Podcasts about sustainable nation

Bérénice Lasfargues is Sustainability Integration Lead at BNP Paribas Asset Management. In this role, she is in charge of the implementation of the firm's ESG integration policy, working closely with portfolio managers across all asset classes to more purposefully integrate ESG criteria in their portfolios; and manages the internal firm-wide network of ESG Champions in investment teams. The changing regulatory environment is placing increasing importance on ESG data, and in her role, Bérenice works on the evolution of the firm's ESG research platform (including development of BNPP AM proprietary ESG rating and SDG data models) and provides strategic guidance on the optimal flow of ESG data through the company. She also coordinates the firm's approach to impact investment, and leads on its ESG analysis in the ICT sector.  She is the representative for BNPP AM's sustainable investment capabilities across the Americas, promoting the firm's expertise with clients and externally across the region. Previously, she worked at the OECD, undertaking economic research on green and blended finance. She was also a legislative fellow in the U.S. House of Representatives and conducted fieldwork on climate change and development in emerging markets. Bérénice holds masters' degrees in engineering and environmental management from Ecole Centrale Paris (now CentraleSupelec) and the National University of Singapore, respectively. She is an EFFAS CESGA (Certified ESG Analyst) certificate holder. Bérénice joins Sustainable Nation to Discuss: Why asset managers are looking so closely at sustainability and ESG goals BNP Pams sustainability investment beliefs and four standard pillars Challenges with ESG rating systems How ESG data could become more valuable Advice and recommendations for sustainability professionals  Bérénice's Final Five Questions Responses What is one piece of advice you would give other sustainability professionals that might help them in their careers? One piece of advice would be to get involved or keep up as much as you can with collaborative working groups and networks. Depending on your focus area or sector, there are so many. For example, if you are within the investment management industry, you could get involved with Principles for Responsible Investment, the Global Impact Investing network, or the Initial Investors Group on Climate Change, just to name a few. I was collectively marched towards mainstreaming sustainability for more cognitive diversity to solve common challenges and raise the bar across the board. So number one is get involved. Number two would be to put in the work into the training and knowing your stuff on sustainability. It may seem from the outside, the ESG landscape is a bit fuzzy. We just talked about the fact that the market is fragmented. But ESG is now part of a firm's license to operate. Therefore there is a need to engage and upscale your workforce on this topic. There are great trainings that exist, the CFA Institute, the Fundamentals for Sustainability Accounting from SASB, the European Federation of Financial Society also has a training. Within BNP Pam we have a network of ESG champions. Each client and investment facing team has one, and they're required to get some formal certification on ESG. So it starts with people and upscaling your people so they have expertise to make the right judgment calls. Maybe a final one would be: develop your leadership skills as they relate to change management. All ESG jobs at the moment, unless you're working at a pure player firm, and even then, involve some element of persuasion and winning hearts and minds. ESG is a journey, and along the journey you will need people and you will need to be able to convince people in other parts of the firm on the foundation of ESG. That is what change management is all about.  What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability? The momentum of the space, but also the increased scrutiny from a new set of stakeholders- regulators, retail, investors, consumers- clearly they shine the light on the fact that we have made so much progress. But there is still so much progress that we still need to make. In the current environment, there is a strong and very important push against greenwashing and that is welcome. I think it will make us only better as practitioners. What is one book you would recommend sustainability professionals read? One short book, which is really a call to action, would be On Impact: A Guide to the Impact Revolution by Sir Ronald Cohen. This book is kind of a prelude of sorts to this much longer book titled Impact: Reshaping Capitalism to Drive Real Change. So you can either read the short manifesto or the longer book depending on your bandwidth. But both books talk about the advent of the impact entrepreneurs and the potential paradigm shift from the risk return equation to a risk return impact equation in investment analysis, and also from measuring activities and inputs to measuring outcomes. Also how at each level as consumers; citizens, employers, we can facilitate this transition in thinking on impact investing. Another book, I have to confess I'm only halfway through, but another book which I find very interesting is Moving Beyond Portfolio Theory by Jon Lukomnik James Hawley. We truly look at how modern portfolio theory has been instrumental in shaping traditional investment but also how it falls short in terms of including a consideration of systemic risk and market ecosystem impact. So that's a very tall order, tackling modern portfolio theory. That's what you're trying to do in this book. What are some of your favorite resources or tools that really help you in your work? In terms of resources, keeping up with market developments related to ESG investing. There are a few newsletters and resources that I would say most of us in the industry tend to read. There is Responsible Investors, Environmental Finance, Bloomberg Green, the Financial Times Moral Money newsletter just to name a few. Another resource for us is academia as well as looking at work done by international organizations, such as the IEA, the OCE or the World Bank Group. We at BMP Pam are a founding supporter of GRAFSI, which is the Global Research Alliance for Sustainable Finance and Investments. It is a global network of leading research universities founded in 2017 that aims to develop academic collaboration on the topic and they have aan annual conference. The next one is in September at the University of Zurich and next year will be at Yale university in September 2023. I think one of the reasons we are very keen to support academia is that as sustainable investment practitioners in such a growing and emerging field, we really need to rely on high quality academic research to make sense of this ESG alphabet to support development of new methodologies, as well as inform development of our new policies in a way that is transparent. Where can our listeners go to learn more about you and your work being done at BNP? They can find information regarding our approach to sustainability on our corporate website https://group.bnpparibas/en/. On it you can find global sustainability strategy, all our policies on integration, stewardship, regulatory documentation. We have a sustainability report but also have profiled members of our firm on what it means for them in the day to day sustainable investor for a changing world. I can also be reached out to directly on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Raphael Shore is a Canadian-Israeli film writer, producer, and rabbi. He is the founder of OpenDor Media (formerly Jerusalem U) — a Jewish educational organization —as well as the Clarion Project, whose mission is to expose the dangers of extremism. His award-winning feature films have been seen on Netflix, PBS, CNN, MSNBC, FOXNews, Comcast, EL AL airplanes, and hundreds of film festivals internationally. His films include Beneath the Helmet, Hummus! The Movie, Obsession, Sustainable Nation, When the Smoke Clears, and Honor Diaries. Prior to these endeavors, he was the COO of Aish International. The Future of Jewish is a podcast hosted by Joshua Hoffman, the founder of JOOL. In each episode, Joshua is joined by top leaders, thinkers, and doers who are paving the path for a promising Jewish future.

"QC Environtmental Film Series: Sustainable Nation" by Virginia Smith

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.

Ellen Jackowski drives HP’s Sustainable Impact strategy and programs that focus on the planet, people and the communities that HP serves. Ellen also oversees efforts to align and integrate these programs with HP’s Personal Systems, Imaging and Printing, and 3D Printing business groups to ensure that sustainability is at the core of HP’s business results. Previously, Ellen was a management consultant focusing on strategy projects for Fortune 500 companies. She has a Bachelor of Science degree from Northwestern University and is a faculty member of the The Prince of Wales’s Business & Sustainability Programme at the University of Cambridge. Ellen join Sustainable Nation to discuss: History of sustainability at HP HP’s response to COVID-19 and social injustice Approach to ambitious goal setting and addressing climate risk Advice and recommendations for sustainability leaders Ellen'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 mean, I think more and more, you know, it's always easy to find reasons. Why you can't do something, you know, the things that we are trying to solve in this space, they're unprecedented. It's incredibly hard work. So, you need to be bold and take risksand not be afraid of those risks. The way that I think we've been the most successful in being able to be bold and do things that I don't think we would have normally, otherwise continuing to reinvent, for example, our supply chain in Haiti and create one of the world's first, most scalable ocean bound, plastics, supply chains, you know, for 60 million bottles in one respect that number is really tiny, but in another respect, think it's more than almost any other company has been able to use so far. The way we've been able to do that is taking a big risk, but with some strong partners. Goes back to what we talked about earlier in terms of collaboration and not being able to do things alonefinding strong partners who have the energy and the spirit to take big risks with you. And sometimes you'll just be tremendously surprised at at the outcome. What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability? I think right now in this moment, you know, when we're looking at how the world is reacting to COVID and the pandemic and to the racial justice issues, this is our moment, right? This is the moment where the call to action is so strong and we need to step up to the responsibility and the opportunity to be drivers of this change. So I think anybody in a role similar to mine right now, you know, this role is more important than ever before. So I'm excited at the opportunity that I think, you know, society understands it's feeling the pressures of climate change. It's feeling the pressures of so many of these other global issues, you know, together. So I'm excited about this moment and doors opening and I think we all just need to be ready to bring innovation, to bring energy to bring progress for the next generation. What is one book you'd recommend sustainability leaders read? So this isn't a sustainability book, but it's something that has inspired me and I've been thinking about a lot. Educated by Tara Westover. As I think about the role of education and how powerful it is how, you know, science continues to shiftthe research that we know about, things like plastic and its effects on the human body things like some of the science around climate change and new data that we're continuing to get,he role of education I think, is more important than ever. We've been as part of our community pillar of our sustainable impact strategy, we've set a goal to enable better learning outcomes for a hundred million people by 2025 and that's because we understand as a company, how powerful and important education is. We see it as a human right, and access to technology is more important than ever. It can be a great equalizer and we want to be part of that solution. What are some of your favorite resources or tools that really help you in your work? I would go back to our partners are incredible resources and tools. There are a lot of things that we know at HP, you know, about our business, about our carbon footprint, but there are a lot of things we don't know andyou know, working with some of the incredible partners that we have, and we're constantly looking for new ones. I think those are some of my favorite resources to be able to pick up the phone or send an email, ask for help and be able to get it. And finally, Ellen, where can our listeners go to learn more about you and the work that you're leading at HP? Well, they can find our sustainability report as well as lots of other information about our programs at hp.com/sustainableimpact. 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.

Shannon Bergstrom is a LEED-accredited, TRUE waste advisor. She currently works at RTS, a tech-driven waste and recycling management company, as a sustainability operations manager. Shannon consults with clients across the hotel industry on sustainable waste practices. Shannon joins Sustainable Nation to discuss: Strategies for implementing zero waste management Engaging with suppliers to reduce waste Addressing organic waste streams TRUE Zero Waste Advisor certification program Advice and recommendations for sustainability leaders Shannon's Final Five Questions: What is one piece of advice you would give other sustainability professionals that might help them in their careers? Yeah, think it's really important as a sustainability professional to work for company where you really believe in the value and the vision of the company whatever that may be. For me, it was finding solutions for removing waste and kind of cleaning up the oceans from plastic waste. I think my company RTS as a company is really committed to finding solutions in order to reduce waste and clean up our planet and make our planet a better place. So that was really important for me. I would suggest anybody who's looking to get into the sustainability field, find something that you're really passionate about, whether that's waste or whether that's fashion or you know, buildings and energy find something that you love and get behind a company that's committed to, to being more sustainable in whatever field it is. What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability? I'm really excited right now that sustainability has become as big of a topic as it has. I think probably, you know, five, 10 years ago, it's not something that a lot of businesses were focusing on or really cared about or really even understood. I think now it's just being pushed as part of legislation and consumers are really demanding more sustainable products or sustainable practices and it shows and, you know, in what they're choosing to purchase or where they're choosing to shop. So I think businesses are really reacting to that. And I think that's incredible, because I think they have so much power in changing the game and making our world a better place, a more sustainable place. It's through actions of consumers, like, you know, you and me. What is one book you would recommend sustainability professionals read? One book? I read Omnivore's dilemma. When I was in college, I think it was really valuable to kind of understand how where your food is coming from. It kind of inspired me to become a vegetarian just learning about the meat industry and how it kind of impacts the environment in a negative way. And that kind of shaped some of my habits so I would definitely recommend that one. What are some of your favorite resources or tools that really help you in your work? Favorite resources and tools? One of the big ones I would say that is not so exciting, but the EPA WARM model is something that we use. I think a lot of professionals in the waste industry use this as kind of a tool for waste reporting. It's kind of like an industry standard as to the weights of different material streams to help kind of create diversion reports for some of our clients. So definitely check out the WARM model as one of them. I guess just one more is just look at a B Corp that you know of that are in your markets and try and shop with those B Corps and support them. Where can people go to learn more about you and the work being done at RTS? So definitely we started working on as a team, as a sustainability team, working on podcasts, webinars and blog posts covering a wide range of sustainability topics that you can find through our website, rts.com and go to our resources page. And there, you can find our on demand webinars and blog posts. Definitely take a look at what you're interested in and stay informed. 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. 

Mike Wakeland serves as the CEO of DialogueDirect, a leader of face to face fundraising acquisition in North America.  His focus is building strong partnerships with charity clients, while improving quality metrics within the industry. Mike and his team believe quality and quantity can be obtained with the right partnerships and coaching. Mike hopes to create an environment of sharing ideas and strategies to ensure sustainable growth.  His commitment to the B Corp community’s values has driven DialogueDirect to align with the movement as the first B Corp Certified face to face company in the United States. Mike joins Sustainable Nation to discuss: B Corp certification process and lessons learned Talent retention and recruitment after achieving B Corp status Importance of mission driven business Advice and recommendations for sustainability leaders Mike’s Final Five Questions Responses: What is one piece of advice you would give other mission-driven or B Corp business leaders? I would say the one piece of advice is your team will rally behind you because it's the right thing to do. It is a big lift. The lift is necessary to complete the assessment. It will take time, it will take resources, it will show some kinks in your armor. However, those are the exact reason why you'd want to do it. Those are the opportunities to realign the culture, realign the vision, and ultimately game plan for the business for the next generation. What are you most excited about right now in the world of business? Well, obviously the last four to six weeks have been interesting to say the least, but I'm still very optimistic. I'm positive. They are different times as of today. However, the situation we're all facing has actually provided a lot of us time to reflect personally, professionally, and ultimately give us an opportunity to plan for the future and reevaluate who we are and what our business priorities are. I'm really motivated to see the next generation bring the change in the world and to really reach out and take care of one another in a time of need, but more importantly focusing more on the impact we're making on this planet every single day, rather than just a paycheck we look forward to on Friday. I think there aren't many other companies to look at to really understand what that next generation of leaders looks like then Dialogue Direct. These are the people that we run into on the streets that are getting us to sign up for fundraising to support important nonprofits. These are passionate, dedicated people. I mean, it's not easy to walk up to a stranger and try to talk to them or, try to sell them on donating and these people are incredibly committed. A great group of people you guys have their at Dialogue Direct in a good, I think, glimpse into the generation that will be making some big changes in the coming years. Mike, what is one book you would recommend business leaders or B Corp leaders read? I'm actually in my office today looking at a whole stack of them. I've really been big into the Simon Sineck. I'm a big fan of his. I had the opportunity to see him speak a few times on a stage, but more importantly, I've had the opportunity to read his books, Start With Why. The one I'd recommend today would be The Infinite Game. It's something that I've shared with many people that I come into contact and back to my initial point, it's that we never really crossed the finish line. There's always more to do. The infinite game has really made the biggest impact on me that I would recommend to others. What are some of your favorite resources or tools that really help you in your work? Well, Zoom has obviously been very important recently. With that said the best resources we have are our people. As you mentioned, and thank you for your kind words, they're passionate, they're remarkable human beings. They're committed to our mission, which is changing the way America gives every single day. Our recent partnership we've developed is with an organization called Verb. It's a online development software learning platform. Our focus is professional personal growth from soft skills to leadership, to managerial skills. We understand that effective leaders know that it's not just about themselves, but it's about the future generation. So that's a resource that we've really committed ourselves to and put a lot of time and effort into. Where can people go to learn more about you and the work being done at Dialogue Direct? Yeah. Thanks Josh. Dialoguedirect.com is our website or you can go to bcorporation.net and look for our profile or coming to a city near you. Hopefully you have the opportunity to meet one of our passionate Dialoguers so they have the opportunity to help explain a critical mission or an organization they're passionate about and you have the opportunity to jump on board and join the movement. 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.

Joseph Brinkley, who holds a degree in Economics from Virginia Commonwealth University, was working for the Federal Reserve in Richmond, Virginia when he realized he would rather get his hands dirty than work in an office. He went back to school, the second time attending Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, where he earned his Bachelor of Science in Horticulture in 2003. Following graduation, Joseph worked with a number of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farms while complementing his education with workshops at Virginia’s Josephine Porter Institute, an internationally acclaimed educational facility that advances education and research in Biodynamics. “I was enjoying learning the details of farming land, including best practices for compost and soil management—and gaining insight to anything that contributed to the overall health of the farm,” Joseph remarks. Today, Joseph’s contributions and expertise, including his extensive knowledge of Biodynamic preparations, contribute to ongoing excellence at Bonterra. Joseph Brinkley join Sustainable Nation to discuss: Differences between organic biodynamic and regenerative farming  The path to organic farming and practices you can incorporate now Biochar trial at Bonterra  Advice and recommendations for sustainability leaders Joesph’s Final Five Questions Responses What is one piece of advice you would give other sustainability leaders that might help them in their careers? I really think crossing over industries we can learn a lot. Sometimes we get kind of siloed within our own industry and so whatever the industry you're within, I think it's really important to kind of take a step back and look into other industries to see how are they solving their problems that that could certainly be applied within our own. What would you say you're most excited about right now in the world of sustainability or sustainable agriculture? I really think it's exciting all of these initiatives that you see from all over. I'm part of this group that we're going to educate and make lawmakers aware of the climate and farming and such. There's some big players there, General Mills. McDonald's is there, right? You see Levi's, I mean, you see some really huge players in the food and textile world really coming behind regenerative agriculture, and then just seeing consumers, so pumped up and excited and just demanding it. I think that's really showing some positive progress. Joseph, how about one book that you would recommend other sustainability leaders read? I'm still on Man or Matter. I think I've got to go back to the same one. If you haven't read it, I'm going to say it again, Man or Matter. That's the one. Excellent. And who writes that? It's Ernst Lehrs. What are some of your favorite resources or tools that really help you in your work? I really think talking to others, seeing what others do and then kind of looking into the other worlds of agriculture. Sometimes we get kind of so stuck, you know, we're in this great nation and we are, but we can look to other nations, to other continents to see there's a lot to be learned from more pastoral ways. And then just on different approaches to farming, to animal husbandry, to how we treat the land for the long-term success. And finally, Joseph, where can our listeners go to learn more about you and your work at Bonterra? I would say go to the website: bonterra.com 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.

Rob Threlkeld is Global Manager of Sustainable Energy, Supply and Reliability for General Motors, leading the company’s energy procurement efforts including the commitment to meet the electricity needs of its global operations with 100% renewable energy by 2050. Threlkeld is responsible for leading the team that supports GM energy procurement and regulatory efforts including negotiating power purchase agreements, natural gas, green tariffs and engineering onsite renewable solutions for GM facilities across the globe, including opportunities associated with battery storage, behind-the-meter applications and EV integration. Threlkeld is a board member of the Renewable Energy Buyer’s Association. He is also involved in the American Wind Energy Association and Solar Energy Industries Association, two energy groups advancing the use of these renewable forms of energy. He serves as industry advisor to the School of Environmental and Ecological Engineering at Purdue University. He is a member of the Association of Energy Engineers, the Engineering Society of Detroit and the Solar Power International Education Council. Energy Manager Today has recognized Threlkeld as one of 50 top energy managers for driving GM and the energy management industry forward. Threlkeld began his career at GM in 2000 as a manager of powerhouse and wastewater treatment plant operations. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil engineering from Purdue University. He is a registered Certified Hazardous Material Manager, Certified Energy Manager and Business Energy Professional. Rob joins Sustainable Nation to discuss: Setting 100% renewable energy goal and developing a four prong strategy - energy efficiency, sourcing renewables, zero emissions, and policy and scale - to work towards it Partnering with utilities to advance renewable energy procurement and green tariffs Importance of joining and engaging with trade organizations - SEIA, REBA, AWEA Advice and recommendations for sustainability leaders Rob's Final Five Questions Responses: 1. What is one piece of advice you would give other sustainability professionals that might help them in their careers? My one advice is, I call it, you know, the three P's. You have the people, planet, profit. Profit is the passion, perseverance and pragmatic view that you need to have. It's really that passion to drive the industry is a huge proponent or huge reason why I do what I do today. You got to have passion in order to really work both internally as well as externally communicate the efforts that we're doing as a company and as an individual. 2. What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability, renewable energy, whatever it might be? It's a continued scale. I mean, you've seen the transformation of the industry over the past 10 years, the price declines, but it's also the ability to integrate battery storage into addressing the intermittency of the renewables. So that really is what's going to allow the scaling of renewables beyond to what it is today. 3. What is one book you would recommend sustainability leaders read? Ooh, that's a good one. I have read so many books. Let me come back to that one. 4. What are some of your favorite resources or tools that really help you in your work? Could be anything from websites, associations, technology, or software programs. Yeah, it really comes down to, I think REBA and I use a lot of news organizations, just keeping up with the various thread of what's happening on a day to day basis. You know, what's the next transformational change that's occurred? One of the things I read today was a French utility is actually looking at battery storage to forego having to do transmission upgrades, which can be both timely and take amounts of time to do as well as costly and thinking about addressing transmission congestion that renewables bring to the grid. So I think it's that readily accessible information that you can get from the internet itself and then thinking about how does that holistically impact what we're trying to do as a company and in the industry from a scaling standpoint. 5. Where can our listeners go to learn more about you and the work that you're leading at GM? You can go to GMsustainability.com to be able to look at all GM's sustainability efforts. There's some good components that you can see what GM is doing and the efforts of renewables on there as well. You can also go to my LinkedIn site. You can kind of get some of the latest information on the things that I'm looking at and working and doing as well. As I said, you can go to the internet and there's some good information of tidbits that we've put out there as a company. We've got GM's blueprint for renewables that you can find that kind of summarizes our holistic strategy towards our renewable procurement efforts and our scaling efforts. That would be a great places to go to find some information about myself as well as GM. 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.

HEALING THE EARTH1st June 2020Producer: Andy Britt Interviews: Vivien LangfordGuests:Greta ThunbergDr Tjanara Goreng GorengRev Glenn LoughreyBruce ShillingsworthVanessa  PetrieRhys Anderson  "Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced"  James Baldwin Greta Thunberg spoke to the EU parliament.. The speaker said "You meet politicians who take a photo with you and then do nothing." But make no mistake, "you are not at the white house with Donald Trump, you are not in Australia where the prime minister is  " climatosceptique" You are in Europe! We are making the Green deal ."But Greta tells  this huge assembly  how we are deluding ourselves that we are taking climate action. How we are all pretending,pretending,pretending."We notice the house is on fire yet we go inside, go to bed and do not even call the fire brigade. Our targets for 2050 are wrong. We should have targets for 2020 and each year after that until the carbon emissions are right down."It's a humbling moment and humiliating for us to hear that everybody knows what an obstacle Australia is.There was a standing ovation. For healing we then talk to Dr Tjanara Goreng Goreng. She is a clinical psychologist and Songwoman.She has insights into endurance because Aboriginal people have already been through a holocaust. She wants transformational leaders brave enough to take bold climate action. She says " If you move beyond  being ego centric, you can reach a higher level of thinking. I discovered a number of things that were unique to Aboriginal culture so that a person can navigate to that higher level." Bruce Shillingsworth spoke at the Transitions Film Festival about saving the water in the Darling Barker river. Carbon emissions are behind the drought but unfair draining of the water brings preventable suffering to wildlife and communities. He makes an impassioned appeal for us to defend the river, to supply water tanks and filters to communities that feel abandoned. He invites us to the second great Corroboree tour in September October to go to Bourke and Menindee and listen to the people. The film is " When the river runs dry" by Rory Mc Leod Rev Glenn Loughrey spoke on a panel  about " Sustainable Nation". As a Wiradgeri man, minister and artist he talks about reading the land. It's had enough as the drought, fires and fish kills attest. We can notice these signs but how can we demand less and start the healing?. Vanessa Petrie CEO from BZE and Rhys Anderson water business leader  from Arup talk about working in communities  to  build water and energy solutions that will endure and not cause future damage.  

Yalmaz Siddiqui is the Vice President of Corporate Sustainability at MGM Resorts International.  He started this role in May 2016 and is responsible for leading a range of environmental sustainability initiatives for the company, including green conventions, food waste reduction, waste management, sustainable sourcing and employee engagement. He is also developing an advanced sustainability strategy framework for MGM Resorts, including metrics and goals, project accountability and roles, and reporting strategy. Yalmaz has a Masters in Environment & Development from the University of Cambridge in England, and a Bachelor of Commerce from McGill University in Canada. Yalmaz joins Sustainable Nation to discuss: Size and scale of impact of MGM Resorts Sustainable purchasing Food waste reduction and overall waste management strategies Advice and recommendations for sustainability leaders Yalmaz's Final Five Questions: 1. What is one piece of advice you'd give other sustainability professionals that might help them in their careers? Well, I'd say first, don't get stuck in false dichotomies and don't let others force you into false dichotomies around sustainability is always more expensive or sustainability means less luxury. Find proof that that is not true because it's not always true. In fact, it's often not true and persuade others using the help in persuading them by showing them politely that their predisposition might might be wrong. I'd also say pilot and scale new initiatives. Don't try and go comprehensive and too ambitious, too quick. 2. What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability? I think this function has really matured and corporate America and corporate world in general is really interested in the value this functional area brings to the brands and to our companies more broadly. I think the excitement comes from maybe the emergence of this function as a very real and important thing that matters to major customers matters to employees and increasingly matters to investors. So it's the sort of arrival is a real thing in the corporate world that makes me excited. 3. What is one book you would recommend sustainability professionals read? So I read a lot and there's a lot of books that I could recommend, but I'm going recommend two, if that's okay. Number one is Influence by Robert Cialdini. It's not about environmental sustainability, it's not about corporate purpose, it's about how you influence others. It's got a whole series of lessons that have been extremely useful in my career because ultimately people in these roles or we in our roles have influenced, but we have no authority and so how do you learn from the best thinkers on influence? That's number one. The second would be Resonate by Nancy Duarte. Nancy Duarte's got a consultancy. It was the world's first and still foremost PowerPoint consultancy. She advises on how to craft great PowerPoints. Her message is that PowerPoint is the business world's communications tool, but no one knows how to use it or very few people know how to use it. If you read Resonate, you'll learn how to use it much more effectively than dense bullet points that no one wants to read or that you read when presenting. So read, Resonate and you will resonate more. 4. What are some of your favorite resources or tools that really help you in your work? I think HBR, Harvard Business Review, reading that magazine, reading Fast Company. I'm a member of GreenBiz Executive Network, being part of that and Sustainable Brands. Then thematically on food, I really like to focus on ReFED. In terms of materials, love Ellen MacArthur Foundation's work. Associations, I'll certainly advocate SPLC (Sustainable Purchasing Leadership Council) as one. SPLC, Sustainable Brands, and GreenBiz those are my go to’s. 5. Where can our listeners go to learn more about you and the sustainability work at MGM? Well, I'm the only Yalmaz Siddiqui on LinkedIn. I believe it makes it easy. And then MGMresorts.com/CSR. You can read all about our programs around focusing on what matters, embracing humanity and protecting the planet. 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.

HEALING THE CLIMATE CHANGED MIND9th March 2020Producer: Andy Britt  Interviews: Vivien LangfordGuests: Greta Thunberg,  Dr Tjanara Goreng Goreng , Bruce Shillingsworth, Rev Glenn Loughry, Vanessa Petrie  and Rhys Anderson  "Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced" James Baldwin Greta Thunberg spoke to the EU parliament just 4 days ago. The speaker said "You meet politicians who take a photo with you and then do nothing." But make no mistake, "you are not at the white house with Donald Trump, you are not in Australia where the prime minister is  " climatosceptique" You are in Europe! We are making the Green deal ."But Greta tells to this huge assembly  how we are deluding ourselves that we are taking climate action. How we are all pretending,pretending,pretending. We notice the house is on fire yet we go inside, go to bed and do not even call the fire brigade. Our targets for 2050 are wrong. We should have targets for 2020 and each year after that until the carbon emissions are right down.It's a humbling moment and humiliating for us that everybody knows what an obstacle Australia is.There was a standing ovation. For healing we then talk to Dr Tjanara Goreng Goreng. She is a clinical psychologist and Songwoman.She has insights into endurance because Aboriginal people have already been through a holocaust. She wants transformational leaders brave enough to take bold climate action. She says " If you move beyond  being ego centric, you can reach a higher level of thinking. I discovered a number of things that were unique to Aboriginal culture so that a person can navigate to that higher level."Bruce Shillingsworth spoke at the Transitions Film Festival about saving the water in the Darling Barker river. Carbon emissions are behind the drought but unfair draining of the water brings preventable suffering to wildlife and communities. He makes an impassioned appeal for us to defend the river, to supply water tanks and filters to communities that feel abandoned. He invites us to the second great Corroboree tour in September October to go to Bourke and Menindee and listen to the people. The film is " When the river runs dry" by Rory Mc LeodRev Glenn Loughrey spoke on a panel  about " Sustainable Nation". As a Wiradgeri man, minister and artist he talks about reading the land. It's had enough as the drought, fires and fish kills attest. We can notice these signs but how can we demand less and start the healing?. Vanessa Petrie CEO from BZE and Rhys Anderson water business leader  from Arup talk about working in communities  to  build water and energy solutions that will endure and not cause future damage.  

In the Season 2 opener The Nagid is still preaching the same thing. Build a sustainable nation that can survive the coming transition, and stay vigilant of world political powers --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/nagid-melchizedek/message

In the five years since USGBC has launched Education USGBC, they have been committed to continuous improvement. Along the way, USGBC has expanded to over 700 courses, diversified the topics and types of education content available, launched curated playlists and created knowledge-based badges to recognize deeper expertise. USGBC has also begun hosting the annual Green Schools Conference and Expo, taking place April 8-10 2019 in St. Paul, Minnesota. The Green Schools Conference & Expo is the only national event to bring together all the players involved in making green schools a reality: people who lead, operate, build and teach in U.S. schools.Two days of programming offer inspiring keynote speakers, informative workshops and breakout sessions and the chance to network with colleagues from across the country. In 2019, GSCE will be hosted in partnership with IMPACT, a regional sustainability conference. In this episode of Sustainable Nation we chat with three leaders from the education programs at USGBC to speak about their commitment to education, educating and preparing the next generation of sustainability leaders and the upcoming Green Schools Conference and Expo. Our guests include: Anisa Hemming - Director of the Center for Green Schools Jenny Wiedower - K-12 Education Manager Jaime Van Mourik - Vice President of Education Solutions Anisa Heming You have an upcoming conference, the Green Schools Conference and Expo coming up April 8th in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Tell us a little bit about that conference and what can attendees expect to learn? Yeah, we love this conference. This is my favorite time of the year. It is a really nice size and a great group of people who really care about better schools for our kids. We're really excited about the programming this year too. USGBC has worked on the conference since it was first launched back in 2010. We took it over fully a few years ago and work alongside the people who founded the conference, which is the Green Schools National Network. USGBC has a lot of expertise in running high quality events and making sure that the right voices are at the table and we have great content for people to hear from. So, we run the conference and make sure that it runs smoothly, has great keynotes and great content for people to enjoy. Can you tell us what you're learning or any lessons learned from the work that you're doing with these sustainability change makers in the schools? We have learned a lot. The US Green Building Council was founded 25 years ago to work mostly with companies, and then in 2007 we released LEED for schools, which was one of our first experiences doing work with elementary and secondary schools. By the time 2010 rolls around we decided to launch the Center for Green Schools because we realized very quickly, in working with LEED for schools, that the K through 12 schools market just makes decisions very differently and the incentives for change are very different. Everything about working with schools is different. So, we have learned quite lot over the last number of years. One of the things we've found in the last eight years or so is that there is a core of staff at school systems who are being assigned work related to sustainability. So, in some cases these are sustainability directors or sustainability coordinators, sometimes they are energy managers, sometimes they're called resource conservation officers. There is this really cool group of change makers that work on a system level at school districts and we have found a lot of success in working with that group, making sure they have the professional development they need to do that work well and best practice sharing among that group. So, it's a very powerful group of people to make change at the system level within their schools. We're learning a lot about the different ways that change happens at schools and school systems. It can really come from anywhere, which is just constantly surprising. All it takes to make a change at a school or school district is to have a few very passionate voices who have the right information and the right research behind the work and are effective at making the case for sustainability action. That can be students, it can be teachers or it can be parents. So, when someone asks me about the path for change at a school or school system, there's really not one path. There's so many and our job at the Center for Green Schools is to equip those passionate people with what they need, because we know that anyone with the right information and the right passion can actually tip the needle at some of our schools and school systems. Are you seeing signs of progress overall in the green school movement? Yeah, absolutely. We've seen a lot of progress in the willingness for school districts to push sustainability further. A lot of your listeners will probably have heard of a school in their area that's thinking about net zero energy. There are dozens of those schools around the country and that is just something that would not have been a conversation even five years ago with most schools. We're actually seeing many schools take chance seriously and the most innovative schools are actually thinking about how to take this even further. They are looking at at zero carbon and water resources - using only what we're able to capture. There's actually many more schools now that are looking at those goals that we would have seen as maybe stretch goals a couple of years ago, and looking at them much more seriously now. So, that is very exciting for me to see. I'm also seeing a lot of progress because of that group I mentioned earlier of sustainability directors at school systems. We can actually measure the growth of sustainability over the last number of years because we do a lot of work to try to find those people to connect them to this professional development network of sustainability directors at school systems. That network has grown by 20% each of the last two years at least. So, we can also see that more districts and systems are hiring someone or assigning someone to work on sustainability issues. That can be in the facilities department or often they bridge the facilities department and the academic departments at a district. Jenny Wiedower We're seeing this huge movement around sustainability in higher education and all these universities that are creating programs and embedding sustainability into their curriculum. So, it's great that we're really working to expose these students to sustainability before that in high school and middle school and even elementary school. Yeah, a really exciting part of my work is thinking about how we are both impacting the experience of school occupants, learners, teachers, professionals today and how we're inspiring and informing students about the possibilities that await them as they enter into their next phase after they graduate from high school. Every green activity within a school is an opportunity for students to think about how they might get excited and resolve to incorporate sustainability in their life, both at school and beyond. Any trends you're seeing about students around sustainability careers? Are students interested in high school or middle school? Is there engagement around students pursuing those sustainability careers? Yeah, absolutely. We like to talk about the concept of sustainability natives. We think that kids understand concepts that we unfortunately sometimes teach out of them. So, not being wasteful and appreciating time outdoors. Even at the youngest age, when thinking about careers is not really something that elementary students are or should be thinking about, there's a real opportunity to help teachers keep that core sustainability thinking present in students' minds. That could be taking advantage of outdoor classrooms, talking about concepts of scarcity and abundance, thinking about how to be more mindful and present and really weaving sustainability as a topic across all subjects. We tend to think of sustainability as being aligned with science, especially as we get into the upper grades, but for our youngest learners sustainability can show up in art projects or writing assignments. It's a great way to take, for instance, the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and try to apply those in learning across all subjects. As these younger learners move into middle school, that's where career topics begin to show up. Many of the STEM skills, science, technology, engineering and math, are introduced around middle school and that's also where we see science and thinking about what scientists and engineers do. The practices that they incorporate into their jobs show up in the next generation science standards. So, as they're learning the skills and practices of professionals, it's a great opportunity to make them aware of the green aspects of so many of the professions out there. It's also a really wonderful time to show them careers and positions that are held by people who look like them or sound like them or come from places that are familiar to students. I recently saw a new book that was published about women in STEM careers. That middle school time frame also is when many students have the opportunity to opt into career technical education programs. When they're in sixth or seventh grade, they might be choosing which high school they will move into in ninth grade and making sure that guidance counselors are equipped with information about green jobs and how sustainability can be incorporated across a number of professions is really important and something that we at the US Green Building Council are focusing on. And then of course, as we move into the high school, students have a lot of opportunities to explore green jobs. Beginning in middle school and all up through high school is a really great time for teachers and schools to be connecting with local professionals. Bringing them into the classroom, having them work with students on projects, or maybe just coming in for a career day are all great ideas. Jaime Van Mourik In general, why is education so important for the overall movement of sustainability and green building? So one of the most fundamental drivers of transformation, both on a personal level and on a market scale, is education. No matter who you are or how you learn best, longterm success is built on continuous learning and growth. So, we know that it's critical to build the pipeline of future green building professionals and citizens of this world who understand that the built environment affects their daily lives. An organization like USGBC needs to advance the knowledge of our current professionals in the marketplace so that we start to see changes happen in the way that we design, construct and operate buildings and infrastructure. So again, education, I really see as that catalyst for change and it's such a critical component to the work we're doing to drive this green building movement. How do you work to getting your resources into the curriculum in middle schools, high schools or even higher education. What does that process look like of incorporating your educational resources into curriculum? So our vision at USGBC is to support all stages of a learner's life. It really begins with very young children, all the way through the college preparatory years and postsecondary education, and then of course, being able to provide advanced education for professionals. We work in a variety of modes. We first need to understand the audience that we're trying to serve and what the goals of the audience is, and then of course the best style of learning, whether that be in-person or through online platforms. So, each day as we're working across all these different ages and education levels to provide the different solutions, what we want to be able to do is connect the knowledge on sustainable topics to real action, because it's through this action that the change is in fact going to take place. For our youngest learners, the K12 audience, our goal is to build a foundation of knowledge and skills and behaviors that are going to set up these young people for decades of success, contributing to building sustainable communities, developing relevant careers and having fulfilling futures. To be able to support learners in this stage, we offer an online learning platform called Learning Lab and we have a green classroom professional certificate, which helps to train K12 teachers on the concepts of green building and sustainability. These all together help these educators bring sustainability into the classroom in ways that have a real lasting impact on the students. When we shift to our postsecondary learners, students in college, our goal is to help prepare them for 21st century careers. So, at this stage of learning, we offer programs and products that help them better define their personal vision and their aspirations and show them a realistic path toward the achievement of their goals. What we've done is really tried to help enhance the curriculum that's being developed and to push innovation in educational practice. We offer high quality education content, curricular toolkits for instructors, professional credential exam resources and an experiential learning course. All that help equip faculty who are looking to bring sustainability concepts to life in the classroom. So again, it's really trying to push on innovation in academia and different methods of teaching and learning and being able to take advantage of the built environment as that laboratory. What are some of the key skills that USGBC finds important for the 21st century marketplace? What's USGBC's role in developing these skills? We continue to hear from industry that young professionals and recent graduates lack the core professional skills, or as I like to say, professional competencies. These are highly needed in the workplace. This is across the board, regardless of whether the organization has a focus on sustainability. When we look at the 21st century workplace, the competencies that employers are looking for are skills and communication, the ability to work with a multidisciplinary team, the ability to manage projects and to understand decision making processes, to be able to apply your knowledge and demonstrate your competency and of course problem solve and critically think about solutions needed to drive change in the marketplace. All of that is what needs to happen within creating a sustainable built environment. It's interesting, there's been a lot of articles about this idea of entering the fourth industrial revolution, meaning now we're finding technology taking over the work and really profound ways that we never imagined. The reality is that the majority of jobs that children and young people hold over the course of their lifetime don't currently exist. So, when we look at how to educate and train the next generation, we need to cultivate the skills and abilities that are human and what artificial intelligence won't be able to replace. Much of this is housed in our right brain. So what does that mean for education? Well, we need to be introducing more innovative teaching practices such as experiential learning and project based work that allows students to have hands on experience and thus cultivate those professional competencies I mentioned. The built environment is such a rich laboratory for learning and when you consider the challenges we face on this planet, this becomes a really ripe playground for education. Quite frankly, we need to start thinking and working in a completely different manner to solve the problems of climate change and to create communities that are both healthy and resilient for all residents of this planet. Learn more about the Green Schools Conference and Expo: http://greenschoolsconference.org/  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.  

Expected to draw approximately 2,000 participants, the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education’s (AASHE’s) annual conference is the largest stage in North America to exchange effective models, policies, research, collaborations and transformative actions that advance sustainability in higher education and surrounding communities. The 2018 AASHE Conference will be help October 2-5 in Pittsburgh, PA. In this episode we learn about AASHE and the upcoming AASHE conference by interviewing two members of the AASHE leadership team: Julian Dautremont-Smith, Director of Programs Meghan Fay Zahniser, Executive Director Julian Dautremont-Smith Complete Interview: Tell us a little bit about your personal life and what led you to be doing the work that you're doing today? I got into this work really in high school. I got really interested in sustainability. I picked Lewis and Clark College in Portland based on Portland's reputation as a real sustainability leader. When I arrived at college, I got involved in a number of efforts to improve sustainability on the campus and did a greenhouse gas inventory with an economics professor. And this was before it was very common. We published a guide that others have used now on how to do a campus level greenhouse gas inventory. It's obviously outdated, but that was really my start in looking at campus greenhouse gas emissions. I also led this campaign to buy offsets to make the college meet the Kyoto protocols targets as a campus. Anyway, that was my first foray into the campus sustainability world. As a result of that experience, I was at the founding meeting for what became AASHE, and so I've been involved, in some way, from the beginning. After I graduated from college, I went abroad for a year and when I came back, I was lucky enough to get a position with AASHE. I was the second employee and worked with AASHE for five years before leaving for Grad school at University of Michigan. Then I worked for a couple of years as a chief sustainability officer at Alfred State College in upstate New York. I worked for a year at a consulting firm that does sustainability in higher ed before coming back to AASHE in my current role as director of programs. Anybody who's working in sustainability in higher education is definitely familiar with the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE). But give us just a real quick overview of AASHE and what kind of work you're leading. AASHE grew out of another organization called Second Nature, which is another organization that does a lot of work in this space. They got a grant to create a western regional network around 2002. They brought together a meeting of people who are active in campus sustainability. I went to that meeting as a student and formed this regional network. Over time we realized there was a need for an international association or professional association for sustainability practitioners in higher ed, which is different than what Second Nature was doing. So we expanded our scope and became independent and held the first conference in 2006. Our main role is really that professional association type of work. We do all kinds of things to help members learn from one another, and that really is our core work, is connecting members to one another so they don't have to reinvent the wheel on their own campuses. So, the conference is a key part of that. We do regular webinars and workshops that provide other opportunities for members to connect. We have an online resource center. We do an awards program to recognize particularly strong work. And then our flagship program is something called STARS, the Sustainability Tracking Assessment and Rating System. It's a tool that colleges and universities use to measure their sustainability performance and report on it. So all the reports are public and you can see how an institution scored the way they did. You provide a whole bunch of information and that translates to a score that then translates to a rating. So, you can be a STARS Gold or STARS Silver campus, similar to the LEED standard in that respect. A lot of great programs being led at AASHE. The STARS program has been very successful. I remember taking Hawaii Pacific University through that assessment when I was there back in 2012. Let's talk about the AASHE conference today. When's the conference coming up and where's it going to be and what can attendees expect? Conference is going to be October 2-5 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania this year. The goal when we put this conference on is to provide thought provoking and empowering sessions on the full range of topics in campus sustainability. Everything from curriculum to engagement to waste reduction to diversity. We really try to have a comprehensive view of sustainability, and we want attendees to walk away both with new ideas as well as knowledge of how to implement those ideas. The conference is structured around that. So, you'll have an opportunity to hear from several hundred campuses on the work that they're doing and how you might be able to do something similar at your campus. And would you say it is geared more towards students, faculty, staff, or kind of a mix of all? It's really a mix. Part of our role is trying to make sure those different stakeholder groups are working together and there has been, unfortunately, kind of a divide in many ways between the academic community and the operational community. But we see real benefits to greater collaboration. And so at our conference, we really do try to bring both groups together. Students obviously are key drivers of sustainability in many campuses, so having them come in and empowering them is also a key goal of the event. That said, the core group of people who come to the conferences, are probably the paid sustainability staff - someone who's hired by an institution of higher ed to work on sustainability. But we do have a good number of faculty and students as well, a smattering of administrators in other roles in higher ed and then a good chunk of business representatives and nonprofit representatives that work with higher ed institutions on sustainability in some way. Do you know about how many people you can expect this year or how many people came last year? We typically attract a somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,800 folks. So, somewhere in that neighborhood. We have been as high as 2,400. It varies from year to year depending on the location and a variety of factors, but somewhere in that ballpark. So it's a pretty big event. The very first AASHE conference I went to was in Pittsburgh. So excited to have it be held back in Pittsburgh again. A great city and a lot of good sustainability work happening throughout that city as well. Are there tours or anything associated with the conference? There are several. We actually picked Pittsburgh because the convention center itself has a really strong sustainability program, which is something we look for. But in terms of the tours, some of them are focused on the campuses that we work with. So there's a tour of a Carnegie Mellon, Chatham university has a tour of Eden Hall campus, where the whole campus is dedicated to sustainable living. So that's one I think is going to be particularly interesting. University of Pittsburgh's got a tour as well. There is also a tour of the Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Garden. They have a LEED platinum building there and it's just a great site to go see. Julian, so the students, faculty and staff, if you were talking to them right now, what would you say the benefits are of the conference? Benefits are actually pretty similar for all three groups. What we hear a lot is just knowing that you're not alone. Many folks who come to our conference are sustainability change agents, but they're the kind of isolated on their campus in many cases and there's not that many of them. So, coming to our conference is an opportunity to see there are people like you on campuses across the country, and then you get to share with them what you're working on, what your challenges are, discuss common challenges and hopefully work out a solution together. Besides meeting other folks in the field, the other main benefit is really learning from them. We really put together a program that's designed to help build those connections and bring people into connection with leading work that's happening on campuses across the country, so they can do something similar on their campus. There really is an intent not just to like go and listen, but to get some guidance on how to do something on your own campus. One of the biggest benefits I saw was just the networking and the people that you meet. If you're a student interested in sustainability and interested in a career in sustainability, this is just an amazing conference to make contacts. I mentioned Pittsburgh was the first AASHE conference I went to, I think it was 2011, and still to this day I have friends that I met at that conference and actually have a call with one of them later today to talk about some composting projects. From all the conferences that I've gone to in corporate sustainability, higher education, government sustainability, I think AASHE has been the most valuable to me as far as making contacts and making connections that I still keep in touch with. So a huge benefit and a lot of great things to look forward to in October. We're going to end on our final five questions. What is one piece of advice you would give other sustainability professionals that might help them in their careers? In the past couple of years, I started gardening. More than anything I've done, gardening helped to make systems thinking applicable for me. So, in addition to the social, environmental and health benefits of growing your own food, I think there's a really amazing learning opportunity. Just really trying to think through the natural systems that operate in your own backyard and how to work with them to grow food. It's been a tremendous learning opportunity for me that goes well beyond what I learned in several classes on systems thinking and related topics in my graduate program. So I've become a big promoter of gardening as a teaching tool. That's a great point. It reminds me of a previous conversation I've had. One of our past episodes of Sustainable Nation was with Matt Lynch who is the Sustainability Coordinator for the University of Hawaii system. He's a permaculture expert and he made some really great points in that interview about using permaculture skills and systems thinking that he learned from permaculture, and how that helps in his job leading sustainability in a large organization. So, definitely would recommend people check out that interview. What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability? I went to a conference earlier this year, put on by the New Economy Coalition, in which AASHE is a member. A lot of work happening in the US around the solidarity economy and trying to redesign economic systems to be more democratic, more just and more sustainable. It blew me away. I was intellectually aware of some of that work, but seeing all of it come together in this conference was really exciting. What I like about it is that it's really about trying to build alternative institutions and have models for what it is we're trying to move towards. I think that is really powerful. Trying to think through, "What would a more democratic, just and sustainable economy look like? How would it work?" I really recommend folks check out New Economy Coalition. They're doing really exciting work. What is one book you'd recommend sustainability leaders read? Don't read the book, read the article instead. Reading widely is really important and trying to understand different perspectives. We all face information overload and I find that in most cases, reading the article or report is going to be more effective than reading the full book because you can read many articles in the same time as it takes to read a single book. Oftentimes, especially with nonfiction, if I read a dozen articles instead of the book, I come away with a more nuanced understanding as a result. So, I really recommend trying to get a diversity of input and perhaps focusing less on the full book. What are some of your favorite resources or tools that really help you in your work? Recently I've been really impressed with a magazine called Current Affairs. Content is always sharp, funny and insightful. It's really helped clarify my thinking on a whole range of big picture issues. So, really strongly recommend folks check out Current Affairs. The other person that comes to mind that I really enjoy reading is David Roberts at Vox website. He's consistently illuminating on energy and climate issues, and I'm always eager to get his take on the latest policy proposals or report that comes out on energy and climate issues. And finally where can our listeners go to learn more about you, your work and the upcoming AASHE Conference and Expo? Everything you could want to know about AASHE is all accessible via our website. It's aashe.org. If you want to follow me, I am on Twitter and my handle is just @JuliandSmith. Meghan Fay Zahniser Complete Interview: Give us a little background on your professional life and what led you to be doing the work that you're doing today? I've been fortunate to have been doing sustainability work my entire career, for 20 years at this point. I started doing sustainability work as an undergraduate student at the University of Buffalo. I went to a meeting about an internship to do a waste audit of the campus and essentially that's what turned my whole life and guided my whole career. So, I spent three years at the university. My title then was environmental educator, but I was a part of a team that created what's now their sustainability office. That was back in the late 1990's. I then had the good fortune of joining the US Green Building Council before anyone knew what the US Green Building Council was. That was back in 2002. I was the 10th employee at the organization, which now has hundreds of staff. So, I rode this early wave of green building and supported the growth of the local chapter movement. I was there for almost six years and then moved to Philly where I had a short stint in the for-profit world doing some LEED consulting and education before I really came running back to the world of nonprofit. I've been with AASHE for almost 10 years now. I've held a few different positions within the organization, including STARS program manager and then overseeing all of our programs as director of programs. I have now been the executive director for almost four years. With our podcast, we interview sustainability leaders in business, government and higher education. Pretty much everybody in higher education is always talking about AASHE. Myself, having worked in sustainability in higher education, I also quickly realized the importance of being engaged with AASHE and the resources you provide. So, before we dive into that and dive into the conference, I'd love to hear your perspective on the importance of the sustainability movement in higher education. It's a really big task that we have in higher education lead the sustainability transformation. That's where AASHE had this vision that if we could have every graduating student from a college or university equipped with the knowledge, the tools and the skills that they need to be able to address sustainability challenges, regardless of their career path, then perhaps we'll be able to create this sustainable world that we're all really hoping for. So, we see higher education as such an opportunity for us to really create that transformation, and not just within the operational components of campuses, but really the opportunity is within crafting and molding the minds of these students that are going to learn and having a sustainability understanding, awareness of the depletion of natural resources as well as the integration of economic and social factors including equity and social justice. We're really hoping that if students are equipped and have that understanding and knowledge base upon graduating from their college or university, that we will be able to see a much faster revolution in terms of this sustainable world that we want to live in. With many of the people I interview, we talk a lot about the UN Sustainable Development Goals and how those are being incorporated in government work, in corporations and how they are aligning their strategy with the SDG's. How is this happening in higher education? How are universities and colleges using or adopting those UN Sustainable Development Goals or helping society in general move towards those goals? From our perspective at AASHE, we felt it was really our responsibility to highlight the SDG's so that there are a lot more support of the sustainable development goals within higher education. I've had the good fortune of being able to travel outside of the United States a few different times in the past year, and the frame that is used in talking about sustainability has been the SDG's and that hasn't necessarily been my experience within the United States since the SDG's launched just a few years ago. But we're really hoping to change that and certainly I think there are a number of different campuses that see the SDG's as such a phenomenal teaching tool for students to help give them a broad and deep understanding of what is sustainability. And certainly that was what brought us to wanting to highlight the SDG's as our theme for our conference this year so that we can bring to light a bit more about these global goals and how countries, and various sectors even outside of higher education, are looking to champion the SDG's. I think higher education has an opportunity not only for advancing SDG's, but higher education really has a role in every single one of the 17 goals. Because we're looking to create the leaders of tomorrow in higher education, there's an opportunity for higher ed specifically to play a role in advancing every single one of the SDG's. So, hopefully our conference and bringing the SDG's to a priority within the AASHE community, I'm hoping to see a lot more enthusiasm and support for an advancement of the SDG's. Speaking of the conference October 2nd through the 5th in Pittsburgh, that city is doing a lot of great work around sustainability so it's great you have some tours lined up. But I want to hear what you are looking forward to. What are you excited about for this upcoming conference? It's a great question and I would say, across all of the staff, the AASHE conference is really like the shot in the arm that we need to continue to feel really motivated and advance all of the efforts that we're doing to try and support our members. I think at our heart, what we try and do as an organization is we really are a convener. We're bringing folks together, and just by providing this space for these few thousand people to come and talk about sustainability in higher education, the ripple effects just by bringing folks together is absolutely tremendous. So frankly, what I get most excited about is that energy that I get and I know that the rest of the staff get as well from our members coming together to talk through challenges, to talk through opportunities to talk through lessons learned and shared experiences. Especially in this day and age when there's no shortage of huge challenges that our world is facing, having like-minded folks coming together to support one another, commiserate with each other is a really, really helpful and nurturing environment. Every year here's at least somebody that comes up to me that I usually don't know, who just says, "Thank you for doing what you do at AASHE.". Because again, we just provide this great opportunity for our members and those change agents at universities and colleges throughout the world. These individuals come to the AASHE conference, they get a shot of inspiration and motivation so they can go back to their campuses and keep doing the good work that they're doing. So, I'm most excited just to be able to connect with our members. For those who have never been to an AASHE conference, could you just give a high level overview of what the conference looks like? Is it a lot of keynotes or a lot of breakout sessions? What does a typical AASHE conference look like? You can expect a couple of different keynotes for sure. Lots of exhibit hall time - meeting with our vendors, the exhibitors, the businesses and nonprofit organizations that come to talk within the trade show. Certainly, there are a lot of concurrent sessions. I'd say on the positive side there are so many different tracks that we are offering and there's something for everybody. The downside being that we often hear the complaint that there's too many good things happening at once. So, that's a tricky challenge there, but you can expect a lot of opportunities for concurrent sessions, educational opportunities, tours, pre-conference, post-conference workshops, a couple of different keynotes and certainly a lot of time in the exhibit hall. But we're also really trying to be mindful of getting folks outside and wanting to have an experience within the city that we're visiting and trying to incorporate some wellness activities. We have yoga and we've done yoga a several different years in a row now. We're trying to get some different activities outside. I think folks can expect a conference with a lot of content, a lot of opportunities for networking and really a conference that's trying to reflect the values that we hold dearly, and offering a lot of different opportunities for not just wellness but really trying to minimize our own sustainability impact through offsets, a vegetarian menu etc. So, we're really trying to make sure that our conference is representative of our values and an opportunity for folks to learn a lot but also have some fun. Having too many good sessions is a good problem to have. I've looked through all of those sessions and I would agree that there's a lot of great content that's going to be available and anybody who's working in sustainability in higher education, you're going to find something that you’re interested in. There's so many different ideas and topics that are going to be discussed. So very much looking forward to that conference. Again, October 2nd through the 5th. We're going to jump into our final five questions if you're ready. What is one piece of advice you would give other sustainability professionals that might help them in their careers? So, I'll just reflect on my own experience. I am somebody that wants to continue learning throughout my career and I've had a number of different trainings that I've attended. The piece that I continue to find incredibly valuable is communications training. Especially given the sustainability work we're doing, we're trying to change mindsets, we're trying to change behavior and with that I think comes a requirement to have some skill around communicating. What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability? I think the fact that there is a lot of emphasis on equity and social justice, and the interconnection with sustainability. I think there's still the challenge of hearing the term "sustainability" and equating that with operational components - waste reduction, water reduction etc. But the reality of all of those things being really important, but the social and economic dimensions of sustainability being as important and the emphasis that AASHE has been trying to place on the equity and social justice pieces of sustainability. The fact that that's not unique to AASHE is really exciting to me because I think making the sustainability movement more personal and having it not just to be about the polar bears, that of course we are concerned about, but making it much more relatable within our communities, I'm really pleased that conversation is happening much more so now. What is the one book you would recommend sustainability leaders read? In my career of trying to get people to function at our best selves and to be highly effective people, a lot of the trainings that I've done and that I've experienced a lot of benefit from, and the books that I've read, come back to how I've improved my own communications. So, Difficult Conversations is a book that I have found really helped me in trying to become a better leader and communicator. What are some of your favorite resources or tools that help you in your work? There's plenty of other nonprofit organizations out there that I look to as examples or models of how are they trying to create more value for their community, or how are they trying to be bold and inspiring to their community. But I think also just within myself to stay motivated and stay inspired, it's really a lot of focus on self-care and a lot of running. When asking about what resources I use, running and meditation are a go-to. So while it's not necessarily something you'd Google, and we try and do this a lot at AASHE, is really to try and pay a lot more attention to our health and wellbeing by prioritizing health and wellbeing. I'm hoping our staff, and anybody that we're working with, is able to be that much more of an effective human. So, those are a couple of my own tools that I use for juggling work life balance, but in addition certainly there's a number of other organizations out there that I'd like to look to and see how they're continuing to try advance the sustainability agenda. Where can our listeners go to learn more about AASHE and learn about the AASHE conference? The AASHE website for sure, aashe.org. That's the place where you can go find more about what we do, our conference, our programs, the STARS rating system, which is probably one of our most popular resources. We have an online resource center and a whole bunch of information that you can find on our website that I think will be useful to anyone in sustainability in higher education, whether it's faculty, staff, students, or senior leaders.  

We are turning the tables on this episode of Sustainable Nation, and the podcast interviewer is becoming the interviewee. Josh Prigge was recently interviewed for an episode the Sustainable Winegrowing Podcast, so with permission, we republished the interview for Sustainable Nation. Josh Prigge is a sustainability practitioner, college professor, published author, and public speaker with nearly a decade of experience managing sustainability programs and initiatives for large organizations. Josh is the current CEO of sustainability consulting firm, Sustridge, and has also worked as Director of Regenerative Development at Fetzer Vineyards and Sustainability Coordinator at Hawaii Pacific University. Complete Transcript: Our guest today is Josh Prigge. He is the founder and CEO of Sustridge, which is a sustainability consulting firm. Now, you've had a very long and intriguing career in the area of sustainability. Would you agree with that? Yeah, it's taken me a few exciting and different kinds of places with some different types of organizations. It's been great. How did you get involved in this area in the first place? So, I'm from Minnesota originally and my undergraduate degree was actually physical education, so sports was always my passion. So, I was teaching and coaching back in Minnesota right out of college and I just started to become more and more aware of environmental issues like climate change and started paying more attention to these important global issues. After a while, that just became much more of a passion to me than teaching and coaching was. So, I decided I should go back to school and study sustainability and rededicate my career to sustainability. This was back in about 2007, and I was looking for graduate programs across the US and there were only a few at the time. Now they're popping up everywhere - green MBA programs and masters in sustainability. But back then there were a few and one of them was at Hawaii Pacific University. They had a master of arts in Global Leadership and Sustainable Development. And so being born and raised in Minnesota, I thought moving to Hawaii sounded kind of good, so I packed up everything and drove to California, shipped my car and jumped on a plane. I studied in this fantastic program for two years, learning all about sustainability and was fortunate enough to get hired as soon as I graduated as that university's first sustainability coordinator. So I managed sustainability for the university for just under four years. I also served as the president of the Sustainability Association of Hawaii while I was out there as well. So I got a lot of great experience in Hawaii, which is just a hotbed for renewable energy and sustainability. So really great experience out there. And then the university was going through a number of layoffs, and I was fortunate enough not to get let go, but I figured it was probably a good time to start looking elsewhere and taking the next step in my career. So I looked throughout Hawaii and the mainland United States looking for the best sustainability job. I came across the job at Fetzer Vineyards up in northern California, a wine company in Mendocino County. I was hired on as their director of sustainability, and the title then changed from sustainability to regenerative development. I got a lot of great experience in the wine industry. Fetzer Vineyards is a wine company with about 10 brands, including Bonterra, which is the number one organically farmed wine in the US. It's a company that really has been leading the industry in sustainability for a long time. So, I got a lot of great experience starting a new sustainability program from scratch at Hawaii Pacific University, and then on the other end of the spectrum at Fetzer, I got the opportunity to take a very evolved sustainability program to the next level. I had worked at Fetzer for about four years and then realized I have all this experience and knowledge and I could make a greater impact in the world working with multiple organizations instead of just one. So, I left in 2017 to start my own sustainability consulting business. Now I'm working with all sorts of different businesses on greenhouse gas emissions calculating, greenhouse gas planning, zero waste planning, zero waste certification, B Corp certification and all things sustainability. Let's go back to Hawaii and then talk a little bit more about Fetzer in detail, because those are both pretty special kind of situations as far as this topic goes. One of the things that I think a lot of people struggle with is that for a lot of folks, the word "sustainability" doesn't mean anything. It's too nebulous and too soft. They want to know where the recycled rubber meets the recycled road somehow. So, in Hawaii for instance, it is a self-contained ecosystem in a lot of ways, obviously there's a lot of stuff that's brought to the island, but as an entity it's isolated. What were the kinds of things that you implemented and what were your goals when you were there, both at university and also as part of the island wide sustainability program? At the university, like I mentioned, I was the first sustainability employee. So, I was tasked with really trying to create a culture of sustainability and embed sustainability into the culture of the university. It started with a lot of tracking and reporting. I had to create a sustainability metrics system to track all of our metrics - our waste, water. energy, supply chain and really all of our sustainability related impacts. That's really the first step is to really track everything so you can baseline your organization, benchmark yourself against your peers and understand where your biggest impacts lie and where the biggest opportunities might be. After baselining everything and benchmarking, I led a sustainability report. So, we put out a sustainability report for the university back in 2012 and used the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education reporting framework. They have a reporting system that is specifically for universities. So, corporations have the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) for sustainability reporting, and universities have this AASHE STARS program. So, I took the university through that process. The first year or so was tracking, baselining and reporting. Then we did a big greenhouse gas emissions report. I led a greenhouse gas inventory of the entire university. So, what are all of the emissions associated with all of the vehicles that are used on campus, all of the energy in the buildings, natural gas, propane, employee travel - all the emissions associated with that. Beginning a new program, that's really what it's all about. It's figuring out where you're at and where are your opportunities for improvement. The after that reporting and tracking, we started looking at some big energy projects and we did some led retrofit projects and looking into renewable energy systems for the campus. We restructured the waste by doing a large waste audit of one of the campuses to reduce the amount of waste pickups and maximize recycling and landfill diversion. So, a lot of really fun projects. It's a lot of fun starting a new program from scratch. Island wide, as the president of the Sustainability Association of Hawaii, that was a nonprofit focused on businesses. So, we were specifically focused on a moving sustainability through the business sector in Hawaii. So what we'll do is have workshops, bring our members out and provide free workshops and educate them on the benefits of a commitment to sustainability, what kind of opportunities are there, the cost savings and really tried to introduce the business community to the B Corp movement. B Corp was relatively new back then and there were only a couple of B Corps in Hawaii at the time. So, B Corp is kind of the highest standard for social and environmental responsibility in business. A company goes through a large assessment and answers a couple of hundred questions on all aspects of their business - from their environmental impacts to how well they pay employees, what kind of benefits they offer, what kind of community impacts do they have, what do their supply chain impacts look like. It's a really comprehensive program and if you get a certain score, 80 or higher on your assessment, you can become a certified B Corp. So, we focused on that and that's kind of where I really learned about B Corp. I brought that with me to Fetzer. So when I got hired at Fetzer, that was one of the first things that I looked into - going through the B Corp assessment. We got Fetzer to become a certified B Corp in 2015 - one of only a few wine companies in the world that have achieved that. I think that the B Corp movement is continuing to grow, I think there's now over 2,500 B Corps around the world in about 55 to 60 different countries. Patagonia's a B Corp, Ben and Jerry's, a number of a large well-known companies that are really doing a lot of good things. But as consumers look to continue to purchase from companies that share their values and share their beliefs, I think this movement of B Corp and these sustainability certifications are going to become more and more important. So, that would be the motivation for a company to go down that road to try to draw this next generation. Is that accurate? Yeah, that's definitely one of them and there are so many others. Attracting new customers, attracting a new demographic that really care about those things is definitely one important thing, as well as building brand loyalty with those existing customers. But outside of that, I think there's so many other benefits, one being just using that certification framework to not only certify but to use that as continual improvement. So, that really just provides a roadmap for your business to continually improve year after year going through that assessment. Another benefit with B Corp is just joining that community. B Corp's love to support other B Corp's. So, at Fetzer when we became a B Corp, we offered a discount to other B Corps out there who are purchasing wine for the corporate events. B Corps love to support each other and they also like to work with each other in creative ways. Ben and Jerry's is a B Corp and also a New Belgium Brewing Company is a B Corp. They actually partnered on a new beer, which was an ice cream flavored beer. So, they had Ben and Jerry's logo and New Belgium's logo on the bottle and on the packaging as a partnership, and that was to bring attention to the B Corp movement and to businesses making powerful impacts in the world and making the world a better place. So there's a lot of great benefits in that world beyond just attracting new customers, but also really being a roadmap for improvement as well as joining those new communities. Let's talk about Fetzer a little bit because there's a backstory around sustainability before you got there, as you know. The Fetzer family and the company had a commitment to sustainable farming and minimal footprint from the day they decided to crush their first grape, and that goes back decades. They had a very deep commitment to these ideas right from the get go, and that was an era when there were not certifications. Tell me about how these ideas around sustainability get transformed into a culture and become second nature within an organization. I think that top down support is key. So you mentioned the Fetzer owners, they were all about. That's about as good as an example as you can possibly have as far as embedding sustainability into the DNA, into the culture of a company - an owner who founds the company with the idea that sustainability is key to its success. So that's the ultimate example, but for companies that are implementing a new strategy around sustainability and want to embed it, there's a number of things that will help. Again, the top down support is key, so having support from the CEO and the C-suite, and having verbal commitments from them so that everybody understands the importance. But it's also important to go from the ground up as well. So, having employees lead sustainability programs and initiatives. At Fetzer we had what was called the Re3 team, which is a sustainability team at the company that is made up of employees from all different departments of the organization. This is key in any business who wants to move sustainability forward - having that interdepartmental team to work together to break down silos within the organization so that all departments of the business are working together to identify opportunities around sustainability and also to engage employees. That employee engagement piece is really important. Getting them active and getting them involved in sustainability is key. And then another important thing is to identify the quick wins and build momentum. So, where's your low hanging fruit? A lot of times companies that are just getting started, there's a lot of energy opportunities. So, energy efficiency, renewable energy, these types of projects have really good payback and help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. They're just kind of win-wins all around. Getting those quick wins early, communicating them to your employees and to your stakeholders and showing that initial success of your new sustainability program can really help build that momentum and get employees engaged and get stakeholders excited. So, I think top down support, as well as engaging and activating employees and identifying and working on those quick wins to build momentum are important. And then setting ambitious goals as well and being very clear about communicating your progress towards those goals and communicating in your success along the way, I think are really important in building that culture throughout your organization. You had mentioned earlier the first thing that you did at the university was to start collecting metrics. That's the idea that you have to measure to manage. How do you identify or prioritize where you put your efforts? What does that actually look like? Identifying those metrics and understanding where your key material impacts are is what really helps you prioritize. In the wine industry you use a lot of water. That's a big key material impact of your business operation, so that will be a priority in your sustainability program. But also of course, you want to look at return on investment. So, what type of projects are going to have a good payback and are not just important to reduce environmental impacts, but what are also projects that also include good financial payback and also social impacts? So, if you can find those projects that really impact those three different areas financial, environmental and social and have positive benefits for all those areas, you're really hitting on all three. Those are going to be the ones you want to prioritize. If you can identify some of those strong financial payback programs early, you can almost create a revolving fund which can be used specifically for sustainability. If you're just getting started and you have all your metrics, you're looking at your energy, your water, your waste, your greenhouse gas emissions, maybe some of the water projects cost a little bit more and have a lower financial payback. What you could do is focus on those quick paybacks, like the energy projects. So, you look for those projects that will have a good payback and then use those savings from your energy project to fund those slower paying back projects in water or in waste or in emissions or in those other areas. It's just working with your finance department, your operations team and understanding what's important to the business, what's going to have the most impact and then just being smart around strategizing about short term and long term. How can we fund these projects in the short term and how can we fund these larger projects that might take longer to pay back in the future with some of those previous savings? And you had mentioned the idea of a culture, gaining momentum, you get people to buy in, you take down silos and we start to build. What about resistance to that? Give an example where you had a really brilliant idea, a really great plan, but you couldn't overcome the barriers because of the beliefs of some of the people involved. I've been really fortunate to be working with two great organizations, specifically at Fetzer who was just so supportive of my work, supporting me and encouraging me to really help take the company to the next level. There wasn't a lot of pushback there. Obviously, there's tradeoffs and things like that. I think the important thing for people in those other types of organizations, where it might be harder to get projects supported, is having the business case laid out so it's not just a sustainability practice that's going to be good for the environment, but what are the other positive benefits of it? What are the other business benefits? And so being able to use that language in promoting your sustainability projects, the business language. What are the business benefits, the financial, creating resiliency in our business and building towards long-term success and long-term health. Thinking about the bigger picture. But also, getting stakeholder support. At the university for example, if I had a project, a big project that I wanted to pursue, I wouldn't just put that project down on paper and write a proposal and take it to my supervisor. I would go to faculty and go to students and go to other staff, and build support so that when I brought that project forward, it was clear that that the university community is in support of this project. I think you can do that in business as well. Speak with your colleagues at work and find out how these projects will benefit their departments and their aspects of the business, and build that support before bringing the project forward. Tell us a little bit about your current work. Now you have a sustainability consulting firm. So, clients are coming to you because they've identified sustainability is an area in which they want to improve, there are elements that they would like to adopt, and they are coming to you for help. Can you talk to us a little bit about the motivations and the initial contacts with clients when they come to you? It's a pretty diverse bunch of folks that I'm working with. I'm working with one pretty large wine company right now on their greenhouse gas emissions inventory. They have dozens of locations, they have wineries and vineyards all over California and Oregon, very large operations and a very complex inventory. So, what I'm doing is calculating all of their 2017 greenhouse gas emissions, all their vehicle fleets, all of the emissions in their vineyards from the fertilizer they use, the soil emissions, the winemaking emissions and the vehicles and airplanes. So, that project that I started basically right when I started my new consulting business was from a previous relationship. I worked with a large tax and accounting firm in the bay area called Sensiba San Filippo, and they just became a certified B Corp. So, I was working with them for about six months through the B Corp certification process and they just became the first tax accounting firm in California to become a certified B Corp and they're doing a lot of great work throughout the bay area, a lot of great community work, employee volunteering and pro bono work with nonprofits. They are just a really great company. I'm working with organizations on helping them create their corporate sustainability strategy and working with some businesses on TRUE Zero Waste certification. There's a large apparel company that has a large distribution facility where they distribute their products, and I'm helping them go through TRUE zero waste certification. I'm also working with some local governments in southern California on a composting education and awareness program for their community. So, it's really a lot of different stuff. I have a podcast as well - the Sustainable Nation podcast. We're really just trying to share information from other sustainability professionals around the world. But yeah, some companies are looking to implement new sustainability programs and others are just looking for specific areas of help, like how to help them with their emissions or help them with their B Corp certification or a TRUE Zero Waste certification. It's been a lot of fun just helping all of these different types of businesses make positive impacts in the world. You said that to make change, you need to be able to speak that language of business and you need to be able to speak the language of accounting. What I'm hearing in the last couple of examples you've given us, it sounds like there are a lot of businesses that are coming forward and putting a lot of effort into their sustainability efforts for more ethics-based reasons. It's the right thing to do as much as anything else. Do you agree that's the case, that that's part of it? Yeah, I think so. I think businesses are becoming more aware of these environmental crises that we're facing and are starting to understand what the future might look like if we don't change the way we operate. But then again, I think they're all hearing from consumers, especially this younger generation of millennials and younger folks who will soon have the largest purchasing power and in the history of the world. These are folks that are trending more and more that they're looking to purchase from sustainable companies. So, businesses are understanding the long term importance of being a sustainable company. In the world of social media and transparency, I think they're also understanding that not doing the right thing could really destroy value pretty quickly. So it's becoming almost just the new status quo. If you're going to do business, you have to do things the right way or in the long run, you really face a lot more risks than if you don't. I think you're right. I think we've had a lot of examples in the past twenty years of companies who were not doing things the right way. They were fine for a long time and then there was a fall, if you will. You were talking about doing the things that we need to do to turn things around and this is a really extreme question, but I really want to hear what you have to say about it. Is it too late? I was working in sustainability education and that was talking to a grower, and he did all these fantastic things. I said, "How do you feel you're doing? How do you feel about making progress and do you feel very good about it? You're doing so much stuff." He said, "No. It's way too late. The generation of my granddaughter is going to inherit hell on earth. We've lost it already." I think there are folks that share that view. Do you have a more hopeful message for our listeners? It's really easy to take either side of that argument of saying, "Yeah, it's too late. We can't save the planet." But I also think it's easy to be optimistic when you see all the amazing things that are happening around the world. I personally don't think it's too late. I'm one of the optimists. I'm really connected and plugged into all these amazing things that are happening, and I see the momentum building. This new movement that we're seeing is exciting. I had mentioned my title at Fetzer changed from director of sustainability to director of regenerative development. That was because of a new strategy that I helped implement at the company, which was moving beyond sustainable to be restorative and regenerative as a company. Let's not just try to minimize our negative impacts and be less bad, but let's actually try to eliminate those negative impacts and focus on creating positive impacts. So instead of being less bad, we're being more good. So, it's not just how can we minimize impacts, but how can we actually make the world a better place. That's a movement that is growing. i might've been one of the first with the titles of regenerative rather than sustainability, but I think there's a few more now. There is also the Net Positive Project, which is a coalition of businesses led by Forum for the Future, BSR in SHINE. This is a number of companies that are recognizing this idea of regenerative and net positive as the next step in corporate responsibility. So, moving beyond sustainable from actually reducing our emissions 50 percent, reducing water 50 percent, to how can we go beyond that to actually reduce emissions one hundred percent, or actually be water positive and send more water into our water tables than we take out, or carbon positive - sequester more carbon than we emit as a company. So, these are things that people are focusing on now and I think the regenerative agriculture movement, which is growing, is extremely exciting. The studies show that if all agricultural areas where to implement regenerative practices, we would actually reduce the carbon in our atmosphere. We could drawn down CO2 in the atmosphere. We would actually be sequestering more carbon in our soil than we emit as a society globally. So, regenerative agriculture is a very exciting development. I see all these great things that are happening, the increases in renewable energy around the world, the agriculture movement, the zero waste movement, the B Corp movement and I'm definitely optimistic about the future.

This week we're joined by Doug Farr, President of Farr Associates and author of the new book Sustainable Nation. Doug chats about the arrangement of the book by different patterns of urbanism and how we can take a bottom up approach to change our cities. He also chats about the forced boredom of the Burning Man festival and why Alexis de Tocqueville's 1835 work Democracy in America is still relevant today. 

Doug Farr is an architect and author of the book “Sustainable Nation”. We get into the reasons why we need to start building an ecologically sustainable nation.

Today we have a special episode of Sustainable Nation. We're talking sustainability in sports and the PAC-12 Sustainability Conference. Consistent with its reputation as the conference of champions, the PAC-12 is the first collegiate sports conference to convene a high level symposium focused entirely on integrating sustainability into college athletics and across college campuses. All of the PAC-12 athletic departments have committed to measuring their environmental performance, developing strategies and goals to reduce their impact and monitoring their progress in engaging fans and communities in greener practices. The PAC-12 sustainability conference signals in elevated approach to enhancing sustainability efforts within collegiate athletics departments, designing new collective initiatives and sharing best practices to transform college sports into a platform for environmental progress. Today we're interviewing two members of the PAC-12 sustainability conference committee, Dave Newport and Jamie Zaninovich. Jamie Zaninovich - Jamie joined the PAC-12 Conference as Deputy Commissioner and Chief Operating Officer in July of 2014. He's responsible for all aspects of the PAC-12's administrative operations, including television administration, sports management, championships, football bowl relationships, PAC-12 global, compliance and officiating. During his first two years at the PAC-12, Jamie helped guide the conference through unprecedented governance changes, major increases in its international efforts, and continued high level success of its 23 sponsored sports. Dave Newport - Dave launched the first US college sports sustainability activation with corporate partnership for the Florida Gators when he was the University of Florida's director of sustainability in 2002. Later he became director of the University of Colorado Boulder Environmental Center and founded the nation's first comprehensive NCAA Division One sports sustainability program, Ralphie's Green Stampede. Dave is also secretary of the Green Sports Alliance board of directors, former board secretary of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, an award winning publisher and editor and a former elected county commission board chairman. Jamie Zaninovich Jamie Zaninovich. Welcome to Sustainable Nation. Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me, Josh. Looking forward to it. I gave the listeners some background on your professional life but tell us a little bit about your personal life and what led you to be doing the work you're doing today. College sports has been a passion of mine since my early days in Eugene, Oregon where I was a faculty brat, son of a faculty member who played basketball in college back in the day and used to take me to all the games at the old historic Matt Court and Autzen Stadium in Eugene as a kid. So that's really where my passion for collegiate athletics started, and I was not a good enough to be a collegiate student athlete, so of course, decided to be an administrator instead. That's how it works. I've spent the last 25 years working both on campus and in college athletic conferences starting at Stanford and then Princeton University, and now here at the PAC-12 for the past four years. Like I said, it's a passion of mine as is sustainability, so we're really excited that we're at least making some progress in putting those two things together here at the PAC-12. And now the PAC-12 Sustainability Conference coming up in July. Really the first sustainability focused conference put on by a collegiate sports conference, the PAC-12. Tell us a little bit about how that came about and what people can expect at this year's PAC-12 Sustainability Conference. It's really a reflection of our 12 schools who have taken a leadership position in sustainability, and sports sustainability more specifically, in the collegiate space. So when I came to the PAC-12 four years ago, Dave Newport is the sustainability director at Colorado, showed up on our doorstep and said, "Hey, I'm not sure if you knew this, but all 12 of our PAC-12 schools are members of the Green Sports Alliance. That's the only conference in the country that that's the case and you guys should really look at doing something in this space." So, we said, "Yeah, this is interesting." Myself and Gloria Nevarez, who formerly worked at the PAC-12, both have a passion for sustainability having grown up on the west coast. We sort of took Dave's lead. The PAC-12 at that point joined the Green Sports Alliance and started looking at what a plan could be for us to take a leadership position, really reflecting what our schools have already done. So we created an informal working group within our schools of sustainability officers and athletics department reps. They suggested having a first of its kind conference, so we did that last year in Sacramento at the LEED platinum Golden One Arena just ahead of the GSA annual conference, and that went very well. From there we started thinking about do we do this again and what could come next? So we'll have our second event this year in Boulder, July 12th. It's going to be a great group of on campus athletics reps, sustainability professionals and industry folks. We have some really great panels lined up including two former NBA players, in Jason Richardson and Earl Watson, two former gold medalists, in Arielle Gold who just won gold in snowboarding at the Olympics - he's a Colorado grad. And Mary Harvey, who's a former goalkeeper for the University of California, who's an Olympic gold medalist for the USA. She has also headed up, which is now a successful, 2026 World Cup North America endeavor, and she's heading up their sustainability areas. So, we're going to have some awesome panels. The folks that I mentioned will be augmented by programmers on our campuses that have submitted proposals in the areas of fan engagement, student athlete engagement in sustainability, and it's going to be a full day of great best practice sharing, networking and hopefully a lot of learning to move forward what is an important initiative. That's very exciting. Jamie, this is bringing together my two greatest passions in life, the environment and sports. So, I love what you guys are doing and really excited to be there on July 12th. Why have these professional athletes and gold medalists speak? What do you think that sustainability professionals or campus leaders can learn from these accomplished athletes? I think the philosophy of purpose plus sport, and the power of that, has never been more relevant than today with some of the societal challenges that we face. I think those in the sports industry, college or professional, understand that with privilege comes responsibility, right? And if you have the opportunity to make a positive difference, such as those that have had made their living in doing something like sports, then there is a kind of an obligation to find a way to give back. And I think the environment is very front and center. In a lot of respects, it's almost a bulletproof cause and those are sort of hard to find these days. It's one of those causes were there may be some people on the other side, but in general everybody's for a sustainable future. So I think those are the elements that sort of have gotten this into it and I think are there reasons why we're getting at least some attention, still very early days for us, but some attention from folks that want to be involved in it as an endeavor. At last year's conference you had basketball legend, Bill Walton, speaking at the event. If anybody has seen him speak, Bill is very passionate person. At the conference last year, Bill said, "Sustainability is good policy, good economics, and it's good for all of us." From a chief operating officer perspective, can you tell us why sustainability is good for business in the PAC-12? I'm very much a believer in this notion of both doing good and doing well. I think for a long time, issues of social based programs, whether it's sustainability or otherwise, have sort of been perceived as cost centers. Right? Here's something you spend money on and you measure it in the value of maybe the positive PR you get. But what I'm learning, and I think we'll have some interesting news around this at our conference, just to tease that a little bit, is the commercial value around this space in sustainability and purpose based sponsorship and engagement more broadly is robust. And so if you could find the right partners that align with your values, you can drive great commercial value to them and to you, whether that's endemic partners that might be specifically involved in sustainability, or just the DNA of some larger corporations that understand that this is important for the future. I think this has never been more relevant. And what we're seeing in our campuses is this is really market driven. There are students coming to our campuses are not saying, "Oh great, there's a recycling banner. Oh cool, we have solar panels." They are saying, "Hey, where are the solar panels? Where are the recycling bins. We expect this. This is our generation speaking." So part of this is really serving that market as well and aligning interest that way. Absolutely great points. And I think you can kind of see that happening in professional sports. Some of these leagues like the NHL a NASCAR are really stepping out and leading in sustainability. It's pretty clear that they understand the long-term business benefits of sustainability and visible sustainability programs. Is the PAC-12 conference looking towards those professional sports leagues and learning from what they're doing? I think certainly. I think they've taken the lead with their green platforms. I think we want to learn from what they've done and put it in the appropriate context for collegiate, which is similar yet different. But I think one of the advantages we have, honestly, is we have these great institutions that are leaders in research and thought leadership. And it's really about leveraging the power of our campuses around this because they tend to be where great ideas start. In our case we happen to have 12 elite research institutions all in the western part of the United States, in centers of innovation. We want to align what we do with their DNA. So we see that as a real opportunity, If anyone is interested in learning more or attending the PAC-12 Sustainability Conference, where can they go check that out? So just go a PAC-12sustainabilityconference.com or put it in Google and the website will come up. You'll get the full program there. You can register online. We have hotel partnerships in Boulder that are available and we hope to see everybody there. I think this is a really unique space and it's going to be another great conversation. Last year we had an oversubscribed room and Bill wowed them last year. He's a great ambassador. Bill won't be there this year, we're giving them a year off. But we do have some exciting speakers as I mentioned before, and look for a reasonably big announcement in the sustainability space at the conference as well. So I'll tease that up. That's exciting. Jamie, we like to end the interview with a final five questions. What is one piece of advice you would give sustainability leaders? Think big and expand who your partners could be. What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability? I think this notion that we can create a commercially viable platforms that bring together sustainability partners and athletics leagues and teams and schools. How about a book recommendation? Do you have one book you could recommend for sustainability professionals or other professionals? Well, this is a little bit off the radar and it's probably been read by most, but Cadillac Desert is one of my favorite books related to sustainability and the history of water in the western US. So that's a must read. What are some of your favorite resources or tools that you use that really help you in your work? I think it's just people. I'll go back to finding the right partners. Our best resources are our best thinkers and our best people, and that's why our campuses are so valuable to us. Whether it's student athletes, sustainability professionals, university athletic directors etc. And finally, we mentioned where people can go to learn about the conference, anywhere else you'd like to send people where they can learn more about you and the work that you're leading the PAC-12, We have a PAC-12.com website and I'd also encourage people to tune into our PAC-12 networks, which is linked from there. We have a lot of great stuff in terms of what we're involved in, including soon, a link to our sustainability platform. Jamie, I'm very much looking forward to the conference in July and that big announcement. I think everyone's excited about that now. It's so great to hear about the wonderful things the PAC-12 Conference is leading in sustainability. It's just so important to have that top-level support when committing to sustainability, so it's great to hear from you and hear about your passion. Thank you for making the world a better place, Jamie. Well, thank you. And thanks to people like yourself and Sustainable Nation for making this publicly available. We really need that contagion to catch on in this area even more to do well this way. Dave Newport Our next guest is Dave Newport. Dave launched the first US college sports sustainability activation with corporate partnership for the Florida Gators when he was the University of Florida's director of sustainability in 2002. Later he became director of the University of Colorado Boulder Environmental Center and founded the nation's first comprehensive NCAA Division One sports sustainability program, Ralphie's Green Stampede. Dave is also secretary of the Green Sports Alliance board of directors, former board secretary of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, an award winning publisher and editor and a former elected county commission board chairman. Dave Newport, thank you for joining us. It's great to have you on to chat about the PAC-12 Sustainability Conference, which we'll get to in a second, but first tell us a little bit about you. I gave an introduction on your professional life but tell us a little bit about your personal life and what led you to be doing the work you're doing today. Well, I guess most people in sustainability come from very diverse backgrounds in terms of their career and their interests, and I'm certainly no exception. I've been a little bit in the environmental arena, one way, shape or form, for a long time. I think personally, what led me to sports sustainability is the inevitable search for leverage. That is, what's the multiplier effect of the work you do? How many people does it affect? How many people can it potentially effect? And of course, sports, there's no bigger platform on the planet then sports. So moving into sustainability in sports was natural from that analytical point of view for me personally and professionally, but like yourself, Josh, I grew up playing sports. I love sports and love sustainability, so let's combine fun with work and boom, here we are. That's what got me here. That's great. And I understand it all kind of started down in Florida when you were at the University of Florida, director of sustainability, you launched the first US college sports sustainability activation with a corporate partnership for the Florida Gators. Tell us how that came about and how it all started for you. Yeah, that was cool. It was 2002, and I was getting the sustainability program running on the giant University of Florida campus. Had lot of support and a great president to work with, and one day said, "Hey, let's see what we can do in The Swamp, the Florida field. I mean, there's no bigger icon of American College football, then Florida Field and Florida Gators, and we can make a statement that would be great." I went to see the athletic director, Jeremy Foley, a legendary AD for Florida, and he liked it. He didn't see any downside to it, but what we'll do is due diligence as smart guys do. And so he pulled a lot of people and talked it all through. He said, "Yep, let’s go with it and we're going to reach out to our fanbase well in advance and let them know what's going on." So he put in place a great communications effort. The corporate partner at the time was a petroleum marketer. So talk about our odd bedfellows, but it was a petroleum marketing company that has a series of stores across the Southeast and the Midwest, and as far as Texas, called Kangaroo stores. They had a very progressive CEO who was trying to move basically out of the oil business and into the renewable energy business, believe it or not. So they wanted to do build some stores in the Gainesville area that were the first LEED certified convenience stores in the United States. They put in bio diesel, and things like that. They were promoting their greenness so it was a good fit. We pitched them and they liked it. We did a pilot on homecoming, at the homecoming banquet, which was huge, and then in the clubs and suites of Florida Field during the homecoming game. I walked around with the AD there and we just visited with the fans, alumni of the Gators, and asked them how they felt about all this stuff. We got 500 comments back and 499 of them were like, this is really cool. The grumpiest comment we got back was from this one old alumni gentlemen who said, "Yeah this is great. How come we haven't been doing this all along?" So that was the worst comment we got back, and after that everything was golden because athletics figured out, hey, there's no downside of this. People intuitively like it and once you get past the inevitable startup problems in implementation and all the operational stuff, which we solved, the fans like it. And so fan engagement is key and has been part of why we've done this right along, is that fan engagement element is very strong. Sure, that's great. Especially the college level it's mostly young folks and these are the people that are really passionate about the environment and that's great. And then eventually you left and now you're the director of the University of Colorado Boulder Environmental Center. And you founded the nation's first comprehensive NCAA Division One sports sustainability program - Ralphie's Green Stampede. Tell us a little bit about that program. So, at Florida we started the first zero waste program in the NCAA, and then when we got to Colorado we came first comprehensive one. So we do it in all sports, and it's not just a zero waste, it's zero carbon, zero water, zero net energy in new buildings, no pesticides, local food and a few other things I can't remember. We've got four LEED Platinum athletics facilities, which is half of the number of LEED platinum buildings on the entire campus. And we've got the lion's share, like 90 plus percent, of all of the installed solar on athletics facilities. So, the University of Colorado Athletic Department is the most sustainable department on campus, a fact that bugs the heck out of the environmental science people, but it is what it is. When I got to Colorado and told them both to the Florida story, it got me a meeting with the AD at the time, Mike Bohn.  He listened to what I had to say and he said, "Okay, we can do that here." It was about that easy. So I said, "Hey, you know, this was awful easy. How come you said yes so fast." And this I will carry with me the rest of my career. His response to me was, "Dave, what you don't understand is people don't come here on Saturday for football. They come here for community. And sustainability is all about community. So this will work." I will tell you that that is a lesson in how to engage fans and what is really going on in sports, that I now see everywhere. I checked it out, I worked on it and we've done research on it. And indeed, sports is a bonding moment for our fans. That's why you come. That's why everybody's singing the same songs, wear's the same shirts, looks at the same environments and all that kind of stuff. Because we are communal species and we want to be part of the community. So, that added to my repertoire of ways to approach this thing and leverage that fan engagement we were speaking of. That's great. And so now we have the PAC-12 Sustainability Conference coming up July 12th and that's going to be at the University of Colorado Boulder, is that right? Correct, and come on down. Absolutely. So, tell us about that conference. How did it come about and what can we expect? From the time when I started working at Florida and then Colorado in sports, many sports organizations have moved into this space, especially at the pro level and increasingly at the college level. I'm seeing the value of: A) Saving money through operational sustainability and B) Engaging your fans through this leadership. However, no athletic conference or sports network has moved into the space of promoting it as sort of a behavior and a lifestyle, as a conference and as a league, until the PAC-12 showed up. And Jamie's great leadership with PAC-12, and Larry Scott the commissioner, I've met with both of them, and Larry is 100 percent behind this because they get everything I just said. They get the savings, they get the leadership and the fan engagement. And so, they're now talking about this in game. They're talking about it as a conference. They're talking about it as a leadership position, as consistent with the Conference of Champions and other people have taken notice now. So, their leadership is really a game changer in terms of taking it to the next level and using the sports platform to engage fans to be more sustainable at home, work and play. That is the mission. Running a recycling system in your stadium is great. Using that as an influencer to influence those fans that show up for that community every Saturday, as part of being a good fan of their favorite team, to live the life and to embody that as part of their fandom. That's the strategy. That's what the sustainability conference is all about - How do we do our operational stuff better and how do we use it to influence fans? You guys have some famous accomplished athletes who are going to be there speaking as well. Professional athletes and Olympic athletes. Tell us a little bit about who will be there. It's a really good group. We have Arielle Gold, a professional snowboarder and one of our students AT UC Boulder, and part of our Protect Our Winters, and is touring the hallways of Capitol Hill and other places to talk about climate change and how it affects our lives and our sports. So she's obviously our millennial target athlete. Mary Harvey, who I have the pleasure of working alongside of the board of the Green Sports Alliance. She is just fabulous in terms of her overall acumen. She's won gold medals, World Cups, she played with Mia Hamm, she's worked for FIFA back in the day and now she's working with the World Cup, a group here for the United States that successfully landed the World Cup bid for North America in 2026. There's some other great athletes as well. Obviously Steve Lavin, a fabulous coach, ESPN commentator and a spokesman for UCLA. Jason Richardson, another NCAA Championship basketball player and retired from the NBA. Last year you may recall we had Bill Walton show up and give us a keynote and some life lessons, and that was entertaining. I think I've missed a couple, but there's obviously more detail at the PAC-12sustainabilityconference.com. And Jason Richardson retired and left the Golden State Warriors a little bit too early. He kind of missed out on all the fun. Oh boy, those guys are something else. So, Dave, some people may not see the connection, but I actually think there's a strong parallel between sports and leading sustainability, having passion and perseverance, cooperation, teamwork, team building and strategy. What do you think sustainability professionals who were leading sustainability can learn from these accomplished professional athletes? Yeah, I think you said it well, Josh. I think that's exactly right. One of the things that sustainability professionals do is basically giving credit away for everything, and being all about teamwork and not really trying to be a showboat or anything. They're much like hockey players. Where do you hear of an arrogant hockey player? Most of them were like, "Oh man, my team is so great," and all this stuff because they know it's all about teamwork. I think likewise, as you said, in sustainability it's the same thing. We want everyone to be part of it. And so when you do it inclusively and you bring people together to have a conversation about moving forward sustainably, then you bring in people that wouldn't normally be part of that team, and that's the key. That's how you grow the scope of what you're doing, by getting beyond the usual suspects and getting into folks where this may not be what they get out of bed thinking about every morning. But it's important to them when they have the opportunity to be influential in it. And so allowing for that influence, allowing for people who are doing other things, to be part of this and really bringing them in and getting those ideas, that's how you grow the team. That's how you move towards sustainability. And that is all a process. It is not an end game. Sustainability is not an end game. It's a process. The process is the product. And the process is inclusion and teamwork. Very well said, Dave. For any of our listeners who would like to attend the PAC-12 Sustainability Conference, where can they go to find out more and to sign up. So, PAC-12sustainabilityconference.com, or just Google it and it'll take you there. The website is up and running and accepting your reservations. Come on down. We've got all kinds of fun things to do in Boulder on the 11th and 12th of July. And then that weekend, the Grateful Dead are going to be in our stadium playing. So, come for a conference and stay for the concert. Sounds great. Dave, before we let you go we're going to end on our Final Five Questions. Are you ready? Five Questions. Who used to do that? It was the original Daily Show guy. Craig Kilborn. Funny thing about Craig Kilborn, who was actually a great athlete himself and played some college basketball. He's from Hastings, Minnesota, which is the same small town that I'm from. His mom was my middle school English teacher. I remember the first day of class I had with her, she had a picture of Craig on the back of the classroom and said, "That's my son. He's in radio and learn from him. He's a great communicator." Then about a year later I saw him on Sports Center for the first time and I was like, "I know that name somewhere." And it was him, Craig Kilborn. So, he's one of the few famous people to come out of my small town. He's funny and he was really good at it too. And when he left I thought, "he's going to be a hard act to follow." Yeah, he was great. So, what is one piece of advice you would give other sustainability professionals that might help them in their careers? Don't think of anything. Have other people think about it and have it be their idea. What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability? How fast it's growing. I'm old, so I've observed the beginning and there was nobody. There was five of us doing this job when I started at Florida back in the nineties, and now I've lost count. What is one book you would recommend sustainability professionals read? If you don't read any other book in your entire life? You have to read Natural Capitalism. Excellent. And we had Hunter Lovins on as a guest a few weeks ago, so everyone can check out that episode of Sustainable Nation. What are some of your favorite resources or tools that really help you in the work that you do? Being a member of AASHE and using their website and their member community is a daily thing. I'm looking at their email right now. I think AASHE, again, didn't exist when we started. Now it's booming and all the many people that I've never even heard of are now offering information and gaining information through their website, aashe.org. And finally, where can people go to learn more about you and the work that you're leading at the University of Colorado Boulder, Green Sports Alliance and/or the PAC-12 Sustainability Conference? I'm on LinkedIn. Let's just go with LinkedIn. They will find you on LinkedIn. Excellent. Dave, it's so great to learn about all the work you've been doing and how this sustainability in sports movement really got started all the way back in 2002. I very much look forward to seeing you in Boulder in July. Thank you so much for joining and thank you for making the world a better place. And thank you for hosting us today, Josh. Look forward to seeing you in boulder.  

Jillian Buckholz is the first Director of Sustainability on the California State University, East Bay campus where she is responsible for managing campus sustainability efforts including: an annual greenhouse gas inventory; 5-year climate action plan; comprehensive campus sustainability assessment and plan; project-based student internship program; campus sustainability committee and associated task forces; and educational programming. Prior to coming to The Bay, Jillian was the Senior Programs Coordinator at the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE).    Jillian Joins Sustainable Nation to Discuss: Leading sustainability as a team of one Involving students in sustainability through internship programs Sustainability reporting and climate action planning Advice and recommendations for sustainability leaders Jillian's Final Five Responses: What is one piece of advice you would give other sustainability professionals that help them in their careers? Take time to build relationships. It's easy to be excited, especially in a new position and want to do a lot of great work, but making sure that you know where other people are coming from and what their interests and assets are very important. If you're going to be at an institution for quite some time and make some valuable change. What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability? I'm excited how the social aspects of sustainability are becoming more and more a part of the movement. It's not about recycling and energy efficiency. You're starting to see campuses looking more at the people aspect of sustainability and social justice. I'm excited to see more of that . What is one book you would recommend sustainability professionals read? Anything by David Orr and This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein is a good one. What are some of your favorite resources or tools that you use that help you in the work that you do? The AASHE website resource center, their Hub STARS, their bulletin. I'm always defaulting to AASHE whenever I need something. Also, the Green Schools Listserv at Brown University is a great resource. When I was in higher Ed managing sustainability, that was my number one and most visited website was  AASHE. They have absolutely everything you need. I submitted a Sustainable Nation podcast as a tool there, so hopefully that'll be up soon. Where can our listeners go to learn more about you and the work that you're leading at Cal State East Bay? Just go to www.csueastbay.edu and scroll down on the main page, you'll see a big box where students are holding up solar suitcase light bulbs. You can click right there to get to the webpage. I'm on LinkedIn as well. We have @SustainEastBay as a hashtag or a handle for all of our social media, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Matthew St.Clair is the first Director of Sustainability for the University of California Office of the President, leading sustainability efforts across the 10-campus UC system since 2004. Matt St. Clair joins Sustainable Nation to discuss: Leading sustainability for the third largest employer in California Using best practices from campuses to implement change across the entire system University of California's ambitious climate, energy and waste goals Advice and recommendations for sustainability leaders Final Five Responses: What is one piece of advice you would give other sustainability professionals that might help them in their careers? Be a good listener. As a sustainability professional, you have to change what people do, what organizations do. And so in order to get people to work with you to make that change, you need to be a good listener to understand the pathways that are easiest to make that change and to gain the trust of the people you need to work with to change things. What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability? I would say one of the technological developments I'm most excited about is that electric vehicles seem to finally be taking off. And transportation is one of the hardest nuts to crack in terms of a global greenhouse gas emissions reductions. So the fact that we have campuses that are telling me that every year at least they're doubling the number of parking permits to electric vehicles, that's really promising that that EV market is finally taking off. Especially coupled with what I said about renewable electricity now becoming available to power those cars. Now, if only all states could be moving as quickly as California and Hawaii on electric vehicles, that would be great. What is one book you would recommend sustainability professionals read? That is so hard? This is a going back to a classic, but John Mcphee is a great natural history writer and has written a couple books, one of which I'm blanking on the name actually, but it tells three stories of what happens when men feel like they can control nature. The Control of Nature. I knew I'd come to me. I think it provides some common understanding of a systems perspective and the interaction between human and natural systems, that we have to try to bring a greater awareness and understanding with everyone we work with on on sustainability topics. What are some of your favorite resources or tools that help you in the work that you do? Well, working at a university, AASHE the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education. It's a great resource. Their weekly bulletin is great. Similarly, the National Green Schools listserv is this great hive or group brain, that all of us in the community access when it's helpful. It helps the whole movement move forward through venues like that to connect and learn from each other. And finally, where can our listeners go to learn more about you and the work that you're leading at the University of California? https://www.ucop.edu/sustainability/is our main sustainability website. There's contact information for myself and others in our system wide sustainability team on that website.

Aly Khalifa joins Sustainable Nation to discuss: Cradle to Cradle and the circular economy' Engineering and designing for a sustainable future Ocean plastic and designing with recycled materials Recommendations and advice for sustainability professionals Final Five Questions: What is one piece of advice you would give other sustainability professionals or those working in the circular economy that might help them in their careers? I think there's a principle that I like to use called boundary conditions, and that's something I learned from engineering school. If I'm looking at like the structure of a building and you say "calculate that structure," it's like an impossible task. You need a computer to sort of figure out what happens and the wind load. But what you can do is isolate a single beam and just draw your boundary conditions around one beam, and calculate for that. And as you get more sophisticated in your modeling, your boundary conditions might grow. You might draw around a bigger boundary. You also might say, "I'm going to announce think about temperature also," or I'm going to think about what if there's a rocking party on top of that beam and there's a lot of vibration? So the boundary conditions define for you the problem that you're going to address. And I think in many cases we draw that circle very tightly and we say, "well, I'm just going to deal with this," or in many cases those boundary conditions are never firmly addressed at the beginning because. And we do the same thing in life cycle analysis, right? We have to consider my carbon footprint from here to here, but I'm not going to go outside of that picture. But sometimes it's when you actually list what you're going to define and the things that you can address, and here's the things you are not going to address. Sometimes it's a wake-up call because reflexively, we will attack problems like we've always attacked them and think, "I'm not going to deal with fair labor. I'm not going to talk about realization or I'm not going to talk about these things," without really having acknowledged to yourself that you're not going to do that. Or vice versa. When you do take something on, maybe it's not appropriate to address that. So I think there needs to be some real rigor as a professional about what's inside the boundary conditions for each project, especially on the sustainability side. What are you willing to take on and address, and what do you not want to be distracted by? Because this product has to get done. Frequently, I think there's one stretch that you can take. You can add maybe one set of criteria to it from a sustainability perspective, without having to like eat the whole elephant in one bite. You can say, "I'm just going to take one bite here. I'm really going to reach for this one particular thing without having to address all of it." What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability or the circular economy? One thing it's been great for us on the Ocean Work side is blockchain technology. The whole notion that we can have communities that help us develop a transparency to the way information is shared is very exciting. I have limited knowledge on the topic, so please don't ask me any more about block chain. There's much more qualified people about that. But I do think it's really exciting thing because it's a technology that's not necessarily just for technology's sake. It seems like the heart of the technology is transparency and community building. And I think that's fantastic. I think there must be other technologies we haven't developed, whether it's open source engineering systems, I think there's many different ways that we could develop technologies that are inherently community building and inherently transparent. I'm just wondering what the next one is, but I think this is one of the cases where I feel like I can just build off the work someone else has done and instead of building the tool, get to use the tool. That's really refreshing for me as a sustainability professional. I think in many cases we have to develop the tools more than we get to use them. And in this case I feel like there's a lot to learn about this tool. What is one book you would recommend sustainability professionals read? Well, probably the one that first really got me fired up was Entropy by Jeremy Rifkin. I think that was the one, as someone coming into it, just sort of having my head taken off and my brain shaken it up a little bit, and my head put back on. I just felt like I wasn't the same after reading that. I think that's good because I think sometimes we do just need the rational, logical kind of approach to sustainability, but we need the energizing aspect to it. So I felt like Entropy was one that was really great, but there's so many other inspirations for me. I've already mentioned Cradle to Cradle, but I think for me also just the writings of Buckminster Fuller and his call for design science revolution really pushed me on my way. He has a really fun book called I Seem to be a Verb, which isn't really anything to do with sustainability. It's about how to start a design science revolution and what kind of happens in the mind of Buckminster Fuller. And I think that would be another one I just think is a good one to kickstart some emotions on this topic. What are some of your favorite resources or tools that really help you in the work that you do? Yeah, it just seems like it changes by the day. I think one of the tools that I'm really enjoying in the past few months is the platform called Slack. It's allowing teams to collaborate on a variety of threads all at once, like the simultaneous nature of being able to look at what's developing across similar but slightly different threads. It's fantastic for me. I feel like that's a tool that allows me to just very quickly share and get feedback amongst a multitasking type of research projects. And then there's a lot of different systems that are going on in terms of tracking materials and signals. The idea of materials having intelligence the equivalent of a DNA, being able to understand what the material is very quickly. There is so much happening on that right now as well. I think that's also fantastic. That's exactly what's needed. We need to attach information to our products to understand them  And finally where can our listeners go to learn more about what you do, learn more about Ocean Works, follow you, whatever you'd like to give out for websites or any way to follow your work. Well, I think my social media presence is pretty frenetic and its fits and starts. Usually has to do with when am I in research phase and when am I in publishing phase, or different things that I'm doing. But certainly on twitter it's AlygKhalifa and that's probably the quickest, easiest way to get to me. But certainly on LinkedIn, I'm pretty active on that. And then Oceanworks.co is where a lot of the Ocean Work stuff is happening. My firm Design Box is partnered up with that, so designbox.us.  You can also see a lot of the other projects that were kind of preceding all this big investment into Ocean Works. Contact Aly Khalifa: https://twitter.com/alygkhalifa Contact Josh Prigge: josh@sustridge.com Sustridge: https://www.sustridge.com/  

Matt Lynch joins Sustainable Nation to discuss: Sustainability programs and initiatives at the University of Hawaii Hawaii's ambitious renewable energy future and UH's contributions Reimagining organizational design for sustainability The Hawaii Sustainability in Higher Education Summit Recommendations and advice for sustainability leaders Matt's Final Five responses:   What is one piece of advice you would give other sustainability professionals that might help them in their careers? I'll give the same advice that my grandma gave me: you have two ears and one mouth for a reason. I would say cultivate and practice the skill-set of active listening, and then related to that is go seek out a mentor that can help you with dynamic group process and the skill-set of developing a group design, processes that can facilitate productive meetings. I think if I was to boil down the job description of sustainability professionals, one of the, the minimum qualifications would be something along the lines of the ability to design an agenda that does not result in death by meeting. What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability and regenerative development? I really think that this emergent, I don't know what to call it, I don't know if it's a practice or a lexicon, but there's this sense that we're getting from the field - the leading edge of practitioners are all talking about the need to look at, reimagine our sort of organizational design and the ways that we navigate these organizations. So I've heard different language for it. I think Leith Sharp and her group are using the term "Flow State Organizations;" they've connected with Janine Benyus who is focused on the biomimicry world, and are now coming up with additional terms. Locally, I've heard it referred to as a "network based organization," and I think that this tinkering with our human operating systems is by far the most exciting thing, another exciting piece in the field of sustainability right now. What is one book you'd recommend sustainability professionals read? Hard to go with one. I'm going to say Social Physics, a book by Sandy Pentland who is a mathematician using big data to study behavioral science at MIT. It's really transformed my understanding of how we make decisions individually and as a group. What are some of your favorite resources or tools that really helped you in the work that you do? This is specific to higher ed, but there's a great green schools list that has been in existence for over 10 years, you know when emails lists were a thing, and this has survived because of its utility - and outside of Higher Ed, I've actually have been a long time subscriber to a newsletter called Thoughts from the Frontline and it's published by a hardcore republican hedge fund analyst. I find his financial and geopolitical analysis to be fascinating. He called the mortgage market meltdown. It is not that norm of what a sustainability professional might be paying attention to. So it gives me this completely alternative viewpoint that I can bring back into this practice and I continue to find that a really valuable resource. Finally, where can our listeners go to learn more about you and the work that you're doing at UH? In our sustainability website is http://www.hawaii.edu/sustainability/and we're starting to focus on developing a larger social media presence as well so you can find us there well.

Richard Heinberg is the author of thirteen award-winning books including The Party’s Over; Powerdown; Peak Everything; The End of Growth; and Our Renewable Future, as well as hundreds of articles and essays. He is a Senior Fellow of the Post Carbon Institute and is widely regarded as one of the world’s foremost advocates for a shift away from fossil fuels. He has delivered hundreds of lectures to audiences around the world and has been published in Nature, Wall Street Journal, Christian Science Monitor, and Reuters. Richard Heinberg joins Sustainable Nation to discuss: The current state of energy and its contributions to the climate crisis The shale gas and tight oil bubble Community resiliency The transition to a fossil fuel free future Recommendations and advice for sustainability leaders Richard Heinberg's Final Five: What is one piece of advice you'd give other sustainability professionals that might help them in their careers? I don't know if it's a piece of advice, but I'd just say, hey you're doing the most important work anybody is doing right now, so even if it's tough, keep at it. What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability and regenerative development? One of the things I'm excited about is carbon farming. I think there's a huge opportunity for us to take CO2 out of the atmosphere and put it back in soil, and as a result of that, we could change our whole food system for the better. And we could reverse climate change if everybody switched over to regenerative agriculture practices. Northern California is definitely doing a lot of great work in that area. What is one book you would recommend sustainability professionals read? Sustainability professionals are sort of keeping up with the latest literature on climate and renewable energy and so on. But I would really recommend that sustainable professionals also read some of the classics in the field going back all the way to the seventies and before. Things like Limits to Growth. If you haven't read that book, you really owe it to yourself to study it closely. How are we tracking those predictions from that book? We're very much on track. Not just the team of scientists who produced that book, but also independent groups have gone back and looked at the scenarios and the trajectories that were discussed in Limits to Growth. It's some of the most accurate modeling that's been done on world systems. That's pretty incredible. Especially, all the controversy surrounding that book when it came out. And here we are 40 years later, 50 years almost, and where we're right on track with most of it. It's kind of scary. What are some of your favorite resources or tools that really help you in the work that you do? You know, there's a great website for modeling energy and climate. It's called Climate Interactive. And you can go there and tweak the dials yourself. There's a tool called C Roads that's for carbon emissions, and one called EN Roads that's for working with an energy sources. And again, you can tweak the dials with energy and public policy and so on, and see what actually happens in terms of carbon emissions. If you do that, I think one of the things you learn is that there are no easy answers. There are a lot of tradeoffs and there's no silver bullet. And finally, where can our listeners go to learn more about you and your work? There are a couple of websites I've mentioned for my work, Richard Heiberg.com is a good place to go. I have lots and lots of archived essays there. And then for Post Carbon Institute I would recommend our public website resilience.org. And that's just a fantastic website to look at every morning to see news about resilience work and sustainability. Not just in the US, but also elsewhere in the world. So those are the best.

Jackie is the Chief Sustainability Officer for city of Fort Collins where she oversees the departments of environmental services, economic health, and social sustainability. Fort Collins has some of the most ambitious climate action goals in the world, including carbon neutrality by 2050. Formerly, Jackie worked as the Governor’s State Sustainability Coordinator for Hawaii, where she led the launch of the Aloha+ Challenge with the public-private partnership Hawaii Green Growth. Jackie joins Sustainable Nation to discuss: Leading sustainability programs in local government. Lessons learned from managing sustainability efforts on an island community. Developing and implementing Climate Action Plans. Advice and recommendations for sustainability professionals. Jackie's Final Five Responses: What is one piece of advice you would give other sustainability professionals that might help them in their careers? Besides kind of the being both data driven and value based, the other one I would give is being authentic, because so much of what we need to do to be successful is in forging strong partnerships because we are looking at transforming systems. And so I think bringing authentic servant leadership is going to be critical for us to be successful at that. I think that's what I would really recommend to folks. And also, to just recognize we can't know it all, right? And so we're looking at transforming systems to recognize the assets and strength of being a generalist who can help to connect dots and engage experts or sectors that will help you to accomplish things and not necessarily thinking that you need to be an expert in everything. So that's not possible. And also we miss a lot because we don't engage others expertise. Jackie, what are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability and regenerative development? I think what is exciting for me, Josh, I think about Paul Hawkins Blessed Unrest and he talked about if you brought the indigenous peoples movement and the environmental sustainability movement and the social justice movements together, just the power of that. And I think what I'm excited about is just that there's so much more conversation about equity and affordability in sustainability than there ever was before. And I think just about the new sector allies. I mean, I just was meeting someone from the health sector today, and not only how excited I am about those partnerships, but the lenses and the expertise and the community engagements that the social sector will bring to sustainability is really exciting to me. What is one book you would recommend sustainability professionals read? I know that's a super geeky, but I my did my master's thesis on implementing sustainability plans and policies. Because my question was, why did bad things happen to good plans? And how do we actually honor the planning process by making it happen. And so I've found so much great literature actually from the public administration field actually for local governments for sustainability that are really great. It's not a book, it's more of like a handbook, but I think for sustainability professionals it just is so helpful because it has case studies and also talks to you about what you need to have in place in terms of metrics and goals and partnerships to really execute on the goals you've set. think it’s something like Implementing Sustainability Plans.  But it's been a great tool for me. What are some of your favorite resources or tools that really help you in the work that you do? This could be websites, technologies, software programs, guide books, any type of resources or tools that help you out that you'd recommend. I worked at a state level for the governor of Hawaii and now I'm in a local level and I'm so excited to be part of the Urban Sustainability Directors Network. Being part of that network if you're working at a local level with cities is there's a treasure trove of resources that we share as peers. I can't say enough about that and the whole team here at Fort Collins also, we just joined the government alliance on racial equity. So again, for local governments that are looking at building capacity in terms of supporting equity and inclusion in their communities, the government alliance on racial equity is an incredible resource. So those, you know, in terms of public sector have been just so helpful to me. Finally, where can our listeners go to learn more about you and the work that you're doing to Fort Collins? https://www.fcgov.com/ There's lots to explore there in terms of the sustainability work, the climate work that we're doing on that page and all the related pages.

Bob Willard is a leading expert on quantifying the business value of sustainability strategies. He has given over a thousand presentations, has authored six books, and provides extensive resources for sustainability champions. He serves on the boards of Forum for the Future U.S. and the Future-Fit Foundation.  Bob joins Sustainable Nation to discuss: Selling the business case for sustainability Communicating sustainability benefits The B Corp movement Learning from decades of experience in corporate sustainability Tips and advice for sustainability professionals What is one piece of advice you would give other sustainability professionals that might help them in their careers? Find an issue that you really care about and find an organization that you can partner with to have a lot of leverage on doing something about that issue but start with something that you really care about. It could be a social issue, it could be an environmental issue. You've got to have some energy around that at a personal level or you'll just get worn down and you need to be able to recharge your batteries by recommitting to something that you really care about for whatever reason. And then don't try to do it yourself. Partner with other people and increase your ability to make things happen. What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability and regenerative development? The point that gives me hope is amazingly simple. It's the dramatic plummet in the cost of renewable energy where it's in many jurisdictions on a par with fossil fuels. So that's fantastic. It makes this transition off fossil fuels much more attractive than it was five or 10 years ago. And combined with that is the requirement for companies to be more transparent about their carbon footprint, led by investors and bankers who say that they need to know that in order to make a more informed decision about whether they want to put their money into a company, and it's not only the companies footprint, but it's supply chain or value chain footprint as well. So it's those two things, the drop in renewable energy and the demand for more transparency from investors and bankers, and they have a lot of influence on the mindset of businesses. What is one book you would recommend sustainability professionals read? I need to pick one that's not mine. Andrew Winston is an incredible author on the subject of the business relevance of sustainability. His original book, Green to Gold that he coauthored. I'd put at the top of my list. There are a couple that are a bit older, the Ecology of Commerce, that Paul Hawken wrote many years ago. His prose is as close to poetry as you can imagine. And he's just so good at expressing the obvious in terms of trying to get your attention. So those two books, Natural Capitalism is a bible for me. The one that Amory Lovins and Hunter Lovins and Paul Hawken wrote there. I've got a library surrounding me right now that are just phenomenal books. So, I'll stop there, but there's no lack of really, really good stuff in it there. What are some of your favorite resources or tools that really help you in the work that you do? I subscribed to a bunch of news clip services, Triple Pundit and Green Bizz, whole bunch of those. And that to me is a daily window into what's moving and shaking out there on the sustainability and business front. So, I use them as a lens as to what reports I want to drill down into what a book I want to take another look at what websites I want to track down. So, to me it's that window that's the most important resource. It's the news clips that gives you a nice little soundbite as to what's going on and then you can decide which of those are most relevant to the projects that you're working on at the time, Sustainable Brands, Environmental Leader, all excellent resources that give daily emails and all that great information on what's happening. I think there were about a dozen, I should probably check this out before this call, but there's a better, doesn't that I subscribed to and it doesn't take long. Just take a quick look at them, see which ones are of interest to you and it's a great reminder of how much is going on out there. It's very energizing. Yeah. And finally, where can our listeners go to learn more about you and your work? That's pretty straight forward the website to help people do that. So sustainabilityadvantage.com is my website. That gives a brief overview of the six books that I've written gives you a sense of some of the other resources that are available, some of the spreadsheets, some of the dashboards, some of the videos, most of which are free, uh, cause I really do think we need to be able to make it easier for people to access tools that are going to hopefully be useful to them. and, um, uh, yeah, that's a, that's a pretty good window into who I am, what I do, um, and resources that may be useful to people in, uh, in the work that they're doing.  

Nurit Katz joins Sustainable Nation to discuss: Leading sustainability change in a large organization Updates on sustainability programs and research initiatives at UCLA Information on the Sustainable LA Grand Challenge Advice and recommendations for sustainability leaders Nurit Katz Final Five responses: What is one piece of advice you would give other sustainability professionals that might help them in their careers? One piece of advice,  it's interesting, this wasn't what I planned to say, but recently a colleague, one of our alumni who I regard very highly, um, Jamie Knack, shared a book that she had read called The Power of a Positive No. And I've now gotten it and shared it with my team. And I think in these roles you're pulled in so many different directions, that actually learning how to kind of prioritize how to say no. So many of us are such yes-people that we get really excited to help everyone at all times. And sometimes that in of itself is not sustainable. So as I say to many of my colleagues, you can't sustain the university or the world if you don't sustain yourself. So, I think, you know, learning how to share, redirect and make sure that you take care of yourself is actually really critical to be a successful professional in this field. And then in terms of more traditional career advice, this field changes so quickly that I would really recommend people get out there and attend events and talk to people. So much of what I learned was that way, going to panels, getting out there, networking and it's not as set of a field where you can just read one book or guide on how to be a lawyer. It's just changing so rapidly. And so I didn't even know, for example, that the title of director of a regenerative development existed until I heard you speak on a panel a while back and the role chief sustainability officer didn't exist until some years ago. So I think if people want to stay up to date, they got to get out there, meet people, hear what programs are going on and stay current. Great advice. What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability and regenerative development? That's tough. You know, part of why I ended up with a job like chief sustainability officer is that I have always been sort of a jack of all master of none generalist type person. I get so excited about all of it. Water to energy, transportation, food, environmental justice and social equity issues. But I think one of the things that's really exciting right now is people are starting to recognize the importance of separation technologies and we've spent so much of human innovation combining materials and putting things together and there's such great potential in figuring out how to break them back apart again until they're useful parts. And I think there's a lot of untapped potential in that area, which really relates to kind of taking what would be a waste product and being able to upcycle it and use it in new and exciting ways What is one book you'd recommend to other sustainability professionals.  You know, it's kind of an oldie but goody, but I happened to love Ray Anderson's, Confessions of a Radical Industrialist. I think his journey on the sustainable business side is really worth a read, but there's really so many that I recommend to my students and it's really hard to choose. So I guess for today that's the one I'll, I'll throw out there. What are some of your favorite resources or tools that really help you in the work that you do? Well, again, a lot of great resources. I am fond of collaborations and sharing best practices among professionals. So we have a group we get together of higher education professionals here in southern California and then more broadly, through the California higher education sustainability conference or through AASHE. So getting together with colleagues both in our sector and across sectors I think is really valuable. You know, lots of good resources through some of those organizations in terms of tools and guides that people can use. We definitely work with a lot of kind of cloud based tools now and collaborative work sharing tools. So those can be handy as well. And where can our listeners go to learn more about the work you are leading at UCLA? So ucla sustainability's website is sustain.ucla.edu. You can reach me and my team at sustainability@ucla.edu. That email address will come direct to our central office. Twitter handle is @sustainucla and it's really an enormous team working on these issues. I'm just a nexus and connector here of just an incredible group of professionals across our operational and academic and research areas. And so I'm happy to be that connector. If anyone is interested in any of the fabulous work being done here, I can help point you to the folks who are working on those programs and we'd love to hear from you.  

Gil Friend, Chief Sustainability Officer at the City of Palo Alt, joins Sustainable Nation to discuss: Leading sustainability in silicon valley The role of a Chief Sustainability Officer in government Addressing the complex issue of transportation in cities Advice for other sustainability professionals Gil Friend's Final Five responses: What is one piece of advice you'd like to give sustainability professionals that might help them in their careers? For sustainability professional, I would say diversify your education and background. We need to be thinking about biology and ecology. We need to be thinking about business and finance. We need to be thinking about physics and engineering. Need to be thinking about a politics and persuasion and fundamentally how to have engaged powerful conversations, even with people who don't see things the same way we do. What are you most excited about today in the world of sustainability and regenerative development? Let me answer both of those separately. In the world sustainability, I'm most excited about the growing attention to getting the prices right, to exposing the subsidies that support the fossil fuel industry, and to putting a price on carbon so the marketplace can actually help us make intelligent decisions about where we invest and where we buy. With regard to regenerative development, I think just the fact that that word is on the landscape is a very hopeful sign. You know, sustainability in itself not a terribly exciting concept. It speaks to kind of keeping things the way they have been in the way that they've been isn't good enough. So more and more people are talking about how do we build regenerative economies that actually grow the creative and productive capacity of our communities. And I'm pleased to be participating in a first conference on building a regenerative economy scheduling San Francisco for early May. So we'll see more about that. And what was the name of that conference? Regenerative Economies What is one book you'd recommend sustainability professionals read? Drawdown. Recently released the edited by Paul Hawken with a team of a couple of hundred, a brilliant researchers who've looked in detail, how do you slow climate change, but how do you reverse it? How do you slow the emissions of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, but actually draw them down, reduced carbon in the atmosphere. A hundred analytically vetted, detailed supported strategies that can actually do that. Full of detail, full of inspiration, a really critical handbook for us all right now. What are some tools or resources that really help you in the work that you do? Great question. I would say the general class of visual visualization tools, I find really powerful. Tools that help people see the trends and the patterns in the data. Not Looking through reviews of spreadsheets or pages and pages of text, but simple pictures and graphs that show the change of trends over time. The ratios of things we care about. So not just energy use, but energy use per dollar of revenue per capita population. And the comparative benchmarks that show my city, my company, my department in my household is doing compared to others, because that's one of the most powerful ways of unlocking, not just the competitive spirit, but the sense of possibility. If someone is doing the same thing that I'm doing and doing it better than me, in theory, I could do it better. There's something to learn there. So that's been very powerful tool for us. Finally, where can our listeners follow you and the work that you are leading at Palo Alto? Thank you for asking. They can follow me on twitter at Gfriend, and on linkedin. They can follow on my website at natlogic.com. You'll see my writing there and I've just started doing a monthly column at Green Biz. First one just published last week was about how businesses can learn to navigate the anthropocene. And I think we don't have time for the definition, but you will find it right at the top of the article there.

Katie Wallace, CSR Program Manager at New Belgium Brewing Company, joins Sustainable Nation to discuss: The history of sustainability leadership at New Belgium Brewing The importance of life cycle assessment and materiality assessments The benefits of being a 100% employee-owned company Advice and insights to other sustainability leaders.  Katie's Final Five Question responses: What is one piece of advice you would give other sustainability professionals that might help them in their careers? Stay informed and be bold. This is not a time to be shy about taking actions. Follow the passion because we need a lot of focused action right now and I would say ask for help. So many of us are kind of making it up as we're going along, and being vulnerable and opening up and asking for help is not a bad thing. What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability? Just to pick one that's tough. I think emerging feminine leadership, and I don't mean that just for women, but I mean feminine attributes and collective inclusive practices for both men and women. It's really exciting and I think that's changing the way that businesses run. Also, a lot of cool carbon capture technologies and other great innovations happening in this space. What is one book you would recommend sustainability professionals read? I would say Jonathan Haidt's book The Righteous Mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion, because sustainability unfortunately has become politicized and can still be divisive, and I really think that's one of the failures of the movement thus far. And so I think that Jonathan Haidt’s book The Righteous Mind provides a lot of insight into why we think differently and how we can come together, because unifying around this issue is really the one thing that will help us be successful. What are some of your favorite resources or tools that help you in the work that you do? Could be websites, associations, technologies, software programs, any type of tools that help you in your work. Well, looking forward, I'm going to say the Sustainable Nation Podcast, but for us, I think the B Corp assessment is just a really nice way to organize it. And it's free for anyone to use, you don't have to go through the formal certification to start, although we've seen a lot of market benefits and recruitment benefits to that certification. But it's a free tool out there, measures the impact you're having on coworkers, community and the environment. And I think it provides an excellent roadmap for moving in the right direction. And then of course, like sticking with the science and contextually based schools, I think science-based targets. It's an interesting model that's emerging right now that a lot of businesses like ours are starting to follow those protocols. And finally, where can our listeners, go to learn more about you and your work? Well, crack open a beer, go get yourself a Fat Tire, Voodoo Ranger, or Sour Saison is my favorite right now. I also missed the most important part that if it's not fun, it's not sustainable. And so, we have to remember to take time to enjoy all these things we're working hard to protect. So, www.newbelgium.com, has a lot of information and it will continue to have more around our social and environmental efforts. Personally, my profile on LinkedIn has some interesting information about rituals and belonging in the workplace and how we unify around this movement from the ground up.

Aurora Winslade, the Director of Sustainability at Swarthmore College, joins Sustainable Nation to discuss: Sustainability in higher education Swarthmore College's internal carbon pricing program Advice on implementing an internal carbon pricing program Advice and insights for other sustainability professionals Aurora's Final Five Questions (transcribed): What is one piece of advice you'd give other sustainability professionals that might help them in their careers? Learn how to design systems that engage others to be the problem solvers and the implementers of the solutions. What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability? I'm excited about the way that those of us in sustainability are starting to embrace the idea of being change-facilitators and leading change, and integrating the work that we'd been doing on a more technical level, creating metrics and and implementing solutions with creating healthy organizations. Because that is fundamental to solving our challenges, is to be able to work together and collaborate across our organizations and adapt to the pace of change, and scale it up at a rapid rate. I'm starting to see a lot more of that sort of systems thinking being integrated into our work. What is one book you'd Recommend Sustainability Professionals read? I have to give you two. I couldn't narrow it down to one. They're very different. The first one is Crucial Conversations. It's a tool for talking when stakes are high. It's written by New York Times best-selling authors and it walks you through how to build your skills in having the difficult conversations that all of us have to have throughout our lives and are particularly important in this kind of role, not only being able to have in yourself but helping others be able to have them because conflict will arise and it can be a source of strength, and one can get better at it. So that's one thing that I found really transformational in my life is learning how to get better and it continually getting better. The second book I think I'm really excited about right now is I recently saw Paul Hawkin,  share his work with project drawdown, the other side of it is what are the actual solutions to climate change. His book is called Drawdown. And they've analyzed using data and creating a model with the best research that out that's out there. The top 100 solutions to climate change. And I was really struck by how number six is educating girls. And number seven is family planning and taken together. Those two solutions could represent the biggest, the single biggest solution to climate change, understanding balancing the interpersonal and change management skills are crucial conversations offers with sort of looking at what the data tells us and using that to drive our strategies. Which project drawdown is trying to give us some really concrete information about those two books. What are some of your favorite resources or tools that really help you in your work? I do recommend the Facilitators Guide to Participatory Decision Making, sort of sneaking in a third book there, but it's really a set of tools for how to facilitate group process.  And finally, where can people go to learn more about you and the work that you're doing at Swarthmore? You're welcome to visit the Swarthmore college sustainability website.  I also organize each summer retreat for sustainability professionals. It's primarily for higher education now every year we have some cross-sector participation which really lends a rich perspective. And this year it will be June 24th through the 27th here at Swarthmore college through the Association for the advancement of Sustainability in higher education act, which is a wonderful organization that itself has a lot of great resources. And also, I don't think I mentioned, but you may have earlier, that I teach leading change in organizations through the Bard College Sustainable MBA program. And that's a really terrific program that offers a great way for working professionals to earn an MBA where sustainability is really big. And I would welcome the contact from anyone who would like to continue the conversation. 

Jay Coen Gilbert joins Sustainable Nation to discuss: Creating and growing the B Corp movement Updates on the state of B Corp worldwide The importance of an inclusive economy Advice and insights for sustainability leaders Jay Coen Gilbert Final Five responses: What is one piece of advice you would give other sustainability professionals that might help them in their careers? Reach out, reach out, reach out. There's power in community that doesn't exist inside your company and seek out or build for yourself a robust community of practice that can help you accelerate your learning and the progress that your company will make. You'll move much faster when you're working with people than if you're working on your own. What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainable business? Actually, I would say what I'm most excited about is the work around building an inclusive economy. I think that the work in sustainability is beginning to orient itself more directly and clearly and explicitly with the here and now needs of everyday people who are feeling left behind. I think that's one of the most exciting things that I see happening right now. And I see that leadership coming not just from sort of social first B Corps, but even from folks who are considered to be a sort of an environmental first B Corp are beginning to do work to build an inclusive economy in their businesses and their supply chains in a way that I hadn't seen two, three, five years ago. What does one book you would recommend sustainability professionals read? What is one book that I would recommend sustainability professionals read? You know what, it's a great question. I don't think it's a book about sustainability. And I think that the most important things that I've read have been things that reminded me about the "why" we're doing this and not the "how." So I think one of the most important texts that I think that has been read is Martin Luther King's Letter From Birmingham Jail. I think it's one of the most important pieces of writing in the twentieth century. And I think it speaks to this particular moment in history and not just to one from 55 years ago. It really issues a clear call to action, and asks us to really question whether we are being to moderate in our demands of ourselves or companies, or the companies that we are doing business with. And so for me, that's not a book, but since most people don't have time to read whole books anyway, I would say, get yourself a copy. Google "letter from Birmingham jail." Read that. And think about how it's calling us to move from a place of moderation to a place of being drum majors for justice and sustainability and what that means in our current environment. What are some of your favorite resources or tools that really helped you in the work that you do? I'd say the most important resources or the people that I work with every day. I learned a ton from the folks at B Lab, not just in our North American organization but through all of our global partners. And so the most important tool I have is the phone and the computer, so that I can be in touch with leaders around the country and around the world who can tell me all the cool things that they're doing, and then I can benefit from their wisdom and their innovation. And finally, where can our listeners go to learn more about you and the work that you're leading? Bcorporation.net