launched a very big incentive program for hydrogen as well, which can be used both as a source of storage and as an energy source in its own. Right. So to me, that's the next phase of the energy revolution is really being able to combine storage with wind and solar energy, so that we can decarbonize the global energy system completely within the next three, hopefully three, maybe four decades.

What is one book you would recommend sustainability professionals read?

Yeah, sorry again, to focus on the energy side, this is, you know, showing my own bias, but a really great book, relatively recent, I guess it is three or four years old now, is the Marginal Cost of Society by Jeremy Rifkin. I think that's a fantastic read.

What are some of your favorite resources or tools that really help you in your work?

Well there are so many, on the energy side there's a lot of publicly available data from the International Energy Agency and from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). World resources Institute is an unending source of knowledge and insight. I think WRI is just a fantastic, fantastic tool. So those would be three that spring to mind that I regularly look at. Carbon Tracker. I've gotta give a shout out to Carbon Tracker. You know, I spent nine months there in 2018 as the head of research. It's the most fantastic think tank on climate change and aligning financial markets with the challenge of achieving the Paris agreement.

Mark, where can our listeners go to learn more about you and your work?

Well, you know, we have a website, the BNP Paribas Asset Management website. And, you know, if I may indulge your listeners, you know, I can be contacted on LinkedIn. I post regularly about my work and about interesting trends that I'm seeing and you can follow me on Twitter @MCL1965.

About Sustridge:

Sustridge is a sustainability consulting firm providing consulting in sustainability strategy development, sustainability reporting, GHG emissions calculating and management, zero waste planning and guidance in a TRUE Zero Waste, B Corp, LEED and Carbon Neutral certification.

An environmental scientist with over a decade of experience in sustainable manufacturing and design, Saskia is head of sustainability at Rothy’s, a global lifestyle brand best known for creating stylish, comfortable shoes from recycled plastic water bottles. At Rothy’s, Saskia develops strategies to minimize the environmental impact that Rothy’s supply chain has on the environment, advancing Rothy’s sustainable innovations in materials, production and fulfillment and more. Prior to joining Rothy’s, Saskia worked as senior director of sustainability at Method, a brand renowned for their clean, sustainable, and effective cleaning products. At Method, Saskia implemented sustainability initiatives on the ground for the European business and at Method’s LEED-Platinum soap factory in Chicago.

Saskia joins Sustainable Nation to discuss:

- Circularity and ocean plastic sourcing 

- How to communicate sustainability value of products

- Importance of industry collaboration

- Mission driven company culture and employee retainment 

- Advice and recommendations for sustainability leaders

Saskia's final five question responses:

What is one piece of advice you would give other sustainability professionals that might help them in their careers?

I think that this would depend on where in their journey they are. For students, I would recommend taking some hard science classes and by hard science, I mean, kind of chemistry, and that will really serve you well in this emerging world of sustainability. I think that within corporations, within a lot of the emerging opportunities for sustainability, the science driven aspects of sustainability will be the most enduring. The reason for that is it's important to be grounded in facts in data. And that will allow sustainability kind of clear out a lot of the trendiness and the noise. So I think it's important to be kind of rooted in science. And then another thing that I found to be just true and I think will continue to be true in this landscape of sustainability careers is there are going to be so many different opportunities. Everything from local government, private companies, product companies, nonprofits. And for me, at least it was a process of elimination. I worked in some small nonprofits and learned a ton when I was there, but didn't necessarily feel that it was exactly the best fit for my talents and what was needed from that organization. So it was a kind of winnowing into what I really, really feel passionate and comfortable with today. So I would say like, don't assume that within sustainability, that you're going to land at the company, that's going to be your forever company. There is this kind of understanding that your own skills will kind of be refined and that each of the opportunities that you have, even if it's nonprofit going to government will still serve you in this larger landscape of sustainability.

What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability?

I touched on it a bit before, but I think that I'm seeing a lot of momentum around this collision among these different, what were considered separate movements and the idea that we could just be looking at environmental justice and biodiversity and that those would be separate somehow. I think intersectionality and this awareness that all of these different pieces have to be happening at the same time and that they overlap and they're benefiting each other in a really clear way. We're starting to see a lot more awareness of that, even just like the awareness from COVID that the spread of disease is likely from some of the biodiversity loss and that climate change will continue to exacerbate that is all kind of coming out right now. So this will only serve us to all be aligned and to hopefully move quicker in the same direction.

What is one book you would recommend sustainability leaders read?

That's a tough one. And it's mostly because this is a hard book to read, but one of my favorite books came out pretty recently is an Uninhabitable Earth. Have you read it?

I have not read that one yet. I've heard the recommendation though. Haven't gotten to it yet.

It's by David Wallace Wells. And I say it's a hard one because it's about the effects of climate change that we can anticipate over the next few decades. And it's a very real view of what that will be like. It doesn't kind of sugarcoat it. And I think some people have critiqued it for not being a solutions oriented as it can be, but I think it's important for sustainability professionals to read it because it really grounds us in the challenge that we have ahead. And for me, it was motivating because knowing what this potential future could be, how can I double down on my efforts in order to mitigate it?

What are some of your favorite resources or tools that really help you in your work?

Well, a few kind of different organizations that I look to a lot of Project Drawdown is a great organization that has pretty creatively looked at all the different options that we have around mitigating climate change and quantify them both in, in terms of how, you know, how much gigatons they can pull out of greenhouse gases, but also what are the financial benefits of that? And it doesn't just look at the electricity grid it also looks at kind of these social mitigation that we can do so I love them as a resource and I think the model that they've created is really creative. I also have worked quite a bit with a think tank called Forum for the Future, and they are really futurists. They think about what these possible futures could be and how businesses can better be equipped to adapt and respond to those features. So I think that they work in the world of sustainability, but they do it in a really creative way and I just love working in partnering with them. And then, because I am a scientist, I read a lot of different journals. I read nature science journal of industrial ecology and think being rooted in the latest sciences is really important too.

And finally Saskia, where can our listeners go to learn more about you and the work being done at Rothy's?

Check out the Rothy's blog and our website. So we do quite a bit of new information, either product launches and talking about some of the materials we're using, I'll be writing on our blog and sharing some of our new initiatives around sustainability. So would encourage people to bookmark that and keep returning to that and sign up for our email list to get updates.

About Sustridge

Sustridge is a sustainability consulting firm providing consulting in sustainability strategy development, sustainability reporting, GHG emissions calculating and management, zero waste planning and guidance in a TRUE Zero Waste, B Corp, LEED and Carbon Neutral certification.

With more than 20 years experience, Scott Paul has held senior positions at many of the world's leading environmental organizations including Greenpeace. He is an experienced leader within the global sustainability community. His career has been devoted to forest protection and mitigating the effects of climate change. Paul has successfully impacted policy change on both local and international levels and has led some of the most innovative environmental campaigns of the two last decades.

Scott Paul joins Sustainable Nation to discuss:

•  Sustainability movement within the guitar industry
• Ebony project and vertical integration 
• Challenges of FSC certification in the music industry 
• Advice and recommendations for sustainability leaders

Scott's final five question responses: 

What is one piece of advice you would give other sustainability professionals that might help them in their careers?

It all depends on your company. What you're making, what resources you're using. Are you a retailer? Are you a manufacturer? You have to look at your footprint to understand to be able to answer this question, but there is a nonprofit organization. There are multiple nonprofit organizations that are working on issues that your company is involved with. And I'm not necessarily talking about former formal partnerships and eco labels necessarily. That's not a bad thing, but you know, get to know the advocacy community over coffee to understand the issues more profoundly that your company is stepping on. And then the other thing I would just say is be a mentor in terms of, you know, there's probably some 20 year old working for your company who came out of some environmental studies program and maybe they're not as well rounded and, you know, may say some foolish things sometimes, but their perspective is insanely important. And if you can't communicate with a 20 year old and understand, you know, convince them that what you're doing is the right thing and listen to them about what they think is important then you're not going to be able to communicate on behalf of your company, to the marketplace. If you're not able to connect with somebody of a different age, a different race, a different gender. So mentor somebody.

What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability?

I think transparency, the increased societal expectation that I have a right to know what took place to bring this product to market. And honestly, a lot of companies would like to deliver that information, but they've evolved over decades that they can't necessarily, but they need to start figuring it out. So I think the increased expectation of transparency is going to drive a lot of good stuff.

What one book you would recommend sustainability leaders read?

So I knew you were gonna ask this question and I'm going to cheat a little bit. There's two books that had a big influence on me I'm going to flag. And then I'll give the recommendation for me because I deal with wood. This guy, David Fairchild wrote an autobiography The World Was My Garden. He wrote it in 1930s, but this guy traveled the world finding plants on behalf of the U.S. Department of Agriculture to bring back to the U.S. and my understanding of natives and exotics, natural resources was turned upside down, reading that book. I also like it's another older book, I think from the eighties, the making of a conservative environmentalist. It was a Reagan appointee to the great lakes commission and Canada that made me think. But if you're doing policy there's a book by a guy named John McCormick Reclaiming Paradise: The Global Environmental Movement. It's a bit of a textbook, but it was written before the 1992 Earth Summit. So it's not almost anything you read is influenced by the Earth Summit and the UN institutions that were created as a result. This was an awesome book written before that, that if you're interested in policy and want to know why these institutions were formed and why people had positions that they took John McCormick's Reclaiming Paradise is pretty awesome.

What are some of your favorite resources or tools that really help you in your work?

Honestly, I'm just going to restate the other answer is, you know, the, the mentor find a 20 year old or in my case, I go home and talk to my kids who are not even 20 yet, but they are tuned in. I'm not taking everything they say as gospel, but I do need to understand what's driving them and where they're coming from. And my mind is constantly evolving when I'm getting inside the head of these impassioned recent graduates of environmental studies programs. It's like, if I can't communicate with them, if I can't use that resource, then I'm failing.

And finally where can our listeners go to learn more about you and the sustainability work being led at Taylor?

At the risk of plugging myself, the only place I can think of is my LinkedIn page. It has got a thing with all my blogs. I think it's called all the blogs that fit to print. You know, I bastardized the New York Times famous saying. That links all my blogs since I've been at Taylor and that pretty much covers the suite of initiatives that Taylor is looking into. Or just call me, people just call me. I'll always answer the phone.

About Sustridge

Sustridge is a sustainability consulting firm providing consulting in sustainability strategy development, sustainability reporting, GHG emissions calculating and management, zero waste planning and guidance in a TRUE Zero Waste, B Corp, LEED and Carbon Neutral certification.