Encouraging Progress toward Circular Economy Production

Part II of Circular Economy focuses on the ‘lifecycle’ of products, with the intention of minimizing resource use and waste. From major industry sectors to small companies, Jorden and Kimberly consider businesses serving as role models, along with a variety of ways governments, IGOs, NGOs, and MNCs can strive to implement circular economy production

Key Topics Jorden and Kimberly discuss include:

• Just how far we’re moving in the wrong direction when it comes circularity

• What Celestial Seasonings and Unilever, companies small and large, have to offer

• Why IKEA still deserves criticism, but at least they’re one of the more conscientious

• Why ‘small wins’ may be the ultimate path to sustainability

Recommended Resources

• Deloitte’s extensive ⁠2024 Circularity Gap⁠ Report

• Some ⁠industry examples⁠ of working toward a circular economy

• The ⁠Ellen MacArthur Foundation⁠, an early and avid advocate for circular economy

• Bloomberg’s BNEF ⁠rankings⁠ for brand owners and plastics producers

• Check out Kimberly's interview with Akshat Rathi, author of Climate Capitalism, for more on Unilever's sustainability commitment

• Kimberly’s Substack ⁠newsletter post⁠

Air Astana has upcycled the fuselage and interior of decommissioned Airbus 320 and Boeing 767 planes to make benches, tables, and chairs for the Almaty Airport, Kazakhstan.

Episode Transcript

KIMBERLY: Welcome to this episode of Sustainable Planet. I'm political scientist Kimberly Weir, and my co-host is Jordan Dye, a guy who knows an awful lot about sustainability issues. In part one of our circular economy segment, we talked about the challenges to achieving an economy where products and their packaging, most importantly, are intentionally designed with their life cycle in mind.

KIMBERLY: In this episode, we move on to consider how to encourage regenerative productions. Jordan, which industry do you think serves as the best role model for others to shift toward a circular economy? We've got some great examples coming up.

JORDAN: I want to bring one up because it ties into our last couple episodes, and it ties into how governments really push this. You know, in the last episode, you gave a great example of Germany. I want to talk about the Japanese construction industry randomly. So back in 2000, Japan took several legislative steps towards enabling a circular economy. It was 25 years ago, they put in two bills, the Construction Material Recycling Law and the Basic Act for Establishing a Sound Material Cycle Society.

JORDAN: I've learned two things already, one, that they were ahead of the curve, and two, Japanese legislative names are the most like descriptive and boring I've ever heard. But the construction laws created a swift change. And by 2012, recycling rates for concrete, asphalt, glass, steel, the major construction materials, were all at 88% or higher, with a few of those into the high 90s. And like, just to get perspective, at the end of the 90s, coming into the 2000s, when this law was passed, those recycling rates were only in the low 60s. So you see a 20 to 30% increase in recycling in a 10 year period following the implementation of this law.

JORDAN: And across all those major categories, in 2024, they're into the high 90s. So we've continued to see, it's a slower rate, you know, getting that next 1% is always harder, but we still see it going up. I do want to be fair, one area they struggle with is mixed construction waste. It's only achieving a 57% recycling rate. But Japan's really focused on building out greater sorting and more and more specific recycling programs.

JORDAN: So while they're still only achieving a 50% rate, they've reduced the absolute amount generated from around 23 kilograms per meter squared of buildings to 11 kilograms. So a half of like over half, sorry, 50% reduction in the amount of that mixed waste. So really great on the construction side. And so much of our construction material just ends up in the landfill. It is straight there.

KIMBERLY: Well, and I think I think it hits on something that we've talked about a number of times, which is land size. Japan is a densely populated area, a country that's an, you know, few islands, and they don't have a lot of other places, just the same thing we see that happens with the low lying countries in Europe. The Benelux countries, they have to, they are much more immediately directly confronted with what are we going to do with this waste? And, and especially those countries, especially European countries don't want to be seen as exporting their waste to the former colonies, right? So they got that additional black eye that they can get from this.

KIMBERLY: And so they've, they're much more in the forefront of learning how to deal with this. And for, for the European ones, it seems to, in incineration seems to be kind of their go-to, but certainly more along the lines of, of finding ways to get things in the recycling stream, harvesting usable materials. Like what we talked about in the waste to heat power section of an earlier episode, Switzerland, while burning like the remaining garbage has diverted a lot of it out. So the final amount being burnt is less. And even on the household level, I thought this would be a little more interesting for people of like to picture it, sorry.

KIMBERLY: In Japan, the average per person waste generated per day is only 1.9 pounds. Now that's in North America, we generate about an average of 4.9 pounds. So three pounds more of waste. To give the context, that's a traffic cone of waste per day for North America and a small yogurt container of waste for Japan. That's really, I know one of the things too, that the Japanese are a little bit better about is they, they don't need as much junk food, or at least they hadn't traditionally.

KIMBERLY: And so I remember when Ben and Jerry's was having a difficult time selling their ice cream there because they sold it by the pint and they had to downsize it to just like the little tiny cup in order to, to get the Japanese to buy into the ice cream. And they're not, they don't have nearly the sweet tooth that we have either. So that saves in a lot of junk food packaging, I think. Yeah, no. And I think that like those cultural aspects and geographic aspects are so important.

KIMBERLY: And I think that like the cool thing about examples like this is that they show it can be done, right? You can get construction waste to 90% like plus recycling. Oh, that can be done anywhere. Right. And I think on like the personal side, there's definitely cultural aspects that go into it or even being accepting of the laws.

KIMBERLY: I think sometimes we don't often grapple with, uh, in certain contexts is how much pushback there'll be to, you know, we talked in the last episode about charging people for the amount of waste generated. And I've seen that it go into a few municipalities in North America and it always, it goes back to metering water and how much of a fight that was right. People don't like to lose and they feel like if you're going to charge them for something that was free, it's, it's now a loss. But they, as I said last time, you're still being charged. You're just not seeing it.

KIMBERLY: Right. And it's definitely a cultural thing in terms of Asian countries that are democratic tend to be much more of the, I hate to use the word authoritarian democracy, but that always comes to mind with, with Singapore is kind of a very different sort of collective sort of idea, much more collective Eastern philosophy sort of idea of democracy than the Western version, which is independence, freedom. Yeah.

JORDAN: That's what I always look at it as the, the collectivist cultures versus the individualistic cultures. Right. And how that you, you see it play out across so many things, but so do you have a favorite industry? Is there one you wanted to dive into?

KIMBERLY: Well, I think that so, so in doing research for this, I was interested in, I was looking, started looking at rankings of country companies that end up being on kind of the cutting edge of me more circular in their production. And I was surprised that Bloomberg ranks Coca-Cola and PepsiCo in spots number one and three respectively. But I realized that wasn't actually surprising because they're under so much pressure to take responsibility for all of the plastic waste that they generate, that that actually made sense to me that they had to start like actually doing something about this. And that I thought that it was also interesting in that Bloomberg report that they also rank plastic producers and what they're doing in terms of, because, you know, because they are, they have a vested interest in making sure that plastics are still used as much as possible. Right.

KIMBERLY: And, and as much for each instance as possible and overall, and they unfortunately fall very much short of their 2030 circular production goals. And so I thought that was interesting because also then I think that the fashion industry is kind of charged with the same sort of like, okay, we've got fast fashion and ultra fast fashion. And they get that same sort of critique for, well, what are you going to do with all of this waste you're producing? And so I think that they've also, it's kind of oxymoronic though, if that's the right, one of those words, because all of the clothing, every, you know, all the statistics show just more and more and more clothes are being sold and made and they're worse quality. And we did whole episodes on these things and, and increasingly fabrics have multiple fiber types, which makes it difficult then to recycle that.

KIMBERLY: And also there are more clothes made with plastic bottles, because that's our solution to dealing with plastic waste is to make, turn them into clothes that then put more white microplastics into the water stream. And so, but when you look at some of the stuff we talked about with garment repair and resale and quality of clothing and what those companies are doing, but I think the most exciting part of the industry is with alternative fabrics and textiles. And so, I mean, I'm kind of torn because as an industry as a whole, I still feel like the, you know, fashion industry and textile industry is still really far behind, but like with the, the soda bottlers and the beverage companies, they're under a lot of pressure to deal with these issues. Yeah. It's so I, I have been accused by team members of having the best worst analogies for things because they, they, they describe it perfectly, but it just shouldn't be said.

KIMBERLY: And so I'm going to say one recorded here. Sometimes I think about this almost like, like a virus spreading.

JORDAN: I have a, I have a game that came out before the pandemic and, and had a little bit of a hard time during the pandemic called plague ink. And you basically are taking over the world with viruses.

KIMBERLY: And, and I think about it like that because it can be at such a low level that it seems to almost be having no impact, but is really starting to spread and diffuse across multiple countries. And I'm thinking about that industries here. So like you said, it's kind of weird to be talking about how I think the, the fashion industry can, is doing so great on some of these things when we've done an entire episode of how bad the fashion industry is doing as a collective. Right. But that's when I put it into that way.

KIMBERLY: It's really in that slow spread phase, right. Where more and more options are coming up. I think like the most common that people know is 10 cell, right. As, as an example of eucalyptus tree based material. And one of the things that I find most interesting about it is though they, they went with a futuristic name.

KIMBERLY: And like, you think of some of the other fabrics that were coming out like rayon and stuff like that at the same time. And they, they, they branded it to be competing with those kinds of fossil fuel, petrochemical based fabrics, rather than going with some of the pinatex and fruit mat from you, amazing examples you found for alternative leathers. And, and this goes back to, you're talking in the last episode about packaging and what it evokes. And we know that environmental branding and environmental packaging or naming evokes a set of beliefs. And on the good side is that it's better for the planet.

KIMBERLY: It, that is going to be better for you, right. That you're doing good with it. On the downside is that it's going to be more expensive and it's going to be worse quality. Those are the two kind of negative connotations associated with them. So I think it's interesting that the most well-known example of a sustainable material just avoided that and didn't try to brand itself like as leaned into it more as it's grown, but was really coming as the, we're a future.

KIMBERLY: And I loved it for the feel before I knew about the sustainability impacts of it. Yeah, definitely. I think too, another one that's interesting that we talked about, we talked about with planned obsolescence and with landfills and so forth is Ikea and the home furnishing industry. Because again, there's another thing where now they're basically accused of making disposable furniture and yet, and I criticized Ikea and I mean, I just, Ikea to me is like, I'm sure many people may, I don't want to be presumptuous, but walk into Ikea and it's like a void. You walk into the void, right?

KIMBERLY: They trap you in there. There's a whole really fun book that's actually not as fun. It's, it's meant to come off as a fun, but it's the Fakir who got trapped in the Ikea wardrobe and took a journey around Europe. And it's very much a social commentary and it's an excellent book. I would highly recommend anyone.

KIMBERLY: But with that, part of the joke is that he talks about in the book is like, you go into Ikea and it gives you, you know, arrows and it's very authoritarian in that it, you don't have a lot of freedom about what direction to go and you have to walk through where they plan for you to walk through and so forth. But I, I, you know, so I'm critical of Ikea and I stand by this for producing furniture that's not meant to last, but they are also one of the most conscientious home furnishing companies. And they have instituted the same sort of programs that more companies in home furnishing and clothing and every other industry that sells consumer-based goods, take back programs and all of the, you know, repair programs and all of those things that you can, that you possibly can to try to move in the right direction, but not have an old whole scale shift, right? And that they do those things. So they're, you know, still better than some of the other companies, but they, they are still in it to make money first and foremost and need to be if that, if they're going to be competitive, because not enough other companies have adopted the same standards to the degree that they have.

KIMBERLY: No. And you're going to see it, especially when they're at the leading edge, it's going to be slower because they're going to do something that they know that they can do. Right. And that's not going to be often major leaps and bounds. This is where sometimes where private companies can actually do better because if you have, I'm blanking on the name, I will try to find it for the show notes for you, but there is a carpet company out of the States and they sold industrial carpet, right?

KIMBERLY: And they were like 70% plus of the market share for you've walked into an office building. It was like their carpet. And the, the CEO, it picked up an airport book on a flight across the country on sustainability. This was like corporate ESG or not even ESG. No, this would have been like CSR, corporate social responsibility days.

KIMBERLY: And he read it on the flight and he got off the flight. And as he's like driving or getting taken to the hotel, he's calling his team and is like, Hey, how, but we're really bad, aren't we? And he just like, starts asking these questions and then goes to them. He's like, no, no, you're going to figure out how to do this and switch the entire business model from selling carpet to renting carpet. And then taking back that product at the end of it, shredding it and turning it into more carpet to then rent out.

KIMBERLY: Right. So complete shift in the business model that, that you almost couldn't see in a public company because it would get, it would be the stock price would fall. The board would have to approve it. There's just so many layers of concern where it was like that private entity that one guy could read that book and say, okay, and now we're going to change how carpets down in America. Well, that's actually one of the things that the CEO at the time of Unilever did, which is a publicly traded humongous corporation.

KIMBERLY: And it was quite an impressive case study on a large corporation that went against the grain and actually shifted to sustainable practices years ahead of the curve of everyone else. Really one of the first companies to few companies to fully embrace sustainable practices. And it's ranked as one of the top circular economy companies by Bloomberg and, and others who do these rankings. And it started in 2010 for them. So not that, that long ago, but still, I mean, when you look at major corporations and their commitments and actual true commitments, not just like, Oh, we've got a 30 year plan here, but it developed a sustainable living plan for 2020.

KIMBERLY: So 10 year plan basically as a way to account for the impact that it had had on the environment, the people supplying the raw materials and their employees, and basically decided to account for those externalities that we always talk about the companies ignore. And it so worked to their benefit because at the time they were actually craft was trying to do a hostile takeover of Unilever. And they were able to resist this in the board voted to not be taken over. And they made this commitment and followed what the CEO's vision was. And it was unprecedented for a corporation to voluntarily shift at the time, their big, one of the big things they did was shift to relying on sustainable palm oil.

KIMBERLY: And that's in so many of the type of products that Unilever and Nestle and, and those craft and so forth companies use, snack companies, and the, I don't know, health and beauty industry companies, and they continue to have a very ambitious goal. And so I really commend Unilever for what they've done. And it's not, it's one of those companies, you just think of these big faceless, you know, behemoths and like, Oh, they must just be terribly because they're a big company, but, but they don't fit that. So kudos to them.

JORDAN: And it's funny, there was so far ahead of it that when I was like in business school, actually, a lot of the case studies we had to work with for sustainable business were Unilever. Cause a lot of our, you know, 10 tree was another one that was already, but that was it. It was either really small companies, right. That like where the end of the case study is always, will they survive? Right.

JORDAN: That's kind of the, the, the, the premise or Unilever case studies. Cause that's, that's really what you had at the, at the big end. And so it was really, it was funny because anytime I'd get in debates with people like, I guess this is like a decade ago on like, can industries do it? I like, that's all you had to really point to, to be like, yes, yes, they can. Cause look like this is shifting stockholders stakes.

JORDAN: Yeah. Stockholders are responding well.

KIMBERLY: And I think that like, we've seen it play out in other companies now that like, this is spreading across industries, generally shareholders. I mean, you can go back to between 25 to three years ago now to the Exxon board, right. You know, activists even getting on those kinds of companies. So I think Unilever also kind of as a reputational risk really saved itself some troubles in that kind of 2016 to 2020 era when we really did start shifting more attention to what companies were doing. Well, I think, and we talked about Amazon too, and just surprising in with the subscribe and save episode that we did just, it was really impressive what Amazon was doing, especially as the top renewable energy buyer by far.

KIMBERLY: And for the last five years at that. So it wasn't just like, Oh, one day they said, Oh yeah. Like, no, this is something they've been committed to. And the, the wide variety of much more sustainable practices that they had instituted and are pursuing and their plans are on par with what Unilever has done. Yeah, no, I think going into that episode, we were both ready to be a lot more like, yeah, okay.

KIMBERLY: We know Amazon's bad. Everybody knows that. I think my biggest critique of Amazon by the end of that episode is that I want to see them roll out their successful country programs company-wide. I think that that's the kind of missing fracture there for them is lots of really good programs that are working at a country or national level, but then they're not pushing them out to change the full practices of the organization. And if we could see that innovation cycle, the impact would be massive.

KIMBERLY: Well, again, it's, it's the stasis, right? It's the sort of falling back to what's the easiest because, and, and in all fairness to companies, they've got a lot of balls to juggle. So, and they've got a lot of, a lot of different aspects and directions of competition to deal with. And now with the way the state of the global economy and the just completely up in the air state of it, you know, they, they've got a lot of other things that are distracting them right now. And some of the, the incentives that were in place are either gone or being threatened.

KIMBERLY: And so, so that, that's the thing we, you know, like we had, we need to depend on governments to set these standards because it has to be, some of these things absolutely have to be top down. But we also, and, and also to encourage the corporations that are doing the right thing to say, Hey, you deserve this reward and we want others to, to follow what you're doing. And to give that stability. I think that's what you hit on right now is, is in the period of, of where we're at right now, a lot of big plans are being pulled back. A lot of major investments are being paused and it really sucks.

KIMBERLY: Cause I think every day in the news. Yeah. I think it's something like America's lost 30 billion in manufacturing and clean technology this year alone now has gained a lot. So it's like on the wash, but the companies at the end of the day need that stability to make those investments. And when we start even on, on this, I like to see when we put in a new rule that should, or a new legislative policy that'll push our sustainability, that should be stable for a few years.

KIMBERLY: Even if it's not the perfect, even if it's not where you want ramp up schedules should be gradual and should be long. You can show them, yes, this is going to increase every five years for the next 20 years. Right. That's the kind of, that really moves the needle because they can make investments around that then. Right.

KIMBERLY: But according to Deloitte, who does a report on circular economy, we're actually moving in the wrong direction. In fact, according to them from 2024, circularity fell from 7.2% to 6.9%. Doesn't sound like a lot, but that is basically only 6.9% of all materials used are coming from secondary sources. So basically we've increased our biomass consumption. Producers are overstocking inventory and we see a rise in resource extraction.

KIMBERLY: And that has tripled over the last 50 years. So we start to make a bit of progress and now we're going the wrong direction. And it's expected to get worse. We're expected to even extract another 60% by 2060. So the report indicates that if we were to recycle all waste, not currently being recycled without reducing a single thing, we would actually, in terms of circular economy, immediately it would shoot up from 7.2% or 6.9, I guess, right?

KIMBERLY: To 25%. And that's literally with making no other changes except to actually on the back end, yeah, reuse that stuff. And so we need to not take steps back. We absolutely need to move in the other direction. I think you hit on an important point in the last episode when you were talking about small businesses are the way, in some way, they're the way to like, we've got grassroots efforts going on, right?

KIMBERLY: We as consumers are trying to do things. We as community members are trying to do things. What can we as individuals do? Well, one of the things too is, well, what can small businesses do? And are they able to set a foundation, a precedent for others to be able to you know, lay the foundation?

KIMBERLY: Sorry. Yeah. No, no, I know. I think it's, it's a great point.

JORDAN: I mean, I want to give a shout out to Anion, A-N-I-A-N for anybody. I don't know if I said it right. It's a Canadian brand. Of course it is. Yeah.

JORDAN: Just kidding. No, I, hey, I want to find it. My example is an American brand. So, okay. Yes.

JORDAN: But they're, so they're based in the British Columbia on our West Coast. They were started off the Island. They, they make clothing, they're a clothing manufacturer that uses primarily post-consumer recycled material. So they were started with the idea of like, Hey, so much wool is thrown out and you can actually really easily get that back. And I've expanded into cotton and others.

JORDAN: So all of their clothes are 80% or higher, higher recycled material. And they also use a dye-free recycling process. So the color you're getting is actually because they had to get enough black cloth, right. To shred that up and make it. And that reduces water requirements.

JORDAN: And best of all, all the clothing is made in Canada. Now, the downside of that is you're talking about like a great, like melt in wool, like outerwear kind of shirt at 160. Right. And that's because you're paying for Canadian labor and for the, because right now we talk about this a lot until you get a economies of scale, that new material will be more expensive. Even if in the long run and it's actually cheaper, it's getting it to that, that scale.

KIMBERLY: That's the really, like the value of death, I think for a lot of sustainability kind of stuff is, can you get to scale and get the cost down?

JORDAN: But I just, yeah, I love, I love that company and love giving it a shout out.

KIMBERLY: Well, I think one of the things that's really important that we should reiterate is the fact that sustainability is also not just about reusing materials and so forth, but about, you mentioned Canadian laborers. We know they are well treated. They get a fair living wage. They get protections built in to give them vacation times and other benefits and so forth. And that's the thing that is missing in production that happens outside of global North countries where those laws are in place.

KIMBERLY: And so, yes, of course, something that's made anywhere else that's not a global North country is going to cost less. And in some cases it will cost less because yes, of course it costs less to live in Bangladesh, no question, right? But if you're still only making a dollar a day or a dollar a piece, you know, like some sense of peace and whatever, then that's still, you can't afford to live there. It doesn't matter, you know, how cheap it is to live there. And so that's what I think is really important about that aspect of sustainability that often gets left out, which is human welfare and fair wages and fair trade and ethically sourced products.

KIMBERLY: And a lot of these smaller companies actually also aim for that part too. And so they're trying to make sure that if they start a company like Blue Stripes that I mentioned in the last part, one of this episode, that's about cacao pods, that they are ethically sourcing that those cacao pods and the people who are producing them get a fair living wage that is relative to what the wage is where they live, right? So it's not like you're going to pay somebody Canadian dollars, the equivalent of Canadian, what it costs to live in Canada, but you're going to pay them enough so that they're not just, you know, subsistence living in Ghana or Ivory Coast or wherever. No, and we've talked about this before, the tension between like, you know, shifting dollars away from global south and emerging economies because of the labor practices can hurt the people there. We've talked about some episodes.

KIMBERLY: And I think that there's a like, it really is about having those same externalities like placed on to those countries and not because we want, oh, I want to protect Canadian jobs, not even from that, but so that they're not dealing with the environmental and social harms of it, right? If their wages, because again, like in a fair world, like the wage is not going to be parity, right? Like that's just not going to happen. As you said, it's cheaper to live there. Yes.

KIMBERLY: That was the word I was looking for and it wasn't coming to me. Oh, but it's still going to be much higher and we get to an actual real cost of the, of the good. I just, at the end of the day, I'd love a world where we're paying the real cost of things. It goes back to my con on ecological economics, right? If this is all actually baked in and then you're making informed choices.

KIMBERLY: Cause right now when you buy that $2 t-shirt versus, you know, a 41 from Manion, you're that $38 is still there somewhere else at the end of the day, you're just not seeing it. And I think that's the biggest thing we need to get away from. I really did want to make a joke though, about how, you know, even Canada to America, I mean, ethically sourced labor standards, support for workers. I mean, they should really buy from Canada. I, I am sure you are absolutely right.

KIMBERLY: Given what I know about some of the labor practices that take place in the United States. And so my, my company that I thought was interesting for circular, it's kind of being more on the cutting edge of circular economy production is Celestial Seasonings. And the company was, is, is a tea company and it was founded in 1969 in Boulder, Colorado. And it's very much based on the sort of sustainability principles. And over the years has really worked towards also, you know, closing the loop on production and, and being regenerative in that they ethically source their tea.

KIMBERLY: The people who they buy from get that fair living wage. They typically buy directly from farmers and the growing communities. They support a number of community projects. And even though that they've been bought out a few times, they've managed to stick to their founding principles, which I think is important because they're big, you know, been bought by a bigger, the big fish. And also I've been buying their tea for a few years because, because specifically because it's ethically sourced, that's really important to me.

KIMBERLY: When I have that option, I go for that, even if it costs more. And I noticed recently that they stopped actually film wrapping their boxes. And it turns out that in April, as of April, 2024, they stopped using the plastic film. And they're according to their site, it's estimated that they will now save 165,000 pounds of plastic waste each year just by not wrapping those boxes. For this, that is the distance of Boulder, Colorado to Australia and back.

KIMBERLY: So that's a lot of plastic wrap. The boxes 100% recyclable made from 100% recycled paperboard. They don't individually wrap bags. They don't use tags. They don't use strings.

KIMBERLY: They use your spoon, which is what the whole point of the spoon was in the first place, right? And by skipping these things, they've saved over 3.5 million pounds of waste because of that. Those few, just those few little additions. They use wax paper instead of, to preserve the tea bags instead of plastic. The company isn't completely circular though, because they do have actually some plastic fibers in their tea bags.

KIMBERLY: And it might be because that's what allows them to be, have these other things that they've, they've skipped. So that's a bummer. Um, but you know, when we talked before about not, not that this is, I'm not defending them because this is a bummer and they should change this, but also in terms of the, just the lack of compost, you know, composting, that's probably not the biggest concern here when we could cut back on this, all this plastic waste. And I'm not sure if their wax paper is compostable or not either because, and I'm assuming not because I think that would probably be on their website or on their box or something if it were, but overall, I think that they're a good model for a company that has made changes along the way. They become more sustainable and they're really looking at the life cycle of the thing, right?

KIMBERLY: What's going on? Like, where is the waste going to eventually end up? And can any of that be reused and put it back into the system instead of just like, okay, we make it and now it's out of our hands. No. And I think it's an amazing example of what we've been talking about this entire time of them taking the onus and starting from the design phase.

KIMBERLY: Right. And the other thing I think that is really encouraging about it is looking, I think there's two ways to judge anything. And especially companies when we're talking about this, right, where are you actually at and what's the thing? And do I see consistent change and improvement? Right.

KIMBERLY: Cause I might, a product might only be, and I'm just throwing numbers out just for illustrative purposes, but 25% sustainable. And that might not look good, but it might be the best in the category. And they were only two, 10 years ago and they've ramped up. I want to support a company like that. Cause that gives me at least some faith that over the next, you know, period of time, we're going to see that continued improvement.

KIMBERLY: So your point there, they have a few things that they're still on, you know, need to, to kind of deal with, but just that it's, it's been gradual and progressive change makes me think that, you know, 10 years from now, maybe it's bioplastic that is in there, or, you know, they've come up with a, again, redesigned the bag, right. So that you can do it in a better way. The other thing I think that's really interesting is there's been a new model of innovation over the last say 15 years for major corporations. And really it was kind of in the IT space at first, where they buy smaller companies and they don't fully integrate them in. They keep them just slightly off and then they can use them actually almost as innovation labs to then once things are proven there without a big risk to the main brand, you can roll stuff back up into the company.

KIMBERLY: And I think it's really cool to think I've said that what 10 times, I think we need a counter for how often does Jordan say cool. I think it's really interesting as a concept that we might have sustainability innovation labs as these small companies that can then roll up into, to bigger multinationals. Well, I think that the, we need to have more ways to encourage circular economy production and, and something that would like with that using, so that's, that's obviously something a corporation could do without a whole lot of risk. What other sorts of system-wide things can we do to try to move and shift towards circular economy? Because we, obviously we need governments to be doing something and we need international coordination through intergovernmental organizations.

KIMBERLY: And we see a lot of the push coming from non-governmental organizations, right? That's where we see people raising concerns about, well, what direction are we going? And, and, you know, consumers obviously are part of the NGOs who are people who are caring about what's going on. How can we push corporations to move in the right direction? And we definitely need to figure out a way to move away from the current make use and dispose model.

KIMBERLY: So the incentives, some of what we talked about are things like tax breaks and benefits. We can't rely on these though, either, as we see in, sorry, the, sorry, we can't rely on them as we see in this current environmental, current political environment, but moving toward more recycled content use and product longevity is something that should be rewarded. Yeah. And I think that, you know, we're going to talk about the sticks in a second, but in any effective change of behavior, you need to put in carrots and sticks, right? So that there, it's not just a punitive feeling, right?

KIMBERLY: Even, even for big companies, if you feel like it's just something being forced on you and you have to do this, there's no benefit. It's harder to get it. So I think that putting in those, those tack breaks or even, sorry, or even like incentivizing government procurement, I think a lot of times we use government procurement in not the greatest ways, right? But like we can incentivize that and use it as that initial kind of like pull to help them build scale, right? And those are all on the kind of innovation grants are a great example of that.

KIMBERLY: Well, I think too, that corporations have recognized that they can benefit from what non-governmental organizations have to offer and create partnerships. And then they can get certification, which sets them apart from other corporations. And then lays, I keep saying lays the foundation. I'm really tired about that. I'm going to say blueprint.

KIMBERLY: We both could use a thesaurus, I think, right? I think that's what we need. And so like a blueprint for, for corporate standards, and also trying to push forward protocols that set regulation, like, I hate to say regulations, but that's basically what we're talking about though, right? Is like, what sort of standards can there be that will move us in the direction toward the extended producer responsibility that we talked about more in the last episode that requires manufacturers to handle end of life disposal instead of just letting it be on the government. And so if the government can offer other ways to move corporations in that direction, that also then is win-win, because then the government can take some of that money that they would be using for waste and do something else more useful with it.

KIMBERLY: Yeah. No, I want to stop on the NGO corporate partnership just for a second, because I think it's actually even much larger than we think about the certification in the kind of standard setting as a big component about it. But my entire work in sustainability is that NGO corporate partnership, right?

JORDAN: And I always, I love telling people about my work because they get amazed that I work to train companies on how to do something. Because they're like, what, what do you mean? You guys are a nonprofit, you're, you're a think tank. And it's like, yes, but in a lot of cases, a large retail brand, I have to be, I will not talk about any brands, but, but a large retail brand, they have sustainability issues across a hundred different dimensions. And at their core business, what they're good at is selling retail products and buying and sourcing retail products.

JORDAN: They don't have expertise in, in my realm of, of purchasing large amounts of renewable energy, right?

KIMBERLY: I think there's also a really interesting and great role for the nonprofit space and actually building out industry and training and helping kind of industry, because it can be done in a way that's not big paid consultant, you know, big four company that gives a standard kind of, yeah, this is the blueprint and just do it, which I find is kind of vapid. And there's really great examples of, of NGOs that have been able to build out standards of how you do it and then go to companies and show them like, no, here you can do it. And I got five examples of five other companies. And it's just an under talked about aspect of that inter interaction. So, well, and it's also not reinventing the wheel, every corporation having to do exactly the same thing in house, which then takes more resources to do that.

KIMBERLY: And maybe less of a commitment is like that one person sitting in that office in the basement where you're like, Oh, where's Joe? I don't know where Joe is, but here's what Joe does. And we, you know, tried him out, tried him out every, every retreat, corporate meeting, whatever. And yep, Joe's doing amazing things. And it's amazing.

KIMBERLY: I talk to companies across all industries and some are still very much, we've got a central sustainability team.

JORDAN: I'd say even for those, there's very few companies I'm dealing with that have a central sustainability team that doesn't have a lot of integration, but it's at the point now where I was talking with a company last week who actually has a sustainable, they have a core team sustainability, but that actually just monitors practices across every department actually has an embedded sustainability team in that department at this. So it's now much more like a central activity, like marketing, right? Which you have marketing in every department, but they have to follow central standards. So seeing the evolution of actually diffusing out across the corporation is something that I get, I get really excited about. But you hit on not reinventing the wheel and to move us into regulations that actually gets it.

JORDAN: My most boring thing I wish we had was a repository of great regulations. So we talked about Germany, we've talked about Japan and like a literal group that their only job was to find these, take their, the country specific and turn it into a generic kind of regulation that then could be customized and applied.

KIMBERLY: I think that would actually have more impact than another 10 white papers would on this subject. Well, and I think that, that this is something too, we need to have the, like you said, moving away from the sticks and have enough incentives to move things in this direction. But unfortunately, without the sticks, you know, so there, there needs to be corporate responsibility. And if governments are going to at least partly, especially in developing countries, I'm going to say not exclusive to, but certainly amongst them. And that's where we also see a lot of it is lacking.

KIMBERLY: A good example of that is just the fact that, that China, PetroChina is the world's second largest plastics producer in the entire world. And if, if they got up to speed, there are 14 other plastics companies, if they started recycling, they would basically save the equivalent of what China produces, PetroChina produces in a year. And so, and PetroChina doesn't even have a goal to achieve this, whereas these other companies do. And so that's the sort of thing, well, China needs to get on the program here. And I was kind of surprised to see that given China's commitment to, you know, kind of surprising, surprising and not surprising because China as the biggest, you know, we've talked about this number of times as the biggest country with the largest population is confronting a lot of environmental issues that will really harm its population and its potential economic growth.

KIMBERLY: It doesn't do something about it at the same time though. I was, I was not surprised because, you know, they're putting out a lot of plastic and people are buying it. And so they have not a lot of incentives to actually change that. So there need to be some regulations in place. I know ring fencing is a term that's used to ensure that funds are dedicated to environmental, in this case, specifically circular economy initiatives.

KIMBERLY: And that can then also help to attract investment because they've demonstrated that they have a commitment to corporate responsibility. And then that meant, you know, then others can say, well, yeah, okay, this looks like a company that's moving forward. We want to get on with this, you know, especially with mutual funds investments. And, and so, and so also establishing an international materials agency is sort of along the lines of what you were talking about with a repository of great ideas that are actually in practice, not just ideas, but actually in practice to measure measure and monitor sustainable resource use and progress. Like that way we can see, Hey, it's possible.

KIMBERLY: These are what countries are doing. We can move. And these are what companies are doing. We can move in this direction. Yeah, no, I think we're still missing some of the key measurement stuff.

KIMBERLY: We talked about before just how it seems like a, not a big step, but actually getting to the point of measuring and having publicly available data on this stuff really does help move the needle because a lot of companies start this journey because of bad press. And I think like you look at Ikea and you mentioned Ikea is, you know, taking back and kind of trying to recycle to create new products and like what they've done with forestry. It all really comes because 15 years ago, they got hit by cutting down some of Europe's last virgin old growth forest and Europe doesn't have much forest left to be cutting down. Right. And that became a really big moment for them.

KIMBERLY: And now you see, you know, 10, 15 years later, what that leads to. So I think that having that data is such a big first step that we need to. And then it also allows countries. We talked about how companies can differentiate this way, but I actually think it allows countries that are leading in certain areas to kind of promote themselves in this. Right.

KIMBERLY: Like, and again, so even some of the examples we've brought up, I didn't know before our episode that India had banned plastic packaging. I told it to a coworker of mine who was raised in India and is from there. And it's like, yeah, like, yeah, you didn't know that. And it's just such a common thing. And it's like, no, no, we need to be promoting those aspects.

KIMBERLY: And on the China side, we talk about this a lot. And I think for me, I think of China as where we were on environmental stuff about 100, 120 years ago, where we were just responding to the stuff that really got public attention. Right. And then even into the 80s, we were still really there. Acid rain.

KIMBERLY: You know, we did something about it because it was really noticeable. Right. Hole in the ozone. Great example of it. That seems really big.

KIMBERLY: People did something about it. And you look at China, a lot of their a lot of their emission stuff has been on that air quality side. Right. A lot of their waste kind of policies have been because of people and overflowing waste. So I think that it's not surprising that they haven't got to plastic until it becomes an actual public concern around plastic.

KIMBERLY: Well, if PetroChina's production, if they actually shifted to sustainable plastics, it was 15.5 million tons about. And that that would then shift to sustainable plastics by 2030. And if these other 14 companies actually set the goals that they set meet that, they would also be shifting plastic then to the 15.5 million tons of sustainable plastic. So we would end up then with the top 15 companies producing like actual sustainable plastics that could be, you know, that mean, meaning that they're using reusing stuff that's already been created, not doing it from petroleum. But, you know, if you're called PetroChina, you know, there's a reason for that.

KIMBERLY: You're probably not terribly quite interested in giving up your petro end of that.

JORDAN: But this is I have actually so I worked in the oil and gas space sustainability before I went to renewables. And I honestly laugh at oil people when they tell me that, well, you're going to need plastics forever. I'm going to get this a little bit wrong because my most recent number on the top of my head is a couple of years old, but it's around eight to 11 percent of global petroleum is used for plastics. Now, any petrochemical engineer will point out, Jordan, it's not, you know, nine percent of the barrels. You need to break those barrels up.

JORDAN: But as EVs and as other uses of fossil fuels decline, the amount of actual feedstock going for available to turn into plastics is going to shrink and shrink because it has to come out of that whole barrel and the cost is going to go up. So two factors. One, these plastics are going to get more expensive as there is less oil being produced. Two, that won't 11 percent of current demand, even at the high level, is not going to save the oil and gas industry. Right.

JORDAN: And that's so it's always been funny to me when it's raised or because I truly believe that there are people at PetroChina or any oil and gas company that say, well, no, this is a feedstock in for our next business. Why would we ever change that? And it's just you're they're not looking at the numbers right is all I ever say. And that's the thing is is looking at the big picture in the direction we need to move and why why we're shifting in that, like why why we're shifting away from fossil fuels.

KIMBERLY: And that goes to your point, I think, though, with why just dealing with sustainability as a whole big issue is so difficult because we can point to very specific things like acid rain, ozone layer, you know, ditch the CFCs and so forth. Or we can look at specific companies who are doing specific things or specific countries. But in the grand scheme of things, it is sustainability and trying to address sustainability and particularly climate change is a behemoth. It is it is a multifaceted hydra headed 100 headed hydra of just where do you even begin? And so I think, as you mentioned, it's important to note that we have a lot of what I think of the small wins.

KIMBERLY: It's a term used in psychology a lot like you have these small wins. And we need to build on those small wins. And I think that that you know, that's what makes me hopeful about this is that we see these small wins. And yeah, like when it comes to circular economy, the likely I mean, come on, are we really gonna ever see a full scale circular economy production where the amount going into the non reusable waste stream is minuscule? No, not unless there's some catastrophic thing that necessarily moves people in that direction.

KIMBERLY: And I don't think we're going to see any system wide change anytime soon. Scale wide system, large scale macro, right? But I think if we continue giving corporations incentives toward this and the NGOs continue to do what they're doing and be active and have activists and advocates moving us in that direction, that we can and we have seen that it's possible and it can be economically, exclusively economically beneficial as well as having all of those other things that are good for the planet and people as well. Yeah, I heard a quote the other day, and it was not attributed, I should find who actually said this, because the quote is that hope is the is the rational middle between the irrational poles of optimism and pessimism. And I really liked that.

KIMBERLY: And I like it's how we end our episodes, right? Because it's acknowledging where we're at, right? But also what what gives you hope. And I think we were talking about it before we started recording today. And I was saying, like, sometimes when you're on an exponential curve, you're zoomed in, so it can feel stagnant, it can feel so slow.

KIMBERLY: But I do like to think about the amount of options now available. Like when I think about buying new, like, and especially around clothing, as an area where there's just a little extra work makes you you can find the options. And it's made it kind of fun in a way, right? To like to just almost source that thing for myself. So that makes me excited.

KIMBERLY: And then I really like your point about small wins. And going back to my, we might only be at 3% penetration across, right? But as long as we're kind of seeing that that grow. Now, I will, I'm going to temper my hope this episode with I really do worry about the next, you know, 10 to 20 years and where we're going with economic relations, right? And if we talk so much about the need for international cooperation, and international agreements and international pressure on this, if we retreat to a world of closed off trade, of doing it all in your own place, we are necessary, just by necessity going to create a less sustainable world.

KIMBERLY: We're knocking ourselves back a century easily, you know, I agree. And I think too, you know, as aware consumers, it matters, we what we do and the choices we make matter. But we can't continue just to have the consumers take the weight of everything because, because the most conscientious people still can't do everything like, you know, still need others who, you know, we have our small wins too, and we need to stay sane in the process. I would that's honestly how I think about it is the small wins in my life or to make me feel not feel good as in I'm doing a good thing, but just make me feel like morally good about how I'm operating my life.

JORDAN: And then that's and I always talk about on the show of how we need the system chain. And we both do you need the system change so people can live their life in that sustainable system.

KIMBERLY: And that's why like I do, we mentioned it earlier, I think you got to sometimes think about yourself in different areas, right? Often, it's the consumer. And we how can we as a consumer shift this, but it's, you know, write to your local counselor about a recycling law that you like, or even just send them this show to have some some examples, you know, and I make that as a tongue in cheek joke, because you know, I would love if you sent our show to it to a counselor. But really, what it is that I'm trying to show you that say that it doesn't have to be the big you don't have to have the full policy. But they need to hear from you and hear that people want this think about yourself as a worker to write like, you know, you go back 20 years ago, 15 years ago, and it was like, Oh, we're using recycled paper and LEDs.

KIMBERLY: And everybody thought that was great. Companies said that now they would be laughed at by their competitors, right? Like the coal industry couldn't come out with like LED lights and green paper, because even they would be like, this is this is bad guys. So like, what pressure can we put on our workplaces and think about ourselves as more multifaceted? Well, I think to another important thing is just talking to other people and telling people, listen to sustainable planet and just raising awareness, because the more people who stop and think and even make one small change or rethink what they can do, or just put it's on their radar.

KIMBERLY: And then maybe they'll think about it later. And maybe that'll have a, you know, residual effect and a ripple effect on other people around them. That that's, that's, that helps every I think every bit of that helps. Yeah. And especially when you can show people, it's easy.

KIMBERLY: I think too often we have when we talk about sustainability, it's the 10 cell verse, you know, a very sustainability name, right? And the images it breaks up, I think like, even to this day, when we talk about sustainability things, or how you can shift it, people immediately get an image of somebody who's like wearing like rawhide clothing. And you know, like every plastic bottle has been turned into a planter. So their house looks like a weird collection of garbage, right? And I think the more we can show that like, no, you can have a completely normal, awesome life and be sustainable.

KIMBERLY: That really does actually make your friends stop and think next time, right? I agree. So if you enjoyed this episode of sustainable planet, or even if you didn't let us know at s planet pod at gmail.com. We're also on Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube, you'll find our links on our show notes at s planet pod.com along with additional resources from today's episode, please share our podcast and our great things we have to say with everybody you know, we would appreciate that. And if you would also rate us and review us, you can read more on my sub stack post.

KIMBERLY: Thank you for listening and have a great day.