Sustainable Nation

Jeff Wooster is the global sustainability director for Dow Packaging and Specialty Plastics. In this role, he collaborates with the entire value chain to promote and improve the sustainability value of plastic packaging. He is the past president of AMERIPEN, and is on the Board of Directors for GreenBlue. He serves on the steering team for the Ocean Conservancy’s Trash Free Seas Alliance signature initiative on marine debris and as Co-Chair of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development’s Roadmap to Curb Ocean Waste (ROW) initiative. Additionally, Wooster serves as chair for American Chemistry Council’s Plastics Division Packaging Team and is a member of the Flexible Packaging Association’s Sustainability Task Force.

Jeff Joins Sustainable Nation to Discuss:

• Moving beyond the circular economy
• The future of plastics demanding radical collaboration
• The importance of  affordable solutions
• Dow's 2025 sustainability goals
• Advice and recommendations for sustainability leaders

Jeff'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 would look at how sustainability interacts with business. If you work in a company and you want to work on sustainability, you don't have to work for the sustainability function to do that. You can work in R&D, you can work in Manufacturing, you can work in Supply Chain, you can work in Marketing and you can work in Accounts Payable. Any of those jobs have opportunities for people to apply sustainability principles to their work.

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

The thing I'm most excited about is that people are really committed to sustainability for the long term. It's not a fad. It's something that people are trying to think very holistically about and make sure that they do the right things for the best longterm benefit for people and the planet.

What is one book you'd recommend sustainability professionals read?

I'd love to recommend Patrick Moore's book, Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout. Not just because he quit working for Greenpeace and started working on other things, but because he has lots of examples in that book of how sometimes things aren't as they seem. Sometimes we have to think in more detail and with a bit more complexity about the sustainability issues that we face. We can't just scratch the surface for five seconds and assume that we have the answer. We really need to dig into the details and make sure that we understand things on a deeper level.

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

I really like the websites of a number of our partners. So, The Sustainable Packaging Coalition has a website how2recycle.info, and it talks about various recycling programs and their label. ameripen.org has a number of useful publications on packaging. There's a great one on the value of packaging that we created early in the organization, but it's still applicable today. The Recycling Partnership has a great website. Keep America Beautiful. Ocean Conservancy. I could go on and on, but lots of great organizations have lots of good material available. People can also go to the Dowpackaging.com website and get some information on what Dow is doing.

Where can people go to learn more about you and the work that you're leading at Dow?

If you Google my name Jeff Wooster, you'll find some videos and things that I've made, but if you go to Dowpackaging.com, you'll be redirected to one of the pages that talks about some of the activities that we're doing around sustainability. And of course, you can go to the websites of those partners that I've mentioned and see the activities that we're supporting there as well.

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 TRUE Zero Waste, B Corp, LEED and Carbon Neutral certification.

Michael R. Boswell is Department Head and Professor of City & Regional Planning at California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) in San Luis Obispo. He has a Master of Science (M.S.P.) and Ph.D. in Urban & Regional Planning from The Florida State University. He has published on topics such as climate action planning, hazard mitigation, adaptive management and governance, local government planning, autonomous vehicles, and sustainable development.

He is lead author of the book Climate Action Planning published by Island Press. Dr. Boswell served as an expert advisor on ‘Guiding Principles for City Climate Action Planning’ for the UN-Habitat Cities and Climate Change Initiative and attended the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris (COP-21) to launch the report. In 2017, he represented the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning in the Planners for Climate Action initiative launched at COP-23 in Bonn. Since 2006 he has served as a senior advisor and Project Director, for the California Multi-Hazard Mitigation Plan update. He is a founding member and served on the Organizing Committee of the Central Coast Climate Collaborative and he is the Director of the California Climate Action Planning Conference.

Dr. Boswell worked as a professional planner for Brevard County, Florida, the East Central Florida Regional Planning Council, and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. His public service leadership includes having served on the board of the non-profit Bike SLO County and as a member and Chair of the City of San Luis Obispo Planning Commission.

Michael Joins Sustainable Nation to Discuss:

• The basics to climate action planning for communities.
• The roles of engagement and collaboration in climate action planning
• Including both mitigation and adaptation in climate action planning
• Climate Change Vulnerability Assessments
• Advice and recommendations for sustainability leaders

Michael's Final Five Question Responses:

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

One piece of advice I have is that you have to find some way to deal with the overwhelming challenge that we face and how it can affect you mentally. I talked to so many fellow professionals in this field who seem to kind of go through these peaks and troughs in terms of their sense of the problem and their ability to make a difference with the problem. Part of this is about taking care of yourself and your own physical and mental health and part of this is about developing good professional networks that provide some support. But, it can be difficult. There are certainly days where you can wake up and feel this problem is overwhelming and it's unsolvable. I remember after I read, David Wallace Wells, Uninhabitable Planet, I just sort of wanted to stay in bed for the day. A great book, but not a feel good book by any means. So, I think that's a real struggle for sustainability professionals and I think we have to help each other with that. We can do that through good networking and communicating with each other, and then taking care of ourselves.

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

There's a lot to be excited about. You have to find the exciting things because that's what really gives you hope. I think there are a couple of important ones for me right now. I've come a lot more focused on getting better up to speed on energy and our energy situation. It just really seems like we are finally at that moment where we are really about to make rapid progress on renewable energy, both due to the cost of renewable energy, continuing to come down but also some of the other real benefits to things like electrification, electric vehicles, that sort of thing. I really feel like we're really finally at that moment we all hoped we would get to on energy. Also, there seems to be a resurgence in the global movement on climate change. We seem to be again in a moment of real activism around climate change, particularly with young people. I think that's always really exciting, although we need to get things done now today on this issue. It feels good that there seems to be this next generation coming up that's highly motivated to push really aggressive action on climate change.

What is one book you would recommend sustainability leaders read?

Now, the worst thing you can ever ask a professor is to recommend one book. We want to recommend 20. For me, the classic book on this was Earth in the Balance by Al Gore. I have to admit, I haven't gone back and read it recently, but I remember when I first read it, it really was the kind of book that inspired me and got me on the path to sustainability and climate change. I do want to give a recommendation for one of my fellow Island press authors, and that's Designing Climate Solutions by Hal Harvey. Island presses who publishes our book. They're a nonprofit publisher and they do a lot of great books on the environment, sustainability and climate change. Hal just spoke locally recently and I thought he gave a great talk and the book's full of interesting ideas on how we develop solutions for climate change.

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

Yeah, I was trying to figure out a way to answer this where I wouldn't just going to detail a bunch of boring government reports and things of that nature, which tends to be at least for me, a lot of the tools I use things like the Global Protocol for doing greenhouse gas emissions inventories. It's interesting, but it's not a page turner. I thought one set of things I could potentially mention were some of the newsletters that I read. Like I said, there's so much going on in the field of climate change, it's very difficult to keep track of the field. There's a couple of newsletters I'm really dependent on. There's Climate Nexus, which is a daily news digest. That's really great. There's something called EcoAdapt CAKE (Climate Adaptation Knowledge Exchange). They have a periodic newsletter that's excellent in terms of going over like case studies and new tools and things like that. One greeat energy related resource is called Utility Dive. There's a number of podcasts like this podcast I think are great. I also always try to listen to the Cimate One podcast and the Interchange from Greentech Media.

Where can our listeners go to learn more about you and your work?

Yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn of course and then my email [email protected]. I'm periodically on Twitter, and that is at @mboswell

As UT Arlington's first Chief Sustainability Officer, Meghna works collaboratively to foster partnerships among academic, research, and operational departments at UT Arlington. She leads institutional sustainability efforts in support of the UT Arlington 2020 Strategic Plan- Bold Solutions | Global Impact that is enabling a sustainable megacity that centers on four themes: health and the human condition, sustainable urban communities, global environmental impact and data-driven discovery.

She also works to address opportunities to promote sustainability in several areas energy efficiency, resource conservation, waste management, transportation, education, outreach, community engagement, supporting and encouraging student initiatives, and implementing an interdisciplinary and sustainability-focused curriculum. She also teaches courses related to Sustainability to graduate and undergraduate students at UTA.

She has spearheaded launching a Regional Center of Expertise for Education in Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in North Texas, a program of the United Nations University, and the Institute for Sustainability and Global Impact at UT Arlington. 

Meghna Joins Sustainable Nation to Discuss:

• How academic/educational institutions can work towards advancing the UN Sustainable Development Goals
• Approaches to engaging with youth and students to educate and create awareness about sustainability
• Importance of food sustainability programs and initiatives
• Examples of public-private partnerships with UT Arlington
• Advice and recommendations for sustainability leaders

Meghna'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 believe that sustainability is a word of the young generation because they are going to live in this world. What we do now matters to them, so I realized that in order to communicate with the students on campus, or other sustainability folks, you really have to be true to yourself. That authenticity in communicating your vision and values is important in showing these people that you really do care and are not doing this just because it's your job. Sometimes I think that blending those values with the unique goals and ambitions that you have, and even qualities like empathy, can be very motivating to others. I believe that leadership for a sustainability professional should live at the intersection of that spark and your values. You have to be true to yourself and you have to believe in what you're doing to make that connection with others.

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

Probably the UN SDG's are something that I'm really excited about because they were adopted in 2015 and the last four years I have seen how people are passionate. Of course, it has its own challenges and disadvantages and there's always something to criticize. But I do believe that they offer this global framework for people to pursue their sustainability goals. They give guidance in terms of the indicators on the goals the United Nations have put forward. It could be your small office, your small campus, small city or even on a regional scale. I feel they are amazing and I think everybody should start adapting them and using them for their sustainability initiatives and program because they have such global implications.

What is one book you would recommend sustainability leaders read?

I don't know how much time you have to read, but I don't get to read much. But I listen to a lot of podcasts. I'm an avid podcast listener and one of my favorites is called How I Built This. The host talks to these founders of amazing companies on how the company came about. A couple of months ago, I listened to this podcast by Alice Waters who, in 1960, went to France and learned all about food sustainability and how healthy food choices affect you personally and professionally. She came back to Berkely and started this amazing restaurant. Her story resonates with me because I focus on food sustainability and give it a lot of importance. Listening to her story about her struggles of launching a restaurant in Berkeley in 1971 where she was using locally sourced, organically grown food to come up with the restaurant menu options was just amazing. I would highly recommend listening to that podcast on NPR.

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

I go to the AASHE website a lot. All universities that are AASHE members have access to the portal. So every time you are trying to implement a project or have some information that you want to share, or you need some information to help out with whatever it is you're doing, I always go to the AASHE portal to check out the information that others have shared. I really like the SDG Explorer, which is a tool for implementing SDG's in operations. I think on campus you do have to interact with students in a language that they understand, so a lot of newsletters, social media and trying to engage with them on a personal level. Those tools have been very useful to me.

Where can people go to learn more about you and the work you're leading at UTA.

We have a very good, robust website at: uta.edu/sustainability. We post all the information on all our projects. People can go there or they can email me at [email protected]. They can follow me on Twitter at @meghnatare.

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 TRUE Zero Waste, B Corp, LEED and Carbon Neutral certification.

Samantha is currently the Sustainability Consultant at HealthPartners, based in Minneapolis, Minnesota and has been an integral part of the nationally recognized Sustainability program for over four years. In this role, she works to identify opportunities to strengthen the triple bottom line: people, prosperity, and planet. Such opportunities include, reducing waste, efficient energy management, environmentally preferred purchasing, and employee engagement. Samantha is responsible for implementing and managing sustainability programming across the HealthPartners family of care which includes 8 hospitals, over 70 clinics, and more than 26,000 employees.

Samantha Joins Sustainable Nation to Discuss:

• What hospitals are doing to address sustainability
• Climate change, human health impacts and the health care industry's role in this dynamic
• Leading an organization's first GHG emissions inventory
• The Minnesota Sustainable Growth Coalition
• Advice and recommendations for sustainability leaders

Samantha'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 would say to be patient yet persistent. I think sustainability work, at least my experience, has been most successful when you bring a lot of different stakeholders with different perspectives together to really collaborate on how to solve these issues. That takes a lot of time, so patience and then also persistence. Sometimes the first time you suggest a project or an idea and might get shot down, but don't give up on it if it's something that you really know will have a big impact or something that you really believe in.

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

The way that it brings people together. Going back to the Minnesota Sustainable Growth Coalition, getting businesses which may traditionally be seen as competitors all in the same room together, talking about environmental stewardship in sustainability and troubleshooting and sharing stories and barriers so we can all learn from each other. This is something that's really unique to this area. ROI and shareholders are always a part of the conversation, but also there's that recognition and understanding that the work that we're doing is greater than ourselves and our businesses and really is is the right thing to do.

What is one book you would recommend sustainability professionals read?

I think for those people who are interested then in learning more about sustainable health care, Kathy Gerwig, she is currently the vice president of environmental stewardship for Kaiser Permanente. She wrote a book called Green Health Care and really has been a trailblazer in the healthcare sustainability world. I think it gives a good overview on the issues healthcare is facing today and the initiatives and projects that the healthcare industry could work on to help improve the health of their communities.

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

So we're members of an organization called Practice Green Health. They're the national premier health care sustainability organization. This is where I go every time I run into a question or an issue or a barrier. They have a website with a ton of great resources. They also have amazing knowledgeable staff that are there to help.

Where can people go to learn more about you and the work being done at Health Partners?

We have a public website at healthpartners.com and search for sustainability. There's a great summary there of all the work we're doing and our future goals. For my work personally, people can check out my LinkedIn page. I'm active on LinkedIn. I love to share updates about things we've got going on here at Health Partners and also some initiatives going on outside of work.

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 TRUE Zero Waste, B Corp, LEED and Carbon Neutral certification.

Frank has spent over 27 years working with residuals management and composting both in operations management as well as sales and marketing. In 1993, he started North Carolina’s first source separated organics composting facility. As past principal of Akkadia Consulting, Frank provided professional consulting services on projects of animal waste management, biosolids management, coal ash residuals, composting of industrial residuals, product development and marketing.

He has facilitated the turnkey start-up of award winning composting facilities, taking them from concept to feasibility to operational, overseeing permitting, equipment selection, hiring and training of personnel, as well as the development and execution of the product marketing plan. Frank also managed the Novozymes’ Nature’s GREEN-RELEAF™ composting facility from 2003-2015. In 2014, Frank was the recipient of the Hi Kellogg Award for displaying outstanding service to the US composting industry over a period of many years. He has a BS in Plant and Soil Sciences from West Virginia University.

Frank Joins Sustainable Nation to Discuss:

• The work of the US Composting Council
• The state of composting in the US
• Roadblocks and challenges to composting
• Getting composting started in your community
• Advice and recommendations for sustainability leaders

Frank's Final Five Question Responses:

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

Build on your knowledge base. Each job should get you the next job. In your first job, you should learn and network to your second job, third job and so on. Go to seminars and conferences based on your job or your topic of interest. When you go there, find a mentor. I've found a lot of mentors over the course of my career. I really didn't know a lot about composting. I did a lot of reading and networking/talking to mentors. Once you become fluid in your subject topic, book speaking engagements and get certified in your subject area.

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

The millennials and the young professionals. We have a young professionals group at the US Composting Council. I just think that they're interested in making our world more sustainable. I'm impressed by their passion and their drive. I'm also excited about how big brand companies are really starting to embrace sustainability at the corporate level and also within their products. I'm seeing more and more of the big brand names worry about their packaging and their processes. A lot of that has to do obviously with shareholders and those kinds of issues. I think we're getting there. It's a slow turn, but we're getting there.

What is one book you would recommend sustainability professionals read?

The one that really impressed me the most is Natural Capitalism by Paul Hawken in 2008. If you go back and read that book, he's predicting stuff in 2008 that's happening now. I've read Cradle to Cradle and Upcycle by William McDonough and Michael Braungart. I'm now reading Drawdown, which is coauthored by Paul Hawken and Katharine Wilkinson. Katharine will be our keynote speaker at our conference in Charleston in January.

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

There's a group called the American Society of Association of Executives, or ASAE. They're a great resource for me because I don't have a lot of experience managing associations, so I use them a lot. They've got a great resource and reference area to go to. We just got a new association management system called Your Membership. That's exciting because it has a learning management system in there. It helps us manage our information a lot easier. Google docs, Google sheets and we use Basecamp a lot for external resources as well as working with our committees.

Where can people go to learn more about you and your work?

I'm on LinkedIn so please link in to me. The Composting Council's website is www.compostingcouncil.org. Our foundation is www.compostfoundation.org. If you're interested in our conference it's www.compostconference.com. If you go to our website, we have YouTube. We're on Facebook, we're on Instagram, and we're on LinkedIn, both the foundation as well as the council.

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 TRUE Zero Waste, B Corp, LEED and Carbon Neutral certification.

Joel Makower is chairman and executive editor of GreenBiz Group Inc., producer of GreenBiz.com, and lead author of the annual State of Green Business report. A veteran journalist with more than 40 years' experience, he also hosts GreenBiz's annual GreenBiz Forums, the global event series VERGE, and other events. Joel is author of more than a dozen books, including his latest, The New Grand Strategy: Restoring America's Prosperity, Security, and Sustainability in the 21st Century (St. Martin's Press).

Joel Joins Sustainable Nation to Discuss:

• The evolution of GreenBiz and becoming a top resource for sustainability professionals
• Current state and momentum around the circular economy
• The ESG investing movement pushing corporate sustainability forward
• Excitement around carbon capture, carbon storage and working towards carbon positive
• Advice and recommendations for sustainability leaders

Interview Highlights

What are you seeing out there in regards to the circular economy? Do you envision us ever getting to a true circular economy? I know one of your annual events is Circularity. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about the discussions that have been going on at that conference and your thoughts in general on what you're seeing in the circular economy movement.

I've been in this field for a long time and I've seen a lot of frameworks, ideas, concepts and other things come to the fore. Most of them fade back into the proverbial woodwork. Circular economy is different. It's the first of these frameworks that I've ever seen that really requires a company to engage its entire value chain, as opposed to something like energy efficiency, renewable energy or waste reduction and things that may involve some partners, but you can largely do that by yourself. This is something where you have to rethink how materials are designed, where the materials come from, where it's made, how it's made, how it's sold into the marketplace and the relationship with the customer because it may no longer be a buy and sell relationship, it may be something else.

We have to consider what the ongoing post-market relationship is, because instead of just a few years of a service contract there may be a 10 or even 20 year subscription kind of relationship in some cases. We have to consider how you get stuff back and what happens to it. How do you extract the materials? Can you repair and refurbish it? Is it produced into something new and what is the market for that? How does the money change hands? It is really complicated. I've never seen anything come to the fore this quickly and attract the nature of excitement and companies. Just look at the companies Loop has with Proctor and Gamble, Nestle, PepsiCo, Unilever, Mars, Clorox, Coca-Cola and a bunch of smaller brands. They have evolved UPS in the program and a resource management company.

It's a big system and it's admittedly just getting going in various locations including Pennsylvania, New Jersey and an area in France. It's just really happened this summer, so it's going to be a while before we really have a sense of this, probably at least the end of the year. But it's a really interesting experiment and it's one of many. It's just really extraordinary what's going on out there. So, we launched a conference this year called Circularity. There really hadn't been a comprehensive, multi-day circular economy event in North America. There'd been a few smaller ones, but none that really brought together the entire value chain from the polymer companies like Dow, DuPont, BASF and others all the way through the brands and the collection and recovery companies.

We didn't know how many people to expect. It was a launch events, so we kind of stuck our finger in the air and said, "Well, 500 people would be great." We had to shut down registration at 850 because the fire marshal basically told us we had to. Aside from the numbers, it was really quite a mood there because you had all these people from some of the world's biggest brands loking around the room and saying, "Wow, I had no idea that there were so many of us." That was a special moment and we think that we're onto something, so we'll be doing this annually. The next one's in May in Atlanta next year.

Loop requires a change from the consumer. Consumers have to play a role in this. Do you think consumers are ready to change the way that they purchase and they consume to help work towards a circular economy?

Well, it's an open question and a good one. I started this part of my career with the consumer facing piece, and back in 1989 there was the first study of consumers in the US about their interest and willingness about making greener choices in the marketplace by an organization called the Michael Peters Group. It had some very large percentage, 78% or 92%, of people who said that they would gladly make the green choice and some very high percentage of those would pay a small premium for the privilege of doing so. Of course, if we look at our grocery carts and everything else, they haven't changed all that much.

They do these surveys all the time now and the numbers aren't all that different. So, there's this big disconnect between what consumers say they want to do and what they actually do. For it to succeed, green has to equal better. Better can be defined in lots of different ways - cheaper to buy, cheaper to operate, higher quality, better for my family, better for my community, better for my image, recyclable, locally sourced and any number of things. I's going to depend on whether you're talking about cosmetics, a computer or a car, but so many of these products have not been better. They have been harder to find, more expensive or didn't work as well from brands you didn't recognize.

I think that's the big question. How much are consumers willing to try new things? Will it be seen as better? Will it be more convenient? Will it be more affordable? Will it be higher quality? Will it be something that makes them feel good? People change all the time and how we do things, but it has to be better. That's the real thing. People say they want a change, but when it comes down to actually making those changes, not so much. So that's the open question. Will Loop be better? Will a subscription model for something that we used to buy for clothing be better? It will be for people who could afford it and for some higher end fashion, but it won't be for the people who shop at, let's say, Old Navy, because those things are just too inexpensive to put it into a circular model.

So, we're going to see a lot of different things, a thousand flowers blooming, and some of them are going to take and some of them are going to wither and die. I think that's where we're at and, and the ultimate answer your question is it depends on the product, the offering, how well it's available and all kinds of other things. It's going to vary depending on product category to product category. We may see some big changes in some and some huge resistance in others.

GreenBiz has also done a great job in talking about how the investment community is getting engaged in sustainability and is helping to push the sustainability movement forward. For many years, the discussion was that investing in sustainability and battling climate change was going to be too hard on the economy and it was going to be too costly. It was going to slow growth. Now we're hearing the complete opposite. We're hearing that if we don't address climate change, it's going to have catastrophic impacts on our economy. The exciting thing is a lot of this is coming from the investment community. Talk to us about this change in dynamic that you're seeing and how this is really moving things forward.

Yeah, the conversation has flipped in a certain way from "What is business doing to impact the climate?" To "How is the climate going to impact business?" That's a very different conversation from corporate responsibility to risk, plain and simple. Risk can come in a lot of different forms from, from reputational and financial risk to right to operate risk. If you are a heavy water user in a water stressed area, you may not be welcome there, for example. There's business continuity risks, the ability to have reliable supply chains.

All of this gets factored in by climate change and so this has become a factor for investors because they are naturally concerned about risk. That's where they live. There's a framework introduced in Europe a couple of years ago with the lovely acronym, TCFD. It stands for the Task Force on Climate Related Financial Disclosure. Basically, it's a framework on how companies can report to investors the impacts to them, to their company, their operations, their supply chains, their customers and their employees in a climate constrained world looking out any number of years at different levels of degrees of global warming. Investors are interested in that and taking a look at that. In Europe and in Asia, that's becoming required to be listed on some stock exchanges.

It's not being required so much here in the United States, but as is often the case here in the US, regulations are coming more from the market than from the government. So, if you look at the big institutional investors, the BlackRocks, the Vanguards, the State Streets, the CalPERS and other big pension funds organizations, they are now leaning into what's called ESG environmental, soci

Bill Reed is an internationally recognized planning consultant, design process facilitator, lecturer, and author in sustainability and regeneration. He is a principal of Regenesis, Inc. – a regenerative design, living systems integrator, and education organization. His work centers on creating the framework for and managing an integrative, whole and living system design process. This work is known as Regenerative Development. It is a meta-discipline that unifies the pattern understanding practices of Ecological Design, Biophilia, and Organizational Psychology into a design process that lifts building and community planning into full integration and co-evolution with living systems. The objective: to improve the overall quality of the physical, social and spiritual life of our living places and therefore the planet.

Bill Joins Sustainable Nation to Discuss:

• Using regenerative design principles in business and the built environment
• How permaculture informs regenerative development
• Healing the earth in 18 months
• Moving beyond sustainability to regenerative development
• Advice and recommendations for sustainability leaders

Interview Highlights:

Tell us a little bit about the process at Regenesis. You talk a lot about "place" and the "story of place." Tell us what that means and why this is so important when you're leading this type of regenerative work.

Yeah, it's the foundation. By place we mean everything in that place: human consciousness, worms, habitat, geology, business, infrastructure and you name it. All of those aspects of life are in what we call "place." So, we don't separate people from place, for instance. They're part of it. And we don't separate nature from place. It's not about placemaking, it's about place as a living organism. Our philosophy is that every place we live in is a unique living organism on the planet and is evolutionary in its own particular, unique way. Unless we understand this, then what gives us the right to build there? We have found that once we work in congruence and in harmony with place, actually ecosystems and social systems recover their health, become dynamically stable and evolutionary all at the same time. The shift that we see when we work with that level of wholeness is profound.

I learned so much just chatting with some of your colleagues during the work that we did and just learning how the geography and the history of a certain place, and understanding that that's really what created the culture that's in that place today. It's amazing how crucial it is to understand this to be able to address the specific sustainability issues that place might be facing.

Yes. You can't escape mother nature, it just surfaces. You might ask, "So what? What does having that understanding do for us?" If nothing else, it awakens us to fall in love. I like to say that we're dating nature when we do this and it helps a community actually understand, honor and love what and who this place is. It's also a much different motivator than feeling guilty or feeling that we should do something. Although fear is a great motivator too of course, but hopefully we have that impulse of care and mutual reciprocity behind it.

You've been talking about this need to transition from sustainability to regenerative development for quite some time. We're now seeing it become more of a topic in corporations, in universities, in communities that are starting to use that language of moving beyond sustainability. How do you think this transition is coming along? What are you seeing in this movement overall?

I am seeing some incredible work being done in the regenerative agricultural field. I think it's more easy to understand because people can regenerate. They can see that the soil can be regenerated. But there's a nuance here. Regeneration is not restoration. Restoration is part of regeneration, but regeneration is the ability to do it again. It isn't doing it the first time. So, to regenerate soil or regenerate an ecosystem is not about doing it once. The Re is really important. It's the capability to keep engaging as systems change and as life evolves.

So the "Re" is important here. It's rebirth. It's birth, life, death, rebirth cycles. So, how do we learn to understand our role in the system? Farmers typically are closely engaged with their soil, so to some degree they're doing regenerative work if they're paying attention. But about 90% of the world doesn't live on farms anymore. And they're the ones with the votes. They're the ones that are making decisions. How do we build that understanding in a population that basically thinks food comes in plastic wrapped containers.

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

Number one, work with deep integration. Co-create with community, design team and owners. Once you start working with integration, the question becomes where do you stop integrating? That means that we actually have to start getting into how life works. So, if we're sustaining life then we better understand how life works as best we can. So, the recommendation is understand how to be an ecologist.

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

I think a lot of us are somewhat depressed about the state of the world and how little we've done. But when even three to five years ago, people were not very receptive to this concept, so many people are opening their minds and hearts now to realize that we have to do something differently. So, I don't know if I'm excited about anything in the world of sustainability, I'm excited about the world that people are realizing fundamentally that we have to work in a different way. It's that Greek definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. I think finally people are realizing we need to change the paradigms out of which we're working. So that's exciting.

What is one book you would recommend sustainability professionals read?

He speaks a lot about what we believe in. His name is Charles Eisenstein and his new book is called: Climate, a New Story. I'm kind of tired of reading about climate, but he changes the dimensions on that. I recommend that. I'm reading it now and enjoying it a lot.

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

We are collaborative learners. We are learning this as we're teaching it to people. There is no answer book for this work. So, I highly recommend the Regenerative Practitioner Course. I highly recommend reading Carol Sanford's books, because I think both of them talk about this work in a unique way. The resources are really these living system frameworks and you can read about them. Yeah, it sounds so self aggrandizing. I apologize for that, but I just don't know the other resources for these things. JG Bennett's work is a source for these systemic frameworks. They open up a different world and so I'll leave it at that.

Where can people go to learn more about you and the work you're doing at Regenesis?

Our website is regenesisgroup.com and you can also access our education site, which we just changed the name to Institute for Regeneration. My email address is: [email protected]. If anybody is really interested, we do have articles on the website. I have more that I can send people. I'm always happy to send stuff out. I'm happy to respond to anybody if they're interested in exploring more.

About Sustridge

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

Timothy J. Mohin is the Chief Executive of GRI, developer of the world’s most widely used sustainability reporting standards. A veteran in the field of corporate sustainability reporting, Tim is responsible for driving GRI's mission to empower decisions that create social, environmental and economic benefits for everyone.  

Prior to his appointment as Chief Executive, Tim was Senior Director of Corporate Responsibility for Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). He is also a former Chairman of the Board for the Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition (EICC) and former member of the Conflict Free Sourcing Initiative’s steering committee. 

Previously, Tim founded and led Apple’s Supplier Responsibility program. He also led Intel’s environmental and sustainability functions. Tim started his career with the US government. With the Environmental Protection Agency, he led the development of the toxics provisions of the Clean Air Act Amendments. Later, Tim was senior legislative staff for the Chairman of Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.

Tim Joins Sustainable Nation to Discuss:

• Testifying for mandated ESG reporting in the US
• Evolving GRI standards and framework to meet new demands
• Developing a new GRI standard to disclose corporate taxation
• Advice and recommendations for sustainability leaders

Interview Highlights:

Can you talk to us a little bit about the importance of ESG initiatives to a company's bottom line and how you think we can best communicate this to those that don't get it?

Yeah, it's a great question. We are viewing this from a global perspective and there's many, many examples where undisclosed material risks have led to some pretty negative effects on companies. But the bigger picture that we're seeing is that ESG information, so-called sustainability information, has moved from a niche, let's face it, reputational issue into the very mainstream of global commerce where analysts, investors, asset owners are demanding this information and rely on this information to make decisions. So, GRI has responded to that by becoming the international standard setter, but we need to do more. We need to have better consistency, better compatibility and better quality. Let's face it, a lot of these reports are a hundred pages or more and they have a lot of pretty pictures and they're somewhat marketing oriented. The disclosures now need to be much more professional and that is the change that we're trying to push forward and that's the change that we're seeing in legislation, not just in the US but across the world.

Investors are clearly picking up on this. They're understanding that these companies with demonstrated commitments to sustainability and transparency are outperforming others. Obviously we're seeing a huge rise in ESG and socially responsible investing. What has that recent interest and growth in ESG and socially responsible investing meant for GRI and the reporting world? Last year we had the CEO of the largest asset manager in the world, BlackRock, say that within the next five years, all investors will measure a company's impact on society, government and the environment to determine its worth. It's a pretty incredible statement that received a lot of attention in the investment community and the sustainability world.

Well, it certainly brought us a lot of attention because as you know, most companies that are reporting are using GRI to report. Currently, we're looking at data that shows that of the top 250 companies by revenue, 93% are reporting sustainability information and 75% of those are using GRI. The numbers in the top 5,000 also show that 75% are reporting and 63% are using GRI. So, we are converging around a global standard and I think that's very important. It brings us a lot of attention and puts a lot of pressure on us as well.

But I think one really important difference to point out as we mainstream from a niche reputational paradigm into one that's much more in the center of global commerce, is this area of materiality. Some actors in the field are really focused on financial materiality, but frankly, if the issues are financially material, they should be disclosed anyway in the regular financial disclosures. The fact is, when you come to ESG information, it's very difficult to make a financial materiality case for many of these issues and so you have to apply a different test. You have to look at not only what is the effect on the company in the near term, but what is the company's effect on the environment in the longterm. That's what the GRI materiality test brings to the table and I think it's very important that test be maintained as these mandates start to come online.

On the topic of evolving the GRI standards, you're now addressing the issue of corporate taxation as a sustainability issue. GRI is now developing the first global standard for disclosures of the taxes companies pay in the various countries where they operate. Can you tell us a little bit about why GRI is going down this path and where you're at with that?

It's really exciting because this is our first new standard in many years. We have 33 topic specific standards in the economic, environmental and social space. This one is obviously in the economic space. So, why would we prioritize this one? Well, it turns out that having appropriate payments to governments, tax payments to governments, is fundamental to government's ability to provide sustainability services to their people. If industry is not paying their fair share, if they're hiding their resources in tax havens for example, then the whole system starts to crumble.

So, we have been told by many different stakeholders that this is a high priority issue and that there's millions, billions and trillions of dollars, euros and pounds that have been hidden from taxes, and it's time to expose that. Specifically embedded in the standard is country by country reporting, which is absolutely central. Most industries would argue we already have to report this, which is true within a certain country, but multinationals don't have to report across their business globally. So, that's the innovation here. We got 85 different submissions when it went to public comment and they were all positive. 43% of them were from investors. So, even investors who you might imagine going the other way are very much supportive of new standard.

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

I actually wrote an entire book about this. It's called Changing Business from the Inside Out. So, of the 270 plus pages, what I would pick out as this: lead from wherever you stand. A lot of people in many organizations can feel that they don't have a lot of decision making power, but they have a lot of passion for the topic. What I talk about in the book is there are many ways to express that passion to help move your organization in a sustainable direction. You don't have to be in the sustainability department to express those views in your professional life. So, lead from wherever your standing.

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

You know, it's that mainstreaming movement that we talked about earlier. When I started this, I mentioned sustainability hadn't been invented, and then when it became invented it was kind of a niche play of, let's say, altruistic people. And now it's really personally and professionally satisfying to see something that I've dedicated my career to become mainstream. Now it's being talked about by global commerce actors, by the chair of the Bank of England, by Larry Fink and by others in the business world. I find that to be incredibly satisfying and hugely important to our future.

What is one book you would recommend sustainability leaders read?

Well, my book of course, Changing Business from the Inside Out. But also, there is a book that I really thought was inspirational. It's called How Will You Measure Your Life, by Clayton Christianson. Clayton Christiansen is the author of The Innovator's Dilemma which is a classic in the business book genre, but he also has lived his life in a way to bring a lot of extra value to the world that is not all about just making money. He wrote it all down in a book called, How Will You Measure Your Life.

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

There's many I can choose from, but for me the GRI standards are incredibly helpful. Why are they helpful? Because everybody likes to talk about sustainability, but very few people can define with specificity what it means. I'm not just making this up, I say this in my book, if you really want to know what sustainability means start with the GRI standards, because it will lead you through how to conduct a materiality assessment and then each and every specific topic that's under that broad rubric of sustainability is defined.

Where can people go to learn more about you and the work that you're leading at GRI?

So I do have a website, timmohin.com. That carries all of my latest social media postings as well as my articles and press reports. That would probably be the best way to follow me, personally. Of course, there's the

Julia Person is the Corporate Sustainability Manager with Craft Brew Alliance, headquartered in Portland, Oregon and a leader in brewing, branding and bringing to market world class American craft beers such as from Widmer Brothers Brewing and Kona Brewing Co.

Julia Joins Sustainable Nation to Discuss:

• Craft Brew Alliance's recent sustainability report and incorporating SASB framework into their reporting process
• CBA's work to understand GHG emissions in product packaging
• Sustainable design of the new Kona Brewing Company brewery
• Managing sustainability messaging throughout multiple different brands
• Advice and recommendations for sustainability leaders

Julia's Final Five Question Responses:

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

What I learned early on in my career, which is more relevant today even than ever, is that sustainability is a business necessity for all different types of businesses. It's just the state of the world right now. So, if you really understand the business case of sustainability and how it really can work hand in hand with business to making you more competitive, more profitable, and it's not an extra cost to the business, then I think that really would help someone out in their career to affect change and really align with those business needs.

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

I think we're seeing that the technology is really out there. It's really caught up with what we want to do. So, it's a matter of really scaling that up and making it happen. I mentioned our water recovery and it's incredible to me that we're able to make our own clean water as a business that's cleaner than water we're being delivered. It's actually clean enough for us to make beer out of. I don't think we're there yet as a society, but I think we will be one day soon and I'm excited to see that.

What is one book you would recommend sustainability professionals read?

The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan. It's about the dust bowl so it's looking back, but that was one of the biggest human caused environmental disasters of recent times. So, I feel like we have a lot to learn from those historical events when we're facing current challenges.

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

In our industry, we have the trade group called the Brewers Association and they have some incredible tools around sustainability. They have manuals around water and energy. A really valuable tool is they're benchmarking efforts where they're collecting data from breweries across the country of all different sizes around our energy and water use and CO2. It's valuable to be able to benchmark and see what's best in class and where's the gap. I really find that one of the most valuable tools out there.

Where can people go to learn more about you and the workup CBA?

The best place to go is craftbrew.com. You can click over to our About section to find our new sustainability report. It's interactive as well. So, as you're reading through that, you can click on links and find videos that pop up and so forth. So, hopefully some of you folks can check that out.

About Sustridge

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

John Marler is Vice President of Energy and Environment at AEG, the world’s leading sports and live entertainment company. In this role, John oversees AEG’s corporate environmental sustainability program, AEG 1EARTH, and AEG Energy Services, AEG’s corporate energy management program.

John came to AEG from Southern California Edison where he focused on renewable and alternative energy contracts and smart grid research and development. Before joining Edison, John practiced law for four years as an attorney in New York State, focusing on commercial litigation and business transactions. John also serves on the board of directors of GRID Alternatives Greater Los Angeles.

John Joins Sustainable Nation to Discuss:

• Leading sustainability in the events and entertainment industry
• Engaging employees across the company in sustainability
• Updating AEG's GHG goals in response to the latest IPCC Report
• AEG's 2019 Sustainability Report
• Advice and recommendations for sustainability leaders

Interview Highlights:

AEG has two different area to focus on around sustainability - the buildings that are owned and operated by AEG, and then managing events that are not in your venues. Is there a different approach to these two different operations within the business?

For us, it's three different scenarios. We have wholly owned and operated properties, which can be events or buildings. Then we have situations where we are a tenant in a building, which presents some different operating constraints and opportunities. Then we also have events in buildings where we are operating the premises on behalf of the client. All those scenarios have different opportunities and it really comes down to the particulars of the site and the relationship with the property to really drive a lot of the work. One example might be our Mary Moore Park Concert Series up in Seattle. That's owned by the local Parks and Recreation Authority. They provide a lot of the infrastructure and services so we work with what they're providing, whereas if we go into a site that we own and control, we have the direct relationship with some of those services and maybe approach it a little bit different.

Anything advice or recommendations you can share on how to engage employees across the company in sustainability?

I think the first thing is you have to build relationships. We spend a lot of time setting up quarterly calls. We have at least one call a quarter with all of our sites and I go through different operational issues, updates and talking about problems. It's really about recognizing that everyone in the company has a day job, and while we're all subject to the company's policies and procedures, not everyone is a subject matter expert in sustainability. Not everyone has that as the main focus of the job. So, it's trying to build relationships and understand what people's opportunities and constraints are and then helping them be successful within their own context. That takes a little bit longer. Sometimes it can take years to build productive longterm relationships, but ultimately I think that's a lot more successful. I don't think it's successful if you just come up with a list of requirements or demands and just blast those out in an email. That's not going to work very well.

So we really try to build those relationships, understand things through the lens of our internal clients and then work with them on whatever initiative that they can push forward. Sometimes there's not much that can be done on energy efficiency, because maybe we don't own the building or any of the infrastructure, but maybe we have more leeway to do something around waste and recycling. So, it's really about building relationships and looking at things from other people's perspective and then trying to fit in what yo can.

I see that AEG's 2019 sustainability report is out. I noticed a big drop in greenhouse gas emissions and that you've developed some new greenhouse gas emissions goals. Can you talk about AEG's work around reducing emissions and what led you to develop these new goals?

I would say the IPCC report that came out in October of last year really drove that. Starting around 2015 we realized that the goals that we had on the books at that time weren't really future proof. They made sense when we set them in the 2010 time period, but the company had grown so fast and diversified so fast that we needed to do something different. In 2016, we announced that we adopted science based targets and basically moved from an intensity based goal to an absolute goal on the theory that the planet doesn't care how much emissions per unit of production that you do if your carbon footprint, in aggregate, is bigger than it was in the past.

So, we felt it's the right thing to do to set an absolute target manage towards that. That was kind of the foundation, and then last year when the IPCC report came out, that was very eye opening and very concerning. Basically, the message for all of us is you've got less than 12 years now to essentially cut carbon emissions in half, and then achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. Those are pretty daunting challenges and we decided that we need to incorporate this. So, we did some scenario analysis and realized that, for us, it meant having a more aggressive target - moving from a 3.2% reduction per year to a 4% reduction. This was more aggressive, but I wouldn't say it was so much more aggressive that it seemed like it would be impossible.

Everything then started falling in line from that. Once we did the scenario planning and looked at the goals, one thing that our management always pointed out was that once we adopted our absolute goal they said they weren't seeing progress year to year. We're not getting worse, but we're not really getting better. We kind of explained that when you have a growing company, you can make improvements with efficiencies and sort of reduce your emissions, but if you have organic business growth you basically offset that.

So, those conversations along with the new goal led to us getting some additional resources to procure additional renewable energy certificates to offset our scope two emissions that come from our consumption of grid electricity. That's why you see that pretty marketed decrease in our emissions from 2017 to 2018, because once we adopted the more serious target and we got that message that was being sent from the IPCC, we thought now's the time that we have to take a little bit more drastic action. There's maybe some historic discomfort around using Renewable Energy Certificates (REC's) and offsets to achieve our goals, but I think after talking through that internally we got more comfortable with it.

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

The sustainability stuff is the easy part, right? Kindergarteners know, reduce, reuse, recycle. The trick is, how do you work within your organization to make those things happen? That's all about knowing your organization and being able to influence and guide people to take better actions. So, I would say forget all the book stuff and just really work on influencing and working with your people and to be successful.

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

Number one is the rapid decrease in energy prices. I'm also very excited about energy storage which is really blowing up. The other thing I'm really excited about is what we are seeing with plastic. This plastic thing for us started in 2018. Like others in this industry, it started with a picture of the turtle with the star in its nose, and almost overnight, you just got a lot of momentum and concern around single use plastics. I feel like that elevation where it's on the front pages of major newspapers is hugely helpful. Having people understand that it's not only an environmental crisis but it's a personal health crisis. A news article came out this week that said each of us consume like 80,000 pieces of microplastic a day or something like that. I think now that people understand that it's affecting them directly and it's not just this abstract global sea level rise problem, it makes getting people's attention and engagement on these issues easier.

What is one book you would recommend sustainability professionals read?

So, you're probably not going to like this answer, but my response would be if you have time to read books, you're not working hard enough. We've got 12 years on carbon emissions and this plastic stuff is everywhere. You don't need to read a book, just get to work. Work with people and move the ball forward. 12 years from now and we're all carbon neutral and there's no plastics we can all hang out and read books, but I honestly don't have the time for it.

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

I subscribe to so many different emails I couldn't really even name a lot of them. I would say you can find good resources like NGOs, United Nations, EPA, Cal Recycle. You can just Google 10 minutes and you can find a lot of stuff. What I like to do is just sign up to the organization's newsletter to get constant feeds in my email with articles on energy storage, renewable energy, the waste and recycling business, the trucking business and things like that. Just having that constant data stream that I can kind of skim through is really helpful.

Where can people go to learn more about you and the work that you're doing at AEG?