Learning Series | Natalie Colvin on Operating with an ESG Mindset

Summary: Learn about the opportunity and challenges in the world of ESG with Natalie Colvin. Natalie is an an expert in sustainability and works with companies to to build and foster an ESG strategy that aligns with their corporate purpose.

If you want to get in touch with Natalie, feel free to reach out to her directly:

Email: nlmcolvin@gmail.com

Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/nataliecolvin/

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Transcript:

Ben - WeHero: Natalie. Thank you so much for joining us on the we hero learn series. We're so excited to talk about so many things, but mainly this really popular topic around sustainability and what 2022 is gonna look like for all these companies that we're trying to support right now. And so thank you so much again for being here and maybe just as a warmup, if you could share a little bit of background about your, who you are and how you got into this world, and maybe what you're currently focused on, that'd be really good for our listeners, just so they understand a little bit more about what you're here and to do and what you're trying to accomplish.

Natalie Colvin: Yeah, definitely. Thank you so much for having me. As Ben said, I'm Natalie Colvin. I'm currently a sustainability consultant focused on strategy B Corp certification and just helping organizations along their sustainability journey. My background is a little bit of a winding road, like many people but I've always been called to purpose driven work. I started my career more in the service social, nonprofit space, but while I was living abroad, I really saw firsthand how important the environmental sustainability was to social wellbeing. And so that's when I started to integrate the environmental side and the social side of sustainability together. On that note, there is, you know, sometimes talk about sustainability and they only think about their environmental impact, but really, I like to look at holistic sustainability and that's something that's known as the triple bottom line.

Natalie Colvin: So there are three pillars to sustainable business or sustainable organization and kind of like a three-legged stool if one of those isn't strong, it'll fall over. And so those three, three legs of the stool are financial sustainability must be financially stable. Otherwise you fail must be environmentally sustainable. And that's, that's obviously the piece that people typically think of now when we talk about business sustainability, but then there's also the social side of sustainability and I really see all three of those as integral to success. And so from, from the social nonprofit side, I realized it was around I'd moved back from abroad and it was around 2013. I realized that, you know, if we were to have any hope of shifting all of these immense, you know, both environmental degradation we were facing and the social inequalities of the world what we really needed to do was catalyze a movement of purpose driven business. And so at that time I went back to school and I got an MBA in sustainable business. And since then I've kind of worked in product and supply chain and built my experience on what sustainable business would look like. And now focused, like I said on, you know, helping companies make meaningful sustainability strategies really focus on tying it to their mission and what they care about.

Ben - WeHero: Thank you for sharing. Cause I think there's also just so many people that wanted to want to get into this career path. And so just understanding a little bit about your background and journey, and you brought up the three pillars and you probably already know just sharing that we're gonna dive into all three of those pillars, understand some of the core things that you're noticing and, and, you know, one of the first questions I have Natalie is you mentioned the environmental system sustainability piece and, and how that's a big focus for companies and something we all think of when we think of corporate sustainability, I, I wanna know what goes into that and maybe a better way to phrase it is what do you see going into that? We hear about carbon offsets, we hear about waste, and I'm just really curious in your eyes, what you're noticing in that pillar. And what's been really popular activities for companies partake in.

Natalie Colvin: Yeah. you know, it's kind of all over. And with my clients, I, I really like to take a personalized approach. And so asking the company's organizations, you know, what they really care about often right now the biggest first step is measuring your a carbon footprint. And so greenhouse gas emissions which can be a super daunting task. It's not easy to know what the emissions are from, you know, the inception of the materials you're making all the way through to the end of use of your customer, right? And are they throwing it away or are they recycling it? And is it even possible to do those things? And so there's a lot of great tools now that can kind of help with estimates. And most companies are working with pretty rough estimates. Those estimates are great though.

Natalie Colvin: They give you a starting line. They let you see where your biggest impact is to be able to start to reduce those greenhouse gases greenhouse gas emissions, and also just a framework full or seeing your whole business, which is pretty cool. You know, the climate, neutral's a great organization that has a good tool. You know, there's greenhouse gas protocol has a great tool. The EPA has a great tool. There's a lot of resources out there. As well as, you know, hiring consultants, if you wanna do a super deep dive but there's, there's different abilities to jump into measuring your greenhouse gas emissions. So that's probably the most popular way to jump in right now. I mean, it's a big issue, right? We, we all know that that climate change is affecting is affecting everything we do, not only the wellbeing of our planet, but also the wellbeing of our businesses. So I think that's, that's definitely the number one, the number one trend in environmental sustainability right now.

Andy - WeHero: Do you see the trend of, you know, once people understand what their impact is, do you see most people jumping into, okay, how do we alter our business to reduce overall emissions? Or do you see most people looking for the, how do I just offset this, you know, and not change my actual business?

Natalie Colvin: Yeah, that's a great question. There's a lot of talk around offsets right now and, and how much good they're actually doing and, and what beneficial offsets are. And so I think that the first step is always offset. It just is it's it's an easy, you know, line item to add, but the question now is are they effective and are they effective enough? And so the conversation has really turned to thinking about reduce and where can we improve our own impact and help our supply chain, both customers and suppliers to reduce their impact, which is also our impact, right? Like as, as companies started to look at the holistic health of their business, it's just more and more you know, proving how interconnected everything. I mean, the pandemic is, is a great example of that. We we're all living in this interconnected world now. And we have to, you know, help help each other

Ben - WeHero: Jumping back out, Natalie I'm, I'm so curious cuz and the broader view of the three pillars now, you know, if we look at just this past year and, and, and what's been changing and, and so many companies trying to, to jump into this, which has been really exciting, I'm curious your perspective on what roadblocks you've seen for companies as they try to do this for any of those three pillars, just what are the things that they're really challenged with and where they need support and help.

Natalie Colvin: Yeah, that's a great question. Over the years I have heard lots of excuses and, and, and roadblock for why it's not, you know, it's not the right time to jump into sustainability. I think that the, the most common is definitely time and money. You know, organizations think that jumping into these initiatives are going to cost a lot and they're gonna take a lot of time. And while that may be true at the offset you know, in the long run, many of the programs and that you will start, will actually save money and save time and, you know, just staying ahead of legal requirements that might be coming down the pipeline and risk mitigation for your own business is a huge reason that this is, this is worthwhile. It just comes down to doing, doing the right research, setting priorities, you know, taking a look at those cost analyses and, and deciding where the best place to get started is.

Natalie Colvin: And just making sure that you're looking into both what will matter for your individual organization and having, you know, that wider, positive impact to counter those, you know, time and money restraints. Another super common roadblock is not knowing where to start a lot of organizations. You know, they come to me and they wanna do, they wanna do better. They wanna do more, but they have no idea what that looks like. And my main suggestion is, is just to start somewhere, you know, pick something that you're passionate about. That really means something to your organization. And you obviously, if, if you can hire outside, help, you know, hire a sustainability professional internally or consultant they can really help you identify where the biggest impact areas are and lowest hanging fruit is. But again, there's a lot of free or low cost tools that you can also use.

Natalie Colvin: As I mentioned to measure greenhouse gases, there's, there's great tools available the B impact assessment, which is a B Corp tool that helps you kind of identify I mean, it's the tool to it certified to be B Corp, but even if you don't wanna be certified, you can go through that tool and it can help you identify any purpose driven policies and practices, just great things that start to implement that a third party has recognized as you know, these are good for people and the and the environment. On that note, I also think that it's amazing to crowdsource your employees. You know, it, it solves the where to start the time and the money. Not, not to mention that employees nowadays, they want to be doing this work no matter if they're in, you know, your accounting department or your product department, they they're interested and they want their work to, to mean something. And they can get a lot done. It's, it's amazing to, to see what passion driven work can do in just a couple of hours a month. And just for employee morale, it's really great to give something to just shift their brains off of their, their normal tasks. So that's another huge recommendation that I make when, when companies have these roadblocks,

Ben - WeHero: I'm really glad you mentioned just like just getting started somewhere. And also, I'm glad you mentioned just employee buying and getting employees involved. I was on a webinar earlier today and they brought up eBay 20 years ago and how sustainability started at eBay. And it was a group of employees that were looking at their passion going, do we still use styro? Are we really still using this? Like we could do better. And it was a group of employees, and then they started doing that with other things and it was employees going like, oh, we could do better than this. And, and now they have a huge sustainability group at eBay. And I, I just show that as to make your point that, you know, coming from employees and just starting somewhere for them, it was styrofoam and now they have a massive solar farm. And so I think that's just really, really important. So thank you for sharing that.

Natalie Colvin: Yeah. And you never know where your, your employee's passions lie. Right? You could have an employee that in their free time is doing a ton of workers' rights work and you know, why not leverage that for within the, you know, within the organization?

Ben - WeHero: Yeah. And another question I have for you too, Natalie, is, is related to that you have these employees that are so passionate about this they're knocking on the door, and a lot of companies are trying to figure out just what does a sustainability group or team look like in the organization? I'm really curious how you see sustainability teams evolving. Obviously you get brought into these companies to solve some of these challenges and O and help orchestrate some of those teams. And I'm just really curious, what does a sustainability team look like and how is it evolving?

Natalie Colvin: Yeah, there's a couple of different belief systems here. You have some organizations that want full on sustainability teams and they wanna manage things and have dedicated employees. And that's great. Not, not all organizations can do that. Like, like we said, sometimes the time and money resources is the roadblock. I do think though, you know, as we were mentioning, employees are looking for something different from their work these days than they were 20 years ago. There was I believe it was a LinkedIn study from a couple years ago that said that it was almost 90% of workers would actually take a pay cut to work at a company that aligned with their, their values. You know, that the company aligned with their own personal values, the company values did. And I think that the last, you know, two years have really, or year and a half have really amplified that they're calling this time the great resignation, which is, you know, kind of crazy, you see gas stations and, and, you know restaurants that are understaffed.

Natalie Colvin: And it it's really because employees want to do work that they feel is, is benefiting the broader society and, and the environment. And not only do they wanna work for a company that aligns with their values, but they personally wanna be integrated in that work. So you see a lot of workers going back to school or, or studying new, new things that maybe weren't even related to their old career. And so in that sense, I think integrating your sustainability initiatives, environmental and social within the broader team is a really great practice right now. I think that it not only supports your initiatives, but it gives those employees that more than their day to day traditional job function, would've been it works really well because you also get to crowdsource and get a variety of ideas and perspectives, and you're not stuck with just two or three people making decisions for a whole organization.

Natalie Colvin: That being said, I really do think it's important to have someone and whether it's a consultant or someone in internally, that's a dedicated person, keeping things moving. You know, you get, you get going. And the sadly the sustainability initiatives are often the ones that get pushed aside, you know, when time gets, gets really tight, that's the thing that's gets pushed the back burner, unless there's a deadline. And so if you have that one person that's too checking in and keeping things, you know, top of mind and making sure that they're still a priority and that they're moving that's definitely the way that I see sustainability teams really functioning at a high level right now.

Andy - WeHero: Yeah. I'd be curious. I, I, I love how you're kind of talk about incorporating the team, but you need kind of need the driver behind the team. And we see that a, all the time in the, in the social responsibility space, you know, I'd be curious from the outside Ben and I talk a lot about how we see these industries going through the life cycles, you know, so we, all of a sudden, see, let's say retail, everyone needs to be doing the sustainability trend, and I'd be curious, you know, you're in the trenches. What do you see from like an industry dynamic standpoint and which companies and what industry really need to be focused on this. And then I'd also be curious, do you ever see companies working together to better understand their sustainability in the industry? There are some supply chain and things like that.

Natalie Colvin: Yeah. Great points. As far as industries go, I, I think it's important everywhere. I might be biased there, but definitely no matter what industry a business is in sustainability and an environmental, you know I don't wanna say issues, but challenges are going to become more and more important. If you're not already seeing it, you will soon, whether it's your supply chain being affected or your consumers starting to demand it it's everywhere. And on the collaboration note, it's my favorite thing to do is to encourage organizations to work together. And not only with other companies, you know, with competitors, with industry organizations, nonprofits are great partners. Academia is a great partner. You know, local government is a great partner. Anyone that has any sort of stake in the issues that a business is, is also looking into, they can be great partners.

Natalie Colvin: There's also a huge movement around doing things together. The outdoor industry association has had a sustainability working group for going on 20 years now. And they've gotten, you know, really hard competitors in the room together to try to solve these problems and it has made a huge impact. So seeing it there now in the beauty space, there's a lot of really great coalition. And then you get cross industry collaboration going on just generally around packaging is a big one right now. I think that almost any industry has these groups that you can plug into no matter what the interest or the initiative is. There's a great one in California around microplastics that, you know, it literally has higher industry people, laundry industry, people apparel companies, it has government, it has academia, it has nonprofits and sitting in those meetings, you really get to see the full scope of not only the problem, but the solutions because people are all thinking about it from a slightly different angle. And it's, it's the best way to make real progress is to get everyone in a room and just start thinking of ideas. And it's, it's working. So it gives me help those collaborations.

Ben - WeHero: I, I love that. I'm so happy to hear you say it's working just, we always need that ounce of like positivity and good news, Natalie. So thank you cuz we can get it pretty negative pretty fast. I I'd love to dive into the weeds a little bit around data and reporting. Like I, I talk to so many folks in this world that are really struggling with the data and the reporting. And I'm just curious if you have any pro tips for them, people that are in this role that are trying to do that reporting, what are things that can make their life easier? Cuz I see them pulling their hair out, see some people getting gray hair. So how can we help these folks?

Natalie Colvin: Definitely. that is a huge pain point. So sustainability professionals have a lot of data to keep track of and it comes from all over at all times. Sadly there's not any great tools out there to help. There's different project management systems if, if that's the way an individual likes to work, but the big guess tips I have are keeping everything extremely organized. And, and cause most things are in Excel sheets and they have to be passed, you know, from suppliers or from different teams within an organization. And again, that one person I was talking about that's, that's kind of leading the charge on some of these initiatives. I think one of their biggest jobs is making sure that the steps are clear. Everyone understands how the organization should be laid out like a clear step by step guide. So anyone who's touching this information will know.

Natalie Colvin: The worst thing that happens is you get someone in a document and they, you don't understand how it was supposed to be organized or what it was exactly supposed as to before. And they start putting other things in and then you have to go back and clean it up. I've seen that happen too many times to count and it's just, it's really unfortunate go back and redo all of that great work. And so those you know, SOPs, the standard operating procedures, keeping track of those as you're keeping track of all of the data that you need. Keeping deadlines, deadlines, and timelines are another huge recommendation I have, especially if you're working with international supply chains or partners because those timelines they change and everyone, you know, is on different schedules and knowing, okay, in October, every year we're gonna be, you know, needing to collect, collect this data.

Natalie Colvin: Here's the step by step for how to do it. And then, you know, the follow through and reevaluating those processes is another big, big recommendation. So at the end of every data collection period, whether that's, you know, the end of the year for some of these greenhouse gas things or the end of the season for different, you know, product things it's evaluating, did that work, what worked good about it, what didn't work about it and, and evolving those. And hopefully soon there will be tools to help manage more of these things and integrate all of the data collection together. But so far it's just not, there's not a, there's not a silver bullet yet.

Andy - WeHero: Yeah. I think everyone struggles with the reporting when there's not a a, you know, I'd be curious, the whole goal of, I guess, reporting is to see how you're progressing. And let's say you're dealing with a company who's just jumping in. How do you help them set goals? And how aggressive do you try to get them to be, you know, are you typically advising, Hey, I want you to, you know, get 50% of all of your sustainability initiatives done in the first year or is it normally a slower ramp? Like if you were a company starting this, how would you set your goals?

Natalie Colvin: Yeah, that's a good question. I've come across some clients who don't wanna set any goals until they know all of their baselines and that's one way to approach it. You know, obviously it takes a little longer to get to those goals, but once you have them, they can be more, more meaningful in the sense that they're tied to data and science based initiatives. But I, you know, going back to what I said earlier, just getting started is really important. And some organizations and people, they need that kind of goal out there, like what they're reaching for before they can get started. And so when I was working with, with a footwear client previously, we decided to make a goal to increase the recycled content of the product. Right. And we didn't know what it was at currently, so we didn't put a specific percentage on it.

Natalie Colvin: What we did was we took one of the lines and said, this line will be a hundred percent recycled for the upper by you know, it was 20, 22 at that point. So kind of breaking down the goals into little bite size pieces is a good recommendation. I also think that different teams have different ideas, right? Like they might already have an initiative that they're really excited about or a goal that they want to try to work towards. And so that's something I leverage a lot. If, if employees are already excited about it then I can help and see is it feasible? What would the, the cost analysis be? Because some of these goals are set without really knowing what it will take to get there. And, and that, you know, step by step and year by year road mapping is something that is really important for companies to be able to see before committing committing to, you know, sustainability goals and the market's always changing.

Natalie Colvin: Right? So that's the thing you need to know about these sustainability goals is that sometimes you have a goal and you're on track and then like, right, right now there isn't enough organic cotton for companies to meet that goal. There's just not. So you're gonna have a ton of companies that are gonna be trying to figure out what to do and what's the, the next best step. And, you know, I've been recommending there's in conversion, organic cotton, it's, it's basically farms that are trying to get certified for organic, but it takes a certain number of years. And so our, you know, kind of bandaid solution because there's not enough to buy is to start supporting these farmers, which really helps them because they're already spending the extra money to be organic and they're not getting the benefit of it. And so it's kind of a great win-win that we were able to figure out within the supply chain of the specific company.

Andy - WeHero: That's an, an awesome example of being creative and also probably helping the social leg of the stool as well as those farms invest and try to convert. I have a question, you know, I think a lot of companies and a lot of managements are probably justifying this by the improvement to their brand improvement, to sales that come with being sustainable. How do you advise companies to market this? When do you market it? Do you market it when you start the initiatives, when you make impact or how would you approach that? If you were sitting in the company seat.

Natalie Colvin: Yeah. That's a great question. Companies get very nervous about, well, there's, there's two kinds, right? Some companies get very nervous about talking about the environmental programs and initiatives they have, and then others wanna start talking about it before anything's even been done. And I kind of advise both groups the same way, a hundred percent transparency as much as possible is good for everyone. I think that, that a big shift that's coming is consumers understand where our products are coming from now and, and what's going on within organizations a lot more than ever before. And the second that they, you know, find out about good things or bad things, it's all over and it's going to be whether you talk about it or not. And so I think that in the spirit of being as transparent as possible, I think people should start talking about it.

Natalie Colvin: They should talk also about why it's really hard because consumers don't understand a small brand that just doesn't have enough, you know influence within their supply chain. Can't get the same prices on sustainable materials. For example, as you know, a big like target can and, and neither is good or bad, but there's different things and different challenges, no matter where you are. And that's a piece I think in the marketing of sustainability that is missing and consumers care, they understand they're not looking for perfect anymore. They're looking for progress. And so if you start to talk about your progress and your journey, it's all a journey. And, and I think as individuals, a lot of us are going through our own personal growth journeys and just to be relatable as a company and talk about your journey and where it came from and the value is behind it. It really goes a long way and not enough organizations are, are doing it yet. So that's kind of my marketing spiel. We'll, we'll see if, if more and more companies will, we'll pick up on it

Ben - WeHero: To double click on a point, you, and you touched a little bit on it, Natalie and I have a hunch, but to that party of C that have the nervousness about talking about it, where is that stemming from? If we can go a little bit more into that.

Natalie Colvin: Yeah. I think, I think it stems from the greenwashing backlash that a lot of companies were getting about 20 years ago, people were doing things that they said were sustainable. That weren't. The other thing is once you start to dig into this, no matter what industry you're in, if you haven't built your company a hundred percent based on making the best choice for the environment and the social, there will be areas where you're not perfect where you're not doing the best thing and that's okay. Right. That's kind of what I was saying about being transparent and talking about your priorities and where they fall and, and why they fall that way is really, really important. But once you start to unpack that, no matter what, you'll get someone who cares about an issue differently than you do, and they might be a vocal consumer, they might give pushback.

Natalie Colvin: Right. And it just depends on what level that pushback comes to. People reference the Nike in the, you know, early nineties with the sweat shops, right? Like that was the big first greenwashing, even though it wasn't greenwash, cuz no one was claiming that they were sustainable in that area. But what happened after the big pushback for Nike having, you know, all these sweat shops in, in Asia was that they started looking and I think it was one of the best things to happen to the apparel industry. As far as in terms of sustainability and that's because customers and nonprofits and outside society, they see things differently and they can bring up issues in a way that a company might not think. And now I'm kind of off on a tangent, but bringing it back when you start marketing things, you open your business up to that scrutiny, but I don't think it's a bad thing. It's kind of my, my, my point there to bring it back.

Ben - WeHero: And I love how like to go back to your Nike example, how Phil Knight talks about he's so glad that that happened. Not that the sweat shops were happening, but that awareness generated cuz he unaware and their leadership was unaware. And like to your point, just having that awareness and, and having that sounding block is almost a really good thing.

Natalie Colvin: Yeah. There's a push. I think it's what we call them, bomb thrower nonprofits. And they're the ones who wanna make a big, big scene and like, oh this is awful. Look how awful all these companies are. And there's a way to work with. And I don't, I don't know if depending on the organization, what impact they need, do they need the bomb throw to get them to, to wake up and see an issue or not. But working together is, is something that I always recommend as well. So if, you know, if a nonprofit or a customer brings up an issue to you that they're really concerned about, ask them, ask them why, ask them if they have any recommendations for solution or know how you can start to get involved in it. Just like employees, individuals as consumers like that, you know, they're, they're having an impact and it, it feels good to, to know that you're making a small change, whatever that is.

Ben - WeHero: Yeah. if we can stay on that point because I think the nonprofit piece is really critical here. Cause I think we can do this too. And we can do this four, which both I think are wrong. I think it's, we can do this with yeah. And I think have doing this with the real, really good nonprofits is, is critical. Also. I just think for employee education and bringing your entire company along for the ride nonprofits do such a good job at that. I'm curious if you have any tips on, you know, identifying really good nonprofits, partnering with really good nonprofits, just your experience through it, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Natalie Colvin: I always recommend going back to the organization's core values and mission and finding nonprofits that align with, with those are always most impactful. There's definitely opportunity to broaden that. So if you're working on a specific issue, the microplastics issue for example, finding international recognize nonprofits that can kind of help fill a gap if, if they're actually doing the work on the ground that you wish you could be doing, or if they're doing the research to provide more background information and, and more science behind it, those are great nonprofits to support. There's also a lot of great like third party nonprofit vetting systems that you can use as far as me making sure that the nonprofits are actually doing what they say that they're doing. And those are really great to do. I think that, you know, working with organizations like we here to help facilitate those partnerships is really awesome as well.

Andy - WeHero: I've got kind of a fun question here for you. You know, I think Ben and I always joke back and, and forth about our favorite sustainable brands. You know, if you had to pick, you know, a company that you think is pioneering in sustainability and that you really would throw your chips in as, you know, a brand that really impresses you. I'd love to hear that, but I'd also love to hear, you know, one of the things that comes out across this whole conversation is, you know, nobody's perfect, we're all working on things and that's okay. You, you know, we, we, we can't expect miracles overnight. I'd love to hear a brand that you think, you know, is really investing in this and committed to it and is coming from a place that's not so sustainable, but gonna end up in a really impressive place.

Natalie Colvin: Yeah. great questions, you know, the, to, to answer your second question first, I have a couple a couple of unexpected ones that people don't think about, but the work behind the scenes that target is doing is pretty cool. And it's not, it's potentially not going to show for a couple of years, maybe too many years, to be honest, in my opinion, but the, the starting of moving away and, and creating a circular economy within the, because sustainability right now, unfortunately, is often seen as a luxury, right? Sustainable items cost more most of the time. And Target's really looking at how to shift that they have a lot of, you know, more affordable options and they want to create everything that they do out of the same sustainability standards, which is, you know, more power to 'em that's, that's gonna be great.

Natalie Colvin: Again, like I said, it probably won't trickle down for, oh, I don't know. Hopefully, hopefully sooner than I think, but so Target's doing some, a lot of really good work behind the scenes and research and also sharing all of that work, which is pretty cool. So they're one that you can watch. Another one that swings so far, both ways. So I don't wanna talk about it, but Amazon's really got some great initiatives. Yes, they should be doing way more for how much money they have. I agree with all of that. I definitely think that the promoting of consumer culture and like having to have it now, all of that is awful. But within that, I like to talk about how they're thinking outside the box. Some of the things that they've started doing as far as with returns, for example, now you can take your returns to whole foods or to a ups store, and they all get put in big boxes and within, you know, shipping and returns, the amount of small little things that have to happen is actually where most of the impact comes.

Natalie Colvin: And so by consolidating all of that into one big shipper, instead of all of the little trips, you know, that used to happen to, and from individual's homes, that's a big kind of outside of the box thinking people weren't really doing that yet. And they've a adopted it and ran with it. And the great thing about Amazon is that when they decide to do something, it happens pretty quickly. They have a huge sustainability team too, so I'm hoping that that, that is helping. But again, there's just like I was talking about earlier. People like to talk about the bad right. And focus on oh, but they're all of these things are awful. And how could you do yes. If you have the means support local, you know, support a hundred percent sustainable B Corps are a great standard, but if you can't, there's still ways to help organizations, individual organizations be more sustainable.

Natalie Colvin: Let's see, as far as really fun, sustainable brands that I support my big push recently has been local and as local as possible. And so for my personal shopping, I buy almost everything I can at farmer's markets or small. You know, luckily right now I'm in a big city and so it's been easy. But kind of limiting the impact on that. And not only, not only that the business is based local, but that they are supporting local. So the inputs to whatever they're making is also local. And so those are mostly, you know, small organizations, of course, you know, you have Patagonia that pioneers, great sustainability Patagonia's advocacy is top notch, the way that they engage consumers around advocacy and actually follow through that's an area that a lot of organizations, they just don't know what to do. Right. They don't know how to engage in advocacy. So they're, they're someone that I've been really following recently to

Andy - WeHero: All great answers. I appreciate the out of the box and good, helpful tips for both Ben and I, I think

Ben - WeHero: I, I have a personal question. I I'm trying to shop more locally as well, Natalie. And I'm curious, you brought a great point, not just shopping locally, but also some supporting local vendors that source locally as well. How, how do you determine that? Do you ask like the employees, I'm really curious how you go about that.

Natalie Colvin: Yeah. If you know, if you're at a farmer's market or actually engaging with someone yeah. Just start asking them because it's great. Cuz then they start to also know that you care. The other way, if, if I'm looking at things online, there's almost always like a way to see made in. So then you can at least know, you can start to get an idea of the supply chain. But my, my best way is just asking. I love reaching out to especially small brands. I think that the responses you get back are really heartfelt and personal and you get to know the brands a little bit better. There's a local tea company that, you know, I always ask and some of her, you know, her materials or her, her inputs are coming from, from international because it's the best, you know, quality or, or whatever her reasoning is. But she's always really great about trying to, to tell which ones are local. And you know, she knows that I'm on this journey and she's on the journey too. And so we have kind of a, a great relationship about it and she points out what I'm looking for and helps me, helps me with that.

Ben - WeHero: Perfect. I'm gonna ask a lot more questions for my farmers market, better be ready.

Natalie Colvin: And then you just get to have that, you know, so especially right now, we all have to have masks on when we're, when we're talking to people in person. And so if you can ask questions that get people to have, you know, that energy that a smile would normally do. That's kind of been my, this summer. That's been, my goal is to get people's energy, to lift without having them see a smile.

Ben - WeHero: I love that. I'm curious, Natalie, as you know, 20, 22 is just right around the corner, which is, seems crazy, but what are things that you think sustainability leader should be considering as we go into this next year? Any things that you wanna flag for the folks that are listening to this.

Natalie Colvin: Yeah. you know, as you were talking about earlier, Ben, there's a lot of doom and gloom. When we start talking about climate and the environment and what's happening and what's not happening and the biggest thing that I want anyone, whether you're a business leader or consumer, or just a, you know, random person who's watching this video to take away is that we have to have hope and we have to think that there are solutions and we have to all still be doing what we can be doing. One of the biggest things for business leaders that I see happening right now that I hope will continue is, is this idea of a whole market transformation and a market transformation. It can't happen unless individual businesses are the force making that transformation. Instead of waiting for consumer demand to, to shift the market or regulations to shift the market businesses are, are starting that movement on their own. You can see it happening in areas like the B Corp movement in 20, 20 16,000 companies started the B impact assessment. And prior to 2020, I think they'd been in, I don't know, at least 10 years, I believe that they've been running it. There was only four and certified, right? So that number is huge. The interest is growing, the movement is growing and this market transformation it's gonna be, it's gonna be

Natalie Colvin: I don't wanna say it's gonna be hard cause it's gonna be fun as long as you're ready for it, right? Like it's gonna be overhauling systems that no longer work. So why are we still using them? And discarding these out outdated beliefs that people have about, you know, our environment is a, a limitless source of whatever we need, right. We can just take from it or thinking that the environment is just a black hole for our waste. Like these beliefs that we all consciously, when you think about you're like, no, that's, that's not true, but that's how our economic system is still being run. And so this market transformation will turn all this on head, not to mention the social inequality and the, you know, global inequality that we've been seeing. All of this is it's just ready to be shifted. And I really think that a sustainability leader, who's a purpose driven, you know, wants to run a purpose driven organization, should be asking themselves, you know, first what outdated beliefs am I running on?

Natalie Colvin: You know, what, what can I start to shift within my own belief system? And then take that to the organization? You know, what outdated beliefs is my organization still running on? Even better, like, can we start to shift our business to work without these outdated beliefs? Or how can we start to be a catalyst to shift other people's outdated beliefs? It's, it's gonna, it's gonna have a lot of, a lot of out of the box thinking and moving beyond, you know, moving beyond linear models of take, make waste that we've seen to a more circular economy working really closely with our supply chain partners and collaborating, like we talked about collaborating is gonna be huge as we move into this new shift. And I think that this far greater transparency idea with consumers, with your supply chain, with competitors, even like get all that information out there so that everyone can be a part of the solution. That's gonna be a real big part of this market transformation as well. And then just keeping that hope, right? Like doing everything from a place of knowing, knowing that there are solutions and that you know, that, that we're not screwed, right? Like yes, 2030 is coming and that's, you know, a big, scary deadline. But we can't live in a world that says there's no, there's no solution. At least I can't. So I hope that business leaders are also living from a place of this hope.

Ben - WeHero: Yeah. I just love that you bring so much passion and inspiration to this, and I think that's exactly what we needed to hear as we talked about next year, which is always scary. But I thank you for just

Natalie Colvin: Especially now.

Ben - WeHero: Yeah. So thank you so much for just bringing so much inspiration into our lives and into this. And we appreciate you in one of the many reasons we want you to join. Andy and I Andy, did you have any other questions?

Andy - WeHero: No other questions from my end, all I can say is we are one of those companies in pending B Corp. We've been waiting a year for our final evaluation. And so it's, you know, every time we get an update email from B Corp where it says, Hey, like, just so you know, we're trying our best, but we have this many applicants. I always forward it around to our entire team. And I say, Hey, just an update here, but what an awesome update. Now, this many people are trying to do something. So so necessary in my opinion, it's a really positive trend.

Natalie Colvin: Yeah. Great viewpoint. Andy, a lot of organizations I work with are just impatient

Ben - WeHero: Ally. Where can more people learn about you? Where can people get in touch with you? What's the best way to reach you?

Natalie Colvin: Yeah, definitely. My LinkedIn profile is just Natalie Colvin, LinkedIn. I've been working tightly with an organization called ever root. And so I am on staff for their consulting firms. It's ever root dot, ever root consulting.com. Those are probably the best, two ways. Anyone at all can email me. Sure. Any questions? Love to talk to you? I don't have, you know, I am my own product. Right. So feel free to come and ask me all the questions that I've been asking. All of the, the, the suppliers and the people that I engage with. So feel free to bug me on that same amount.

Ben - WeHero: Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for just taking the time to educate us. I always learn so much every time I get to have a phone call with you, look forward to the day we get to meet up in person, but thank you again, sincerely for educating us for sharing your wisdom and just that sense of hope and inspiration that you give us. I really appreciate you for that. So thank you. You.

Natalie Colvin: Yeah. Thank you both for, including me. This is great.

Andy - WeHero: Thank you.