Sustainable Ecommerce

Ep59 - Are Bugs the Key to a More Sustainable Food System?

Welcome to Episode 59!
https://sustainable-ecom.com/ep59
You might be forgiven for thinking that I’m becoming a little obsessed with brands that turn waste into value, and you’d be right!
Last week we had Goodcitizens, aiming to Untrash the Planet by turning post consumer plastic into desirable eyewear.
This week we have another incredible Aussie entrepreneur, who’s getting even grubbier (pun very much intended) by using insects to turn food waste into protein and fertiliser. 
Phoebe Gardiner is the Co-Founder of Bardee, and AgTech start-up from Melbourne who’s managed in just 3 years to scale operations up to processing 40 tonnes of food waste every single day. 
Food waste is one of the biggest contributors to Greenhouse Gas emissions. It’s estimated that every tonne of food waste averted from landfill saves nearly 2 tonnes of emissions, so quite aside from the alchemy of turning waste into value, Bardee’s operations are already materially contributing to our struggles towards Net Zero. So much so, that they’re the first insect tech project in the world to become a recognised & certified Carbon Offset provider.

EP58 - Is Brand Purpose Critical to Founder Resilience & Overcoming Adversity?

Welcome to Episode 58!
https://sustainable-ecom.com/ep58
It’s so tempting isn’t it, to believe that other brands and other entrepreneurs have all the answers and so have had an easy path to success.  We’ve all been sucked in by the alluring stories of hockey stick growth. Few brands like to share the real story lest it tarnish their investable image. 
But when you’re a purpose driven brand, honest & transparency about the realities are far more powerful.  Imagine openly promoting your 2500+ failed attempts to make your first.  And imaging the emotional challenges of 752 days in which your commitment is tested, your leadership is needed to keep your team motivated, your values are challenged, all the while your bank balance is draining.    
What does it take to build an internationally recognised, ground breaking brand from that kind of standing start?
To answer these questions, my guest today is the hugely inspirational founder of Good Citizens, Nik Robinson.   Together with his wife and 2 children, all equal shareholders in the business, Good Citizens makes eyewear where the frames are made from 100% post-consumer plastic, and in doing so are executing their Purpose of Untrashing the Planet.  
There are a number of things I hope you’ll take from this episode.
Firstly, just how hard it really is to make things out of recycled plastic. I hope you’ll excuse some somewhat self-indulgent questions about the details of how they make products, having been down this path myself I was fascinated by and somewhat in awe of what they’ve achieved with their manufacturing process.  And if nothing else, I hope that you pass a BS filter over claims made by many brands about how their products are made from recycled materials.
But in many ways, this episode is the story of how Purpose, and especially the Robinson family’s commitment to each other to see that Purpose through, has sustained them through what continues to be a turbulent journey.
And far from being back-room idealism, Good Citizen’s mission drives everything they do and has enabled a story so compelling that they were able to secure a front window spot at Selfridges in London before they even fully launches, and get invited to speak to the leadership at Tesla, Google and even at the UN.
I hadn’t intended the show to about Purpose especially.  But as we were chatting, and my mind increasingly opened to the question of whether Purpose is in fact the key to overcoming adversity and generating resilience as a founder.  Please do listen right to the end for my take on that, having had this amazing opportunity to chat with Nik.

EP57 -How Values & Story Are Driving Growth in Corporate Gifting

Welcome to Episode 57 of the Sustainable Ecommerce Podcast!
https://sustainable-ecom.com/ep57
Last week I got to chat with Nikki Ciancio, from Blaek Store, who’s been focused on re-inventing retail and build a model that supports consumers as we all move to a more circular economy.  I loved having that different perspective on things, and so this week I though it would be cool to get another angle on things, this time with a Corporate Gifting business. 
Michelle Smith is the founder of Curated With Conscience, a gift box brand that, as the name implies is doing the hard work of seeking out brands with ethical, sustainable and purpose-driven stories that match the growing needs of business to work with vendors that align with both their own values as well as their ESG directives. 
As you’ll see, far from being an opportunist, frankly like many of the hamper and gifting brands that have sprung up in the past few years, Michelle herself is driven by a deep sense of Purpose, and its abundantly apparent that it’s those values that have both driven her business growth to date, as well as what will see her through the current challenging economy that we are all experiencing.
 

EP56-What Brands & Retailers Must Do to Help Consumers Buy Better

Welcome to Episode 56 of the Sustainable Ecommerce Podcast!
https://sustainable-ecom.com/ep56
This week we return to sort of normal programming by chatting with the founder of a sustainable retail store. Nikki Ciancio is the Co-Founder of Blaek Store, a retailer store attempting to define a better model model for supporting consumers on their journey to sustainability. 
Of course, Nikki’s brand is doing the hard work of carefully curating sustainable and ethical brands to sell in store, making Blaek a go-to destination for buying better on the Northern Beaches, but much more than that, she’s providing the consumer service structure needed to help us move towards a circular and lower-consumption economy with recycling, recommerce and repair services needed to keep items in circulation for longer.  
What’s especially interesting to me is that they think of themselves as a fashion retailer, and so they really are forging a new type of sustainability store.  In the show today, Nikki shares her experiences in forging new type of retail store, as well as her opinions on exactly  what sort of information brands should be providing to help consumers make better purchasing decisions.

EP55 - Rethinking Waste: Old Footwear to New Flooring with John Elliott

Welcome to Episode 55 of the Sustainable Ecommerce Podcast!
https://sustainable-ecom.com/ep55
This week’s show is the fourth one in our mini series on rethinking waste. 
So far we’ve touched on ocean plastic and how Plastic Bank is rethinking that as a resource is generating significant social and economic opportunity. And we’ve looked at mechanical recycling of textiles with Upparel, and how they are actively stitching together supply chains for the recycled fibre, then chemical recycling with Blocktexx where blends are being split out and turned into new PET chips and organic paste to be used in soil regeneration projects.
So today we move onto footwear.  110 million pairs of shoes are imported into Australia every year, and basically without rethinking used footwear as a resource, they all end in landfill.   My guest today has been spearheading the recycling of shoes since 2010 and I think you will agree has an extraordinary depth of experience and pedigree in the business-for-good movement. 
John Elliott is the founder of Save Our Soles, they’re the organisation behind every shoe collection box you maybe have seen or used at stores like Foot Locker, Rebel Sport and just about everyone else.
We learn about the Save our Soles process in today’s show, but with John’s deep industry experience I found the whole conversation fascinating, even if it does get a little philosophical in places.
 

EP54 - Rethinking Waste: Recovering Polyester & Cellulose from Textiles with Adrian Jones

Welcome to Episode 54!
https://sustainable-ecom.com/ep54
This week is our third episode in our mini-series on waste, this week we look at absolutely emerging technology in relation to chemical recycling of textiles.
Chemical recycling per se isn’t new.  There are a few amazing companies overseas like Renewcel that can take cellulosic textiles and recycle those into new yarn. But until now, there has never been a solution to blends.
Enter my guest this week. Adrian Jones is the co-founder of Queensland-based chemical recycling company BlockTexx. Despite being what I think you would still call a start-up, they’ve already proved they can handle 85% of the typical textile fibre types, and are handling about 4000 tonnes of textiles this year.
They have developed an incredibly exciting technology that I think we’ll see becoming more and more important part of the textile recycling supply chain in the years to come.

EP53 - Rethinking Waste 2: Giving New Life to Old Textile with Michael Elias

Welcome to Episode 53 of the Sustainable Ecommerce Podcast!
https://sustainable-ecom.com/ep53
Today’s show is the second episode in our mini-series on rethinking waste, and we turn our focus from plastic to mechanically recycled textiles, taking a look at the downstream uses for the recycled material and how you can get involved. 
Now you may be aware of some of the alarming statistics of this already, but the average Australian throws out 23KG of textiles per year, giving us the dubious honour or being the second largest consumer of textiles per capita in the world, behind the US.
And if you sum those number up, with 26.3 Million people in Australia, that adds up to something like 604 million KG of textile waste every year. Clearly, as brands we need and responsibility to change this equation.
So to help on that path, my guest today is Michael Elias, founder of Upparel. As you’ll hear, the demand for domestic recycling of textiles here in Australia has enabled Michael to transition from ecommerce brand selling subscription socks to Australia’s largest mechanical textile recycler, in just a couple of years.  
A little like Plastic Bank that we spoke to last week on the show, Upparel have a strong focus on transparency and traceability when it comes to knowing exactly what your brand is recycling, and where that recycled material ends up. 
Perhaps most relevantly for the topic of this series, one of the most exciting parts of Upparel’s ecosystem is how they’re constantly innovating and working with downstream partners to rethink ‘waste textiles’ as a resource, replacing other virgin materials in a range of products from the fillers in boxing bags to home insulation.
That means that whether your waste problem related to overstock, returns, deadstock, post consumer product or even staff uniforms, Upparel has a solution to help you keep material out of landfill.

EP52 - Rethinking Waste: Turning Plastic Pollution into Social Impact with Shaun Frankson

Welcome to Episode 52 of the Sustainable Ecommerce Podcast!
https://sustainable-ecom.com/ep52
My guest today is Shaun Frankson, co-Founder of Plastic Bank.  They’re a Canadian technology company on a mission to stop plastic before it reaches the ocean. 
To date the partnerships they’ve enabled between brands and coastal communities have prevented almost 4 billion bottles worth of plastic from entering the ocean, 88 million KG.
They’re not just collecting that plastic from shorelines and dumping into landfill though, they’re fundamentally rethinking waste as a resource and turning it back into recycled flake at scale.
While big brands can get involved and actually work with them to secure a predictable source of fully traceable averted plastic to help replace virgin plastics, any brand in any region can get involved, make an impact in the plastic pollution problem as well as huge social impact in the lives of families and communities most affected by the issue.