E+E Leader: Sustainability Unveiled
Welcome to "Sustainability Unveiled," a podcast that delves into the essential domains of Sustainability, Environmental & Energy Management, Compliance, Global Supply Chains, and more. Prepare for insightful conversations that dig deeper than the superficial, enriched by our distinctive human approach that amplifies expert analysis.
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E+E Leader: Sustainability Unveiled
Sustainability, Profitability, and Purpose: A Conversation with Shel Horowitz
What if the businesses we often view as the problem could actually become the solution? Join us as we sit down with Shel Horowitz, a veteran activist who has turned his sights on harnessing the power of ethical business practices to spark sustainable change. Shel challenges the conventional perception of business as a negative force, revealing its untapped potential to drive positive impact.
Explore the compelling stories of industry giants like Toyota and General Mills, who are reshaping corporate social responsibility by aligning it with core business values. Shel shares insights on how forging alliances within and across industries can transform ethical initiatives into concrete, community-benefitting actions. Discover how collaboration and steadfast commitment to ethical practices can forge a path toward sustainable progress.
Our conversation doesn't stop at business; we reflect on the broader societal shifts since 1956, noting strides made in racial and gender equality while acknowledging the hurdles that remain. Shel highlights the unexpected role of large corporations, like Walmart, in democratizing access to sustainable products. In a world where sustainability is becoming mainstream, we underscore the necessity of strategic communication and audience-tailored messaging. Shel calls upon individuals and businesses alike to leverage the immense potential of collaboration and creative communication to build a sustainable future. Tune in for an episode rich with insights that could revolutionize your perspective on business and its role in societal change.
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Welcome to another episode of Sustainability Unveiled Today.
Speaker 1:We're honored to have Shel Horowitz, widely regarded as the Sherpa of social transformation. Join us. Shel has dedicated his life to inspiring change, from his early activism to his groundbreaking work, combining grassroots movements, sustainability and business profitability. We'll explore how Shell's journey from activist to advocate offers insights for today's leaders navigating the challenges challenges of meaningful change. Welcome to another episode of Sustainability Unveiled Today. We're honored to have Shell Horowitz, widely regarded as the Sherpa of social transformation. Join us. Shell has dedicated his life to inspiring change, from his early activism to his groundbreaking work, combining grassroots movements, sustainability and business profitability. We'll explore how Shell's journey from activist to advocate offers insights for today's leaders navigating the challenges of meaningful change.
Speaker 1:Welcome to another episode of Sustainability Unveiled Today. We're honored to have Shel Horowitz, widely regarded as the Sherpa of social transformation. Join us. Shel has dedicated his life to inspire Shel. Thank you again for being here with us today on Sustainability Unveiled. We're really excited to really jump into the conversation. You've been in the world for those who don't know, you've been in the world of activism for a very, very long time, going all the way back to your early days in New York and even being at the first Earth Day. So what about those experiences has really set you on this path that has really become your life's work.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, I became an activist at age 12, a few months before the first Earth Day, which reinforced the activist commitment and opened up the environmental side of it. But I went to a Vietnam War demonstration and one of the speakers said the Vietnam War is an undeclared war. And I actually hadn't known that and I had, you know, inculcated all these lessons from social studies class about how the checks and balances work and how the government has these three parts that protect us from overreach of any one part, and that all came tumbling down. It seems just kind of prescient now as we're going through a similar phase as a country. But that made me question everything. So then, a few months later, the first Earth Day happened. By then I was 13., much older. This makes a whole lot of sense. I'm just going to close the door because we're getting some noise infiltrating.
Speaker 2:But yeah, so those two events kind of propelled me to look for different ways of being in the world and different ways that the society could be in the world, and then eventually finding my way back to the more mainstream business arena, which I was slow to come to. Coming from that background, you can imagine that I saw business to some degree as inherently evil. And it took me a while to overcome that and to realize that business can be not only okay but could actually be a force for good. And so the real big jump in that thinking came in late 1999, when a developer decided that the mountain next to the state park behind my house was going to be the perfect place to put 40 McMansions, going all the way up to the ridgeline and ruining the view and having major environmental consequences. And while all the experts were going, oh this is terrible, there's nothing we can do, I went out and started a movement and we saved the mountain and that was incredibly exciting.
Speaker 2:And I thought it would take us five years and I thought we'd have the first meeting and 20 people would show up and five would get seriously involved and we would drag this out and make the developer's life uncomfortable enough that he would eventually give up. Well, 70 people came to the meeting, 30 more called or emailed and said I want to be part of this, I can't make that day. Roughly 35 were in the core after that meeting and we won in 13 months flat. So one year plus one month that's more than impressive. It's very. It still amazes me now that we were able to do it that, not that I thought all along, as I said, that we would win, but I thought it would be a much longer struggle.
Speaker 1:I was going to say why do you think it was such a shortened timeframe from what your expectations were to begin with?
Speaker 2:Part of it is because I took by then I had a 20-year career in marketing and I took lessons from that world into the world of activism, and so we had enormous press coverage. For example, we had two local papers that covered us extensively. One of them gave us, like I don't know, 60 articles plus letters to the editor. And we had some TV and radio coverage. We even got into the Boston Globe, which is a hundred miles away but considers itself a statewide newspaper. And so we had that.
Speaker 2:We had a near consensus that this project was not a good idea and the developer and maybe five of his friends were in favor of it. And like I would go into town hall to get a copy of some document and the town clerk, who was, on most issues, not aligned with me politically, she would say stuff like well, I'm supposed to charge you for this, but since it's for save the mountain, wink, wink. So we had allies in unexpected places. We had allies in the business community, we had allies in the colleges, we had allies from local everybody. Pretty much nobody wanted to see that thing built.
Speaker 2:So that was a big thing. And at the very first press release I wrote, said developer's name has wildly underestimated the love that people here have for that mountain, and I was right. Wildly underestimated the love that people here have for that mountain, and I was right. So we mobilized that love and we passed three ordinances in town that made it impossible, basically, for any future developer to build on mountains in town, and we did just all sorts of things. At one point some of our people were tabling at the farmer's market in the next town over and the developer and his wife happened to come strolling through and she turned to them and said you people are everywhere.
Speaker 2:Like yep, we are Get used to it.
Speaker 1:And we're growing, and we're growing Exactly.
Speaker 2:We turned in. How many thousands of petitions do we have? I live in a town of 5,000 people Okay so small town. Small town and surrounded by two towns of 30 Okay so small town. Various things. They didn't know what to make of us. They had never seen a force like this in our town's politics before.
Speaker 1:Especially back then I mean.
Speaker 2:Well, we did have the internet, but it was early and primitive. We had a listserv on e-groups, if you remember that, and most people at that time didn't even have web access. This was 1999 and 2000. So it was different from how it would be today. But then, when the dust settled after we won, I started thinking about well, we did all of these things from the marketing world to make this activist campaign happen. What can I bring from activism into the business world? And that's when I started focusing on this intersection of finding the sweet spot where profitability meets environmental and social good. And it's bespoke. It's different for every single company. It depends on what your core strengths are as a company. So there's a lot of business analysis that goes into any time.
Speaker 1:I'm proposing a solution for someone and it's very exciting it is very exciting and I mean I just it makes me think of what were those initial conversations like when you started, you know, transforming how can environmentalism impact businesses and bridging that gap and making the connection. Financialism impact businesses and bridging that gap and making the connection. And what were the reactions from the business owners or shareholders even smaller companies that you were working with that maybe had not ever considered the work that you're bringing to them?
Speaker 2:Well, they were excited by it because, number one, I was able to show them the market potential that the research over and over again, and I've written four books on this. The most recent is this one, guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World yes, and that one has lots and lots of references to studies of the impact that socially conscious businesses can have and also of the impact that social and environmental consciousness within the business can have on the business, and the numbers are phenomenal. And if you think about it, it makes sense. Why would you not want something that is going to lower your costs by, for example, lowering what you're paying for waste because you're generating much less of it, lowering what you're paying for fuel because you're using much less of it, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and also gives you some price stability, because consumers are more willing to pay for something that they feel is doing good in the world and for doing business with companies that are doing good in the world that are doing good.
Speaker 1:I was just about to say that there's plenty of studies and I know we've covered them too where consumers are willing to pay more for products that they know are sustainably sourced or companies that really do have an ESG sustainability strategy and are transparent. They're not just putting information out there, because anybody can throw data and information up, but the transparency aspect is key in today's world, as I know you've seen.
Speaker 2:Totally, and it's also it ripples through in things like it's really hard to be a company that treats your workers badly if you're trying to do this stuff, because you have to start by looking in your own backyard or your own factory floor and also because the employee loyalty benefits that you get from doing this go away if you're treating people like crap. So there are.
Speaker 1:I mean there are and they'll make it known. I mean, we've, we've all seen those posts on LinkedIn which can come across in various ways, or you know, when you're when you're looking at job reviews from people who have worked at specific companies there. There are platforms for that now. So transparency, again, is such a key aspect to any type of business, regardless of the size of it, and not only stronger, exactly.
Speaker 2:Only stronger Now. Yeah, it behooves you as a company head to do the right thing, because otherwise it's going to come back and smack you.
Speaker 1:Exactly, and the many conversations that I have had with you know, whether it be a CEO or a sustainability director or a manager or advocate is we don't expect perfection, and I think companies once they realize okay, we don't need to be perfect, but we can show that, yeah, we've made some mistakes, but we're learning from those mistakes and we're moving forward. And these are the steps that we are taking to get us to where we would like to be, and we want to show our stakeholders, internal and external, exactly what we are doing and to admit that it's a process.
Speaker 2:Nobody, not even Patagonia or flooring, jumps into this with every single thing addressed all at once. You start with the small steps and the ones that have the highest cost return. That will start earning you profits very quickly, and then you can use some of the money you're saving to go deeper and deeper and deeper. And I think most at this point people realize that the Greta Thunberg absolutism model doesn't really work in business, that you have to give people the credit to accept where they are and that they're moving forward if they're moving forward and you reward that, even though you say that's not enough and you have to do more. And I'm really particularly concerned about X, y and Z. Can you address that in your next six months? Can you show us what you're going to do about that as opposed to? You're going to do about that as opposed to? You're not perfect, we're not doing business with you.
Speaker 1:Exactly Because that's not reality. Not reality. Now, advocacy work, I'm sure, has a lot of ups and downs throughout the process, and you mentioned earlier when you are working with businesses, you can lay out all of the data for them to look at as to why they should implement a specific strategy or focus on something like that. But what about? How do you handle the pushback? Even if you give you know the stakeholders internal stakeholders all of the data that says look, your profits are going to increase, how do you deal with those who philosophically don't agree necessarily with what you are proposing to them?
Speaker 2:Well, I make the bottom line case. I say these are how your revenues can go up and these are how your costs can go down. And lower revenues plus sorry, higher revenues plus lower costs equals higher profits and everybody likes that. And I also remind them that the costs of not going forward are significant, that if you want to have consumers protesting at your stockholders meeting or if you want to have people boycotting your product because they're not at all convinced that you're doing the right thing, how are you going to deal with that? How are you going to deal with the front page picture of your CEO being let off in handcuffs for raiding the company treasury or getting sued for environmental violations? That could have been avoided in the first place if you had a strategy. So there's the carrot and the stick and the interesting thing is most of the people who come to me they don't need convincing. They come to me and they say I need to convince my boss, but they're in.
Speaker 2:So having allies on the ground is really crucial and I went to several years ago it was before the pandemic. I moderated a couple of panels for something called the Responsible Business Summit and I was really fascinated that I'd say two-thirds of the people there were from major corporations. Okay, we're talking Toyota, we're talking General Mills, you know Fortune 50. They're all in. They all understand the business case. They're all in. They all understand the business case. And sometimes I did wonder why Ford chose several years ago that their charity partner was going to be Susan Komen Foundation. There's nothing wrong with breast cancer research, but I didn't see how it related to a company that's-.
Speaker 1:How it aligned with them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I didn't see the alignment and I think it's good to have an alignment that like, if you're, let's just say, timberland and you make shoes, that maybe you're looking at how you can provide shoes for people who don't have them in some distant country with some of the revenues and this is Tom's Shoes actually does that. And the sunglasses people.
Speaker 1:Yes, they do.
Speaker 2:You know there's a lot of companies doing that. Glasses people yes, they do. You know there's a lot of companies doing that. And then my friend, dean Sycon, who, until he retired recently and gave the company to his employees, ran a lovely coffee company called Dean's Beans. From here, not only was every bean he ever sourced of either coffee or cacao, organically grown and fair trade or, better, certified, but he took profits and said to his growers okay, your village gets to decide on a project with this money that I will supply and I will provide technical guidance, but you're in charge. And that model was able to do in places like Rwanda, in places like Guatemala, where there's a real need and where this stuff can do a huge difference, just like micro-lending, except that there's nothing to pay back.
Speaker 1:Has he, as the person that you are referring to? Has he been able to help other businesses?
Speaker 2:kind of set up a similar model, well he's written a book on it called Java Trekker, and trekker is spelled with two Ks. That came out like 20 years ago with Chelsea Green, and he's spoken at coffee conferences. So he's done what he can and again now he's retired from the business, gave it to his employees and is writing fiction.
Speaker 1:But for him, you know, he's done what he has wanted to do, he's been successful and now he gets to enjoy his time writing.
Speaker 2:And he had a previous career as a labor lawyer.
Speaker 1:Never too late, right? Never too late to change it up.
Speaker 2:I love him because he's so ethical that he actually was offered I think it was an exclusive contract to do the Coffee for Keurig when they first came out, and he turned it down because of the plastic waste Before you even said it.
Speaker 1:That's what I was going to say.
Speaker 2:He even helped develop some compostable cardboard-ish Keurig containers that I've now seen on the market. I don't know if he had anything to do with the ones that actually came out, but I know he was working on that in the 2000s. Wow.
Speaker 1:I want to get back to. You mentioned that you've spoken at some of the biggest forums with companies the Fortune 50 companies and what's one message that you really hope sticks with not just the CEOs there, but the next generation of change makers that are a part of these forums?
Speaker 2:I'm going to give you two messages, because I think in the immediate moment that we're recording this, there needs to be a message that you don't back down to bullies and you continue doing the good things that your company has started to do and shown to be profitable for the last 10 or 20 or 50 or 100 years and you don't get cowed by the threats and the rhetoric and the nonsense that's coming out right now.
Speaker 2:Hopefully that is a short-term need.
Speaker 2:So longer term, just remember that when you collaborate with your consumers, with your developers of products, with your supply chain, you have a lot more power than if you try to do it alone, just as if, within your company organization, if you're the only person championing the cause, it's not going to happen unless you are the CEO, and even then it's going to happen with great resistance, whereas if you go to HR and you say this is how this is going to resistance.
Speaker 2:Whereas if you go to HR and you say this is how this is going to benefit you and you go to marketing and say, oh, look at these cool angles we're going to be able to give you. And you go to production and you say look how lower you're going to have a bill to dispose of the waste and you build the coalition internally, then you can do amazing things. And then, beyond that, then you can become the industry standard and reach out through your industry groups to influence other people to do what you're doing. Yes, you lose some of the competitive advantage, but being first is still an advantage. I think, for example, recycled toilet paper and Markel which, marilyn, you probably are just at the southern edge of their supply area.
Speaker 1:I was about to say I don't recognize the brands, but I will be looking to see where it is New.
Speaker 2:York City, philadelphia, that middle Atlantic, I think they may go down to DC but they may not. But anyway they went bankrupt in I think it was 2006, 2007, something like that. And the guy who came in as a turnaround CEO noticed that they had been recycling since 1950. They had been making their toilet paper from recycled paper and they forgot to tell anybody. So he built a whole rebranding around. That Amazing stuff Pulled the company out of bankruptcy. It became the best-selling recycled toilet paper in the country.
Speaker 2:And again, this is a regional brand. This is not Seventh Generation or Scott. That's got national penetration. And I came up to tour their plant in New Jersey years ago and when I did I stayed with my in-laws and my mother-in-law said I always buy Markel because it's recycled. And I thought well, you always buy Markel because not only is it recycled but it's right next to the Scott on the shelf of the store you were already in. Because she's what I call a lazy green, I divide the market into deep greens like you and me, lazy greens like her, and then neutral or hostile non-greens. Non- greens.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's plenty of those, unfortunately, that are making their voices known at this exact time when we're recording this there are, but they're a small minority. I think they have a lot of points and not that much reach. I agree. I agree the plant was an interesting experience, I'm sure to just see the production. I had the chance to go to Jakarta last year with Asia Pulvin Paper and see their production and talk about their sustainability plan and how they're growing and it's pretty amazing how it all works together there.
Speaker 2:There are examples everywhere you look, in any industry.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, couldn't agree more with you there. Now, you know, when we were talking prior to the, prior to this conversation, we talked about how, you know, sarah and I, as owners of Annie Leader, we, you know, our goal with this goal, with Sustainability Unveiled, is really to make that connection to the next generation or somebody who might not be open to this world of activism, sustainable leadership. So, for those who are interested in advocacy and not necessarily starting a movement but joining a movement, but they really aren't sure how or where to start, what advice do you have for them?
Speaker 2:Well, first of all, if you're working in the business world, use business-friendly language. So you don't use the word activism, particularly because activism those are the people that are protesting their corporate share meeting. Those are the ones who are writing nasty letters to the editor about them. That's how it's perceived. So I use it and say going beyond sustainability to regenerativity, and regenerative is something that the business world can wrap its brain around. So and I say it's not sustainability is staying in the same place and that's not getting any worse, and that's a good first step. But that really we want to make things better and we can. We have that power and we see it in my goodness.
Speaker 2:When the UN sustainability goals were introduced, I thought, well, this is nice rhetoric, but nobody's going to do anything. Boy, was I wrong. Those have been markers for progress and, oh my goodness, just steps toward ending hunger, for example, or toward empowering women. I never thought I would see in some of these countries. And it's become mainstream. And you know, it's just mind blowing how far we've come, how now, when I started with environmental work, we were so fringy and now, as I said, you see Fortune 50 companies having these discussions, not just having these discussions, but having these departments.
Speaker 1:I thought when I started this work.
Speaker 2:I might get consulting gigs with companies like that, but they all have their own staff. They don't need me. The smaller companies, the ones with 10 employees, they need me. They don't have a full-time sustainability person and they don't necessarily have the mindset or the resources to do some of the things that the big companies are doing, and so for them you have to go very bottom line, because it's their money you're dealing with. It's not just the company's money, it's totally intertwined. So you have to really look at what are the things you can do. That's going to have a payback of two months or five months. Start with those things and then, as they gradually come along I mean my own journey.
Speaker 2:I became a vegetarian in 1973. I joined my first food co-op in 1975. I started my first real organic garden I won't count the one I had in Brooklyn, that was 1982. So, step by step, and now I can actually talk on a deep level. I've spoken at something called the Sustainable Food Summit. I gave a keynote there. Familiar with that, yeah, yeah. So that's my journey. In that particular slice has come a long way. But we just actually got our first hybrid car three weeks ago.
Speaker 2:And it's I know you had just gotten it the first time we met. So how has it been? It's been great. I really like it and it handles way better than our 2012 Honda that we still have. But this is the first new car we've bought since 2005 and in 2000, no 2004. And at that time the hybrid options really weren't there yet. So it's not like we've deliberately bought gas cars. It's just we inherited one car and we bought another one used very cheap, and it's just not worked out to buy a new car. But we knew all along that when we did buy something new, it was going to be something much greener, and this is yes.
Speaker 2:I just unplugged it shortly before we talked. It was in overnight using household current. We didn't build anything special for it. I have an extension cord that goes from that outlet on my house to my driveway.
Speaker 1:Hey, you know it works. As we said before, we have an EV and we have solar on our roof and we have our own charger that we charge, you know, the car at night. So you know everyone can do their part in some aspect. Our big goal this year, as a side note, is to start composting, because that's we have the space and it's we've talked about it, but that is something that we are going to start.
Speaker 2:It's actually really easy. We have a three pit system. We dig three holes and we start filling one of them and cover it with leaves, and then, after several months, we start the next one, and then, by the time that next one is done, the first one is ready to put into the garden.
Speaker 1:Excellent. Well, we'll talk more off this episode about that. So you can just tell me what I need to get and what I need to do.
Speaker 2:The point where I was going with this is that all of us can take individual steps. One of the things that I'm really concerned about is the way we squander water, and that's unlike the issue with oil, which is mostly a big corporate use and we individual householders are really a minor part of it. That doesn't mean we shouldn't do our part. I have solar on my roof too. We have our organic garden and all the rest of it, but especially in the Northeast, we are trained from a very early age Like when we brush our teeth, we turn the water on full. We leave it running three minutes. We waste I don't know five gallons of water Every time we brush our teeth. I brush my teeth Like I live in the California drought.
Speaker 2:I turn the water on to wet my toothbrush just a trickle, turn it off again, add the toothpaste, brush my teeth, turn it on another trickle to rinse the toothbrush. You know and I'm using teaspoons and I think water is a very, very undervalued resource because most of us don't realize that we're even paying anything for it. What we're paying is very, very little, and so if every person listening to this call brush your teeth that way, wash your hands on that principle, did whatever you're doing with water that way watered your garden in the morning and evening, when more of the water stays in the ground. The impact would be enormous. I don't think there would be a California drought if everybody in this country was doing that. No, I think that's great.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so many different. Every just think creatively about how we use resources.
Speaker 1:I mean my son this morning reminded me that I had the water on for our sink but in my defense I was cleaning out a pot and letting water go in there. I'm sure you've seen that with your kids and letting water go in there. But you know, it might even I mean I'm sure you've seen that with your kids. I know your kids are adults now but I'm sure the work that you've done, not just personally but professionally, has also transcended into you know, the work that your, what your kids are doing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they both have quite a bit of activity in the social change world, and my daughter actually works for a effective altruism company and my younger one teaches music in public schools.
Speaker 1:Oh, good for him.
Speaker 2:It's a different kind.
Speaker 1:As a former teacher as my husband likes to say, I retired 10 years ago but as someone who spent 10 and a half years in the school system, I know what he's going through and what he's gone through as a teacher, they actually use them pronouns.
Speaker 2:They don't go by he, they go by they them.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'm sorry about that. Yes, thank you for correcting me. I appreciate that. Now you've been at this for decades, what keeps you going? What keeps you going to that next project, working with that next company?
Speaker 2:I am fundamentally wired to be optimistic, I think, and I've done some things to build that up. You know you can be optimistic and still get totally sunk, but for one thing, I do a gratitude journal every single day and I post it publicly on Facebook. So I am accountable to my fans. I have to find something to be grateful for every single day, even the hard days, like the day my stepfather was hit by a distracted driver and killed. So that day's journey is all about what I had learned from him in 50 years of knowing him. Wow, you know, and it was a hard day. It was the hard day when Justice Kavanaugh was confirmed. I wrote about the movement that tried to stop that confirmation. So if I can't find something direct, I can find something indirect like that, and I've been doing it. It's coming up on seven years, another month and seven years that I've been doing this every single day.
Speaker 1:That's incredible. Yeah, that is absolutely incredible.
Speaker 2:And how has it?
Speaker 1:really changed. I mean, I'm sure it impacts you know the people that read it, but really how has it? Has it impacted you putting all of this out there?
Speaker 2:Very deeply. Uh, because now I spend my days looking for things to be grateful about, so I have something for my audience and I find them and I feel like it's made me a better person. I've had a private gratitude practice and happiness practice for decades. I made a decision in the eighties to have a happy life and I always refer to that as the best decision I ever made. So I look at the world from a positive lens and doing the work that led to the book and the speaking and the consulting really helped with that. Also because I'm reading stuff like what you put out, what Triple Pundit puts out. It's all the good things going on that we don't see in our mainstream news reports and thank you for doing what you do.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you for reading us, thank you for doing what you do. Well, thank you for reading us. You know we want to make the world aware of, you know, some of the smaller stories or different stories that they're not going to be able to see.
Speaker 2:And you know, really hone in on those special projects too, yeah, and some of them turn out to be big stories Arab Spring, for example. I mean the idea that a movement that was really totally nonviolent could overthrow what was it? Four governments within a few months. It's just mind blowing. It is more current than I am on the stats of like how much solar and wind and geothermal and small scale hydro have pushed out the oil and the gas and the coal. It's a real turnaround.
Speaker 1:It's and people don't realize this too that the state of Texas and what they have done in their clean energy infrastructure it's surpassing so many other states, and when you think of Texas, you think of big oil.
Speaker 2:So there's yeah, there's a lot of places where this is about that, and China. China has the most coal plants, I think, of any country in the world, and they're building more, but they've also so much moved toward wind and solar and the vehicle fleet. And this was really good because, like the first time I went to China in 2016,. And this was really good because, the first time I went to China in 2016, the air was so bad in the cities we were in and I was there again last year in an admittedly much more rural area, but rural by Chinese standards, which means there's only 8 million people instead of 24 in the big city. But the air quality in Kunming was not bad and I think part of the reason is the huge shift to electric vehicles over there.
Speaker 1:No, I couldn't agree more. Well, so many lessons have come out of this conversation already. I really want to look ahead now and what excites you the most about the future of sustainability and advocacy.
Speaker 2:Wow, big question. Well, first of all, I'd encourage people to go to my website, goingbeyondsustainabilitycom to find out some of the things that I've already gotten involved with, but also I'm thinking very seriously about finding someone like Third Act or AARP to partner with a book on being activists in your 60s and beyond or if it's AARP, it'll be in your 50s and beyond, and I have my own experience to draw on, but I'm actually the second youngest person in the core of our immigration justice group and the youngest is my wife, who's six months younger than I am.
Speaker 2:Also, I'm actually the second youngest person in the core of our immigration justice group and the youngest is my wife, who's six months younger than I am, and I have been to 200th birthday parties for people who were still activists on their centennial birthday Wow, so I have potentially 30 more years to do this, which is amazing.
Speaker 2:That's exciting, and what also excites me is how far we've come. I was born in 1956. Not only were South Africa and what was then called Rhodesia, now called Zimbabwe, totally segregated, but half of the United States was totally segregated, segregated, but half of the United States was totally segregated. Women if they had a job outside the home, they were nurses, maids, teachers, and that was pretty much it. Secretaries that's secretaries. Yeah, I knew I was forgetting one, so that's a huge shift. People of color were marginalized in ways that they are no longer.
Speaker 2:There's still lots and lots of work to be done. We have not eliminated any of the isms, but one of the you know, one of the platforms that I stand on is some of the ones you'd expect, like catastrophic climate change into planetary balance, but also othering into equity, really making that commitment to bring everybody along and not push people down because of what they look like or who they sleep with or whatever. And then the other two are war into peace, which is a big, big jump and one that we've got like 10,000 years of bad history to overcome. But there's also been many, many successes in that. And when I say war, I include other kinds of violence too, like domestic violence is a war. It's a war on one person? Yes, it is.
Speaker 2:So there's lots of work to be done and I am not going to live to do it all, and I am also encouraged that places you would not expect, like a certain very, very large retail store chain based in Bentonville, arkansas, named Walmart, has probably done more for sustainable supply chains than I have done in all my years of speaking and consulting and writing, because they demanded of their suppliers and they are not a tree hugger company. In fact, I have some serious issues with some of their policies and I'm not a customer, but I really applaud what they have done on moving the business case forward, for doing the right thing on the environment, and I actually tried to get the statistic updated just this week. I wrote to their corporate press office and, unless they answered this morning, I haven't gotten an answer yet. But I asked them how much organic food are you selling these days?
Speaker 2:Because the last time I had a statistic for that, I had to extrapolate it and do the math myself. From some other statistics I found but it came to $15 million a year that they were selling organic foods and this is like 10 years ago and it was actually. Was it million or billion? Maybe it was billion, it must've been billion. Anyway, they were selling more organic food than Whole Foods.
Speaker 1:I remember we talked about this before too. I'm glad you brought that up because I had forgotten, which was a staggering statistic.
Speaker 2:Staggering and the really interesting thing to me is the people who buy their organic food in Walmart are people who've probably never set foot in a Whole Foods in their lives and are never going to. So they doubled the market, not by selling more stuff to the same people, but by selling to people who didn't think they needed it before. That's great, and they've also their own. They're a real poster child for the idea that you can save enormous amounts of money by doing the green stuff. But greening their truck fleet, greening their stores, has paid off hugely in cost savings for them, as well as in propaganda points for a company that sorely needs them because they're not well regarded on labor or store siting or a bunch of other stuff.
Speaker 1:Yes, no, definitely there. Well, I have thoroughly enjoyed our conversation. I'm going to give you the floor for any last minute. You know lessons or pieces of advice that you want to leave our viewers with and we will have a link to on the podcast page, to Shell's webpage, along with a book.
Speaker 2:Right, it's goingbeyondsustainabilitycom. And the advice? First of all, know that one person can do a difference. Make a difference, but know that that difference is going to be much amplified if you find other people to work with. Know that you have to target your message to the people you're talking to. So we've talked a lot in this conversation about how to talk in the corporate world about these things.
Speaker 2:In a talk I do called Making Green Sexy, which is about the B2C business to consumer side, I talk about the difference in what kind of messaging you would do. Just as you would not put the same ad in the National Enquirer and the New Yorker magazine you don't want to give. The same message points to the deep greens, the lazy greens and the non-greens, and certainly not to the anti-greens. So, like the deep greens, you sell the green stuff, and to the anti-greens, you sell the personal comfort, the cost savings, the personal benefits. And there's a lot more of this in the book Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, on the website and I'm also anybody listening here if you tell me that you heard Jessica's show, I will give anybody a 15-minute consult, but if you mention that, I'll make it 30. And that 30 minutes is enough to really get down and deep into what your company can be doing and what your organization. Where are the opportunities, where is the intersection with your strengths? And that's a pretty powerful thing.
Speaker 1:It is. It is, and I hope people do take advantage of that. Well, again, thank you for being on with us. I hope this is not our last conversation. I'd love to have you back on in the future.
Speaker 1:That would be a pleasure, yeah, in the next 60 seconds, ask yourself how can I contribute to a brighter, more sustainable future, not just personally, but professionally? Let's embark on this journey together and shape the landscape of sustainable leadership for tomorrow. Take the first step now and make a commitment to lead with sustainability in mind. That's all for this episode of Sustainability Unveiled. Join us next time as we continue exploring the forefront of sustainable business practices. Until then, stay informed, stay sustainable.
