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Where to find Katie Boothby-Kung:

Katie Boothby-Kung - Instagram

Where to find Shopify:

Shopify - Website (Home)
Shopify - Social Enterprise Slack channel (Sign up)

Shopify - Open Learning
Shopify - Environment
Shopify - Sustainability Fund (Read more)
Shopify - Compass, Free Online Courses
Shopify - Community
Shopify - Operation HOPE (Read more)

Links Mentioned in Episode:

Copper Root Collective (Katie's Skincare Brand)

Technovation
Recurate
Genusee
Kiwibot
ShoppingGives
DailyKarma
Kotn
Son of a Tailor

Shownotes:

Krissie Leyland  0:00

Hello, and welcome to the MindfulCommerce Podcast, a place where we talk to ecommerce brands, ecommerce service providers and developers who care about protecting our planet. Today we're talking to the fantastic Katie Boothby-Kung from Shopify's social impact team. Katie is doing lots of incredible work at Shopify and we wanted to chat about it here on the podcast to inspire others to follow in Shopify's footsteps. So hi, Katie, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today. You know, I'm a huge fan of Shopify and what you're doing so I'm extremely excited to have you here. Do you want to start by introducing yourself and just tell us a little bit about your role at Shopify? And what you help Shopify to achieve?

Katie Boothby-Kung  0:46 

Yeah, totally. Well, first of all: Hi, Krissie. Thanks for having me, super pumped to be here. This is awesome. So I am Katie, I am the Senior Manager for social impact here at Shopify. In my role, I am specifically focused on working with the social enterprises, on and off our platform. I do that by or through strategic partnerships, building education tools, and working with our partners and our platform so that we can help grow and scale. And even launch new social enterprises, on Shopify, and also to give them the resources that they need so that they can be successful.

Krissie Leyland  1:32

Oh, my god, it's so good. It's like the dream job. I love it.

Katie Boothby-Kung  1:35

It really is! (laughter)

Krissie Leyland  1:37  

I'm always like, "oh, how did she get that job?" I'm gonna pick your brains. So what is the definition of a social enterprise business to you and Shopify?

Katie Boothby-Kung  1:52  

Great question. How we think about social enterprises is that it's at the intersection of environmental action, and human rights. So businesses that are working to create a better climate for generations to come, or be it through supporting communities and workers within their supply chain, making sure that they're treated fairly and with dignity. The combination of the two is really where we see that long term sustainability, long term social enterprise. We like to think about it as a Venn diagram. So you have, environmental action over on one side, and then you have human rights in the other circle. When they come together, and there's that sweet spot right in the middle, that's where we see, where long term sustainability happens: at the intersection of the two of them–social enterprises working on either of these circles, or both of them together.

Krissie Leyland  3:01  

Nice. So, what do you think then, is the intersection between sustainability and social impact? How do the two work together and do good?

Katie Boothby-Kung  3:13

Well, by the sounds of it, you guys are just defining sustainability more from an environmental lens.  mean, that's certainly how a lot of the discussion around sustainability has been framed: is that it's, it's environmental. However, we see it as both being environmental and social human rights coming together in that intersection in the middle of those two circles. That's how we define sustainability. So by focusing on either or, and coming together, you are creating social impact. Without getting into kind of the complexities of climate change its effect on human rights, and vice versa, that's kind of see how we see it. If you're working towards sustainability, environmental action & human rights coming together, then you are creating a lasting social impact.

Krissie Leyland  4:12 

Yeah, it makes total sense. I think I do always think of sustainability, as you know, things that are going on in the environment, but you are right, it does link back to social impact, communities and things like that. So I'd like to talk a bit more about your role in particular. Also, what are the community projects that you're working on at the moment that has a positive impact socially, and potentially environmentally, then?

Katie Boothby-Kung  4:48 

For my role in particular: I'm working on ways Shopify can better support the community of social entrepreneurs and also support other communities that are hungry to learn more About being socially conscious. Recently, I was able to team up with some of the folks in other teams here at Shopify to help them expand their educational offering to include ways to help merchants inject more sustainability into their businesses. So we have a team called Open Learning that works with a lot of post secondary education institutions. Also, our Shopify for startups, which is our startup program. By working with them, they're providing education that can not only help businesses grow, but to also help them become more socially minded as well. So that's a lot of what we're focusing on this year is just continuing to support this community, and bring that education to communities that maybe aren't thinking about this all the time, so that they're more inspired to not only create businesses, but to create socially minded businesses as well. My team is always incredibly busy and so maybe you saw, we recently announced we have a global partnership with Technovation. Therefore, we can deliver STEM education to young women and girls around the world. Our team is certainly very, very busy focusing on entrepreneurs, and also within the tech community as well.

Krissie Leyland  6:24 
Hmm. Okay. So on that then, because you know, I love a bit of tech conversation: What do you think is the role for tech partners towards a more sustainable and positively impactful ecommerce world?

Katie Boothby-Kung  6:42 

Here on Shopify, we can't say enough good things about our partner ecosystem, and the tech partners that are building some wickedly cool tools. I mean, that community is always drumming up really creative ways to support our merchant community. So keep it up. There is a lot of potential for them to impact this space. It's no surprise that sustainability is becoming a top priority for consumers and therefore it's becoming important for brands as well. So I'm sure we're going to see a lot of new offerings from the tech partner community being launched this year in order to keep up with with this growing demand.

Obviously, there's Recurate that's working on the resale market, and allowing our brands to resell their their wares, to keep it from going to landfill–giving their products new life, which I think isn't very exciting. Especially because the resale market is growing so quickly and I don't think that's going away anytime soon.

We're seeing Genusee. They're a an eyeglass company based out of Flint, Michigan, that have a really cool tool on their on their shop, to allow you to try on their sunglasses so that we're reducing the rate of returns. I say we as if I'm a part of it. (laughter) Their customers don't need to return as much. I'm not involved in that at all. They're doing great work.

And then there are even more sustainable shipping alternatives, like Kiwibot. Also the social impact of shopping local, I mean, it's accelerated. So our partners are creating more tailored pickup locations and delivery services. I think this idea of "shop local", is here to stay beyond 2021, kind of like the resale market. So consumers are looking for ways that they can be more supportive of their own communities and the small businesses that are essentially our neighbors. There's a lot of really great tech partners out there doing some, some really, really incredible things to help make sustainability and easier choice for merchants on our platform, for sure.

Krissie Leyland  9:07 

Do you think that there's been a rise in, you know, apps that are specifically to help sustainability and social impacts because of the pandemic? It just seems to be on the rise? I don't know if it's because I'm involved in it, and I see it everywhere. But yeah, do you think it's because of the pandemic or it was going to happen anyway?

Katie Boothby-Kung  9:33 

Honestly, is a great question. I don't know if I have the right answer to you. I think perhaps the pandemic accelerated this trend. I mean, we were seeing this, as things were kind of heating up in in March and April: this idea of shopping local and "voting with your dollar" and things like that. That became something that people were really talking about, they really wanted to support brands that were helping people throughout the pandemic. I think that there was a stat that I recently read–and I might butcher it a little bit–I think it was something like, I don't want to say it was specifically like 84%, but it was a percentage in the 80s. That said, more consumers were willing to shop from brands that were out there to help those in need during the pandemic. That's a pretty significant stat. Do I think that there was a trend towards more climate action and human rights? So I think that that there was already, but I think that the pandemic certainly helped speed it up.

Krissie Leyland  10:40 

Yeah, definitely. I think ecommerce in general is just gone mad. Apparently, five years worth of growth has just happened in six months. Yeah.

Katie Boothby-Kung  10:55 

Okay, that's insane.

Krissie Leyland  10:57

I probably butchered that stat as well. So yeah, we need to be mindful of how we're doing it and how we're doing business and ecommerce to make sure that we continue to protect our environment. Okay, so on the topic of the environment, obviously, Shopify did an amazing thing this year during Black Friday: Cyber Monday, to offset all carbon emissions from sales. I'd love to hear more about that and what Shopify achieved.

Katie Boothby-Kung  11:37 

Totally. I will, I'll represent Stacy in our Sustainability Fund here. So we purchased a wide range of nature-based and engineering offsets under the assumption that all of the solutions have a role to play in the fight to reverse climate change. Our purchases go beyond just buying the offset itself. We purchase offsets to send a demand signal and we're overpaying for these offsets so that companies can then conduct research and pilot projects to refine their technologies. We're helping these companies to scale and bring their costs & prices down. Then by doing that, more buyers can participate. In 2020, it was really exciting, we invested in 13 companies across 10 different industries. We're already seeing companies gain more traction, in part because of our investments. Again, I'm not I'm not the offset expert so if listeners do want to learn more about this initiative, you can google Shopify sustainability, or you can head to our website, and it's shopify.com/about/environment.

Krissie Leyland  12:50

Amazing. Everyone should definitely go look at that and look at the specific projects that you worked with to offset carbon emissions, because that's super interesting. One big thing about offsetting is to always make sure that it's actually going to the right projects or another project that you align with. Yeah, so everyone should go and check that out.

Katie Boothby-Kung  13:16

Even these offsetting businesses are just so cool to learn about. There's some really cool things happening in this space, for sure, and I think more people should know about it.

Krissie Leyland  13:29  

And there's so many of them, I think. Obviously, with the community, we've got app companies & tech partners from Shopify, in the community. Honestly, there's about 10 offsetting apps, but it's so interesting, because each one has worked with completely different projects, people and communities. It's like, if you're a brand and you've got an online store, choose the one that you align with the most and really look into it like, "Where will my customers money go? What's the impact that it's going to have?"

Katie Boothby-Kung  14:09 

100%. I mean, you should be doing that for anything. That's woven into your brand, right? Just understanding your customers, you should know your customers so well that you know, the causes that they care deeply about. If they care about you buying offsets from kelp farms, and you should be doing that. Or if maybe there are some charities that are really important to them, you have a donation app installed into your Shopify store. What are the causes that speak directly to your consumers and what is important to them? That's super important to your brand building.

Krissie Leyland  14:53

It's amazing. On that as well, obviously we know that there are apps out there like ShoppingGives and DailyKarma that put the power in the customers' hands so that they can choose the charity that they want to donate to, or the project or whatever it is. I just think that's great, because you're going to feel good about that, aren't you, as a consumer. Plus, then they'll come back.

Katie Boothby-Kung  15:23 

Sorry, I'm interrupting you, I'm just so excited! I think there's a lot to be said about building these really amazing experiences so that you can make your customer even closer to the impact that you're making through your business. Whatever you can do to make it so that it's not just a click, or it's not just something that seems simple and almost like at the back of your mind. But bringing them into that experience, bringing them into those choices, really allows them to feel like they're part of the impact that you're making. I think that's super important going forward.

Krissie Leyland  15:59 

Yeah and that just makes really nice customer connections as well, doesn't it? If they feel good about making a purchase with you, they're going to tell their friends & family and be like, "Look, you can go and choose your own charity or whatever!" I love it. I love it. It's so funny, because whenever I do a podcast, I end up talking about either Recurate or ShoppingGives. People are gonna think I'm sponsored, but I'm not.

Katie Boothby-Kung  16:31 

There are certainly apps that have been around for a while before this trend–I don't want to call it a trend because that makes it seem like it's going to go away–or movement really took off. So giving them a shout out is really great because when you think about some of those donation apps, they've been around for a long time.

Krissie Leyland  16:53 

I can just imagine how when we go back to normal, and at point of sale in in an actual physical store, I imagine the shop assistant saying, "Okay, so what charity do you want to donate to with your purchase?" Imagine that... online and offline?

Katie Boothby-Kung  17:15  

Cool, very cool. Definitely.

Krissie Leyland  17:19

It's endless, it really is. So, what are some possibilities for tech partners going into 2021?

Katie Boothby-Kung  17:30 

Oh, my goodness. The possibilities are honestly endless. I feel like at this moment, you're just opening it up for me to share my wish list, which I'm not going to complain about at all. So, they already existed and I mentioned one of our merchants that's using this, but: to have AI tech or VR tech rather ,across all industries to help reduce the rate of returns. Making returns should be avoided because it is causing a lot of carbon emissions, as as you're all aware. By creating these tools that our Shopify merchants can easily plug and play, I think, will be amazing to reduce those emissions. Right now, if you're coming to Shopify, and you're really excited, you already know that you want to build a social enterprise... that's really, really amazing. However, once you realize that you want to become a social enterprise, the how and sourcing that first product can be a bit of an uphill battle. I know this isn't quite a tech partner, but even just thinking about like the experts in our ecosystem: how can you help brands source from factories that use smart environmental practices and treat their workers fairly and with respect? Brands can source these types of products faster & easier, get up & running and making their first sale. I know again, you're framing this in terms of how tech is in more of the app partnership community, but I'm even thinking about it from all the cool tech and science companies out there that are building really sweet, environmentally friendly alternative materials.

Thinking about fashion and in textile, they're doing some really amazing things! Just this past week, there's brands that are building it out of algae, they're making eather from fruit pulp or they're making it out of recycled fishing nets that they've managed to find in the ocean. This is so incredible. However, when when you're searching for these types of textiles, there isn't really an easy way to get your hands on it. There isn't an "order now" or a "grab a sample, click this" button. So just making those choices easier and making the process–or the workflow from going to the website, discovering a really cool material, and then getting a couple samples so that you can start your production–building something like that would be really, really cool.

My call to action for any tech partner listening is just to make sustainability easier for entrepreneurs. They only have a limited amount of time. In many cases, as I'm sure all of you guys are, as well, they're wearing between 20 to a million hats in a given day. So if making a sustainable choice is a really long and difficult process, these entrepreneurs are eventually going to have to opt for easier options, because they're going to have to move on to the next task. And then the next and then the next. They're running a mile a minute trying to run this business. So just making sustainable choices easier for these merchants so that it becomes a no brainer: "Why wouldn't I make a sustainable choice because it's right there in front of me and it's so easy!" Then, you know, boom: they have 20 products in their store and they're all made with sustainable fibers.

Krissie Leyland  21:24

I love that so much. Yeah, I've heard about people making products out of seaweed and mushrooms.

Katie Boothby-Kung  21:34 

Honestly, it blows my mind. What is out there? I've seen some of that mushroom material too. And I'm just like, "Holy smokes. What can't we build products out of like that there?" There's a lot out there. I just think the biggest hurdle for merchants is: how do you go from discovering the product, to getting it in your hands and being like, "Okay, I'm gonna make 20 shirts out of this really cool nylon or something?"

Krissie Leyland  22:05

Oh, it's just so exciting. It gives me like a fire in my belly.

Katie Boothby-Kung  22:11

It's why I wake up and I'm ready for work: because I'm so pumped to work with these kind of entrepreneurs and tech partners.

Krissie Leyland  22:19

Oh me, too. It's amazing. So when you were talking, I was just thinking: what are the barriers for the merchant to be able to get such materials and make products?

Katie Boothby-Kung  22:40 

I can't speak for all of them because I haven't found all of them. Just based on what I have seen in my passive research, is just that a lot of the times there's a lengthy "contact us" process where you have to go in, contact them & set up a phone call. Whereas, it would just be great if you could just click a button and have a whole swatch palette mailed to you, and then you can have a "kick it off from there" kind of thing. I mean, obviously, there are reasons why some of these brands have it. They're really small and they really want to work with specific brands, because they haven't gotten to the point of larger production.

So there is that and I can completely understand. I don't want to dictate how these types of materials should get this to be easier for merchants. Based on my perspective, also, as a merchant who went to one of these websites, and was like, "Woah." because I have a skincare company, right? So it's like, "Hey, I can make these really cool. facecloth out of this material! Okay, how do I do it?" And then it was this whole process and it thought, "Oh my god, I have 20 things to do tonight. I can't think about this. I'll get to it next time." It's that mentality of "I have so many things to do, like I'll get to this later." Whereas if they had given me a button where it said, "get your swatch sent to you," I would have been just be like, "Yep, done. Okay, now I have my swatch and I know that I really want this material, I'll give them a call and make an order."

Krissie Leyland  24:31 

Hmm, that's so frustrating. I could imagine that. It's so interesting that you've got so many hats yourself. You work for Shopify, you've got your skincare business, which is amazing, by the way. I'm definitely going to invest one day. Yeah, I was just gonna ask actually: are these the things on your wish list as a brand, or coming from Shopify, or both?

Katie Boothby-Kung  25:07 

Both. I mean, from my Shopify perspective, I want these decisions to be easier for merchants, because it means that more merchants are making sustainable choices in their business, because it's a no brainer. But from a brand persepective, I selfishly want things to be easier so I don't need to spend a whole evening trying to figure out how to order something. I mean, just how I even got started... It took a long time for me to get up and running: finding the right partner and finding the right materials. It took me almost a year just to find the products and the charity partner where I felt like I was ready to launch and I felt comfortable. So it's like, "It takes one year of a solo entrepreneur doing all this research by themselves." So, how can we take that one year and turn it into one month, one week or one day?

Krissie Leyland  26:10

Yeah, that'd be so great. Going back to Shopify, Shopify makes it easy to start a business online as an ecommerce business. But yeah, if we could make it easy to be ethical and sustainable, and use all these really cool scientific materials, which oh, my god sounds amazing,

Katie Boothby-Kung  26:35

Right?

Krissie Leyland  26:36

It's just so exciting. It's phenomenal, really. If we could make that easy... then the job's done.

Katie Boothby-Kung  26:48

I mean, there will always be something but whatever we can do–and again, like I'll say this again toeveryone listening–whatever anyone can do in this world to make sustainable choices easier, let's do it! It's unstoppable at this point.

Krissie Leyland  27:06

Yeah. So what is Shopify achieved when it comes to having a positive impact in the world? How is Shopify using commerce as a force for good?

Katie Boothby-Kung  27:22 

Wow. Well, that's definitely a loaded question. How much time do we have on this podcast? I mean, I can talk all day... Even just going back to the roots of the company, right? Shopify, by design is bringing social impact to the world. If you think about it, a decade ago, people couldn't just wake up one day and start an online business. They had to consider the huge financial burden, how to get a website set up & who could help them with this. There's so many steps that these folks had to take for starting a business. So when Toby started Shopify, he was able to reduce the amount of time and money to start a business, and then get people to realize their independence without having to spend their life savings to start an online business. So by reducing these barriers, more people can realize their dream of becoming an entrepreneur. I think that's impact itself, right? Just the existence of the Shopify merchants, they're able to contribute to economic growth, building their communities & employing people. So I think it's pretty incredible, the impact that one merchant had on their community and in the economy.

Then enter my team. We've been working with communities around the world for quite some time. We've been working with under-resourced tech and entrepreneurship communities via partnerships, education, and even sometimes sponsorship. Just this past year, for my portfolio in particular, I've looked for ways to engage and support our social entrepreneur community. As as you know, Krissie, because you're in part of these. So you know, creating an online forum, where folks can come and ask all their questions and get help from our support team when it comes to specifically creating a social enterprise. We have online networking hubs, meetups & panels. Also just a couple days ago, we filmed our first ever Compass Course on building and scaling a social enterprise on Shopify. So there are a lot of really cool things that are that are happening right now where people can come together. They can learn from from either our education team, they can learn from each other or they can build these networks & these connections with one another. So I think that that's really powerful.

Krissie Leyland  29:55

Oh my god, you're just speaking my language. Oh, I love it so much. I love how aligned MindfulCommerce is with Shopify.

Katie Boothby-Kung  30:07

It's how we became friends, isn't it?

Krissie Leyland  30:09

Yeah, yeah! It's just great... Um, damn it. I forgot what I was gonna say. I was too excited. Oh, yeah! Tell me about the video course that you were filming. I saw a sneak peek on Instagram. Looks very exciting.

Katie Boothby-Kung  30:29

So it's like a social enterprise one-on-one introductory course. We do cover a lot of topics. We obviously we talked about sustainability, we talked about what social enterprises and you know, this intersection between environmental action and human rights. Then we drill down into each of those. Like, "What does environmental impacts look like for your business?" and, "What can you be doing within your business to create environmental impact?" then, "How can you befostering human rights and taking care of the people in your supply chain, building diversity and inclusion within your own company?" and then "How to support the communities that you engage with and that your customers really resonate with?" I mean, you're gonna have to write a lot of notes down, and you might have to give it a listen acouple of times...

Krissie Leyland  31:29 

So if there's somebody listening, who wants to get involved with anything that you're doing, actually, how can they do that?

Katie Boothby-Kung  31:41 

The community forum is open for anyone. Just head onto Shopify Community, and you'll see it listed there as social impact businesses. You can head in there and ask any of your questions. Whether it's the community that's there to help you answer it, or myself or someone from our Shopify support team, then you know, we have your back, and we're there to help you. Then there's our Slack channel. You just need to fill out a form. I will send that over to you, Krissie, so that if anyone's interested in applying to join the Slack channel, then they can do that. We also always tell folks when we're having these meetups and things like that. So if you are a Shopify merchant, we do our best to put that within our newsletter that we send out so that you know, when these types of meetups are happening. And I don't want to have any spoilers, but there are going to be some other very cool ways that you can get involved too, and we'll just keep everyone posted.

Krissie Leyland  32:54 

Ooh, very good. And just so the listeners know, if you are in the MindfulCommerce Community, there's a link to Katie's Slack channel in there as well. Anyways, that was funny, because I was gonna say that bit at the end, but it just seemed right, because we were talking about it. Other than Shopify, who else do you think is leading the way to a more sustainable and positively impactful ecommerce world?

Katie Boothby-Kung  33:35 

Wow. There are a lot of really great players in this space, so I don't think I'll be able to name them all. However, a brand that comes to mind specifically is Kotn, they're based out of Toronto. They've done some really incredible work to support the employees within their entire supply chain, "from farm to T shirt" kind of thing. They're just really leading the way in terms of the transparency of how their clothes are made, and what they're made with. So I think that they're a very good example of that intersection between human rights and environmental action. I think they're doing a really, really great job.

Another really cool one is called Son of a Tailor and they're doing made to order, on demand. That in of itself has some very positive environmental impacts. I think that anyone doing made to order successfully are doing some really great things for their their environmental footprint. So that's awesome.

And then I mean, obviously, you guys: MindfulCommerce. It goes without saying. You guys are building this really, really incredible community where people can come together. I mean, that directory in of itself! Before you guys there was never really a home for these types of experts and partners who specifically worked with sustainable brands to be all under one roof. Now, you know, you're throwing this awesome epic party for all these partners at MindfulCommerce. By doing that, think of the time and energy you're saving merchants who are looking to work with a sustainable partner because they can know that they just have to come to MindfulCommerce. They're going to be able to find on so much there. So, thank you for doing that because that is having a lot of impact for our merchants looking for work with more sustainable partners.

Krissie Leyland  35:47 

Thank you so much, that's so nice. And thank you for your input on the research project. I was listening back on this, this is this is amazing. This is just what we needed. That's great, I'm glad you like it. So, it's the start of the year... I just thought might be nice to look ahead a little bit. What's next for Shopify in relation to sustainability and social impact?

Katie Boothby-Kung  36:20 

We're still charting some of this out, but what I can tell you is that we will definitely continue to deepen our support for black and indigenous entrepreneurs over the coming months. That's including our 1 million black businesses initiative that we announced with Operation Hope, later last year. We'll also continue to build support for our social impact initiatives like Open Learning program that's working with the post secondary education students, our STEM education outreach with young girls in particular, and of course, the work that we're doing to support and grow social enterprises on Shopify. So there is lots happening. I can't speak specifically on the fund, so you'll have to poke Stacy for that information but I'm sure that they have some pretty big and exciting goals that they're going to be working on this year.

Krissie Leyland  37:15 

I'm just so impressed. There's so much that you, Shopify & the sustainability team are doing. I just hope that other platforms will follow in your footsteps, because that would just be amazing. Finally, do you have any advice for anyone who would like to find a role like yours at Shopify? I added that one in...

Katie Boothby-Kung  37:52 

I mean, it's a great question. When I think about kind of how I landed in my position here at Shopify: I just kept talking about this all the time with people that would listen to me. I remember, I had this old deck. It's fun to look at, because I made it three years ago. It was all about building social enterprises on Shopify and I remember I sent it to a bunch of people. Then, here I am. Just, if your company has the appetite for it, and this is a job that you want, then  go get it. Go start talking to people. Go tell them that this is important to you. Go show them why you're the right person for that job, for sure. Depending on what company you work for, you might need to wait a little bit of time. Maybe there isn't an appetite for this right now and that's okay. Just keep pushing for it. Keep talking about sustainability. Kep talking about social impact. Depending on where you work, if there's nothing stopping you from doing small initiatives off the side of your desk... that's showing initiative, that it's showing that nside of your day to day, this is something you really care about, that you're willing to put in the time for your company. I mean, if all else fails, you should just quit your job and start your own social enterprise so that then, you are doing it every day.

Krissie Leyland  39:23

Yes. I like that. I was just gonna say, basically you created your own job! Obviously, because Shopify are very minded in that way, it was good for you. If your company isn't keen, then just do it yourself. Like I did!

Katie Boothby-Kung  39:48 

Exactly! I think like whether people are ready to hear what you have to say or not, put in the work now. When I think about it, I was putting in the work before we had changed our team name to Social Impact. There were a few other people that were doing the same as me and now we're all on the same team together. Just put in the work now, and I think it'll pay off tenfold.

Krissie Leyland  40:18 

Great, I love it. So, I think that's it really. Where can people find you if they'd like to chat about Shopify's approach to social impact, or anything else?

Katie Boothby-Kung  40:37

If they're interested in learning more about what we're doing as a company, go to shopify.com/about/environment. There's a lot that you can find out there. Take a look at our community forums. Again, like if you're a social enterprise and you want to join this really rad network of other social enterprises that are hanging out together, then come join our Slack channel. If you want to, see teasers about other things that we're working on, you're more than welcome to follow me on Instagram. It's @katiebkung. That's where we had our course teaser just the other day. If you're a social enterprise, and you just want to reach out, or you have any feedback for us, or if there's a partner that we really should be thinking about, orwhatever will help you guys help and grow your social enterprise: lay it on me. You're more than welcome to send me a message and I would love to hear from you.

Krissie Leyland  41:41 

Great! Especially if you can tick it off the dream list.

Katie Boothby-Kung  41:45

Yes. Get to work, people. Go!

Krissie Leyland  41:52 

Amazing. Thank you so much.

Katie Boothby-Kung  41:54 

Thanks Krissie, I've loved this.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Find us: 

• Head to our community page to register & join the MindfulCommerce community as an expert, brand or merchant
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• Contact Us - [email protected]

Where to find MoreTrees:

MoreTrees - Website
MoreTrees - Twitter
MoreTrees - Instagram
MoreTrees - Facebook

Links Mentioned in Episode:

Shopify
WooCommerce
Expandly
Zapier
IFTTT (If This Then That)
Wilkinson Sword
My Green Christmas
Zoom

Shownotes:

Krissie Leyland  0:00

Hello, and welcome to the mindful commerce podcast, a place where we talk to ecommerce brands, service providers and developers who care about protecting our planet. I'm Krissie

Rich Bunker  0:11

& I'm Rich, and we're your hosts. This podcast is an extension of the MindfulCommerce community.

Krissie Leyland  0:18

The MindfulCommerce community is a safe place for ecommerce brands and experts to connect, collaborate and explore opportunities to work together to unleash the power of ecommerce as a force for good.

Rich Bunker  0:30

You can join by going to mindfulcommerce.io and clicking on 'Community'. See you there!

Krissie Leyland  0:36

Today, we're talking to Niki and Alan from MoreTrees. You probably know that carbon dioxide is one of the biggest drivers of climate change and we know we should be playing our part in reducing and negating carbon emissions. So MoreTrees are a tree planting app. MoreTrees not only helps offsets your emissions, but it comes with tons of other benefits too. Every tree planted helps the planet & it reduces extreme poverty and combat deforestation. We're going to be talking about what inspired Niki and Alan to start MoreTrees, how that makes it super easy to offset your carbon for e commerce businesses of all sizes, but also we want to know exactly how offsetting with MoreTrees can help with those four benefits I just mentioned. So, hello to both! How are you?

Niki Tibble  1:33

We're good, thank you. How are you?

Alan Wilson  1:35

Great, thank you.

Krissie Leyland  1:38

Could you start by introducing yourselves and tell us a little bit more about MoreTrees?

Niki Tibble  1:44

Yep, definitely! I'll let Alan go first.

Alan Wilson  1:57

Okay, so background-wise, I'm a "techie"... so about boatloads of software and startups for years. My last startup was called Expandly, and that's an ecommerce platform used by "one man bands" up to global companies like Wilkinson Sword. So it's a multi channel ecommerce system and so that's where my background is: building tech for  ecommerce and other industries.

Niki Tibble  2:30

Yes, and I am Niki. My background is copywriting. I have a copywriting business, writing for all sorts of different sectors. I think the most obscure thing I've written about was calculating your construction overheads. But predominantly, I work with ecommerce platforms, tech, and sellers with their content. So that's my background and I've worked with Alan, on previous projects before. Alan came up with the initial idea.

Alan Wilson  3:03

So originally, I went to a meeting and they were planting trees for every person that attended the meeting. So I thought "That's just a great idea! There's actually companies that plant trees and it's good for the environment." For a meeting, just think of the people that come there for traffic and stuff... I thought actually, that could be a good thing in the future! So then, I told Niki, "I'll get this fantastic idea and get this button in every meeting room around the world. People just come in, press a button, then it all connects to my API, they plant a tree, and it's all gonna be great! And then Nikki said that it's a crap idea.

Niki Tibble  3:47

I did, I'm not going to lie. I thought all I could envision was this big red X Factor style button, where people are just hitting it in meeting rooms... horror stories of disgruntled employees, hitting it 1000s of times. Which you know, would be fantastic for the planet but then these businesses are planting millions of trees unknowingly. But I really, really liked Alan's thinking behind it and I knew as a business owner that I wanted to do more to help the planet. You see things on Netflix, you read the papers, you see in the news all about climate change and you want to do more. But actually knowing what to do, having the time to do it, understanding the different parts was just difficult for a business owner. You know Krissie, it's a hot topic in ecommerce–people are talking about what you can do all the time, but actually, the options aren't always that obvious. So we definitely felt that there was a gap in the market for a tech lead solution to just make it easy for businesses to plant trees and to do something positive for the planet without it costing a lot of money & without it taking up time. But also to open it up so that ecommerce in particular, involve the customer so that when you plant a tree for them, they're actually being told about that tree. Then they get an email telling them about it so that there's no concern that someone saying they're doing something they're not actually doing.

Krissie Leyland  5:18

Yeah, that's really nice. Something you said there made me think... There are lots of different offsetting apps out there now. So when you first had your initial idea was that not the case?

Alan Wilson  5:35

I think that some apps out there offset but I think overall–there's some neat apps as well, there's some really neat carbon calculation apps–but I think it's still a very early fragmented marketplace that is very confusing for a lot of companies and organizations. Wales, within the very small industry as at the moment, is starting to see more of them emerging. I think it's actually quite a very, very early marketplace currently.

Niki Tibble  6:07

The amount of people we speak to say,"Oh I didn't realize something like that existed." So I mean, there are fantastic apps and ways to do it out there but a lot of people don't actually realize that they are out there, which is a problem.

Krissie Leyland  6:21

I agree. Maybe it's because we're involved in it, and so it can pop up. But the thing that I noticed about MoreTrees was like, you work with different projects. So it's obvious where your money is going, if you offset with more trees. But do you want to talk a bit more about the projects that you work with?

Niki Tibble  6:47

To us, it was important that we work with the right tree planting partners. So unfortunately, it's not me and Alan putting on our wellies and grabbing our spades and going and digging in the garden... our garden's not that big. It was important to us that the people that we were partnering with would be the people that our customers would want to partner with. It also meant that, planting trees and offsetting carbonare the primary focu. But actually, there's a lot more that these projects can do to extend the benefits so we make sure that anyone that we're working with on the projects are actually planting trees that are going to be making a difference. They're helping with reforestation, or they're providing agroforestry trees to provide food and sources of income, but also that they're benefiting the local communities. A lot of our projects are in impoverished areas where actually the trees are providing an income, they're teaching these people a skill that they can use, and they're protecting the local area. For example, some of the projects they've got problems with flooding, they're planting the right trees to deal with that. Areas that have suffered deforestation need reforestation to give wildlife places to come back to. So for us, it was a lot more about just picking projects that weren't "just trees": It was actually making a wider impact. It's trees and more.

Krissie Leyland  8:17

Nice. Perfect. It's really interesting to think that planting a tree can help combat poverty. How exactly does it? What are the links? Someone clicks on "offset with more trees" and then what happens?

Niki Tibble  8:40

Yes. You click & you buy your trees. Then at the end of each month, we we pull them all together, and we tell our different partners and projects how many trees. When you go into the platform, it defaults to the most needed tree and the most needed project, but you can also pick a specific project and tree type. So at the end of the month, we collect those together & instruct our tree planting partners. They work with local villagers, educate them and provide them with the tools, the equipment & the knowledge to plant these trees. They also fund forest guards to actually protect the areas and they're there for a while so it's not just a quick plant and run. They're helping them grow these forests and and they don't leave them until they're in the position to want to be able to carry that on themselves. You read the stories & get the feedback from the fields and it makes you feel lucky inside knowing that you're doing so much with just a seed, effectively.

Krissie Leyland  9:43

I love that. It's so nice.

Rich Bunker  9:45

It's so much more than planting trees than you can imagine, to be honest which is great... lovely projects at work. What stands out is your favorite project.

Alan Wilson  9:57

I like Madagascar because of the film... Nikki, you have a favorite, don't you? I think I actually like them all. There is Madagascar and stuff but the ones that do more than the poverty alleviation as well as environment, really strike a chord with me as much. You can buy offsets and as you'll know, those just prevent people from cutting down trees and stuff. They're just not as good as planting a tree and given the income to the farmers as well.

Krissie Leyland  10:42

So something that just has more meaning behind it than just planting a tree.

Alan Wilson  10:47

More meaning and also as I say, the offsets that you can juust pay someone not to cut down a tree can be a verified project... it's great that the trees not being cut down, but it's actually developing more the whole concept. The ethos is getting the more trees out there and actually creating more of these great carbon capture species out there.

Rich Bunker  11:13

Yeah, there's funds out there that support people not knocking down trees and educate them of why it's a good idea not just to cut trees down, as you see fit, willy nilly, yeah.

Alan Wilson  11:28

Yes, it's great. Exactly but also, I do believe more in getting more trees planted. But anything that helps us is the way forward.

Rich Bunker  11:38

Amazing. So how does it work? What's the app? How does does the money get sent to the project and what's the tech involved in in the background?

Alan Wilson  11:51

We've built a platform. So it's not like a sort of front end website or a Shopify store, it's a whole entire platform. We've got a whole process: when we add projects, we add them in our back end, system adds it to the platform and then as a user, you come onto the platform. You can either just quite quickly plant a tree within minutes. If you haven't got any credits in your account, you can pay straight away for that tree–that's one pound a tree–or you can preload credits. You can preload, say 100, and then you can plan them all automatically as well. You can either plan for yourself or other people. If you buy a plan for your customers, you can see right away the plan. You put the name, email, and quantity and then that emails will send the user the certificate. So you can either do that, just manually typing them or you can upload them via CSV or via the API, which we have.

Krissie Leyland  12:52

So for MindfulCommerce–obviously, we already use MoreTrees, but I'm doing it manually at the moment–eventually, we're going to connect it with our payment system.

Rich Bunker  13:10

Yeah, the automation takes the decision out of it. It's done.

Krissie Leyland  13:14

No manual work. So easy.

Niki Tibble  13:19

There's no reason to not plant trees, because it's just done for you. So why wouldn't you do it?

Alan Wilson  13:28

We used to have an API and we have some larger companies already using the API and doing it that way. So that takes a bit of development. We're also developing an app for the app store's at the moment. So we have multiple of them in the pipeline, which won't be that long. We also use a great tool called Zapier and Zapier is fantastic. It's an easy integration tool that connects straight to Shopify, eBay and Zoom as well. So basically you can connect your Shopify store and connect your MoreTree account in minutes. You could prefund your MoreTrees account and then for every order plant a tree or you can see for every order over 50 pounds plant a tree. The scope of it is huge so literally, for every street payment, make a "plant a tree for every invoice" and it just goes on. We have customers who are setting themselves up in minutes. It's incredible. Currently, I get an email every time someone plants. So I wake up in the morning and see all these people planting through the night. They haven't actually planted obviously, it's just the automation of their systems where the process are coming through. So we just got it made quite easy and that Zapier is really, really useful.

Krissie Leyland  14:51

Definitely. I love Zapier.

Alan Wilson  14:55

Nikki, you have one don't you? We have them for people doing mortgage companies and stuff. Do you have a good example of that?

Niki Tibble  15:04

Yeah, we've got this great company and they've just love it. I messaged them the other day and just said, "Oh, how are you getting on? How are you finding it?" And he was like, "We absolutely love it! We've drawn a massive tree in our office (I presume it's on a whiteboard wall) and every time we plant a tree, we go up and write it on it. It's like attending this massive competition in the office. We love it, we just can visually see all these trees. Everyone's running up and writing that they've planted another one." I think it's fantastic.

Krissie Leyland  15:40

What was that? It's if somebody signs up to a mortgage deal, then?

Alan Wilson  15:45

That's what they do. So automatically in their system, someone signs up for a mortgage deal and it automatically plant them a tree. Then the customer gets the emails with the certificate that the tree has been planted as well. It sounds like from what Nikki says, that their senior sales team also flags it on a whiteboard as well.

Krissie Leyland  16:09

I think they can just look at it every day and be like, "look what we've done!" I love it because–obviously me and Niki work together in other means–I received an invoice from Niki and was like "Ooh! I feel good about paying this invoice and planting!"

Niki Tibble  16:27

Every time anyone pays an invoice there, I plant my little tree. It's just little things and it's so much fun because everyone's thinking of different ways that they can plant trees. It's almost become a bit of a competition where people are like "what innovative way can I think that someone planted trees?" Pop quiz winners the other week, for example. There will be different things people come up with, it's like, wow.

Alan Wilson  16:49

I planted 11 trees when Scotland beat England that weekend.

Niki Tibble  16:52

Alan set a Zapier to plant a tree every time it rains, didn't you? And I said, I said good that you're not still in Scotland.

Krissie Leyland  17:09

So what are some of the kind of businesses that you've worked with so far?

Niki Tibble  17:18

With our backgrounds, we have built the platform with ecommerce in mind. So we have lots of online sellers who are either selling by their Shopify, WooCommerce, or any other platform. We've got a lot the typical businesses that we expected when we first set up MoreTrees. I might speak for myself Alan, but I've been amazed at the variety of people that are using it. We've got window cleaners, personal trainers. accounts and what else?

Alan Wilson  17:52

Clothing brands. Ecommerce brands in sustainable clothing. There seems to be so much of them coming up, which is great.

Niki Tibble  18:01

Yeah. People building the fancy garden shed. All sorts. It's just been amazing that so many different people want to get involved for so many different reasons.

Krissie Leyland  18:13

Fancy garden sheds? (laughter)

Rich Bunker  18:23

What will it become when people go back to working in offices? Hmm...

Alan Wilson  18:32

I think one of my first case study business was a company called My Green Christmas. They do Christmas cards and stuff. We didn't know them at all and it was really good. All of a sudden, they were integrated and then we saw these trees going out for every order over 30 pounds. So they effectively help drive their sales so that people pay not that much, but they're really good company and good people. So that was a really good daily sort of case study.

Krissie Leyland  19:09

Yeah. And a big boost I guess during Christmas.

Alan Wilson  19:13

Exactly. They're a young team as well, and they've done fantastically well.

Krissie Leyland  19:19

And I bet Niki, that you're writing case studies.

Niki Tibble  19:22

Yes, which is nice because there's so much to talk about. People want to get involved. You know, people really love using it, and they want to talk about it. They want to share that they're doing it, which is lovely. And then you really do see this viral effect, where you know, we've had a customer who's come to us saying, "Oh, one of your existing customers planted my friend a tree, and they told me about it when we went for coffee, and now I'm planting a tree." So there's an really nice knock-on effect and also then businesses and ecommerce sellers have this amazing platform to encourage their audience to live a more sustainable life. I was speaking to someone on Friday, and their setup setup was a bit a bit complicated. The people they were sending the tree confirmation email to wasn't actually the personnel planting the tree for. So we were batting things backwards or forwards about how they could do it. I said to them all, "Possibly, we could see if we could set it up so that when you planted a tree for someone, they didn't get the email from us saying that they planted the tree." And this person said, "No. I want to tell my customers and show them how easy it is to plant a tree. I want to send them your way, because I want them to find their own trees." I think it's so great that we've got so many brands that actually want to plant trees themselves and they actually want to encourage other people to get on board and do it as well, so that we can all make a bigger impact. Yeah, that's been really nice as well.

Krissie Leyland  20:58

A network of tree planters. A community.

Alan Wilson  21:04

I think it's a network of good people as well. That's been the best part about MoreTrees. We meet so many good, good people, instead of a lot of the harsh realities of what's going on in the world. It's a lot of good people.

Krissie Leyland  21:19

Yeah, it must be really refreshing. We find that, don't we?

Rich Bunker  21:24

A lot of really positive people recently.

Krissie Leyland  21:28

Positive and inspiring, just like you two.

Niki Tibble  21:33

That's the great thing about MindfulCommerce: you have a community of people who are doing something pretty much off their own back, because you know, at the end of the day, currently people don't have to do anything. But there's always people that want to do something for the better good.

Rich Bunker  21:50

I guess there's a social shift for people as well. David Attenborough has been a champion of bringing that to people, especially in the UK's forefront, and wider globally. So hopefully, that is a social shiftand a movement that will stay. People will look after their environment a bit more.

Krissie Leyland  22:15

What a legend. Quick, get him on the podcast.

Niki Tibble  22:21

During a Zoom quiz yesterday, I found out that he's the reason that tennis balls are bright yellow? Something about making them visible on TV. It was either true or false: David Attenborough is the reason those tennis balls are bright, luminous orange or yellow. He is just wonderful in all different ways.

Krissie Leyland  22:50

Every time I see a tennis ball...

Rich Bunker  22:55

Touching on the integrations, you mentioned Zoom, Shopify, WooCommerce... What are the other integrations you've got and is there anything coming up in the pipeline?

Alan Wilson  23:07

The Zoom one. I mean, that's that's a really neat one where people say "for every person who joins the zoom–every attendee for the meeting–will automatically plant a tree." We're finding that more and more popular.

Niki Tibble  23:19

That's the original idea, Alan, your original meeting idea... (laughter)

Alan Wilson  23:22

Exactly. Just virtually, it saves me from having to visit every office in the UK. So I realized my mistake, now Niki. But yeah, this week we've got a new subscription and "auto top up" will be liv. By the end of the month, we will have WooCommerce up live. Shopify and other carts that we're working on will very quickly follow after but, we're going to launch on one foss, which is WooCommerce. Then we have If This Then That (IFTTT) which is another sort of Zapier type API platform, which is great, which we're working on. I mean, ultimately, being a techie, I love that part of it: just making it easy. I love integration and all the amazing ideas you can do with it. So eventually, "every Uber ride, plant a tree", and "everything you spend on your card, plant a tree", etc. They're coming very soon.

Rich Bunker  23:23

Integrating some of the challenging bank tasks. "Deal with your savings, you can plant a tree". There you go.

Alan Wilson  24:40

We need to give you a commission now, for that idea.

Rich Bunker  24:44

It's helping more people.

Alan Wilson  24:46

Exactly, no, it's a good idea.

Rich Bunker  24:52

Is it just you Alan, tapping on your keyboard, coding away or have you got a team

Alan Wilson  24:59

My last app, I built the whole platform initially, and then had raised a couple of million pounds, built a big team and done it that way. So this time, I built an MVP myself to learn how it works–so all the lessons from last time–but then I've got a development team that I use, and I've known for 10 years. I basically paid them to build it. I just architected, designed and worked out how it would work. They've been fantastic. They do the development, Nikki tests it, and then makes it live.

Rich Bunker  25:40

The collective mind is always more efficient.

Alan Wilson  25:43

I mean, the development-wise, it's hard to build a business and develop. That's what I learned from the past. You spend so much time. There's so many talented developers out there. If you can just harness them the right way, then it gets easier. I think what you mentioned about a lot of products out there, competitors are just front end shops and stuff and some of them are even just Shopify stores. So, what we actually have is a platform that is scalable, and can plant hundreds of 1000s of trees a second. Not right now, but we've got the technology there to scale it so that it can plant massive amounts of trees and grow in scale... to large enterprise customers.

Krissie Leyland  26:33

I had one question for Niki, actually. It is probably going back a little bit about the project: Are you looking for more local projects? At the moment I see Madagascar, and other areas, but as we're in the UK... I just wondered.

Niki Tibble  26:54

Yeah, so that's a high, high high on my to do list. We are actively looking for a UK project. The biggest challenge for us is getting that at a price point that people will want to pay for. Currently on MoreTrees, you can plant trees for a pound but obviously, in the UK cost of labor and things like that, it just costs more. So we're just trying to find a project where we can get that price to where, though it will be more than planting a tree in Madagascar, it's still a price that's reasonable and that businesses will actually say "Actually, I'm willing to pay that bit extra to have a UK project" rather than being the difference between 1 pound and 20 pounds. Most people just can't afford to make that that purchase for their customers. So if anyone listening knows of any UK projects that could be a good fit, then please do let us know. Hopefully we could help.

Alan Wilson  27:52

We're very close with a couple.

Niki Tibble  27:55

Yeah, they should be shortly announced, but we're always welcome to more.

Alan Wilson  27:58

That will be up to the customer, then. It'll be up to the individual or business that's using MoreTrees. If you want 20 trees planted, but they're not in the UK, that's fine.... Or if you want one in the UK, and it's a 20 pounds We're trying to get it a lot cheaper than that as wel but it's an understandable labor cost in the UK. So the idea is to give everyone the choice and transparency of what you want to do.

Rich Bunker  28:24

I suppose, yeah. I mean, the idea is to plant more trees and that could be more that you support the project by your donation rather than planting a tree. But it's nice to get that "Oh yeah, I've planted a tree today by buying some item" or "I just want to plant a tree today and given some money to find the tree."

Alan Wilson  28:44

Exactly, I think there is a large scope for different people out there as individuals, small businesses or enterprise businesses. That's what we will provide: the choice of what you want to do, and here are the options for you.

Niki Tibble  29:00

A lot of people have different motivations. So I 've spoken to people who like the fact that it's good for the planet and is offsetting carbon, but actually, they said that they're much more motivated by the poverty alleviation or the wildlife side and things like that. So yeah, it's having a range of projects that suit different people's motivators.

Rich Bunker  29:28

You just mentioned carbon there, and that's something I wanted to ask: Is it obvious how much carbon planting a tree somewhere is offsetting, for like a business if their goal is carbon offsetting? Can they use your platform to basically offset carbon as well as do good planting trees?

Alan Wilson  29:49

We've got some verified carbon credits coming. The tree planting is expensive. Currently it is voluntary, so you can still pass your ISO and everything using MoreTrees. If you're a large company and using it for your scrn... again, it's still voluntary but there's a carbon tax coming out in future as well, so that that could affect that. So we do offer additional carbon credits and in different variety. It's the Woodland Carbon code ones in the UK, so you can buy WCUs, but they start at like 12 pound a credit. So the way we estimate the carbon is by what the partners said they estimate: 300 grams per tree over the life cycle of it. The difference with that: UK WCU has to be verified over the years. Ultimately again, you're paying for scientists. That difference between one pound and 12 pound for a scientist to validate and ensure it has already happened in the past. If you buy it in the UK, and then you have to wait for the five years or so that it is completely validated that the carbon has been sequestered. As opposed to say, planting 12 trees. It is an estimate based on the planting partners. Do they have audited and validation for it but it's not the same as the WCU one.

Krissie Leyland  31:33

I'm just thinking: if I'm an ecommerce business, and I know that my carbon footprint is 'x, y, z'. And then I've started to offset trees with more trees. Is there a way of kind of seeing you know how far you've got to be carbon neutral? or carbon positive?

Alan Wilson  31:58

We have a small calculator. There's obviously some great tools out there and some great tools developing. I'm developing one myself as well. Again, it's that scenario of you've bought a product, and you maybe have brought in Turkey, then you've imported it from Turkey. But also even if you manufacture in Turkey, you've then got the person who's created the cotton... where did that cotton come from and who's the liability of the ownership of that carbon that was used to deliver the cotton there? So I think it's a very early industry as well. Currently, there really isn't a good full carbon calculator tool that is easy to use, and really does understand it because it goes to the massive level.

Krissie Leyland  32:56

What it could do is just estimate what your carbon footprint is and just maybe offset more than you think you need to. Then hopefully, you're at a higher level.

Niki Tibble  33:11

On the platform, when you sign up, there's a dashboard that tells you all your stats. It tells you your estimate of how many trees you planted or gifted and it gives you an estimate of what that is in carbon, according to what our projects have been audited at.

Krissie Leyland  33:30

So based on that, then, what are some milestones that you've reached that you're really proud of?

Niki Tibble  33:39

As you know, when you start a business and you're like, "Oh, god, no one's gonna use it1" then you get your first customer that you don't know... So that was a big milestone, when it wasn't my mom planting a tree. I mean, it happened really quickly. I think it was the next day, wasn't it Alan.

Alan Wilson  33:58

Yeah. I mean, we kept saying, "how long is it gonna be before someone tells someone to tell someone who wants a tree?" Yeah, Nikki's mum's our first customer. So Nikki's mum, when she she planted the first one: it was five o'clock in the 14th of October... then we did a soft, soft launch, wasn't it Niki? Niki's mum posted on Facebook and then 24 and a half hours later, the first person who had no connection with us started planting trees, which is great. So a lot quicker than we thought.

Niki Tibble  34:37

Yeah, that was a nice milestone. And I think the first person that automated a tree without any input from us–we didn't talk them through the setting up, they just went they did it–that was, for me, that was a big milestone to think we've actually created this system where you can just plant trees automatically. And it works and people are doing it without us having to build the tech for them.

Alan Wilson  35:01

That you didn't have to deal with tech? (laughter)

Niki Tibble  35:10

Yeah it was because I didn't have to do any of the tech. That was the actual milestone for me. (laughter)

Krissie Leyland  35:10

Do you get notified when someone does that on their phone?

Niki Tibble  35:17

Yes, we have it popping out whenever trees are planted. And it's getting to the stage where it's like, "I can't cope."

Krissie Leyland  35:26

Really? That's amazing. I'd be like up first.

Rich Bunker  35:38

Yeah, amazing.

Krissie Leyland  35:44

People–what, sorry, were you going to say something?

Alan Wilson  35:47

No, no, no. Just other milestones. I mean, we've planted tons of thousands of thousands of trees. It's just really been, I think, overall it's just a milestone in terms of doing that business that is good. My previous business is great business and ecommerce, but it's about growth, customers and making customers good. But this is just about everything. I think its customers, partners, end customers, our customers... Just everything has just been so great. I think so. I think pushing towards environment has been good, it's just been brilliant.

Niki Tibble  36:23

And it must be like what you two feel with MindfulCommerce, where you've taken something where you're making an actual impact, you know, genuine difference. As opposed to, before obviously copywriting I love and I can bring joy to people at work... but to actually make a positive impact on the planet is just heartwarming.

Alan Wilson  36:45

Actually... just as we've talked, someone just planted 100 trees.

Niki Tibble  36:48

Woo!

Krissie Leyland  36:48

Yay!

Rich Bunker  36:49

Well done on that!

Alan Wilson  36:55

We do have a bad news story... On our early days with some test customers. So my Auntie Barbara...

Niki Tibble  37:03

Oh, yeah...

Alan Wilson  37:04

...we asked some people to test that out and then my auntie dedicatedly bought five trees, and then she gives a four star review.

Krissie Leyland  37:21

but Five stars!

Niki Tibble  37:23

She says she doesn't get five stars.

Alan Wilson  37:26

Yes, I replied. So I thought she must have done a mistake. "What are you doing? Why'd you give us four stars?" She was like "I never give a five star son"

Rich Bunker  37:37

She's clearly one of those poeple that's a bit like myself, "there's always room for improvement!"

Alan Wilson  37:43

She's only gonna get a four star Christmas present this year. (laughter) Everyone else's gave us five stars.... But yeah.

Krissie Leyland  38:03

I think we've asked quite a lot. Anything else that you'd like to cover?

Niki Tibble  38:10

No, I don't think so. Alan?

Alan Wilson  38:12

No, no.

Krissie Leyland  38:13

Where can people find you if they have any questions about planting trees with MoreTrees?

Niki Tibble  38:18

So our website is moretrees.eco and there's loads of tons of information on there. And we're always hanging around in live chat, as well.

Krissie Leyland  38:29

Do you have an email? And are you on social media?

Niki Tibble  38:33

Yeah, so the email is [email protected] and all our social media handles are moretreeshq.

Krissie Leyland  38:41

Perfect. Thank you! There's a question there about how can people get started but I think we've kind of covered that to be honest.

Alan Wilson  38:54

It's just easy. I mean, that's the beauty of it. You can if you want the pre top up credits, you can. You can automate if you just want to buy it there straight, and then it is really, really quick. And Niki has done some nice little User Guide videos and stuff.

Niki Tibble  39:08

Yeah, what we haven't covered is that the process, the sign up is free. Then you can plant trees for yourself. You can either plant the most needy tree and most needy project or you can select the specific tree and project type. Then if you're planting for your customers, you can either do it manually, which is just typing in their name and email address by a spreadsheet. So just Bulk Upload, which is the same details (name and email address) or you can use Alan's wonderful API's and Zapier integrations to do it all automatically. It really is that simple. In fact, we actually have to add in a step to make it harder to plant trees because people were saying, "well, I wasn't ready to plant trees. I didn't know I was going to plant a tree!". Because when you do it for someone else, they get a customized message, which you can tailor in the email settings. People were like "I didn't realize. It was too easy. I hadn't set up my message and I wasn't ready." We had to add another little step saying, "Are you sure?" because people found it too easy. You have to make it harder to plant trees...

Krissie Leyland  40:20

But it's good because it made me personalize the email and I thought, "Oh yeah, this is better." (laughter) Thank you very much. This has been great.

Niki Tibble  40:29

No, thank you.

Alan Wilson  40:29

Thank you, appreciate it.

Niki Tibble  40:32

I mean, I think MindfulCommerce is such a brilliant idea and a great community.

Krissie Leyland  40:37

Thank you! We could we could maybe do an event or something together soon.

Rich Bunker  40:44

We hope you enjoyed the episode today. If you did, you're probably like being in our community. There's a whole host of exciting things going on.

Krissie Leyland  40:51

So don't forget to join by going to mindfulcommerce.io. Click on 'Community' and register from there.

Rich Bunker  40:57

If you liked this episode, please share, leave a review and remember to subscribe.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My Instagram for Murphy photos to make you smile - @krissieclaire

@mindfulcommerce
@kollectify

• Head to our community page to register & join the MindfulCommerce community as an expert, brand or merchant

www.mindfulcommerce.io

www.kollectify.com

Happy Valentines Day, Rich x

Krissie Leyland  0:01 (it's all me chatting to myself)

Hello. So this is Krissie here. And this is a little bit different to what we are normally talking about on this podcast.

I've just been thinking, like, for a while now, why did I end up as an entrepreneur? And why did I want to start a business?

So I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur since I sold ice creams from the tub in our freezer to walkers who used to walk past our farmhouse. Because there was a lovely bit of countryside where I used to live in the middle of nowhere, as I was growing up, I had two sheep. One was called lucky and the other was called very lucky because we did not decide to eat it.

Anyway, so I was probably about six, when I had my first business, and selling ice creams.

My parents were very encouraging of me and would buy some to make me feel better. Mum tried to tell me about the fact you have to minus expenses to work out profits, but I ignored her. And actually, it was not my own money. But anyway, the thought was there. And I really enjoyed I remember choosing the right colours, for my for sale sign and in my best bubble writing and whatnot. And anyway, so I had a really nice upbringing in the countryside, field surrounded by fields and trees and deer and all kinds of lovely things. 

So I guess this is just a bit of a, I don't know, like a self reflection episode for me. But also, I'm hoping that this could help even just one person who's listening. So it's quite interesting, really, when I think back, and like I said, I had a really good upbringing, but I have had some struggles.

I was bullied in two different high schools. Because basically, I had a really good friend friendship unit in primary school, and then decided not to go to the same high school as all my friends. So anyway, thing is, I was severely bullied. And when you're in that kind of situation for a long time, you know, you've been called ugly, freckled face, as they used to call me.

You tend to feel quite worthless, and I lost every inch of my self confidence and self esteem. So I went from a happy, funny outgoing kid to someone who would react to every or everyone with a bit of defence because I just thought that everyone was out to get me so and, and probably including my parents, which I might feel quite awful for now. 

But anyway, these kids in school would make me feel nervous to even walk or talk in front of anyone else. Because I was afraid, people would start picking things out about me and using it against me so but looking back, I was a beautiful kid, I was not ugly, I was fit. And I loved to run, play netball and everything like that. But I just went into a bit of a shell afraid to show my true personality and my true self. So it's quite funny that I'm recording this now as I'm 31 years old.

And I just thought, sod it. I'm going to tell people my story. And if you can relate, then that's great. Please tell me.

So I can remember not wanting to get out of the car to go to school, and my mum would say ignore them. But it was so bad that I obviously couldn't. However, college and university was better. I made some wonderful friends through my new found love of surfing, which I'll talk about a bit later on in this episode. And my God, my life is so good now. I have a wonderful boyfriend who is just my rock. I have a Portuguese water dog. And he is beautiful called Murphy and you'll probably see lots of pictures of him on my Instagram if you check it out.

He makes everybody smile. So do that. Um, so the reason I'm telling you all of this is, I don't know I've never really been able to hold down a proper job because I didn't cope very well with having a manager telling me what to do.

I would kind of get defensive even with you know, it's coming from the bullies and making me feel like shit, and I would just think that, you know, my manager, if he would criticise my work, they would then make me feel a bit worthless. And that kind of brought back feelings from being in school. 

Anyway, it just didn't sit right with me. So I needed creative freedom and individuality. And I'm the type of person who wants to work in my own time, at the time of day that works for me. And when I can have my deep focus time and create great ideas, most of the time, I'm in the shower. And I can't write it down. haha.

I think creative people like people listening, you probably get this, like, you need to be able to work at your own time, when you feel like working on something in particular. 

So you know, and some people like working in the middle of the night, whereas I'm like, I'll wake up at 5.30 in the morning and think, oh, crap, I need to get working on that right now, before I forget, or something. So yeah, 9-5 didn't really work for me. And I'm not sure if that stems from like, I think it's a mix of wanting to create ideas and see them flourish from you know, even seeing an opportunity like walkers passing by and I thought, right, I'm going to use this audience and sell them some ice cream. 

So yeah, I don't know, I think it's a mix of things, and also not wanting to work for somebody else and have them kind of control me, I guess. And because I just feel stuck, and they can't do what I want. 

So anyway, I still suffer from huge imposter syndrome. I think everybody does. I'm not sure if I'm more affected by it because of the way I have been made to feel. But I guess I'm trying to say, you know, if you feel the same, and you feel like, you've got this brilliant idea, and you want to tell everybody but you think, you know, oh, who am I to have this idea and roll with it and tell people like this is what I think I'm here to say if not you, who? If not now, when? So I don't think imposter syndrome will ever go away. But I guess I'm now comfortable with being uncomfortable. Because if I don't do it, who will? Especially when it is something for good. And if you have something burning away in your stomach, and you're like, I really want to do this.

But you're scared of what other people might think. I say do it anyway. Just like go with it. Go with the fear. Do it anyway. Because you know, if you fail, you fail if you don't, what what could happen, like, what if you don't fail, amazing things could happen. That's what. 

And if you have the right audience, you can iterate and tweak your offering until you don't fail. 

The outdoors and surfing saved me and gave me back my self confidence. Surfing grounded me and made me realise that life is more than work. Life is about being outside and like just embracing the elements and appreciating life for what it is. You don't want to be stuck in an office nine to five doing what other people tell you to do, like give yourself a break. 

And I even did my dissertation on surfing as a therapy for disadvantaged children. I tried to set up a business which would provide more access to outdoor activities for children suffering from low self esteem just like I was, it was called Liberty active. 

So this business failed for a few reasons. But at the end of the day, I'm still on a mission to make sure people feel empowered. I want to protect our oceans, our environment and the people and animals within it. Ecommerce, Shopify in particular has given me access to a bigger world of entrepreneurship. Maybe one day I'll sell ice cream again. But for now, I want to give the power of entrepreneurship to others. And I'd like to help them to do it in the most sustainable and ethical way possible. 

Because I want to give back to the thing that saved me. And that's the environment. surfing, being outdoors and yeah, freedom. 

So I guess my question to you is, what do you want to do? If you could do anything in the world? What would it be and what's stopping you? Because if it's fear, embrace the fear and do it anyway.

And also I just to say, like, if you're thinking, Oh, but what if such and such thinks I'm silly for doing this or, you know what if I fail, just do it, just do it anyway. Because you might be the person who helps another person to transform their life. 

And love yourself enough to set boundaries. I think the best thing about running your own business is that you get to choose to set your boundaries. And because your time and energy are so precious. You get to choose how you use that time. And you should teach people how you like to be treated, and how you should be treated.

You decide what you will and won't accept. So back in school, when all the bullies were out there, and they were saying stuff to me, I just let them do it. But I don't accept that anymore. And I will not accept that if I see people doing it to others. And one thing I love about running my own business is that by working with others, so contractors, freelancers, I love the fact that I can give them freedom as well. And I, you know, I always say set your boundaries, don't overload yourself. Learn how to say no. And, you know, don't accept it. Don't accept, if people treat you in a way that you don't want to be treated. You decide how people treat you by deciding what you will or won't accept.

Love yourself enough to set boundaries. Your time and energy are precious. You get to choose how you use it. And you teach people how to treat you by deciding what you will and won't accept.

I actually thank those bullies now because actually, if you're listening, thank you. I wouldn't be who I am if it wasn't for you. I'm empathetic, caring, Funny now again, my personalities come back.

And I'm actually incredibly resilient. Hit me with it. It won't work anymore. So thank you for making me who I am today. 

Now, I want to help others, in particular, those who are helping to protect the environment, those who are helping communities with social impact. And yeah, maybe I wouldn't have wanted to do these things if it wasn't for you. So thank you. Thank you very much. Goodbye. 

Oh, and I just want to add don't want the bullies to take all the credit here. Do I? Thank you to all my beautiful, lovely, loyal, caring trusting friends and my absolutely, Oh God, I don't even have words. There's no word that couldn't explain how much I love Rich, my wonderful partner. Beautiful man. He's away at the moment so I'm getting emotional now.

And my parents, thank you love you. love you, love you, love you longtime. I'm gonna go now this is weird. Thanks if you've made it this far, and listened.

I hope it rounded off all right, because I feel like I was just babbling on but hopefully there's a message in this somewhere and somebody will take take note from it. Yeah.

Bye and Happy Valentine's Day rich. I love you.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Find us: 

• Head to our community page to register & join the MindfulCommerce community as an expert, brand or merchant
• Instagram: @mindfulcommerce
• Facebook @MindfulCommerce
• Contact Us - [email protected]

Where to find Gavin Ballard:

Gavin Ballard - Twitter
Gavin Ballard - Website

Where to find Disco Labs:

Disco Labs - Website

Links Mentioned in Episode:

Disco Labs - Carbon Report

Shopify
Shopify BFCM - Black Friday Cyber Monday 2020
Stripe
Stripe Climate
Wildbit
DigitalOcean
Who Gives A Crap
Thankyou
Brooklinen
GCP - Google Cloud Platform
AWS - Amazon Web Services

Sponsor:

Shownotes:

Krissie Leyland  0:00

Hello, and welcome to the mindful commerce podcast, a place where we talk to ecommerce brands, ecommerce service providers and developers who care about protecting our planet. Today, we are talking to Gavin from disco labs who make things possible on Shopify plus through custom development. They're a team with deep platform knowledge and world class expertise on Shopify Plus, and have a list of happy clients. Gavin and his team have worked with brands like Who Gives a Crap, a sustainable toilet roll brand–who I've mentioned a few times within the community–and they've worked with big brands such as Harper Collins. So hi, Gavin, how are you? Would you like to add anything to your introduction?

Gavin Ballard  0:45

I'm very well, thank you. Happy to be here. Thank you, you nailed the introduction. That was a goodbreakdown of who we are and what we do. If listeners can't tell from the accent, we're based down here in Melbourne, Australia.

Krissie Leyland  0:59

Great. And so could you tell us a bit about what how you ended up in the Shopify space?

Gavin Ballard  1:06

Yeah, sure. My background is as a software engineer, so that's always been something that I've been quite interested in. Then quite a few years ago, I got involved in Shopify, just building a site out for a friend who who wanted to sell something online. That was nearly 10 years ago, I think, or maybe it is 10 years ago now. A few years later, after that, I was thrust into into freelancing. A couple of friends and I had moved overseas to start a company that didn't work out that well so I needed to pay the bills somehow, and just started freelancing in the Shopify arena. It just grew from there started out doing all of the standard stuff that you do on Shopify: theme builds design, setting up stores, etc... but because my background is in that software engineering, I eventually decided to focus on the apps & integration space, and we have sort of grown out the agency around that.

Krissie Leyland  2:01

Okay, so like, the apps integration space. So what do you do, there then? Like, what does that mean?

Gavin Ballard  2:09

Yeah, so what we tend to do is work with (these days they tend to be) larger merchants who are using Shopify and they have something they need to get done-whether it's connect Shopify to an external system, like a warehousing platform or something like that, or they want to offer their customers a new experience or something to improve the way that they sell things to those customers. (We work with them when) there's nothing off-the-shelf that does it-there's nothing in the Shopify app store, or their platform doesn't have an integration, or the merchant has these really funky, bespoke needs. So we step in there, and we work with a merchant to work out exactly what they need to get done to solve their problem, and then build the software to do that. We try to do that in a way that's really, because we're very much focused on Shopify and Shopify Plus, compatible with the platform and working with it rather than hacky workarounds or anything like that.

Krissie Leyland  3:13

Nice. So whatever your clients need, you can tweak things and make it custom to what they need, which is really good, obviously.

Gavin Ballard  3:23

Yeah and because we're just focused on the back end of the app, the thing is that we also work quite a lot with other agencies who are more focused on the front end of things (so design and theme development and things like that).

Krissie Leyland  3:39

That's cool,that's quite unique then, because I don't often see that people just focus on the back end, I guess. It's more popular as a Shopify agency to kind of niche into marketing or development. So yeah, that's cool.

Gavin Ballard  3:56

Yeah, it's a niche, but it is quite a large niche with the way that Shopify is growing at the moment. It's keeping us busy, so that's a good thing.

Krissie Leyland  4:07

Yeah, I can imagine a lot of partners coming to you. Like, "Can you do this super techie bit? I can't do it." So that's good. Rich, do you want to ask a question?

Rich Bunker  4:19

Well let me jump into the environmental footprint side of things... What do you believe is your role as an ecommerce service provider to improve the ecommerce world in terms of sustainability and social impact?

Gavin Ballard  4:34

I mean, I always am hesitant because I don't want to be seen to be preaching or anything like that... but ever since I started the business, I've always thought that the way that we actually do things is just as important as what we're doing. If you look at our company's mission statement, we have this dual purpose: One of which is to basically be the best in the world at building software for ecommerce merchants, but that's kind of our external mission. Then the internal one is to be building the company that we want to work for. I think that it would be really difficult today, in 2021, to say that you want to be working at a company that isn't being quite conscious of the the society we live in, the planet that we we live on and not be keeping that in mind so that we can do what we can to make that better. So that's why I say, that our role is being part of the society that we live in. We wouldn't exist without everyone else on the planet. I think it's just about being a good corporate citizen. That's my personal view and I think being public about that is meant for the people that we work with, internally at the company, to share that that goal, that value.

Rich Bunker  6:05

It's great and it's about being a good example, as well.

Gavin Ballard  6:10

Again, I am very conscious that I don't feel like my place, or our place in the company is to be preaching and making other people feel like, "Hey, this is what we're saying you should be doing" but I think it's more about leading by example, and trying to talk about it as much as possible.

Krissie Leyland  6:27

Yeah... Acknowledging it and building awareness around it. What do you think are the biggest issues in ecommerce when it comes to sustainability?

Gavin Ballard  6:40

Well, I think probably the thing that is on top of everyone's mind is climate change and carbon impact. Those two certainly have been a big part of where our focus has been in terms of our environmental footprint and what we think we can measure and improve quite significantly. Then, from a merchant perspective–given that a big part of your job as a merchant is often selling physical goods that need to be shipped across the world and that good itself is probably made of parts that have been shipped from everywhere else in the world–that's certainly a big factor when it comes to ecommerce: what that carbon impact is and how sustainable that is longer term.

Rich Bunker  7:36

How do you communicate that  message? Do you communicate that to your clients, when you sort of have initial meetings or do you just communicate it through your own community?

Gavin Ballard  7:51

We've started becoming a lot more public about this sort of stuff in the past year, I would say. Even though we're not a merchant that's shipping stuff around the globe, we do have an impact, like every business does. So, there was a decision made at the start of last year that we wanted to become a carbon-neutral business. Towards the end of last year, we we hit that goal. Part of our success criteria that we defined at the start of last year was that "We're going to do this, but we're also going to have a report about our carbon impact and give us a baseline to measure against in future years." In having that report, it makes sense to make that public. Not only as an accountability measure for ourselves internally, but also to hopefully, show other people that it's very possible to do it. It's not that expensive, it's not that difficult and it's not that time consuming. I think we have definitely started to think about part of our contribution is actually becoming a carbon neutral business ourselves. Then another really important part of it is just talking about it and that tweaks. If us publishing a carbon report means that one other agency says, "Oh, we should do that, too!" then in a way, we've kind of doubled our impact with just publishing what we're doing. So yeah, we're definitely keen to talk about it more. I don't think it's necessarily something that a lot of merchants will look for but it can be a nice thing to put on the pitch deck. I think it'll become more and more of a factor as time goes on.

Krissie Leyland  9:42

Definitely, I totally agree. Love that. More people need to follow in your footsteps. What inspired you to do it? What was it that kind of kicked it off for you?

Gavin Ballard  9:52

So we have a company retreat every year. I was just mentioning to you off-air that we're about to have our next one next week but we we had one at the start of last year or the end of the year before... back when you could actually gather and meet with people... It was an idea that I'd sort of brought to the table to say, "Well, what about becoming a carbon neutral business?" Then as a company, we decided that would be one of our company goals for 2020. Once we set that, I said, "Well, that's part of my accountability and my KPIs as a CEO: to get that sort of stuff done." So I pushed to make sure that we did that. Despite the weird year that 2020 was, it was quite a good one for people in ecommerce, relative to a lot of other people in society. So, it seemed silly to think that we should abandon those goals. So yeah, it was a community discussion and setting that. Part of the process of putting the carbon record together and the research that we did for that, certainly reassured me that it was probably a good decision to stick with it and to actually do the carbon record.

Rich Bunker  11:26

It's an amazing report. I commend you on that. Did you do all the research in house, get an outside agency to help you or was it all just hours of internet searches?

Gavin Ballard  11:40

It was driven internally. This goes back to the earlier question about the inspiration for it, but part of that has been seeing other companies do this. Probably the biggest, the most useful examples of what drove our carbon record structure and what we were looking at were: firstly, a company called Wildbit, which is a software company based based in the US. I think they align very closely with us in terms of values. They're completely outside of the Shopify space, but they build software products. Then Basecamp, as well was another. Both of those companies published a blog post that was basically going through "this is what we did to estimate our carbon impact, this is why we did it and this is what we did with that information." So we took those as a starting framework, customised a bit for our industry & our business. We did research through a couple of books we looked at: going through things like Apple's environmental pages to work out what the impact of our physical goods were, and things like that. Then doing some general research on ways to calculate carbon impact, especially for software businesses where you're hosting stuff in the cloud. That was the inspiration. Then we definitely used them as a starting framework to build it out but there was a fair bit of original research done, as well. I know there are businesses in helping companies put these things together, but for a small business like ours, I think it can be less work than people may think it is.

Rich Bunker  13:39

If you don't have a huge infrastructure of hardware, services and personnel, you can probably dial it down quite quickly to what the exposes are and it's the difficulty of calculating it.

Gavin Ballard  13:55

We are a small company so I think that it's certainly a lot easier for us than for a massive company with multiple office where you can't easily survey everyone to find out what electricity provider they use at home and that sort of stuff. But I think that it's important for us to do it while we're small because it is easier to do it. As soon as you start doing it, because then it just becomes ingrained and part of the business. We certainly have plans to grow in the next few years but hopefully, as we do that we can grow the carbon report with that.

Krissie Leyland  14:28

So if another supply agency was interested in doing the same thing, would you like give them six steps? Would your current report kind of provide those steps for them to take as well?

Gavin Ballard  14:45

If someone wants to do it, I would absolutely jump on a call with them and work through it... Give them our spreadsheets. Absolutely. That's part of the reason that we we published it. I think for an agency or a software company that is similar to ours, taking out that carbon report as a starting point would be quite valuable because the similar emissions profile. You know, for our type of business, really the the biggest impact that we have is cloud hosting and then close after that it's office space–including home offices for us as well. So, I think they're going to be similar sort of environmental impacts for any businesses similar to ours.

Rich Bunker  15:37

Excellent.

Krissie Leyland  15:38

Should we ask for more details on the cloud?

Rich Bunker  15:40

Yeah, definitely. It's something close to our heart, because we've engaged in that process of trying to find the better cloud hosting service. But you know, that's using renewables and even just better services. In general, how do you go about that and what do you perceive as the best renewable hosting services out there?

Gavin Ballard  16:04

It is tricky. I was surprised when I started digging into it. There are platforms that are carbon neutral and there are kind of different ratings. There are some that are carbon neutral because they're doing offsets while there are others that are carbon neutral because they're they're actually powered by renewables, and they know that they're powered by renewables. Then, there's the the dirty ones that don't report on it. Even for one particular provider that can change depending on what region you're hosting things in. So AWS, Amazon's cloud hosting, for example, depending on where you're actually hosting your servers will change whether you're using carbon neutral hosting or not. It actually surprised me a little bit that was difficult to tell. Sometimes you just don't know because you don't actually get a report on that. For example, we use a provider called DigitalOcean, as well as AWS and Google. They don't necessarily tell you for sure whether you actually hosted on carbon neutral stuff or not, so we try to do the research. At the end of the day, we didn't know for sure so we just went with the assumption that they weren't when we were calculating our impact and our missions. Then the bigger players like Amazon, Google, Microsoft are good at publishing that sort of stuff. It's certainly better than the smaller providers. So that is one of the advantages of going with a larger provider in that sense.

Krissie Leyland  17:45

I actually asked DigitalOcean the question and they just sent me to a forum where someone else was asking the same question. It said, "Some of our some of our service centers are using renewables, but not all of them." So it's like, alright, we're not gonna know for sure then, are we?

Gavin Ballard  18:10

I think I must have been going through that exact same thread at some point.

Krissie Leyland  18:14

Yeah, probably.

Rich Bunker  18:16

I guess there's an element of "better, best and the BEST" isn't there? You know, if you're on a journey to change your infrastructure up a bit, choosing a better service that has some renewables is better than not doing anything.

Krissie Leyland  18:32

For sure. I think there are offerings now, which clearly, optimal or they have optimised that. This isn't a paid advertisement or anything but yeah, Google's JCP, their cloud platform is 100% carbon neutral. A lot of that is from actual renewable energy, rather than just offsetting. In the research that I've done, they're probably either the best at it, or they're the best at talking about it.

Rich Bunker  19:12

It's not new, but it's getting to be more in demand that people want to know that information. So I think some of the smaller players, who aren't even thinking about it, will probably realise that that's a potential and bigger customer base. Then they can market to them or maybe they already are renewable and aren't telling people.

Krissie Leyland  19:32

Yeah! People just might not even realise that they're actually doing good and need to talk about it. So, shall we move on to talk about Shopify? We're not sponsored by Shopify, I obviously talk about it a lot. How is Shopify good in terms of carbon neutrality?

Gavin Ballard  19:55

This is gonna sound like I am sponsored by Shopify, but I'm in not. Obviously, we're big, big fans because all of our money and livelihoods depend on Shopify but in terms of their commitment, I think that they're probably one of the biggest, best larger companies going around. Maybe this is just my bias but I think they're very cognizant of the climate impact they had themselves, and then also that their merchants have. In 2018, they started a sustainability fund. That's at least 5 million a year to invest in carbon technologies and then another million on top of that to focus on investing in weird or underfunded ways to look at sequestering carbon, going forward. They're putting that money in.  They're on Google cloud platforms or their hosting, they're carbon neutral and then there is their operations. Like I said, this is definitely sounding like a Shopify ad, but they've done the work to calculate the carbon impact of their operations. They're carbon neutral there as well with both renewable energy and offsets. So, I think in terms of them looking at their own business, they've done a really good job, and they're clearly caring about it. And then they've done some things to make it a lot easier for merchants to think about that as well. They have an official offset app, which you can install into your app store and it will calculate your shipping emissions and automatically bill you for that. I think they say it's between half a cent to 10 cents per order they'll take a clip of and put that towards offsetting. Their payment providers short pay. If you purchase something with short pay, then the shipping for that product is offset as well. They're definitely very aware of it and I think they're doing more than a lot of large companies are.

Krissie Leyland  22:21

Yeah, we definitely don't see the other platforms talking about this. You know, they definitely haven't got a fund for sustainability. One thing that I loved about what Shopify did recently was offsetting Black Friday, Cyber Monday shipping, and I just thought that was genius. You can see it on their BFCM globe. You know what I'm talking about, don't you, Gavin?

Gavin Ballard  22:46

Yes, yes.

Krissie Leyland  22:48

I just I loved it. I was like, "Look, it's like they show each order... But then they're like we've offset these billions of orders!" They offset the shipping and it's great. I love Shopify.

Gavin Ballard  23:01

I think that's really impressive and, you know, it's a it's probably a bit of a marketing thing for them as well. But at the end of the day, it's good that that sort of stuff has become good marketing.

Krissie Leyland  23:14

Yeah, true.

Rich Bunker  23:15

It would be nice to be in a place where offsetting is the norm and everyone's chasing being carbon neutral.

Krissie Leyland  23:26

Yeah, I think one of the things I like about the Shopify approach as well–that I think also goes for Stripe, the payment provider behind Shopify or short pay, who is another company that I think is very impressive in the climate arena– is that they're very much focused not only on the offsetting stuff, which is good and wonderful but also actually looking at getting to negative carbon. As well as taking carbon out of the atmosphere with sequestration and things like that. So they're impressive in leading the way.

Rich Bunker  24:12

I think, going back to the carbon offsetting for any company looking to have less of an impact, that is a good place for them to start. Then, like you've done your carbon report, you've got a plan to reduce your carbon. So it's a good place to start. Then, as long as you've got a way forward to reduce it, and that's even better.

Gavin Ballard  24:33

You definitely need that baseline, right? You don't really know where your biggest impact is and what you can actually do to address that.

Krissie Leyland  24:45

So on a normal day, what do you and your team do to ensure you keep your footprint down to a minimum?

Gavin Ballard  25:00

A lot of it is being conscious. We were in the process of addressing what we've done, or what we identified in our carbon report. So, we're looking at moving more and more of our hosting over to other platforms. In a new project, we'll make sure that we're setting that up on something that is carbon neutral. Because we're working from home so much still, I think that'll be a long term thing for us even though here in Australia, COVID has thankfully not had as much of an impact as it would have elsewhere. We are able to go back into our offices, while I think a lot of other people are really lacking the flexibility. But that then means that we need to look at things like longer term such as people using that the houses as offices. So, "What's the electricity that's powering that office", "How are their houses are heated?" and things like that. There's a renewable energy supply here in Melbourne that we helped by sending out a way to get started with or how to swap over to them. They that had a promotion so we were just promoting them within the company to try and encourage people to swap of over. Again, it wasn't like we were saying, "You have to do this to work here." I think that's a very personal decision, that sort of stuff. But we're just promoting those sorts of things and then making choices about where we work and how we work. We moved office recently. While this wasn't the only factor, the fact that the office–which was close to public transport–provided good facilities for cyclists and things like that was certainly a factor in that decision as well. I think there were a couple of things that we're sort of looking at on a day to day level, but hopefully we're going to bring our overall carbon footprint, numbers down in 2021.

Krissie Leyland  27:03

Nice. At the moment, I don't have a high impact at the moment because I'm just at home working.

Rich Bunker  27:13

So as a developer yourself–and thinking about Shopify, in particular, and its massive app platform–again, you don't want to sound preachy, but do you think that other app developers should be looking towards promoting what hosting services they're on? We've had discussions with them.

Krissie Leyland  27:37

They didn't even think about it.

Rich Bunker  27:40

Or they're like, "We have to be hosted on 'x' platform." So we don't know what they do. So are there any quick wins or things that you'd advise other developers to do?

Gavin Ballard  27:54

It is difficult because, at the end of the day, there's probably other priorities around that. But I mean, one thing that I would say is really advantageous for a Shopify app developer, specifically, is that if you're hosting your apps on Google Cloud Platform, you're on the same platform as Shopify. So, you're gonna have much lower latency when you're calling their API, which is definitely something to think about when you're picking a host. I don't think we're at the point yet where merchants are really using that as a factor, or they're not asking the question of their app providers: "Hey, are you carbon neutral?" I think it might be a nice thing to do. I could say, of all the app stores in the world, the Shopify Apps are potentially being one that has a little badge or something for carbon neutral providers, but I don't think we're there yet. I just don't think it's top of mind for a lot of merchants when they're looking at their stores. It would be good to change that, though. I think that that could be something that app developers are doing. If they do happen to be carbon neutral, they should promote that fact. As soon as one app developer starts promoting it, then it might get in the minds of others. Again, a lot of it is promoting it and making sure others are aware of it.

Rich Bunker  29:17

Definitely, communicating it.

Krissie Leyland  29:20

Put that in our framework, Rich.

Rich Bunker  29:21

We could.

Krissie Leyland  29:24

Just ask if they're using renewable energy or not.

Rich Bunker  29:27

Yeah, I guess it depends on the merchant as well. You know, if they're a merchant that keeps stainability close to their heart, then they're gonna ask those questions. But if it's not that close to the heart or if they perceive it as an expensive thing to do then they're not going to ask. But if it's easily identifiable on the Shopify platform, then that'd be a great place to start.

Krissie Leyland  29:53

So if the Google Cloud Platform is the same as Shopify, that means that it will call the API quicker, and that means that app will be quicker, right?

Gavin Ballard  30:10

Yeah. It's probably a small difference but if all other things were enabled, then that's a good hard technical reason to choose it above and beyond the carbon neutral element. So, if people need a way to justify it to their boss, that's a good starting point.

Krissie Leyland  30:30

Oh, I love that. I'm going to put that in the framework. Does that also mean that the store will load quicker because you know, if you've got tones of apps, it slows it down, right? So if your app is known to not slow down the lowest speed, then that's a good thing!

Gavin Ballard  30:53

I mean, I'm a massive fan of app developers taking a bit more responsibility for store performance so anything you can do to improve performance is worth it in my view.

Rich Bunker  31:07

I guess that leads us a bit onto the next question, really, which is about ways to build a store or development in Shopify in a low impact way, as well as hosting on the Google Cloud Platform would probably be one of those things.

Gavin Ballard  31:28

Again, I think if you're a merchant and you're faced with to two apps, and making a choice between them,... at the end of the day, you're probably going to be focused on the one that's going to serve the needs of your customers better. So you're going to be more focused on the functionality, what specific features it has, and how many reviews it has, rather than "Is it's hosted on Google versus something else?" But for merchants that are more conscious about it, or for merchants who are serving a customer base that is really conscious about it, it pays ask. I think that if an app developer is getting that question during the sales process, even if it's just one in 50 times, then it's going to get them thinking about it. Maybe they see the value and then maybe it flips one person or one developer over. So, asking that question is something that merchants can do. Even if they're not hosted on a neutral platform and you you still use them, at least you've asked a question, and they're thinking about it. Beyond that, this is definitely where I get into the territory of how merchants work incredibly hard to build their businesses. There's a lot of things that they need to think about so I don't want to be suggesting that we just add one more thing on top of the list. Obviously, the choice of what type of business you're running, the product you're selling, where you're shipping to and from... it all has a bigger impact than almost anything else on things like carbon emissions like where you're sourcing your stuff. I'm sure that you've spoken to merchants about this, or with notions about this a lot. That's definitely going to be a big impact: the type of business you have and where you're sourcing from into.

Krissie Leyland  33:35

We have talked about that quite a lot but we don't have a solution.

Rich Bunker  33:41

The solution is communication and an education: making people aware so that they're gonna ask the questions. Hopefully, that'll ignite the developers and agencies to be more.

Krissie Leyland  33:56

Yeah and for the shipping, say for example, if a shopper's at checkout and they have the option between: next day delivery or wait a few days, but if you wait a few days, it's better for the planet because it's being shipped by–

Rich Bunker  34:16

–road or rail. Yeah, especially in larger countries like I guess Australia and America where next day delivery would sometimes mean the delivery jumping on a flight.

Krissie Leyland  34:27

Just being mindful of how your choices can help. But as a merchant building that checkout experience to help consumers to be more mindful... do you need this to be next day delivery because it costs the planet this and just helping them to think as well as a consumer?

Gavin Ballard  34:47

If you've got multiple items in an order, shipping them out individually... If there's going to be a couple of days difference between when you can fulfil them or if you could just wait an extra day or two and get them all in one parcel would be better. Some of the packaging waste that you say from large retailers is pretty ridiculous–and it's all done in the name of automation, obviously–but when you order a toothbrush and it rocks up in a 1m x 1m package. That's an exaggeration but I've certainly seen situations where it's not that different to that.

Rich Bunker  34:48

No, we've definitely seen that... tons of packaging and an item that comes that's really packaged ready to go.

Krissie Leyland  35:23

Say, if you have a physical store as well, could the packaging be ready to be just shipped as it is? You know, you don't need to put it in another box.

Rich Bunker  35:58

That's really for package designers or product designers but I just think if those guys could think in a more sustainable way: we're gonna make this product and we're going to put it in this box. Is that box capable of big shipping the product in it?

Krissie Leyland  36:15

Be innovative in that way because it's changing and ecommerce is growing. At the moment especially, it's more popular than physical stores. Anyway, that was a slight tangent. Sorry, but if there's tech that can solve that, like an app maybe that's at checkout that can say, "Have you thought about the cost of this?"

Gavin Ballard  36:44

It was interesting, because as part of the research for this podcast, I was looking through the offset app that Shopify publishes, which does that. A really common feature request, which I don't think I've gotten around to yet, is providing a really easy way to communicate what they're doing to customers. So, from a merchant perspective, they may be happy to pay that extra amount but if they can't tell customers that that's what they're doing, or make customers feel good about their purchasing decisions, then that's the missing link. I think this is definitely the theme of what we've been talking about a lot today is: doing the work is obviously the most important thing to offset or reduce, but very important also is talking about it and making sure that people know about it, because that's how you keep pushing the boulder up the hill, inch by inch.

Krissie Leyland  37:51

When you talk more, you'll all find the gaps and then maybe come up with an idea together to fill that gap and make it better, I think.

Gavin Ballard  38:01

Mhm, absolutely.

Rich Bunker  38:06

Krissie's looking at my like it's my question time...

Krissie Leyland  38:10

Well, I was just thinking we could talk more about the projects that you've done as a team with conscious brands. How do you usually work with clients? In particular, those that are conscious and sustainable?

Gavin Ballard  38:27

Look, at the end of the day, we really like working with social, socially conscious brands. Especially if you're working ecommerce in an agency, some days, you find yourself thinking, "we are helping people buy more stuff and is that necessarily what the world needs right now?" So it's nice when you're working with a client, and you're actually saying what they're doing with what they're selling. Who Gives a Crap is a fantastic example of that. Thankyou is another brand that we have worked with previously. Working with those clients makes you feel good about what you do every now and again, which is nice. Even the brands that you maybe wouldn't necessarily think off the top of your head are super socially conscious, I guess. So, Brooklinen is a big client of ours and they sell linen, bedding and things like that, in the States. You might not necessarily think of them as a socially conscious thing but they've gone to quite a bit of effort and expense on their end to set up their return system to make sure that anything that's returned goes to a local donation centre rather than getting shipped all the way back across the country just get thrown out in their warehouse. We built the returns management app that helps facilitate that for them. So you know, those sorts of things are really nice to work, especially when you're working with large merchants. You build this one app for them, and you can see how how much waste you're saving or the impact that you having. One of our projects with with Thankyou actually, was to build a custom app that let people pay what they want for a particular book, which was the history of Thank you, the company and where they wanted to go. Obviously, it was essentially a donation type product. Every single dollar that went through that, was going straight to Thankyou's projects. Those sorts of things are always really nice to, to work on and for. But also, I said at the start that we don't necessarily treat working with those clients super differently to working with any other client because at the end of the day, the merchant is always the hero. It has to be what they care about, and what they want to do–that's what is most important for us as an agency. It's nice when they're doing they want to do things that are nice, but there's no way that we can come in and shift a company that doesn't already want to do something good. We can't shift them into doing that. At the end of the day, everything has to come from the merchant themselves when you're in a service business.

Rich Bunker  41:46

Just jumping back to how the shipping and returns part of ecommerce is massive. The fact that you've helped a company try and eliminate or reduce their return costs is a double win, isn't it? You know, financially, for the environment and all. So that's really amazing, to be honest.

Krissie Leyland  42:08

Yeah, I was just taking that all in about Brooklinen as well. I just thought that's genius. So say for example, the customer bought an item and there in Manchester, would they donate that potential return to somewhere more local?

Gavin Ballard  42:32

A lot of bedding stuff, if you returned it, would just get thrown out because they couldn't resell it. So rather than doing that, they've worked with charities, that have hubs around the country, that will make sure that they get to them, rather than just going in the trash or shipped back to a warehouse where it will get thrown out. From the customer perspective, it's the same as any other return. They will get their return label, go and take it to the post office. But instead of getting shipped rom Tennessee, all the way back to New York where it came from, it'll go to a local Tennessee charity or return centre where it all get distributed properly. It's probably a win for Brooklinen as well, not having to deal with all of that coming back when they're just gonna throw it away. Just being a bit more thoughtful about it means that it's a win win.

Krissie Leyland  43:45

It's great for the planet and it's a social impact, as well. I really like that. It's the start of the year, so let's look ahead. What will you be doing differently in 2021, in terms of your carbon footprint.

Gavin Ballard  44:11

The first thing was that literally four or five days ago, we signed up for a program called Stripe Climate. So this is Stripe, the business I was talking about before, who handles all of the payment processing for one of our products. So we process a fair amount of money through them every year and they've just made it very, very easy to flick a switch to get the percentage of the revenue that you're pushing through Stripe to climate projects. So, we've we've done that and it's been operating for a few days and that's quite nice to think that it's a very low effort way for us to do it–to make an impact. That was first project for 2021. I think the other big thing for us will be moving all of our hosting to carbon neutral stuff this year. It will take a while because we have a lot of apps that we host, and it does take time to move them. I'd like to think they we're at least 80% of the way there by the end of the year, and that'll be probably the biggest way for us to reduce our footprint from from 2020. We'll continue to do our offsetting at the end of this year. So anything we do create will be offsetting and probably just trying to get a bit more sophisticated about how we're calculating our hosting missions and things like that. Then, I could happily put the spreadsheet for our carbon calculations for any other agency that wanted to do that. Maybe even potentially wrapping that up and making a little public tool that people can just plug in to the common things that you do when you're a creative or digital agency: just get a number and then a link straight to an offset provider and just make it a very low effort, low brain way to do that. That was really, for something like Stripe Climate, which is committing not-insignificant amount of money to that every year but they just made it so easy and so obvious that it really became a no brainer. If we could do something like that for agencies, that would be really exciting.

Krissie Leyland  46:47

That's incredible. Please definitely do that.

Gavin Ballard  46:54

Fingers crossed. It's a it's a busy year, but of all the things that we shipped in 2020, the carbon record was, though not a traditional bit of software that's out in the world, definitely one of the things that I'm proud of us doing this company.

Krissie Leyland  47:17

Nice. Thank you. How will you further support merchants to be more conscious of what they're doing?

Gavin Ballard  47:27

Well, I'm going to appear on this podcast and convince everyone else! ...Again, it comes down to that promotion. In terms of how when we're engaged by a merchant, it's not really our place to be changing their business model, how they ship things, or what product they're selling or anything like that. It's about, just making sure that they're aware of the things like the offset app from Shopify. For the right type of merchant, have them think about how if you offset all your shipping, you may be paying money for that but let's have a look and see what it does to the conversion rate, if you're publicly promoting the fact that this is something you're doing. Try to help merchants think about that a bit more holistically. And again, just letting them know, there's a thing that we've done. You don't need to do that but if it's something that you want to do, then we're very happy to help you out with that.

Krissie Leyland  48:36

Yeah and give them some examples for example, the Brooklinen case study.

Gavin Ballard  48:43

Again, I think it's something that we're very bad at as a business: talking about the stuff that we've done. We have worked with a lot of large merchants on interesting projects and we justreally lacked doing that. We jump straight onto the next big projects that are exciting, but then forget to write up in detail what we actually did for everyone else. So.... terrible marketing strategy. I should really get better at that this year.

Krissie Leyland  49:12

Well, you can pass it on to Kollectify! We do content.

Rich Bunker  49:17

So finally, if you had one message to Shopify experts and merchants listening to this podcast and hoping to improve their own business in terms of how they can have a positive impact on 2021, what would it be?

Gavin Ballard  49:30

I think my first message would probably be 2021 can't be as bad as 2020, right? So anything you do is probably going to have a more positive impact. I think, given what we've been talking about the most in this interview has been around the carbon report. The best thing that you could do is just start by estimating your impact. Doesn't have to be necessarily to then go out and offset it. It doesn't need to be something that's done in a huge level of granularity or anything like that. Just find a baseline and have some idea of like, where your biggest impact or where your imprint is. That's something that most businesses would be able to sit down and work out in a couple of hours with a bit of research on the internet. Doing that would be a really interesting way to start thinking about it and thinking about ways to reduce and potentially offset down the track. If you just go into it with a bit of curiosity about what is our footprint, where are the big things, then I think that'll at least put you in a position to really be able to do something about that.

Krissie Leyland  50:53

Perfect answer. So Gavin, where can people find you if they'd like to chat more about custom Shopify development or your carbon report?

Gavin Ballard  51:04

For me personally, Twitter is probably the best place for me. I am just @gavinballard and if you'd like to learn a bit more about Disco Labs as a company, or read the carbon report them were at www.discolabs.com.

Krissie Leyland  51:19

Thank you! One more question: What made you choose the name Disco Labs?

Gavin Ballard  51:25

I wish there was a great answer to this question but in all honesty, it is purely domain name availability. We just needed to name a business and looked at some .coms and that happened to be available. Yeah, there's nothing deeper to it than that.

Krissie Leyland  51:51

I thought you liked discoing or something?

Gavin Ballard  51:56

I don't mind the disco, but not too much in 2020 or 2021...

Rich Bunker  52:05

Remote discos!

Krissie Leyland  52:06

Yeah, on your own!

Rich Bunker  52:07

Zoom disco. There's probably a niche software isn't there?

Gavin Ballard  52:21

I don't think anyone wants to spend any more time on Zoom than they have to, at the moment.

Krissie Leyland  52:25

No thanks! Oh, wait... we're on it right now. Thank you Zoom!

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Where to find Tom Locke:

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Tom Locke - Instagram

Where to find Noughts & Ones:

Noughts & Ones - Website
Noughts & Ones - Instagram

Links Mentioned in Episode:

Patagonia
Finisterre
Know The Origin
People Tree
Twelve
Red Bank Coffee
Blossom Coffee Roasters
Contentful
Github
Netlify

Sponsor:

This podcast is sponsored by the MindfulCommerce Directory.

Shownotes: 

Krissie Leyland  0:00 

Hello, and welcome to the MindfulCommerce Podcast: a place where we talk to ecommerce brands, service providers and developers who care about protecting our planet. Today, we're talking to Tom from Noughts and Ones: a Shopify agency working with purpose-driven ecommerce brands who want to make a meaningful impact online. We love their advocacy for a better world, their passion for Shopify and sustainable commerce... and they're great to work with. And I know this firsthand! Hello Tom, welcome! Would you like to introduce yourself.

Tom Locke  0:42 

Yeah, so I'm Tom. I run an agency called Noughts and Ones in Bristol. And we're a web agency specializing in Shopify, working with ecommerce conscious brands, helping to make meaningful impact online.

Krissie Leyland  1:07
 
Nice. I love it. What are you up to at the moment? You didn't always have that focus on conscious brands and purely Shopify, did you?

Tom Locke  1:19 

No, early days, we started out doing actually quite a lot of custom Squarespace design and development. We started doing a bit of ecommerce on that platform but we always knew that other platforms are a little bit better when it came to the functionality for ecommerce brands. Shopify was something that we'd always wanted to really get stuck into. Then, it just happened semi-naturally, although it was definitely our plan. Now we focus pretty much entirely on Shopify and we've replaced Squarespace with an alternative web tech stack basically, that you're obviously very familiar with.

Krissie Leyland  2:11
 
Yeah, definitely. What was it that attracted you to Shopify, in particular? That Squarespace didn't have as much functionality, did you say?

Tom Locke  2:23 

Yeah, we were finding limitations from a development perspective. But also, we were starting to work with bigger commerce brands that needed more of their platform. Shopify, being a commerce-focused platform, just has a lot more strings to its bow. We were finding that it was a much better fit and we knew that in order to kind of serve those customers as an agency that Shopify was a much better fit as a platform.

Krissie Leyland  3:01 

I've used both and I much prefer Shopify. It's easy to use as someone like myself, who's not a developer, but then you can also use a lot of different technologies. You can code–do the geeky code stuff and scale. It's also quite simple and easy to use for maybe a brand owner that doesn't really know about the back-end and that kind of stuff.

Tom Locke  3:34 

For us as an agency, we were born out of working with a platform like Squarespace, which obviously, the idea is that anyone can make a website, upload content and that sort of thing. So our approach to Shopify development is very much focused on the actual kind of day-to-day usability. I guess that's something that has always stuck with us in terms of our approach is that: yes, we can build out really custom themes, but still maintain the actual usability on a day-to-day, on a content management level. Whenever we're building out a specific feature on a Shopify store, we're always trying to think about who's going to be in the seat–that's going to be using that eventually, which is generally going to be the merchant. So we try and build in any custom features within the theme editor itself. That's something that's super important for us.

Krissie Leyland  4:44 

Also, do you find that the App Store helps? I don't know what the App Store–if there even is an app store on Squarespace... but is that something that attracted you to Shopify as well?

Tom Locke  5:02 

Obviously, there's a whole host of additional features and functionality that you can plug into Shopify that, you know, at the time you couldn't in Squarespace, and now, it's still very much restricted. And certainly, for us as developers, having that kind of starting point for a particular feature... it just makes total sense to use an existing app as the basis and maybe, tweak it from there or get it to do what we needed to do, basically.

Krissie Leyland  5:32 

That's very cool. I wish I could do that. I do. I wish I could because I'm always like, "If only there was an app for this, this & this and I could just like tweak one or build one from scratch would be great."

Tom Locke  5:45 

I think with a lot of things, it'd be great if there was one thing that did everything. But inevitably, you've got to tweak things somewhere.

Krissie Leyland  5:54 

And then also, you've got to have a focus, haven't you? It's like you said, what's great about Shopify is they only focus on commerce. Whereas Squarespace, you know, they do everything... well, they say they do.

Tom Locke  6:10 

Sort of a catch-all type thing.

Krissie Leyland  6:12 

Yeah, which isn't always great. It's good to niche and get really good at one thing. Actually, on that note, so you have tweaked or shifted your niche a little bit. So we mentioned that you're focusing on working with purpose-driven brands, and do you want to talk a bit about that?

Tom Locke  6:37 

Yeah, it's felt like a real natural evolution for the agency. Ultimately, Noughts and Ones is built around the values of each and every team member. I have an amazing team that works at Noughts and Ones, and generally, they're just a passionate bunch of creative, lovely people. So, I think I've always wanted to shape the agency around the collective vision rather than just my vision as an agency owner. I think that's kind of something that's long been championed through our own values as individuals and now it's all kind of coming together, basically. It is super cheesy, but I said the other day that, "You know, it really feels like Noughts and Ones now is becoming the agency that it should be." So, we're always looking to do what we can do in a more conscious way. Despite the madness of the last–well, it's basically been a year now, hasn't it?–year (not that this is going to be podcast about COVID), I think it is really exciting to see ecommerce growing so significantly. Which, is very positive but I think that means that ultimately, there's a bigger opportunity for agencies and tech partners, to make sure that we're scaling with that growing ecommerce world to make sure that it's happening in a way that is as positive and meaningful as possible.

Krissie Leyland  8:39 

I love that. Yeah, definitely. That's what we're all about. I remember when we were first talking about it. It was like we both went down this rabbit hole at the same time. Do you remember?

Tom Locke  8:51 

Yeah, absolutely. We were–I feel like it was maybe almost a year ago, was it?

Krissie Leyland  9:00
 
I think, yeah–no longer.

Tom Locke  9:02 

Really?

Krissie Leyland  9:03 

Yeah. Anyway... I was so excited to talk to somebody who understood what I was talking about.

Tom Locke  9:11 

Yeah and I think it's certainly from us as individuals, but also a collective realization of the impact that ecommerce does have. Obviously, that coupled with how much it's growing as a result of things that are going on in the world. I think it was serendipitous that we connected, and as you say, went down that rabbit hole.

Krissie Leyland  9:40 

Like you said, ecommerce is growing but so is its impact and we need to do everything we can to lower that impact.

Tom Locke  9:50 

That's exciting, right?

Krissie Leyland  9:51 

Yeah!

Tom Locke  9:52 

It's a huge opportunity to start a conversation and make sure that sustainability in commerce and ecommerce, specifically, is being talked about.

Krissie Leyland  10:04 

Definitely, and I think ecommerce can be part of the solution to combating or fighting climate change... It's just about working out exactly how we can do it. Talking about it is also the best thing and that's why we're talking now. So, what projects have you got on at the moment and what is it about those projects that are helping to make ecommerce more sustainable?

Tom Locke  10:35 

We've got a really nice mix at the moment, actually, of projects. So, we've just kicked off a Shopify project with a plant-based, single-use plastic-free deodorant brand called Fussy, as you may have seen on Instagram. They're a recent startup and they're just an incredible brand and they want to do everything right and do right by this "big round thing" that we're on... Which is really exciting. Then we've also got just a really beautiful coffee brand, based up in the Lake District, and they're really focused on the traceability of their products, obviously, and quality. Fundamentally, the brands that we'reworking with want to have a positive impact and do what they do best in as conscious a way as possible. So it's really exciting.

Krissie Leyland  11:47 

That's really cool, I love it. I bet you just feel so content, so happy with the work you're doing.

Tom Locke  11:54 

Yeah, so the coffee brand we're working with up in Lake District. It's called Red Bank Coffee. Aside from being an absolutely amazing brand, I don't know what it is, but after every call that I come off of, I just feel so zen. I don't know whether it's Tom, who's the guy that runs it but every call that we come off with as a team, we're all just feeling super chil and it's inspiring.

Krissie Leyland  12:26 

Oh, that is so nice. I just think it's because you're aligned! It's because you know what you want & what your team needs to feel happy about the work that they do. Great! So, I want to get into the nitty gritty of the projects that you're doing: How do you build or create an online store that is good for the planet?

Tom Locke  12:58 

It's a very good question. Yeah, there's a lot to that. Firstly, we we feel a huge responsibility for the part that we play in the whole kind of ecommerce world. So as an agency, we do feel that we do have a big responsibility and with that, obviously, opportunity to actually do what we do in a meaningful way and actually have a positive impact. For us, that kind of breaks down into three areas. So, delivering what we do: our core services and how we exist as an agency, as consciously and sustainably as possible. I think the other aspect is supporting like-minded tech partners, as part of our preferred tech stack so that the partners we work with to achieve certain functionalities for a brand are so important–which is where something like the MindfulCommerce Directory and framework is a game changer. Then obviously, who we work with. So that means, partnering with brands that are focused on doing what they do consciously and not on my over-consumerism. Supporting and working with the right people, fundamentally. I think that's our role I see as being to connect with the right people and ultimately lay out the best course of action when it comes to building and growing an ecommerce brand. I know, it's cliche, but we're all in it together and it can only really be achieved by working together.

Krissie Leyland  14:58 

And by working with people who are on the same journey and are also doing everything they can in the way that they work and the way that they live. Yeah, that makes sense. You mentioned the MindfulCommerce Directory, which we haven't talked about yet. You obviously helped us to build that, or you basically built it, you and your team... So, what were your initial thoughts when we approached you with this idea for the directory?

Tom Locke  15:37 

We connected over a couple of other projects and ideas and, as you say, we went down that rabbit hole of sustainability and ecommerce. What came out of that as MindfulCommerce just felt totally right & the right time. It just felt like a really natural kind of thing and I think when the idea was presented, it just sort of clicked. You know, I was super fired up. I just knew that it wasn't an option to not do because it was super exciting! Obviously nothing really like it has properly existed before and I think the amount of work that you guys have put in along with Twelve on the framework is incredible. Honestly, it does feel like the start of something... really... game changing.

Krissie Leyland  16:40 

Ooh, I like that! Thanks! So the MindfulCommerce Directory is a directory of experts. So: service providers, technologies, to ecommerce apps... anybody who can help sustainable brands to grow or a brand that isn't necessarily sustainable, but they want to be more sustainable, and kinder to the planet. Just in case people didn't know of it yet.

Tom Locke  17:11 

And actually, I think on that: it doesn't have to be something that's just closed off to a certain number of brands or companies that thinking a certain way. You don't have to be selling sustainable or eco friendly products, to be conscious and to be sustainable in the way that you conduct your business, right? So actually, for me, that's the even more exciting part: is that we can make a real positive impact with brands that aren't necessarily in that space. Then that opens it up to basically anyone, which is pretty cool.

Krissie Leyland  17:56 

Yeah! I spoke about this app in the previous episode, so it's like I'm promoting them but I'm not–for example, Recurate is a plugin that you can plug into your online store where you basically can have a secondhand shop on your brand's website. So, any brand, even if you're not selling products that are made out of sustainable eco-friendly materials, you can still resell your clothing or your products or whatever, if you can. You know, you can't resell everything–like you can't resell deodorant– but it's accessible to everybody.

Tom Locke  18:47 

That is what's so important: it's having the conversation and having somewhere that the educationcan happen with those brands that aren't necessarily in that space. Because ultimately t's not just going to take a handful or 200,000 conscious brands with eco friendly products. Really, the proper impact is going to come when people outside of that space or sphere. That's really when there can be some significant changes.

Krissie Leyland  19:29 

That makes a lot of sense, because if we can shift their mindset to start thinking about it, then that's actually just as powerful as speaking to the brands are already thinking about it. We can help them to improve it, but we can introduce it to those that haven't thought about it yet.

Tom Locke  19:54 

I think that's where the the framework obviously comes in... Which is just exciting.

Krissie Leyland  20:02 

Yeah it is just exciting. So that's great... Who do you think is leading the way towards sustainability in ecommerce?

Tom Locke  20:20 

Yeah, another big question. I think there are obviously a number of amazing brands and individuals that are driving, change or having conversations. On a previous episode, where you're speaking with Lucy from Reverie, you discussed the problem of how over-consumerism is really at the heart of where ecommerce and sustainability & yet also where those issues lie. It isn't necessarily a new thing, but it's not something that can really quickly be fixed. So in my mind, the kind of the people who are leading the way are the people who are willing to talk about it, being proactive in conversations, taking meaningful action by holding events or exactly like you're doing with the podcast. But when it comes to brands, there are obviously some some amazing brands out there. You know, Patagonia, Finisterre, Know The Origin... I don't know if you know those guys?

Krissie Leyland  21:38 

Yes. Love that website.

Tom Locke  21:41 

And People Tree. They've been around, obviously, for absolutely ages. They're obviously the kind of brands that focus on not the sort of throwaway fast-fashion, when it comes to those sorts of apparel brands. As far as tech companies go, obviously Shopify, as a platform, does work quite hard on on sustainability, and their impact as an organization or as a platform.

Krissie Leyland  22:38 

So if you're building a low-impact website for a brand, something that you can say to them is, "Make it really obvious that it is (low-impact)" because then you're communicating the message, and you're building awareness around the fact that a website has a high impact on the planet. So there's advocacy and sharing innovative ideas, as well. You mentioned the coffee brand that you're working with... I don't know if their packaging is fully recyclable, or... I'm not sure because I don't know that brand. But there is a brand in our community, they're a coffee brand called Blossom Coffee and we use them all the time. They're amazing.

Tom Locke  23:13 

I've had another coffee. That's very nice.

Krissie Leyland  23:15 

So good, isn't it?

Tom Locke  23:16 

And actually, Tom at Red Bank, I think he does partner with them. They're in Manchester, aren't they?

Krissie Leyland  23:21 

Yeah! So is [Red Bank's] packaging recyclable?

Tom Locke  23:27  

Yes.

Krissie Leyland  23:29 

Oh, cool! But the thing was with Blossom Coffee: we didn't know that it was 100% recyclable because it didn't say anything on the packaging. So I'm just saying that communication and stuff is really good to do. If you're working with a brand, just remind them to communicate what they're doing.

Tom Locke  23:47 

I mean, if you're doing something positive, why wouldn't you obviously shout about it from your own kind of brand's positioning? Fundamentally, if you're doing something like that, then make it known.

Krissie Leyland  24:06 

Yeah definitely, tell everyone! So the directory, the MindfulCommerce Directory... we have tried to build it, for this phase one, with the lowest impact possible. So, because it's a Jamstack... how does that make it better for the environment?

Tom Locke  24:35 

Well the MindfulCommerce Directory stack, or our approach to web development outside of Shopify: we're building out our own low impact framework that we call 'Conscious Development'. So what we're looking to do, and MindfulnessCommerce is our real first proper project with this new framework in mind. It's an evolving beast, obviously, in terms of both the directory and also the framework. But fundamentally, we have a number of principles that make up our Conscious Development framework–all of which we've obviously applied to MindfulCommerce and the directory. So really, the biggest thing is having a low-impact design principle. So obviously, questioning absolutely everything and making sure that nothing, that is featured on the site, isn't needed, basically, or doesn't serve a purpose. Then, more on the tech side, what we're using is basically a headless approach. Rather than using an overarching platform, like Squarespace or WordPress, we're actually breaking out the individual components that make up a website: content management, asset storage, your code storage, you know, domain hosting–all of the bits and pieces. Which traditionally, platforms like WordPress and Squarespace want to bring under one roof by taking a headless approach. Essentially, you're kind of breaking those out into individual platforms, almost. So the content management is done through a platform called Contentful. All the code is hosted with GitHub and then deployed through Netlify. What that means is, we can build everything that we need, and with none of the stuff we don't, basically. Then within that, we can build super efficient code that ultimately doesn't sit on a server somewhere. We basically try and use the web browser to do as much of the work as possible. Basically, we try and render as much as possible on the browser side. Ultimately, that minimizes impact when it comes to servers and things like that.

Krissie Leyland  27:47 

I'm just looking at now, it's so beautiful as well. You don't sacrifice it looking nice but like you said, it's your first one and there's still things that we could do to make it better.

Tom Locke  28:01 

Yeah, for us as an agency, we're still very much on that journey and it's very cool to have you guys as part of that journey. Every day we're learning new things so it's constantly evolving and improving.

Krissie Leyland  28:20 

That makes so much sense and then you can just put your Noughts and Ones everywhere in the spotlight! Great, so how do you think the MindfulCommerce Directory and framework will support ecommerce businesses (so apps, agencies, brands...)?

Tom Locke  28:42 

As we've said previously, it's really all about conversations and connecting with the right people or someone that knows one very specific thing. Then, basically it's all about putting all of those pieces of the puzzle together. So, really what the directory enables that kind of connection with like-minded tech businesses, and to facilitate that kind of conversation. Obviously, there's a huge amount that we can get stuck into when it comes to more of the educational piece, which would speak to brands outside of that kind of space. Then further to that, the framework then obviously gives those brands–that are looking to have a more meaningful impact or conduct their business in a more conscious way– it actually gives them something tangible to work with and work towards. It obviously hasn't existed until now.

Krissie Leyland  29:55 

It's so interesting, because yesterday, I was speaking to Jessica & Naomi about the framework (because they helped us with that) and they were saying, from being so in involved with the framework, that the directory is actually the action. Because in the framework, it's asking you questions and things to think about in your business and then saying, "Here's an example of somebody who can help you." And then it links to the directory, then you can connect with them, and then you can get going on tackling that specific pillar or task that you're working on. It works both ways, doesn't it?

Tom Locke  30:38 

Yeah, absolutely. Even if, there are brands that may already know tha they really want to work with a tech company that specializes in X, Y, Z or they want to partner with a packaging company that only does fully recyclable packaging, for example. Yes, you might be able to Google that and find someone that potentially does it, but you never really know. I guess that's kind of touching on the realms of greenwashing, but ultimately, now there's a place to look, right? Which is cool.

Krissie Leyland  31:32 

Yeah and we've taken the time to get to know, everyone who's listed on that directory, because they're in the community. They're doing things like this podcast and events with us and we know that they genuinely want to help with sustainability and social impact. So, I love it. Thanks! It's like this really nice cycle, you know? Like a flywheel of different points of the directory, the framework, the community, education... It is all about education, connection, and collaboration–working towards one goal. I keep coming back to it, but it's just about talking: Just talk, talk, talk.

Tom Locke  32:23 

Obviously, there's a load of exciting plans that you guys have for MindfulCommerce in both areas. Ultimately, what you're kind of creating is something self serving when it comes to the framework, the education & the directory. You know, eventually, it will just become completely self serving and hopefully become an absolute beast.

Krissie Leyland  32:51 

Yeah and also, I hope it's the norm. We always said, if it's not actually needed, you know, if it becomes the norm, then it's like, our job's done, if that makes sense? Obviously, it will still be there, but it'll just be "Oh, yeah, that's the place to go to find an expert to help me with ecommerce stuff and it's also good for the planet!" I'm just so excited about it. Ah! Best thing you said, which literally made my brain happy, is: "It's not just about the brands that are already on the journey." I think with MindfulCommerce, we need to start speaking to brands that are outside of the space.

Tom Locke  33:55 

Those brands that are outside of the space, make up such a huge amount and so there's potential impact that they can have–really, just by making some pretty small decisions on the way they even just do one aspect of running their business. The actual amount of positive impact that could have is incredible. Obviously, it's super important to champion those brands that are taking those steps. They should absolutely be celebrated and championed but, they're already kind of in that mindset, right? But then think about all the brands that aren't in that mindset, then it starts to get pretty big.

Krissie Leyland  34:49 

Yeah, even just saying to them, "Do you know there are things that you can do to improve such and such", whatever it is. And then they're like, "Oh, yeah!"

Tom Locke  35:02 

But fundamentally, it is in their best interests, in terms of their brand because people are willing to spend more money to invest and connect with brands who are conscious and who are trying to do what they do in the right possible way. So, although it may seem that it's not the best business decision from a profitability perspective, that really is quite a short sighted viewpoint because ultimately, the conversation is growing and consumers are becoming a lot more conscious. So engaging with that is a no brainer.

Krissie Leyland  35:54 

Definitely. I always say, "the future's conscious commerce" because if you're not thinking about it, you're just gonna get left behind. So, think about the future, and long term, ecause if you don't, then there won't be a planet to live on.

Tom Locke  36:10 

[No planet] to think about or sell your products on.

Krissie Leyland  36:18 

Exactly. So do you think, this is a big question and I love it–

Tom Locke  36:22 

Oh, stop with the big questions. No, I'm only joking.

Krissie Leyland  36:34 

So, on that note then: If we tell all those brands that we were just talking about that aren't yet on the journey and we say something to them like "We're going to create this huge wave & educate them all." In 10 years, do you think we could have a fully sustainable world?

Tom Locke  36:58 

Obviously, that would be incredible. There's certainly a huge amount or there's so much more that can be done. Fundamentally, there is still an incredible amount to unpick, undo or address. So I think something like that could be possible but it does need buy in across the board, which really is where the biggest challenge is. That's only ever going to happen if it is addressed and people are talking about it, just like we're having a conversation right now. I don't want that to be like a sad answer.

Krissie Leyland  38:00 

I asked because I myself often just ponder this in my head. Obviously, that's the biggest goal.

Tom Locke  38:08 

But what does that look like, though? Like, the other aspect completely changes things. What that might look like for you might be very different for what that might look like for me. I'll flip it back to you: what's your definition of a fully sustainable ecommerce world?

Krissie Leyland  38:29 

I think it's all brands, all service providers, all app companies, and operations being mindful. It's them taking a step back and thinking, "Do I need to do this? Do I need to collect this data? Do I need that high res image? Do I need that video?" Taking more time to be conscious about if you're a brand, the materials that you're using to create a product, or thinking about end of life. So: "Where is this product that I've got in my head going to end up once it's created?" So if people can do that–and that's basically what the framework is.It's just asking you questions, the things that you need to think about: about your product, about your business, about supply chains, communications, website... All that stuff is just being mindful, in my head. But then obviously, you've got all the big businesses that are profit-hungry. and don't really... I don't think someone like me and my small community can even get the chance to talk to people like the guy at Amazon. But, you never know!

Tom Locke  40:00  

It's not something that is not discussed–I said that in a really weird backward way–but it's something that is being talked about and is only going to be kind of growing. So ultimately, it's going to get to a point where that sort of thing can't be overlooked. That's what the challenge is for us: to make sure that we're facilitating and expediting that conversation to get to that point where it's something that cannot be ignored, as soon as possible.

Krissie Leyland  40:41 

So it's like building the community or just a network, partnerships with people that want to make a difference and just talking about it. Instead of saying "a fully sustainable, positively impactful, ecommerce world," I could have said, "Do you think we can have a more mindful ecommerce world in 10 years?" And it'd be us and like, you know, our community–me and you, our network–will hopefully be able to make a difference. Even if its just someone looks at the framework and takes one thing away about the website data, and the impact it has. It'll just make them just think about it twice a day or in their day to day. Then yeah,I think you'll be more mindful and positive.

Tom Locke  41:41 

I think that is 100% something that that can be achieved. Like you say, even if this community can connect to a single person that makes a single decision, the the knock on effect that that will have eventually is huge. So, it can totally be achieved. There's a lot of work to be done within ecommerce. Obviously, there's a lot of work to be done everywhere but I think within commerce, specifically, there's a huge amount that can be achieved through something like MindfulCommerce and the community,that you guys are creating, and the framework to give people a platform to actually think about this stuff. Just because a website or buying from an online store is not a physical experience, obviously, it still has an impact through the way that that business has been conducted. I think that the framework gives that platform to think beyond the screen, basically. Well that's a cheesy line. You've got to put that cheesy line in there.

Krissie Leyland  43:07 

Oh, I will now!

Tom Locke  43:10 

Looking at the, broadly, business directories that do just become a place to get listed in order to get business... obviously that is an aspect of the directory but really, you're not wanting to connect with brands or tech partners that have that mindset of just wanting to get listed so that they can, you know, work with X,Y,Z. The sort of the weight that MindfulCommerce can carry and the framework, ultimately needs to be at the center of everything. Which obviously, it is and we're working towards that for sure.

Krissie Leyland  43:59 

Yeah, definitely. So anybody who gets listed on the directory needs to go through our onboarding, which includes the framework. But if it was a Shopify agency, for example, and they're not currently just specifically working with conscious brands, that's fine. Because as long as they have the idea in their head of how they can help a conscious brand, or maybe it's just that we've triggered something and now they do want to. Like you said, MindfulCommerce is at the center and it's making people think differently.

Tom Locke  44:47 

Ultimately, MindfulCommerce is the facilitator, facilitating conversation within the space and within agencies & tech partners that are already thinking that way. But to some extent, more importantly, facilitating the conversation outside of those outside of those spaces or industries... that's when it becomes really powerful.

Krissie Leyland  45:18 

That is what I'm taking away from this conversation. I mean, that's changed my mindset a little bit because I've been focusing on people that are already on the journey or thinking about it–at least, they're talking about it–but actually, I think he needs to work harder. Well done, Tom.

Tom Locke  45:40 

I think you already work very bloody hard. And obviously we're stoked to be a part of the project and to be working with you guys and MindfulCommerce. As I say, it's super exciting because the potential is almost too much to get your head around. Yeah, so for us, it's just great to be a part of it.

Krissie Leyland  46:12 

Right, so I'm going to try and wrap this up, because I could talk to you about this forever... What is your number one tip for ecommerce businesses who want to build an ecommerce website in a planet friendly way?

Tom Locke  46:32 

Log on to the MindfulCommerce Directory! Obviously that is something that you definitely should check out but fundamentally, I think it's just to really question everything: every decision that you need to make when you're building your ecommerce brand, or your website. "Is it serving the right purpose? Is it working towards that goal that you set?" That can come down to a content (a page on your site), the tech partners that you work with, or any sort of operational decisions. It's quite a broad answer but fundamentally: question everything.

Krissie Leyland  47:27
 
Yeah, and be mindful.

Tom Locke  47:29 

And be mindful when you're doing it.

Krissie Leyland  47:33 

Thank you. That was great. That was a good answer.

Tom Locke  47:37 

I hope so.

Krissie Leyland  47:38 

So where can people find you, Tom?

Tom Locke  47:43 

You can find us on our website, which is noughtsandones.com. You can connect with me on LinkedIn, my name is Tom Locke. As an agency, we're on Instagram. That's our only real sort of active platform. So feel free to check out Noughts and Ones on Instagram.

Krissie Leyland  48:07
 
Perfect. Your Instagram's beautiful, it's so pretty. Who does your Instagram?

Tom Locke  48:15 

I do my Instagram when I get a minute, basically. That's why it's fairly sporadic, but when it does happen, there's a lot of thought has gone into it.

Krissie Leyland  48:26 

Yeah, like it's so good. Everyone go on the Instagram. It's pretty.

Tom Locke  48:31 

Check out my "rows of three".

Krissie Leyland  48:34
 
Yeah, exactly. That's exactly why it's nice on the eye.

Tom Locke  48:40 

Thanks!

Krissie Leyland  48:44 

One more thing, you're part of Ecology, are you?

Tom Locke  48:48 

Yes. So we partner with Ecology just as as a business. So we offset our own impact through supporting Ecology. Then as part of our approach to our Shopify projects, we do offer an optional tree planting scheme, as part of a project with Noughts and Ones.

Krissie Leyland  49:15 

Cool. And how many trees have you planted?

Tom Locke  49:21 

How many trees have been planted? I think we're about 1600.

Krissie Leyland  49:27 

And how long has that taken?

Tom Locke  49:31 

I think about six months and we've got other projects we're working on at the moment. Basically when we hit a milestone, we celebrate that by planting 100 trees. So it's growing... it's always growing.

Krissie Leyland  49:49

That's cool. You even planted you planted me a tree for Christmas.

Tom Locke  49:53 

Yes, we planted a few trees for Christmas for our clients rather than sending out gifts or cards. Everyone got enough chocolate, I'm sure. So we just started planting trees and stuff.

Krissie Leyland  50:09 

Yay, love this. Thank you, I think that's it.

Tom Locke  50:17 

Anything else?

Krissie Leyland  50:19 

No, other than saying, "Bye!"

Tom Locke  50:23 

Yeah. Thanks a lot for taking the time speaking with me & for having me on.

Krissie Leyland  50:29  

It's good to reflect on everything, isn't it?

Tom Locke  50:32 

Yeah, certainly when you're in the weeds of a project in particular. We've obviously achieved some pretty cool stuff.

Krissie Leyland  50:43 

Thank you for listening to this episode. If you would like to contact Tom, please visit his website: noughtsandones.com. It was an absolute pleasure to talk to Tom. We have loved working with him on the MindfulCommerce Directory. If you're interested in the MindfulCommerce Directory, framework or community, just visit mindfulcommerce.io and you'll find everything there. If you enjoyed this episode, you're bound to enjoy every other episodes that we do or that we have done already. So please hit subscribe. Every subscribe helps us to reach more people and spread the message about being mindful in the ecommerce world. Thank you!

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Find us: 

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• MindfulCommerce Sustainability Framework
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Where to find Jessica and Naomi:

Twelve

Links Mentioned in the Episode:

Gerry McGovern Podcast with us

Pukka Herbs
Finisterre - Leave No Trace
Bcorp

Shownotes:

Rich Bunker  0:00 
Hello, and welcome to The MindfulCommerce podcast, a place where we talk to ecommerce experts and brands who care about protecting our planet.

Krissie Leyland  0:07 
Today we're talking to Jessica and Naomi from Twelve, a sustainability consultancy firm, helping businesses respond to the climate and ecological emergency and embed sustainability in the way they work.

Happy New Year, everyone. This is our very first podcast of 2021. And we are very, very excited because we'll talk to Jessica and Naomi about our sustainability framework, which we built with them last year. It was a very interesting project. And it is, we think, is going to be very beneficial for the ecommerce industry, and also for the planet.

All notes will be in the show notes. And if you have any questions or input, please feel free to email us at [email protected]. Enjoy.

Hello, and welcome Jessica and Naomi. Jessica, because you are the founder of Twelve, would you like to introduce yourself first? And tell us a little bit about your agency?

Jessica Ferrow  1:23 
Hi, you just did a great job of introducing me. Yeah, I am one of the two co founders of Twelve and we set up as a business in 2020. And yeah we're here to help businesses respond to the climate and ecological crisis. But yeah, I've been working in sustainability for about 10 years, working with businesses, mainly purpose driven businesses, to help them be better and have more positive impact in the world.

Krissie Leyland  1:52 
Cool. And what about you Naomi?

Naomi Lawson  1:55 
Hello. Um, so thanks very much for having us on the podcast. I'm a sustainability consultant and I've been working with Jessica over roughly the past year, which has been great. I kind of started out my career working for BCorps like Pukka herbs. And I've specialised in communications, marketing, and working on policies and campaigns that kind of focus on big impact to help tackle the climate and ecological crisis. That's me.

Krissie Leyland  2:32 
Perfect. And Jess, what brands have you worked with?

Jessica Ferrow  2:35 
Sure, yeah. So I spent some time... Well, a few years ago, I was kind of working with large businesses. So mainly, like on corporate responsibility, so I did a lot of work doing sustainability reporting for companies like IKEA, Vodafone, BT, those kinds of organisations. And then lately I've been working more with purpose driven founder led BCorps so I work with Pukka - been working with Pukka for the last three or four years. Worked with Ella's kitchen, Finisterre... I've done some work with Ecover. And yeah, so it's just Oh, and was really one of the companies I'm working with the moment is Edgard and Cooper who made pet food, and I think your doggy eats Edgard and Cooper!

Krissie Leyland  3:22 
Yes he does! We just transferred him over fully. And he loves it.

Jessica Ferrow  3:29 
Great. Yeah.

Krissie Leyland  3:29 
We love it too, not to eat, but you know, the brand, I look at the packaging, and I'm just like, this is amazing. I'd probably eat that.

Jessica Ferrow  3:37 
Yeah, I feel like the rule for us, like for the kinds of brands we like to work with my co founder, Ellie and I, we often say like, Is it the kind of brand that we like, and we want to use? And that we maybe probably have in our cupboards or on our shelves? And if the answer is yes, then yeah, we want to work with them for sure.

Krissie Leyland  3:54  
Perfect.

Rich Bunker  3:54 
Cool.

Krissie Leyland  3:55 
Um, so what are the kind of projects that you work on with these brands? And what does the process usually look like, working with you?

Jessica Ferrow  4:05 
Yeah, so basically, what we tend to find is most businesses in the world they want to make a positive impact. Or they want it you know, more and more these days, people are waking up to what's going on in the world with the climate and with nature. And, or if they haven't yet, they're kind of, they're going to wake up soon. But they it's been amazing the last few years, ever since Gretta, has become a big name and and extinction rebellion and the school strikes and all the things that are happening. And then of course, now with pandemic, David Attenborough and all these things, people are waking up and now most businesses are feeling the pressure from them. Their employees or their customers or even just their own consciousness of just being a better business and doing better things for the world and leaving the world a better place than they found it. So what we do is we help businesses to navigate those challenges, because it's all very well saying I want to be really sustainable business, but a lot of people just have no idea where to start.

So, yeah, what we'll do at Twelve is we help guide businesses through that process. And we normally help them to create a strategy, a sustainability strategy, which would help them identify targets and set a roadmap for improvement. And then also, we'd help them to communicate that with their consumers. We also help businesses to become BCorps and so if you don't know what B Corp is, it's certification for ethical and sustainable businesses. So it's, if you don't know what it is, you should definitely check it out. Because it's an amazing movement that's sweeping the globe. I know you guys know what it is.

Krissie Leyland  5:49 
There's something else that might sweep the globe that we worked on together recently. So obviously, we recently worked with you on a very exciting project. So we built the MindfulCommerce Sustainability Framework together. And it sounds like this isn't normally your usual style of project. So what were your initial thoughts when you? Well, when we approached you with this idea for the framework?

Jessica Ferrow  6:17 
Yeah, great question. So yeah, we loved working on the MindfulCommerce Framework you guys, what we love about that project is that normally would be working with one business, on their own sustainability strategy, and how they're going to become a more sustainable business themselves. So it's kind of on a micro level, when you approached us and talked about your vision for the MindfulCommerce Framework... It just is basically the same thing but on a whole industry level, or even beyond an industry because ecommerce isn't exactly an industry is a kind of, it's a what a channel, it's a it's a way people are selling. So it encompasses so much more on a much more macro scale, but it's a similar process that we followed with you to get to the result that we we wanted, we essentially, well, should we talk about the the project and what, what, what we did?

Krissie Leyland  7:10 
Yeah, yeah, I was gonna say, talk us through like, so I approached you. And I said, or we said, actually, originally, I think I wanted to make my business more sustainable, and then work with you to define a framework for Kollectify and then you were like, I think it's bigger than that. Because we would then use that framework to help other businesses in the ecommerce industry to kind of do the same thing. And then, yeah,

I totally forgot about that.

Rich Bunker  7:43  
Yeah, yeah it was because I suggested it is like, for us to be on not authoritative but have experienced the process, then we could better understand it, to deliver it and help others get to that place. So I was like, let's put Kollectify through it. But then you guys like, it's too big for Kollectify, it doesn't work enough for Kollectify, we need to go bigger.

Jessica Ferrow  8:08  
Yeah, I think that that's right. I think what happened was, it was just, it was great to see that you, it was really obvious when you first approached us is that you really wants to make an impact. But you weren't quite sure how you had a huge amount of energy, that you wanted to channel somewhere. But you and you want to have this positive impact in the world, but you just were like, help us figure out what to do. So I think what we really noticed that your vision to bring everyone together in this MindfulCommerce Community was was going to be the key. And what we really needed is something to hold together that community. Yeah, we needed a focus. So it's like you bring all these people through the door and saying we want to make ecommerce more sustainable, and more mindful. But when there's no answer to the question of Okay, how do you do that, then it's a little bit up in the air. So what we really wanted to create was a kind of best practice framework for all of the things that anyone working in ecommerce, can look at in terms of steps to become more sustainable, more ethical, more mindful. And then provide that to them as something they can work through.

Krissie Leyland  9:20  
Yeah. And then the next step was, you went and did loads of research. So yeah, do you wanna talk us through that?

Jessica Ferrow  9:29 
Sure. Naomi, you want to talk us through that?

Naomi Lawson  9:31 
Yeah, sure. I was also just going to say, because I wasn't on the initial phone calls as well. So I remember when Jessica briefed me as well. It was obviously a really exciting project, because we were talking about the fact that it could have a really big impact. And that really came through when we did the initial research as well, because it was clear that this was like a big open space where not a lot of work had been done. And it was and it was definitely needed. So it was Yeah, it was a great project to work on from that perspective.

For our stakeholder research, we had a couple different approaches. Firstly, we did a survey for the MindfulCommerce Community, and kind of identified what the main environmental challenges that are facing the ecommerce world. And as well as that, we also interviewed 10 key stakeholders from large merchants through to small ethical merchants, as well as tech developers and web experts to get a real range of perspectives and views on again, what the most kind of prominent environmental challenges there are facing ecommerce. And we used that information to develop an insights report and kind of gather our key recommendations for building the Framework.

Jessica Ferrow  10:56  
When when you approach us we realised that we needed to find out more about what was going on out there. So the best way to do that was to speak directly to people who are working in e commerce. So we ran some surveys, we did some interviews with some experts. And through that, we gathered a load of insights into what was happening out there, what was missing, what people needed. And the main things that we heard, were that people really wanted to be more sustainable in their ecommerce, but they just had no idea where to start. They wanted to be more sustainable businesses, but they weren't really sure where to go to find those materials. They really valued that idea of a community that they could be part of. And they also really, they there just wasn't much out there already. So we could really see an opportunity. And what this this told us is that the MindfulCommerce Framework could have a really massive potential impact. Because there's lots of people out there who are just poised to do something, but they don't know where to start.

Krissie Leyland  12:04 
Yeah. Why do you think these people didn't know where to start? Like, I guess because ecommerce is a specific world. And it's not just like your supply chains. And yeah, why do you think no one's done it before?

Jessica Ferrow  12:21 
Yeah, it's a great question. Because some of the brands that we spoke to, even if they have quite robust sustainability programmes in place, even some of the more kind of sustainable brands that you think of, they hadn't quite tied up their sustainability department with their ecommerce department. I think quite a lot of the time in the kind of medium to larger businesses, those two aren't necessarily crossing over. So you've got the ecommerce team who just focused on growth and sales. And they aren't necessarily embedding really sustainable practices. I just think it's not quite come on people's radars yet, I think a lot of people are thinking about packaging,  that's the main thing that consumers will be noticing and flagging up. But I think beyond that, I think a lot of brands haven't quite thought beyond the packaging piece. Or we just saw, those are great opportunities for how, for example, there's so many tech tools on the Shopify App Store, where you can add carbon offsetting at checkout, you can add charitable donations, at checkout, you can there's even apps or kind of tools that you can add plug into your Shopify website where you can create a whole secondhand store on your on your site. And that is called ...

Krissie Leyland  13:49 
Recurate.

Jessica Ferrow  13:50  
Recurate! And they're part of the MindfulCommerce Community.

Krissie Leyland  13:55 
They are.

Jessica Ferrow  13:55  
But I think a lot of brands don't know about these opportunities. So what we really wanted the framework to do was to not just tell people what they could do, but actually link them up with the apps, people the organisations, the partners who can help them do those things.

Krissie Leyland  14:13 
Yes, that's my favourite. They're my favourite benefits, you just nailed them.

Naomi Lawson  14:18 
And I also think that when we spoke to ecommerce experts, and people who work for different for different brands, and spoke to them about the different challenges, I think it all seemed a bit overwhelming. So we needed to think of a way where we could kind of break it down and, and people who kind of work in ecommerce could type kind of, like take it step by step because they didn't know which challenge to prioritise. And that's kind of why we framed it and we took like a value chain approach. So first, so people who want to use the framework would start with sourcing and kind of end with like, product end of life. Yeah. But that's kind of going on and getting into the nitty gritty of the framework. Are we ready? Yeah,

Jessica Ferrow  14:37 
yeah, it's really important to say that like, there are lots of tools out there for businesses to use to become more sustainable. But I haven't seen that many that have been specifically cut for those working in ecommerce. So I think it's just, this is a specialist tool, that speaking the language of people who are working with ecommerce in e commerce, and it specifically identified all the issues that they are working on or that they need to prioritise. So we, you know, I talked before about how we work with businesses to help them become more sustainable, what we do we help them to, like set a strategy and to figure out what they need to do. We've done that, yeah, or a company that's got an ecommerce operation. So it's, it's specialised,

Krissie Leyland  15:39  
yeah and it can scale and that's why it could make a big impact.

Rich Bunker  15:46 
So that's great. So what is the framework? And sort of, can you give us an overview of it?

Jessica Ferrow  15:53  
Sure. So the framework is a best practice guide for any company who's working in the ecommerce world. And it's split into six categories, or pillars. So I'll just list them off. And then I'll go through them in more detail.

So there's mindful business, mindful sourcing, mindful footprint, mindful deliveries, mindful products, and mindful communications. So mindful business is all about your business model. So it's, what kind of business are you? Do you have a strong mission? Do you have a mission for social impact? Are you doing anything to try and tackle the issues around for example, overconsumption and people buying too much? And I have you got any aspects of your business that, for example, are you working in the circular economy? Or are you doing something that's not just traditional types of business, but something that's inherently sustainable? So that's kind of what kind of business model are you.

So the Framework contains loads of prompts, and questions to help people navigate some of those ideas. And it also provides links to case studies or examples of businesses that are doing these things, or it links to resources for them to learn more.

Krissie Leyland  17:16 
And to the MindfulCommerce Directory. If, for example, there is a tech company that is involved with the circular economy. So for example, Recurate who offers, like we mentioned before, a plugin for a brand to have a secondhand store, then they would be kind of listed as an example, for the brand to find on the directory to help them with that.

Jessica Ferrow  17:46 
Exactly. And that's one of the things I love about this tool is that it's linking back to the directory, and it's all the people within the community that can help each other out. So we tried wherever possible to link to people in the community, and we really hope that over time, the framework can evolve and grow. And more and more, we hope that we can add more links in to people within the community itself who can help each other.

So yeah, the second one is mindful sourcing. So it's all about what kind of supply chain do you have? Where are you getting your products from? What are they made of that kind of thing. Then we have multiple footprints. So this is all thinking about your carbon footprint as a business. Even thinking about things like your website, and the data that you're using, and how much carbon emissions that's causing. And so it's really helping you think about - maybe things you haven't thought about before.

And deliveries. So that's obviously a big one for ecommerce. So in here, we talk about packaging, of course, different types of delivery methods, and we so some people might not realise that if you choose next day delivery, on an online purchase, that that might mean that it has a much higher carbon emissions than if you chose a slower method of delivery. That's because often, especially in the United States, next day delivery means probably it's going to be popped on a plane overnight and flown to you. Whereas if you chose slow delivery, it might make its way to you by road or another way.

So I think just a lot of people who are just buying something on a website might not think about that. But we're trying to encourage businesses to offer more awareness to their consumers about that and offer them different options.

Naomi Lawson  19:37 
Yeah, because I guess the thinking behind that as well as like, obviously, if consumers are aware, then they might choose a better delivery option and also are given an incentive to.

Jessica Ferrow  19:48 
Yeah, exactly. So that's deliveries and then products. So the products themselves, what we're really trying to think about is yeh, what is your product? How are you thinking about how you can make your product better how you think about how you can cut out waste ending up in landfill could it end up as something else, and designing it. So for example, Fairphone, design phones that can be their components can all be replaced easily. So instead of it becoming e waste, it would become something that could be used again. And then finally, mindful communications, because we think it's all very well doing all these things. But if you're not telling people what you're doing, then you don't, you're not unlocking that opportunity to lead change in the industry. So we really encourage that kind of to talk about what you're doing and sharing with others in your industry and leading that change.

Krissie Leyland  20:45 
Yeah, that one's a good one. Because it by doing that you're building awareness as well. And then giving the ideas to other people to do the same thing. And like influencing, because we buy from a really good coffee brand. And didn't know for a while that their packaging is actually like fully recyclable, which is really interesting for a coffee brand because it's difficult to normally how to have like the foil inside and stuff. But if he had said it on the packaging, then you know, yeah, we would know we could recycle it. and he is doing really cool things as well like making it will be like actually,

Rich Bunker  21:28 
home compostable

Krissie Leyland  21:28 
home compostable. Yeah. So he's like working with another organisation to create this home compostable packaging. And then I was like, oh, would you mind when you've done that, sharing that so then we could tell some other coffee brands. And yeah, it's like, innovation, spread the word, build awareness and a nice little circle.

Rich Bunker  21:53 
Exactly.

Jessica Ferrow  21:55 
Yeah, and a great example of a company that's doing that is Finisterre. So Finisterre, make ethical apparel. And they are they create, they've created what they call Leave No Trace bag, which is made out of water soluble material. And they are using that instead of kind of poly plastic to send out their clothes. And, and instead of keeping that innovation to themselves, and giving themselves the kind of competitive advantage for being a really sustainable company. They've just open sourced it. So they've just said anyone who wants to use this bag can just speak to us about it, so and they they've gone to other B corps and offered it to them. So that's a great example of communications and kind of advocating for change and, and sharing open source information.

Rich Bunker  22:44 
Super - thank you for going through that.

Naomi Lawson  22:47 
And I guess another thing to say about the framework as well is that it's all about asking questions, and prompting people to think about different, like different areas of sustainability, rather than telling them what to do.

Krissie Leyland  23:04 
Yes, yeah, definitely.

Rich Bunker  23:05 
Definitely. It's a good it's a, it's a helps them ask the questions about themselves. That's what I found sort of looking at it was definitely, you can gauge yourself by it, and really deeply get into almost sometimes too deeply, to where you can go and what you can do to make yourself your business more sustainable or better for the environment. And that's great. And I guess, a little bit - in reflection now that it's been out there and delivered. And we've had a few weeks to play with it and, and ask the community what they think about it, but like, what are your guys thoughts on it? Now that you know you're looking back at the project and where it is now? What do you think about it?

Jessica Ferrow  23:54 
Yeah, so I'm really excited about I think what we found in our research, or what we really felt with this project is that we didn't spend, you know, it was quite a quick project to just get started. And we didn't want to spend like a year perfecting it and getting it to like the perfect, perfect thing and test and tests and tests. We just wanted to get something out there that people can start using. And what I'm really excited about is seeing how it evolves. And we by no means think that it's perfect to begin with, even though we know it's really great start and I'm sure that anyone who goes in and starts playing around with it and finds it, they'll definitely find some really useful resources. And I'm sure they will find things in there that they've not heard of, or they've not come across before. So even if we can get someone to know about one app or one tech company that they've never heard of, then we've done some good, but I would expect that most people will find a lot more than that in there. And as time goes on, we can just keep tweaking it and keep improving it and keep adding more and more things, more resources to it. I very much see it as a work in progress that can grow and grow. And with feedback from the community with input, and as things improve, so I'm excited to see where it goes.

Krissie Leyland  25:09  
Yeah, definitely. I'm already like, constantly thinking of how we can improve it and add more solutions, more brands as examples. And yeah, it's great.

Naomi Lawson  25:20  
Yeah, definitely. And I think we also spoke about how we could kind of expand it and draw on your amazing community of experts that you've already got to do things like run kind of workshops and webinars on like specific areas of sustainable e commerce. So there's so much that you can do with it.

Krissie Leyland  25:41 
Yeah, that's a good idea.

Rich Bunker  25:43 
Jot that one down!

Jessica Ferrow  25:48 
And I'm just really just seeing it as something that can create so much impact because we are Twelve, as so we set up Twelve because it was all about - it is called Twelve because in 2018, there was a report by the IPCC released that said that we had less than 12 years to avert the climate and ecological crisis. So we've now got less than 12 years to go. So yeah, we only really want to work on projects that are game changing, and they're going to make a big impact. And that's why we love this project. Because the scalability of it, you know, there could be hundreds or 1000s of people using this framework and making positive impact to their business. And that really gives us a really good feeling. And we really hope that even if one business changes the way they source their materials, or reconsiders, the kind of packaging that they use or thinks about how they could be a more purpose driven business, then we've done our job. But I would just say that the the scope for scale is huge. So I really hope that lots of people do use it.

Naomi Lawson  26:55 
And the key thing as well, just in the framework that we spoke about a lot was needed to show users how to think beyond their own operations. So it's not just about reducing the negative impacts, but also about how they can increase their positive impact. So it's a bit of a mindset change for for some organisations.

Krissie Leyland  27:13 
Definitely. And even like, you know, the thing that I kept saying was, we need to talk about the websites and the impact of an e commerce website. Because not like I say this all the time, but not enough people realise that because it's just because it's not physical, it's still having an impact. And it's taking energy from the planet. And I think that's the biggest thing that people go, Oh, I never realised that. So just by, like you said, if one person takes one thing away from this framework, or being in the community, then we've done our job.

Jessica Ferrow  27:51  
Yeah, exactly, exactly. And I think what the the important thing that, that as sustainability consultants, we would try to get people to think about is how material those issues are. So if you are a huge company, like a huge, you know, clothing company, that selling fast fashion, and your website is probably not going to be your biggest impact. So it might not be the thing you focus on. First, you might want to think about the fact that you're flying clothes all around the world, and you've got a truck to transport going everywhere. If you're a small company like yourselves, and with a few a small team working remotely, then yeah, your digital footprint is likely to be one of your significant impacts. So you have to think about it like that, that different companies need to think about what their biggest impacts are, and they're not going to be able to do that until they start looking into it.

Krissie Leyland  28:43  
That's very true.

Rich Bunker  28:44 
I think that was one of the big Penny drop them for me was, you know, when we found out about listening to our friend Gerry about the digital impact of business businesses online. And that was just I was kinda like, we just have to tell people about this. How do we how do we let people know about this so they can make more informed better decisions? And that I think that was one of the biggest things that kicked off.

Krissie Leyland  29:10 
It was it was the rabbit hole.

Rich Bunker  29:11 
Yeah, the MindfulCommerce reconing.

Jessica Ferrow  29:15 
We're really lucky to speak to Gerry as part of our research for the Framework, we had a great conversation with him and he has some extraordinary facts around the amount of data storage and and how many trees you'd have to plant per year to just account for the returns. I think it's something like 2 billion trees per year.

Krissie Leyland  29:36 
He has some shocking stats that make you think. And and by the way, we did interview him on the podcast on episode three.

Jessica Ferrow  29:47 
Listen to that definitely. Yeah, no, it's really it's really great to have such a wide range of experts in the community, just who are all supportive of this and what we found when we did our research was there was appetite and support from all the people we spoke to for this. So it was really great to, to feel that love from the community and enthusiasm.

Krissie Leyland  30:10  
Just out of interest on that topic of, you know, digital impact. And did you ever think about that? Did you consider it before you met us? Or was like, was it already on your radar?

Jessica Ferrow  30:26 
It's definitely on my radar it's probably not something that I had, it's probably something that I had thought I need to act on it. Like, I've got some shocking amount of emails, you know, old emails that I probably need to delete are just like digital clutter. And it probably just gave me the kick to just tackle it a bit or think about it a bit more. But yeah, I think you guys have done a great job of raising awareness of that issue. So yeah, keep doing it. For sure.

Naomi Lawson  30:56 
Definitely. I too am just, I kind of, I knew it was a thing before, but I am so much more conscious of it now day to day, kind of things like thinking before sending an email and storing images and watching videos and things like that.

Krissie Leyland  31:13  
Yeah, definitely. I think in ecommerce, it's quite tricky, because, you know, it's quite image heavy. And videos and graphics and stuff. But yeah, hopefully we can help people to do better.

Jessica Ferrow  31:31 
Yeah, I don't, I also think that people need to think about the thing that is, like I said, the thing that's going to be the most material impact, you know, if you, if you if your house was burning down, you wouldn't go outside and like, put out the tiny fire in like, a tiny corner of the garden, you know, like, do you know, I mean, it's just you need to kind of focus on the areas that you are your biggest impact. And, and that's what as sustainability consultants, that's what we kind of help people to figure out. And there's lots of ways that you can do that you can do that through the carbon emissions that it creates the spend that you're spending on it, the amount of impact it has on your business, and how relevant it is to your business, that kind of thing. So, but you've got a lot of our thinking in the framework, you know, as sustainability consultants, we've put all that together, and we've literally externalised our brain into, into a resource that you can read and look at. So it's like, we think about it as like having a sustainability expert in your pocket? So

Rich Bunker  32:33  
It's a great way to you know, you can use the framework to sort of go Okay, maybe that is my big ticket item, that that's the biggest impact we have. But we can't afford to change that just yet. What else can we do? It gives us that, you know, because sometimes businesses get focused on Oh, we need to change this massive impact that our business has, but then can't see past it.

Krissie Leyland  32:53  
can't do it right now. So in the meantime, I'll look at this small thing that I can do, which has a big impact small but big change.

Jessica Ferrow  33:02  
Yeah, exactly.

Rich Bunker  33:03  
If you do several small things that are easy to change, you can have quite a big impact in your business, as opposed to just doing the one big thing that might take some time and have quite a lot of institutional changes that you need to do you know, so

Jessica Ferrow  33:16 
yeah, that's totally right. And sometimes it can be cheaper things are easy things or behavioural changes. And I think the most important thing that I'd encourage people to look at is, is that kind of mindset, mind set shift. So actually getting them to think and ask questions of themselves that are a bit more like a business that takes sustainability seriously. And just, some people might have never asked themselves those questions before. I think when people are new to the idea of sustainability, they're always asking, what's the right thing? Should I do this? Or this? You know, should I use this type of packaging? Or this type of packaging? Which one's better? Which one's best? And what I often have to explain to people is, it depends. It depends, and it depends what best is. And what best is depends on what your priorities are. So what do your consumers care about? What do you care about? is plastic The worst thing for your consumers and they don't want to see any plastic? Or is it Do they want to have Do you have to also balance all these other things like durability, and it's no good if you have a really sustainable packaging, that means all the goods insides get damaged or it gets damaged 50% of time, so you have to send it back and that's going to create more carbon emissions. So it's all about as a sustainability consultant, what we're always trying to do is think holistically about all the different multifaceted issues that will add up to your environmental impact, and social impact and trying to balance all those challenges.

Rich Bunker  34:47  
you know, and tech can help with that. I think tech can be really helpful in leading that change. You know, there's lots of good calculators out and there's probably scope for more calculators out there that say like a business has got a product and they ship it in plastic packaging, or it's a plastic bottle and they're like, we want to be more sustainable or something that's more recyclable or something that can be reused, we're going to use glass. But then what is the upshot of using that glass, like the co2 footprint of transporting that glass product, as opposed to a plastic could be, you know, in tech can play a big part in in that where there's lots of online calculators that you can gauge your co2 footprint and you know, against the two, again, it's, it's what's best or better or the best. And there's there's definitely scope for tech, to help with that. And I guess what, what's your guy's views on tech in e commerce and its place in sustainability?

Jessica Ferrow  35:48 
Well, tech,

Naomi Lawson  35:50 
tech, I think with tech, there are already a lot of tech solutions out there for different sustainability challenges. I think one of the challenges perhaps for kind of tech developers and applications is kind of them getting the message out there and communicating and kind of promoting their own service potentially. And kind of seeing themselves as a sustainability solution. I guess an example of that would be, maybe it comes down to to the brand or merchant using them. But an example of that would be Okendo, which is an app that enables shoppers to review their purchase online. So I know that Finisterre for example, use Okendo so that people can purchase an item, once they have done they can leave a review, say if the sizing runs large or small, which obviously enables future shoppers to go look at the reviews and say, okay, that runs large, so perhaps I'll get some size down, which means that they are reducing the number of returns, which obviously lowers their carbon emissions. But so that's that's an amazing initiative. But I would say that a lot of a lot of organisations maybe don't see that as being an amazing initiative or being something that is an incredible sustainability solution.

Krissie Leyland  37:23 
I absolutely love that. it's true. They don't they don't recognise,  in particular Okendo... so I've got a good relationship with Okendo, and they, I was like, have you worked with any, you know, sustainable ethical brands? Can you help with this and that and they're like, I haven't really thought about that. And yeah, they're in our report, they're in our framework and now on the directory, and all of a sudden, they're like, Oh, yeah, I can be a solution to help fight climate change. And, yeah, it's just, I liked your answer.

Naomi Lawson  38:01  
That's good.

But actually, quite an interesting fact that Gerry McGovern gave us is that 1.5 billion trees would need to be planted to deal with annual ecommerce returns in the US alone. So yeah, reducing the number of returns is making ecommerce more sustainable.

Krissie Leyland  38:20 
Yeah. So Okendo, a customer review app are a solution a solution to lots of , well, the biggest ecommerce issue, which in my opinion, retruns like returns are the biggest issue in ecommerce, huge Like...

Jessica Ferrow  38:39 
yeah and we want to get more people realising how they can be an actor in that in that response, or into kind of fight one of those big challenges. So if we have the issue of returns, like how can we get more app developers to, to kind of step up and say we we've got solution to that. And there's some really cool as well, just thinking about other tech tools that are at play. And quite a few companies now like ASOS and Finisterre using AI, lead size fit guides. So you go online, helps you find the right fit. And so you click you know, or you average body shape, or you know, above or below and then what height you what weights, and it kind of figures out the best size for you and says you should by size 10 or size 12 or whatever. And then it's it's much more likely that you'll get the right fit first time. So again, reducing returns. So more and more that of companies that can do that. They're also going to save money, because often returns are free. So it's it's a win win for businesses to do this.

Rich Bunker  39:41 
Definitely.

Krissie Leyland  39:43 
Yeah.

Naomi Lawson  39:43 
I also think when it comes to returns, as well as it comes back to the communication piece up. It's most people I would say, think oh, I'll just order two sizes of that because they can easily send it back and they won't think about the impact that that has which is massive. But all it takes is is kind of raising awareness and people to think about it to just completely change their habits, which if you know, like the impact that that could have if there was sort of a big industry led campaign around, it would be huge again.

Krissie Leyland  40:20 
Yeah, I've actually recently come across an app that at checkout says, like, your impact or a comment what it was, but I was like, Oh, my God, that's a perfect app to say, like, prompt the shopper - Do you really need this, like, this is the impact that it's going to have, and make them just be more mindful about their purchases.

Jessica Ferrow  40:49 
I love that. I love that I'd love to see that. You know, why you got Three? Three have the same dress in your basket? Why don't you head over to our fitness system to find the right size? You know, like that. And if we had a industry wide example of best practice, if we have more and more people saying, well, we're doing this, we've got this tool, we've installed this plugin, we're using this. And then if we had an industry wide campaign, where we tried to get all the power companies to do something similar. I just think that's where we need to go, we need to get all the people have the solutions to start telling everyone Hey, this is the way to do it. We all need to do this. Come on, let's get on board. And I think you could see some really rapid change.

Naomi Lawson  41:32 
Exactly, yeah. And partnerships are important in e commerce, which is why the directory is needed. But yeah, another thing that I've seen recently, I can't remember where it was, was basic, I think it was a men's clothing website. And it basically told people, it would tell you, like how much water was used to make a T shirt, or you know how much energy was used. And that's just amazing. Just to get you to stop and think about whether you need something as well, and to realise, like the impact of your purchase. Yeah,

Krissie Leyland  42:11 
it's just cool. And definitely transparency. And yeah, communicate your impact.

Rich Bunker  42:18 
I think, I mean, there's, there's a lot of businesses and a lot of tech, and a lot of good solutions out there. And there's just not enough awareness about the solutions, I think is the biggest problem.

Krissie Leyland  42:31  
That's our goal to build awareness of them.

Rich Bunker  42:35 
And if there isn't, if there is a problem that a lot of brands and merchants are facing, and then they're asking about it, and there's a there's sometimes a gap in to be filled by some tech, possibly so that that'll be part of the framework, where there isn't a solution for merchants problems. So ...

Krissie Leyland  42:57 
We will be like, can you fill this with your current app or like add a feature to your current app or build an entirely different app for to fill that gap?

Jessica Ferrow  43:10 
Yeah, 100%. Like, I would love to see tech companies kind of doing massive hackathons to figure out the solution, you know, to these things, if we're like, we really need something that's going to help us track our carbon footprint from warehouse to end user. And we don't have a tool to do it. But we're pretty sure using mobile data, we can do it. And who can do it, as well as so many clever smart people out there. There's so many young graduates who are just absolute coding geniuses, who I'm sure if we gave them that challenge, they could meet it, I'm sure they could learn something amazing. So it's identifying the need, it's identifying the fact that we want to do this. There's a lot of people out there who who want to do it, and it could be a great opportunity.

Krissie Leyland  43:58 
So I'm very aware of your time. So I guess I might ask Naomi first. What's your number one tip or words of wisdom for any ecommerce business who wants to be more sustainable?

Naomi Lawson  44:20  
Phwor that's a good one. I'm just gonna go to my notes. might have to cut this out.

Rich Bunker  44:31 
How professional, you have notes.

Krissie Leyland  44:33 
Yeh, we didnt even share the talking points!

Naomi Lawson  44:38 
So I would like to encourage organisations to really reflect on their business model. I think a lot of businesses fall short when they're setting sustainability goals and targets because they're so focused on short term gains. And actually thinking long term is so critical to ongoing commercial success and to the protection of our planet. And if we're not thinking long term then there won't be a planet for us to make profit to run our business.

Krissie Leyland  45:07 
Ohhh...

Rich Bunker  45:07 
Very deep, I like it

Krissie Leyland  45:10 
I like that. I like that a lot. So over to you, Jessica.

Jessica Ferrow  45:18 
Yeah. So my top tip would be, just get started, it can feel really overwhelming when you just see this huge list of things, or you look at other businesses, and they seem so far ahead of you. But really, every journey starts with a single step. And it really is important just to start where you can start small, get the wins, celebrate the wins. And also just find the right people to work with. Just reach out to people who are doing it, find experts to work with find brilliant people on your team, quite often, if you have a team, you know, young people will be very interested in helping you with this. And you can delegate projects to interns, or, or, or senior managers, or anyone at most people will be really motivated by this kind of work. So just get everyone involved and just try and set a target to get something done by a certain date, and then keep going. And good luck.

Krissie Leyland  46:20 
Perfect.

Rich Bunker  46:21 
Great, great answer.

Naomi Lawson  46:22  
That's a great answer.

Rich Bunker  46:24 
I guess one final thing to touch on. You mentioned it early on in the podcast there was you help businesses with B Corp certification? And really, what are the big differences between B Corp and what you've created for us at MC?

Jessica Ferrow  46:43 
Great question, because I think that's a really, it's really good to to recognise that there are other frameworks out there. And the BIA, the B impact assessment, which is the one you do for the B Corp certification is also a big list of questions, which you tick. And the main difference I would say is that the MindfulCommerce Framework is first and foremost geared up for people who are working in e commerce in some way. So it's been tailor made for that kind of organisation. So it has more specific questions to that kind of business. However, it does also have some broader sustainability and business related questions and topics. So I would say the MindfulCommerce Framework is really great place to get started and to start your journey towards becoming a more sustainable business. And I think the BIA B Corp assessment, after you've done the MindfulCommerce  Framework would be a lot less daunting and a lot that you find quite a lot of overlap. And you'd be on a great, you've done a great start to continue and do the B Corp as a next step. But I would say that when you first approached the BIA, it can be a bit overwhelming, because there's more than 200 questions, and some of them you're like, how does this even relate to my business and some of the way the languages can be quite difficult to navigate. So for a company that doesn't have a sustainability strategy in place, it can be quite difficult to know, where you should be focusing. So that's what that's why we find that often we work with businesses to help them identify what their priorities are, and help them set their own strategy before tackling the BIA because it helps them not just go down rabbit holes, focusing on how to measure water consumption in their suppliers, when actually they really should be focusing on the you know, environmental footprint of their offices, which are massive, whatever it is, it's just like, you've got to you've got to it was like I was talking about for you need to go where the big impacts are. And the people that are in your company and your stakeholders care about.

Krissie Leyland  48:52 
What about the other way around? So if you're if you're doing the B Corp assessment, so the BIA

Jessica Ferrow  49:00 
Yeah.

Krissie Leyland  49:05 
And and then you came across the MindfulCommerce Framework. So you're an e commerce business, obviously.

Jessica Ferrow  49:09 
Yeah, I still think you'd really find the MindfulCommerce Framework useful because as we talked about, there's loads of case studies, which you never even find that in the BIA. It's not like an informative thing. It's more like a questionnaire asking you about your performance. Whereas I feel like the MindfulCommerce Framework has got more focus on improvement, and also linking you up via the directory of people who can help you. So it's more like a one stop shop for thinking about your business but also improving rather than just assessing where you're at. So I think if you've done the BIA or you're already a certified B Corp, I really think you will still really find the MindfulCommerce Framework to be super useful in your journey.

Krissie Leyland  49:46 
Perfect. Wow. I love this.

Why didn't we do this ages ago, I would have found it so much easier to write the website copy

Rich Bunker  50:01  
The first iteration is out there.

Jessica Ferrow  50:02 
Well that's it it's an iteration. You just have to keep improving. And done is better than perfect, right?

Rich Bunker  50:11 
Like the framework is, it's a journey.

Krissie Leyland  50:14 
It's a journey for us as well. Um, thank you so much. It was lovely to chat to you both.

Jessica Ferrow  50:24  
Thank you. Great. Talk to you guys, too.

Naomi Lawson  50:26 
Yeah, it's lovely to catch up.

Krissie Leyland  50:28 
Thanks for winging it with us.

Rich Bunker  50:30 
Yeah. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks for the catch. And really, thanks again for helping us get to where we needed to get to to help others.

Krissie Leyland  50:39 
Hmm, it's amazing, honestly.

Jessica Ferrow  50:42 
Aww it was great to work with you. And we really look forward to seeing all the impact that the framework and the directory will, will make, and we look forward to hearing what people think so do let us know.

Krissie Leyland  50:51 
Definitely. 100%

Naomi Lawson  50:53 
I can't wait to see how it develops as well. In months and years to come.

Rich Bunker  50:59  
It's very exciting, so excited.

Krissie Leyland  51:03 
Thank you so much. Um,

Rich Bunker  51:06 
And yeah, we'll speak again soon.

Krissie Leyland  51:10 
If you'd like to find out more about Twelve you can head over to their website twelvefutures.com. And I will leave the link in the show notes. And if you enjoyed this conversation today, you'll love the MindfulCommerce community, head over to mindfulcommerce.io and click on community and I'll see you there!

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• Contact Us - [email protected]

Where to find Lucy Roberts:

Brave The Skies - Shopify Plus Agency
Reverie The Boutique - A Curation of Luxurious, Sustainable Pieces

Links Mentioned in Episode:

CrueltyFreeKitty.com - A Directory of Cruelty Free Brands

Sponsor:

This podcast is sponsored by Kollectify, a content marketing agency working specifically with Shopify solutions to successfully position and promote the app or agency. 

Show notes:

Krissie Leyland  00:00

Hello and welcome to episode number four of the MindfulCommerce podcast. Today, I'm talking to Lucy Roberts, an amazing woman in e-commerce. Lucy is not only the MD of a Shopify Plus agency called Brave The Skies. She's also the founder of an online boutique called Reverie. Reverie is a curation of luxurious, sustainable and vegan pieces. Amongst some very girly giggling, we discuss how Lucy ended up in the e-com space, what it's like juggling two very big roles and how she's breaking the vegan, sustainable and luxurious debacle. And Lucy reveals her top e-commerce branding and marketing secrets, which you simply can't miss. I hope you enjoy. 

Should we just start by talking about your story. So what's your story? What are you up to? How did you get to where you are now?

Lucy Roberts  01:02

Yeah of course. Um, it's quite a big question and I can give a long answer or a short answer. So I'm going to try and go somewhere in the middle. So I have been, I suppose, working in e-commerce since I was 18, which feels like a really long time now, because I've just celebrated my 30th birthday, which was exciting in lockdown. So I guess yeah, I've kind of worked client side and agency side, in the UK and in Australia. Obviously, at the moment, I manage a Shopify plus agency called Brave The Skies, which is super exciting. And the merchants that I get to work with are amazing. So I get to work with RIXO, with KITRI Studios, and it's just, it's really lovely to work with such amazing brands who really care about their products and their branding and that customer experience. It makes my days very, very happy. Um, but it's been, it's been nice to have so much experience on both sides of the fence. So I guess I started on client side, working at different e-commerce brands, here in the UK, and then in Australia. And it was always so interesting for me to be like hearing from customers and working, obviously, within the companies and talking to agencies, because there would always be, in my opinion, such a big disconnect between the brand and the tech partner. And it was almost like we weren't speaking the same language. So after I finished up working for Zimmerman, which was my last client side job, I ended up moving to an agency because I was really, really keen to understand, you know, all of these really creative ideas that we have on the brand side, how do we actually build it? And who builds it and how does it happen? And who needs to do what and how does that work with the ERP and the in-store experience and the online experience and email marketing and ads? So I joined, I joined at the time, it was a Magento agency, and we ended up diversifying into Shopify plus as well. And it was so much fun, kind of being able to fuse fashion and technology. And I ended up, yeah, really happily staying on the agency side. So I've been agency side now I think I'm in my seventh year. And being yeah, being at the at the head of an agency and being able to run it in the way that I want to run it is is super exciting. It's really rewarding.

Krissie Leyland  03:32

That's so cool. What's your role then as an MD, so I'm never really sure what it is?

Lucy Roberts  03:39

So it's really funny. So my team members, call me Mama Bear. I call myself an intern. And I guess technically, I'm an MD. It's um, it's a really, really varied role. So it kind of, every day is different, which is amazing, because I love variety. And I love change. There's some days I'm working with new business like talking to new merchants about what kind of solution they need, which tech partners they need to work with. Some days, I'm working with our existing merchants on what their new collection is going to be and how we're going to market it. What the website needs to do to support it. Some days, I'm working predominantly in HR and catching up with all of our team members, making sure they're all happy. And other days, I'm just trying to keep my head above water.

Krissie Leyland  04:27

It sounds like you are a lot of hats. You might just wake up in the morning. Be like what is on my schedule today. 

Lucy Roberts  04:37

Yeah. Yeah, it's definitely some days it's a case of "Okay, I've actually got no meetings today. What am I going to do? Like where is my time going to be the best spent?" And other days like "Okay, which fire is the biggest? Which one needs to be put out first?"

Krissie Leyland  04:52

Oh, wow, that sounds really exciting.

Lucy Roberts 04:55

It is. Yeah, it's very, I think dynamic is a tactful word to use.

Krissie Leyland  05:00

Yeah, you have to be very organised. I bet Oh, but also quite flexible, which is probably the exciting bit. 

Lucy Roberts  05:07

Yeah. And like, I'm really lucky. I've got the most amazing team and like the team really kind of keeps me in check and like, diverts me where they need me. So I'm really, I'm really lucky to have such a great team.

Krissie Leyland  05:18

Yeah, yeah, I bet. And So, do you want to talk a little bit about Reverie? 

Lucy Roberts  05:24

Yeah, absolutely. So I guess I started Reverie, officially, Reverie The Boutique launched at the end of August in the middle of lockdown. It had kind of been an idea that I'd had for, well, probably about five, six years, I'd known that I'd always wanted my own business. And I wanted it to be something but I wasn't quite sure what. And I decided to actually switch to a totally plant-based diet about four years ago now while I was living in Australia. I was working with an amazing brand that at the agency I was with at the time called Edible Beauty. And Anna, who was the founder of Edible Beauty taught me so much about natural skincare, vegan skincare. And I was just completely inspired by her to be honest. And everything at that point kind of came into focus for me like Reverie, could be this amazing destination that fuses luxury and sustainability because there wasn't really anything, anything like that at the time. And I was finding it really frustrating after turning vegan and starting to only use cruelty free products that I'd have to order everything from a different website and like I couldn't go to Sephora or Mecco like with the girls and and just shop because I'd be like, okay, is this is this lipstick vegan? Is it quality free? Okay, who's the parent company? Okay, does it sell in China? It was like, it was really exhausting. And it really took the fun out of shopping for me because my degree was in fashion, I'd always worked for fashion brands. And all of a sudden, it felt like a really, I don't know, like, like an industry that I couldn't be part of anymore. And I was like, well, that's rubbish, because surely there's a way to do it. It's just that maybe the people who are doing it on that prominent or they're smaller businesses that I just have to look a little bit harder for. So Reverie, I guess started off very much. I call it a daydream because obviously a daydream, a reverie is a daydream, a musing. And now I feel like it's become a reality which is super exciting. So I'm working with some amazing brands. The Wild One jewelry who do really beautiful handmade pieces from recycled gold and silver and the Honeymoon Apothecary, which do these beautiful vegan candles. George & Edi, which is a Wanaka based brand, gorgeous home fragrance really lovely diffusers and Edible Beauty as well. I spoke to Anna about my idea, and she wanted me to be her first UK stockist. So having her support throughout has been absolutely incredible.

Krissie Leyland  07:54

So exciting. I love it. Love it. You know I love it.

Lucy Roberts  07:57

And you've got your earrings. You love your earrings.

Krissie Leyland  08:00

Yes I'm actually wearing them right now.

Lucy Roberts  08:02

Are you? That makes me so happy. 

Krissie Leyland  08:04

They're so nice. So, I'm kind of interested what, you know, your role as MD, as you know, fairly big Shopify agency, so does Reverie help with your roll at Brave The Skies? 

Lucy Roberts  08:06

Yay! Yeah, definitely, I think they feed really nicely into each other. So at Brave The Skies, we got, we got so many inquiries from merchants of all different sizes, obviously, we work with RIXO, Manuka Doctor, you know, hundreds of thousands a year. And then we also get these inquiries from really quite small brands who are just starting up. And it's really difficult because one of the things that I'm really passionate about is helping people is, you know, I think that when it comes to starting a website or a business or anything, information should be really accessible. And more often than not the only tool you've really got is Google. And it's so easy to just go down an absolute rabbit hole and not find the answers that you want. So I guess previously, if we got an inquiry from a really small merchant who had say, zero budget, but had this amazing idea, I'd have to say I'm really sorry, we don't, we don't have the, you know, it's not feasible for us to help you for the budget that you've got. I mean, we're a big plus agency, we've got a lot of overheads to cover, having, you know, a local team. Whereas now, it's really nice for me to be able to spend, you know, half an hour, an hour on the phone to these people and say we as an agency can't really help you but I've completely bootstrapped this on my own. This is how I did it. I'm not a developer, I'm not a designer. I use this theme, I installed this app, I had this idea. I used a Pinterest board as like design. I used Instagram as a mood board like this is how I did it. So it's it's really nice to be able to bring that to Brave The Skies and not just have to turn people away and say we can't help you because you don't have the budget but here's how I did it on a budget. And if you still need development help, I can refer a small agency or a freelancer. And I think yeah, I mean, I mean, I suppose, having worked in e-commerce for 12 years, and, you know, being so lucky to work with brands, like work for brands like Zimmerman and Manning Cartell in Australia, work with brands like KITRI, here in the UK, like, it's taught me so much. And I feel like I've spent so much time with so many different businesses, helping them grow their businesses and their online strategies. And like, okay, like, I've learned quite a lot, I can bring this to Reverie. 

Krissie Leyland  10:37

That's amazing, because they've got all these big budgets and big project you can take little bits from them, but I think it's amazing that you actually, you know, you spend the time with the smaller brands and give them advice. And that's like, it's just amazing, because you can kick start, their small brand and then, you know, what it's like having a passion. And I love that, that's really nice. 

Lucy Roberts  11:00

Thanks. I always kind of say, whenever I speak to a smaller merchant, like I get it, you know, you've got this big idea, but you don't know where to start. And I always give them my mobile number and like my LinkedIn profile, and say, if you've got any questions, I come always happy to answer them. And I just think that everybody should have access to that help. And that information, because you know, when you've got an idea, and you're so like, you like you're so incredibly creative, like you've got so many ideas in you, then I just think if there's somebody who maybe doesn't know, as much as you know, about e-commerce or digital, like, it's almost not fair that they don't get the chance to share that idea.

Krissie Leyland  11:37

Yeah, I mean, I literally have a video on my LinkedIn where I'm like, come on agencies like, give them a chance, you know.

Lucy Roberts  11:45

Exactly!

Krissie Leyland  11:47

You know, and if you can give them advice to kick start it, and then they go and do it, they will probably come back to you when they've got the budget. Then go that step further. So yeah, like I love that. I love it. So if you're a brand and you're listening, speak to Lucy!

Lucy Roberts  12:11

Talk to me, let me help.

Krissie Leyland  12:14

Um, so you've mentioned or I think we both mentioned this that often, when you think about a vegan brand in the luxury space, it's like you might have to sacrifice luxury for vegan or for sustainability. So yeah, talk to me about that. And how have you kind of overcome that? 

Lucy Roberts  12:36

Yeah, I think I mean, there are obviously the really big players in the space like Stella McCartney, I think is just paving the way for that luxurious, sustainable vegan lifestyle. Obviously, her designs are incredible. Her brand is amazing, the pieces are just to die for. But it's such a high price point. And it's just it's not accessible to everybody to you know, make the switch to vegan and buy Stella McCartney, you don't kind of get paid for making the switch. And it was the same with with even stupid things like with shampoo and conditioner, like I would always just buy it without even thinking. And the same with moisturiser. And it was you would buy it from these beautiful luxury brands, and you get the really nice packaging and you feel really nice about it. And it was just, it was one of the things that was actually quite daunting for me and perfume as well. For example, I always used to Alexander McQueen and Chanel perfume. I loved the boxes, I loved the bottles on my dressing table. And it was something that I don't want to say it put me off. But for a long time, it was really daunting. I was like, oh, when I I know I need to make this switch. Because I'm eating vegan, I know that I need to switch to cruelty free and vegan beauty. But I'm really going to miss these things like these little luxuries that you just feel, make you feel so nice in the morning when you spritz on your perfume. And that was a problem that I really wanted to address because I was like that's not fair. Like I'm trying to do the right thing. And I want to have these luxuries in my life. Like they make me feel good. And it's it's a nice thing to have. And I started doing a lot more research into it. And now for example, I use one of the cream perfumes from George & Edi, which, I've ended up stocking at Reverie because I love them so much. And then they last for longer, the fragrance is stronger and they look just as beautiful. It's just about, I think it was just really about finding those brands which have luxury and sustainability as their values that have really beautiful packaging. The websites are really nice. The products are really beautiful. And it's almost like it's an afterthought that they're vegan. And that's something that I really wanted to do with Reverie. I wanted it to appeal to people who who are vegan and who do shop ethically and consciously because everything on that is cruelty free. Everything is from a small business. I think everything bar three things on the website at the moment is vegan. And I also wanted it to appeal to people who are luxury shoppers and who really love those beautiful things in their lives. But you know, it's all, it's vegan, it's cruelty free, and it kind of shows you that you can have both and that you don't have to choose.

Krissie Leyland  15:14

Yeah, definitely. I must admit, I do have a Chanel perfume on my shelf right now. 

Lucy Roberts  15:19

I mean,  they're beautiful, I get it. They're really gorgeous. 

Krissie Leyland  15:23

It's the end of the bottle, and I'm so glad we just had that short, like that bit of conversation. That means I can make the switch now. It's at the end, and then I'm done. 

Lucy Roberts  15:34

Yeah, it's, you know, it's so it's so difficult. It's such, it's such a really difficult switch to make. Because it really does depend on you being willing to compromise on something that you really, really want. Like, I want a Chanel perfume desperately, I miss it. I love the fragrance. I love the smell. But I know too much about it now. And I know that I can get something else which is vegan and cruelty free. And that's completely fine with me. Like I'm happy to make that compromise because I know that I don't have to compromise on the luxury side of things. I know I can get a product, which is just as good. So let's see. 

Krissie Leyland  16:13

Yeah, definitely. What is it about Chanel then, the perfume? What's the bad things about it?

Lucy Roberts  16:20

I mean I don't want to slag off Chanel.

Krissie Leyland  16:23

I mean, no.

Lucy Roberts  16:27

I think the I guess it's a common misconception between brands that say that they don't test on animals unless it's required by law. And those brands being cruelty free. So there's, there's tons of brands that all say, we do not test on animals unless it's specifically required by law. And obviously, in the UK and EU, it's not required by law to test on animals, it's actually illegal. But if you're selling your product in an overseas market, so for example, China, testing on animals is mandatory in order to sell in that market. So while they might not test on animals to sell within the UK, or within Europe, or any other parts of the world, if you want to sell in that market, which is obviously a lucrative, luxury market, so of course you do because it's going to be amazing for your sales, you have to pay to have your products tested on animals before you can sell in that market. So yeah, there's an amazing website actually called crueltyfreekitty.com. And it's the most incredible comprehensive directory of brands, which sell in China don't sell in China, all of their like animal testing policies. It's, it's a brilliant website, I recommend it to anybody who's looking to learn more about which brands are cruelty free.

Krissie Leyland  17:37

Wow. Okay, I'll be I'll be going on that, and I'll have a look. Nice. Thank you.

Lucy Roberts  17:43

Of course.

Krissie Leyland  17:45

So switching it up a little bit, but staying on the Reverie topic, what was the branding process, like, because I love your branding, and your Instagram feed.

Lucy Roberts  17:55

Thank you. Thank you so much. Um, to be honest, I'm really I'm really lucky because my, my fiance is a designer. And he helped me so much with the branding, with the fonts, with the colours, with the way that the website was going to look. And the he actually runs his own design studio called Field and Black. I think you've actually spoken to him before he was gonna help you out with something. Yeah and you know, having  a live in designer is like, super handy when you've got no budget to do anything. So yeah, I was I was really, really lucky that he helped me out so much. And he's been, he's been so supportive of everything to do with Reverie, because I have kind of a constant fear of not wanting to do something in case it goes wrong. And I think especially when when you work in e-commerce, there's almost an immediate expectation that if you launch your own business, then of course, it's going to go really well and your sales are going to be amazing, and everything is just going to sell out immediately. So it was quite daunting, like putting it out there like this idea that I'd had for so long. And I didn't know if I was ever really going to be ready to do it and to share it but my fiance was incredible about and so like, so when my mom and my sister, my dad and my best friend, Charlie, they were all just always encouraging me like "No, you do it, you should go for it." So yeah, they were they were an amazing part of kind of actually bringing Reverie to life because I definitely wouldn't have done it without their kind of encouragement and support for sure. 

Krissie Leyland  19:31

Yeah, definitely. I think um, top tip everyone

Lucy Roberts  19:39

Get engaged to a designer.

Krissie Leyland  19:43

I mean, what can I say that's a bit perfect, isn't it?

Lucy Roberts  19:48

It's an unfair advantage.

Krissie Leyland  19:53

Okay, so similar to that topic. I'm wondering, you know, I know that when I got on your Instagram, I just feel really relaxed and mindful and at ease and positive. So is that part of your marketing strategy? Or is it just part of like, what you feel like putting out there in the world?

Lucy Roberts  20:15

I suppose, I suppose a little bit of both really. I've, I used to know an amazing woman who is actually a brit, she lives in Australia and she has a brand called Flora and Fauna. It's um, it's like a vegan superstore. It's absolutely amazing. I mean, if there's anybody who lives in Australia that wants to make a switch to a vegan lifestyle, Julie Mathers started Flora and Fauna to be just that, it's got everything. And I was really lucky to meet her a couple of times while I was living in Sydney. And she always used to tell me that she, she founded Flora and Fauna on kindness. And that is what she leads with for everything. Kindness to the environment, to the people that she works with, to animals, to everything across the board. And that really stuck with me. And I also have a wonderful friend called Beck who actually also has her own small business called Silky Studios does the most amazing silk scrunchies. Unfortunately, they're not vegan. So which is the only reason why I wouldn't stock them on reverie, but I use them, I have bought them. They are incredible. And she told me when I started Reverie, that if you become your own brand, then your brand will always feel honest and will always feel authentic. And that's probably one of the best bits of advice I've ever had about Reverie. And I want it to feel like me, I like to think that I'm a nice and positive and warm person and I want the brand to feel like that as well. So kind of a healthy amount of escapism in the Instagram feed like lots of really nice travel shots. But I just want it, I want people to feel how you feel like calm and mindful and, you know, like you're in this really nice destination where the outside negativity doesn't matter. It doesn't affect you, and you can just relax. That's really what I want Reverie to feel like. This whole idea about it being a daydream and a fanciful state of musing. I love that, I think it's just sometimes it's nice to just switch off a bit from everyday life. 

Krissie Leyland  22:18

That's so nice. You just feel like content when you look at your Instagram feed, like "That is me, that is the brand"

Lucy Roberts  22:27

Yeah. And it could be you know, burning one of the really beautiful candles or it could just be having one of the pieces of jewellery on or, you know, the sleep masks or the bath salts, anything like that. Just almost finding that time in your day to just relax and that, that's the reverie for me. It's just those little, those little luxuries.

Krissie Leyland  22:47

I love it, whilst being kind to the planet.

Lucy Roberts  22:50

Exactly, without compromising on anything.

Krissie Leyland  22:52

Yeah. And also the Duchess of Cambridge.

Lucy Roberts  22:59

Oh my god, I love her. Honestly, anyone who knows me will know I have been to Kate Middleton fan since literally day one. I've had my hair blow dried like her, I dress like her. 

Krissie Leyland  23:13

And then she just was wearing a necklace that looks, Is it the exact same one?

Lucy Roberts  23:17

It's not unfortunately, but my mum actually texted me the morning that she saw Kate wearing that necklace because my um, basically my mum has helped me so much with Reverie. She really keeps me in check. Because I just want to buy everything, stock everything and do everything at a million miles an hour. And mum's always like "No, I don't think that product is right" or "I don't think that's correct." And I'm like, No, Mum, this is gonna be really good. And she actually said that about the pearl choker. And she was like, I don't know if that's on brand for Reverie. It's a little bit modern. It's a bit too trendy. And I was like, No, I've got a really good feeling about this necklace. And she texted me the picture of Kate wearing and she's like, okay, you're right.

Krissie Leyland  23:23

That's amazing I saw it I was like, No, way, is that the same one?

Lucy Roberts  23:44

I wish it was honestly, if I could send a Reverie gift box, it would be the Duchess of Cambridge. 

Krissie Leyland  24:15

Has anyone like... did you see an increase in sales because of the photo

Lucy Roberts  24:21

Sadly not. I was really excited about it though.

Krissie Leyland  24:25

I can imagine you probably dancing around. I've got the giggles now.

Lucy Roberts  24:33

I know this. This always happens to us. 

Krissie Leyland  24:40

Oh, okay. Yeah, I'm gonna try and stop laughing. So, yeah, so what does your marketing strategy look like? Taking in, like keep in mind that, you know, you've worked with all these big brands with bigger budgets and stuff like what have you taken from that? 

Lucy Roberts  24:55

Yeah. Um, it's a really it's a really difficult question because the honest answer is that I am completely winging it. I am just seeing what, that's just me being completely honest, I'm just trying to see what works and trying to see what people respond to. So I've tried doing like a big gift away on Instagram, you know, you're kind of standard, like this post and share it and tag a friend and make sure you're following the page kind of thing. And that went really well, I feel like people responded really well to that. And it was also a nice way to introduce the products to somebody as well, which was great. Whoever won, you know, you send them this beautiful box, and it's a nice way to get the products out there a bit more. I do a lot of just emails, email marketing, and I like to make them quite conversational and kind of talk about why, why I really love the products and why I think they're really, really great. So or, or whatever, make a really great gift. And I've tried Facebook and Instagram ads. And that's actually something that I'm looking for a little bit of help with, so if anybody's listening to this, they know how to do Facebook and Instagram or Google Ads really well, please let me know.

Krissie Leyland  26:06

I actually do know a few people.

Lucy Roberts  26:09

I was gonna ask you about this. And I was hoping that you would know some people. So yeah, I haven't got the world's biggest budget. But if you, if there's anybody within like your community, or like the MindfulCommerce network, like super keen to talk to someone about helping me with that, because I think that that is quite a good strategy. And whenever I've randomly thrown some money on an Instagram ad, it seems to do quite well. But I know that it's not, marketing is not my forte like e-commerce is. E-commerce is my thing, really. So if there's anyone you can connect me with, who knows more about digital marketing, that would be amazing!

Krissie Leyland  26:45

I may have someone in mind who i'll tell you about after this. Right. So, okay, now I'm completely changing the subject. 

Lucy Roberts  26:58

So that's okay. Let's jump around. We always do this, we do this all the time. So that's fine.

Krissie Leyland  27:03

I could go off on so many different tangents. Yes, so sustainability in e-commerce. Obviously, this is a big topic and it's probably a joint favourite topic between us. So what do you think are the biggest environmental challenges in e-commerce? 

Lucy Roberts  27:29

That's such a big question Krissie. You know, that's a big question.

Krissie Leyland  27:36

I know.

Lucy Roberts  27:37

I don't even really know what to begin with this one, to be honest, because I think that, I think the first problem happened years and years and years ago, where fast fashion rose really quickly. And it was kind of this immediate demand that you wanted to have a rip off version of something that you've seen on the runway or on a celebrity, and I think brands, brands responded to that really, really quickly. And companies sprung up with that as their whole business model, which is, you see something on Saturday, on a celebrity in a magazine or on a runway at Fashion Week and by the Wednesday, you're selling it to like thousands of people. And at the time, I think everyone was ready, quite naive to what the impact of that actually was. And it was like, Oh, my God, amazing, you can get, you know, you can get a version of a Gucci bag or a YSL blazer, and it's a fraction of the cost, and you get it before the brand has even manufactured it. And it was, you know, I think I was probably even a bit of a sucker for it. At the time, I was probably about in my late teens, I suppose, early 20s, when this was really happening, and it was quite exciting, you know, being on a fashion course, at uni and thinking, Oh, my God, yeah, you've got the the Primark version of the whatever it was, an Alexander McQueen dress or whatever. And it was quite exciting. Whereas now I think we're really feeling the impact of that and the effect of it, which is, well, what is that done? I mean, it's completely exploited factories all over the world where, you know, you can't pay your workers a living wage, because they're working around the clock, and you have to manufacture this fabric in double time. And the quickest, cheapest, easiest way to do it is not sustainable. And, of course, the way in which these things are manufactured, it's done cheaply, so that you can sell it cheaply so that people don't have to wear it for that long, because it's not really going to be in style for that long. So the reality is that all of those products, more often than not just end up in landfill. And because the fabrics that they've been developed from aren't sustainable, they're obviously not natural fabrics. They're not biodegradable. They've got thousands of micro plastics in them, and it just goes straight back into the planet, into landfill. That kind of over consumerism almost about to the right term, it's constantly servicing that demand and then meeting the new demand rather than almost challenging the customer to shop with longevity and sustainability in mind. And it's just every single brand, it's a race to the bottom and a race to see who can ship their products, the fastest by air mail or by courier vans or whatever. And it's this constant need that's now now now now now, I want it tomorrow. And I want this, I want that. And brands are constantly on the back foot. Because they feel that the only way that they can meet that demand is just to figure out a way to do it.  Totally at their own costs, and definitely an environmental cost. Yes, probably the biggest problem that I see. 

Krissie Leyland  30:43

Definitely, I totally agree. And I don't think that the brands will like that. They're probably quite stressed about it, you know? 

Lucy Roberts  30:51

Yeah, exactly. 

Krissie Leyland  30:52

They have to keep up with all the other brands and who's the fastest

Lucy Roberts  30:57

Exactly, and who's who's doing next day shipping for free, like who's doing same day shipping, you know, in some postcodes, you can get it the same day, like, how stressful is that to have somebody constantly on your orders grid, refreshing in case something comes in, like, I can't imagine the amount of anxiety that someone must feel for that. 

Krissie Leyland  31:15

It's horrifying. It stresses me out thinking about it.

Lucy Roberts  31:19

No same thing here. And it's just, it's this constant demand for now, and immediately and cheaper. And there's no, there aren't really any brands pushing back on that. I think other than, you know, your really big ones, like Stella McCartney that really incorporate that whole messaging in their brand. And I guess the people who follow her brand are really invested in those values as well. So they're happy to shop with a brand that matches those values. Whereas your run of the mill average customer who doesn't really care too much about sustainability and doesn't really care too much about the fabric content of their jumper or top or dress or whatever. They're not going to ask the questions. They're just going to think, well, I'll just shop with the brand thats the cheapest I can get it to me the quickest.

Krissie Leyland  32:02

Yeah, I mean, I do think that there's obviously the rise of conscious consumerism, and people are waking up to, you know, these green washing brands. And it's, it's hopefully changing, hopefully, and in five years time, we'll be moving towards a more sustainable world. 

Lucy Roberts  32:24

I hope so. I really hope so. I think it's just, it just takes a couple of the, I suppose the market leaders of your high street stores, of bigger fashion brands, just to start educating their customers on where the products come from, where they're manufactured, why the price is what the price is, and really start making it part of their brand identity as opposed to just being these faceless, brandless fast fashion brands. 

Krissie Leyland  32:55

Yeah, I agree. I do think that small brands like Reverie, do have power and I do think, you know, if we, if we get together and do it together, fight combat, you know, and just boycott them all.

Lucy Roberts  33:13

I hope so. I hope so. And it's kind of it's it's something that's so beautiful about small businesses, because they're these tiny little ideas that have become online businesses that specialise in these beautiful products. And that's really all I ever wanted for Reverie, I wanted it to be more than just an online shop, I wanted it to be a destination where you can go and you can browse. And you can see really beautiful content, and you can shop and you can send gifts. I wanted it to be very inclusive and very, I suppose very socially and environmentally. And it's if more brands, if more brands do that. I mean, it's definitely the way that things are moving. I mean, with all of the David Attenborough documentaries that people are seeing now. I mean, hopefully people are actually listening to what he's saying, rather than just thinking, Oh, yeah, David, David Attenborough is really cool, he's really awesome. It's like, yes, so do what he's telling you to do now. I really hope that that's going to be the way that it's moving. 

Krissie Leyland  34:10

Yeah. And if you you know, you watch you watch David Attenborough programmes, and you're really inspired and, and then, yeah, if you don't do anything, then what's the point? Anyway... 

Lucy Roberts  34:23

Another rabbit hole, we could go down

Krissie Leyland  34:26

So many, oh, gosh, find myself in them all day. On a personal note, then, um, what's your vision for the future? Where do you see yourself in five years? Oh, sounds like an interview question.

Lucy Roberts  34:40

It does sound like an interview question, one which I wasn't actually prepared for. I mean, there's so much more that I want to do with Brave The Skies. You know, the agency is it's changing really quickly. we're evolving really quickly. There's new brands who want to work with us, which is awesome. I've just actually hired an incredible general manager who I'm so excited to start working with. And I think that she's going to be a real breath of fresh air. And so I definitely see Brave The Skies as a big part of my future, regardless of what happens with Reverie. But I want to spend more time building Reverie, I feel like I've got so many ideas for what I want to do with that, I would love to introduce clothing at some point as well and really make it more of a lifestyle boutique, or sustainable, you know, beautiful vegan fabrics and your bamboo silk, which is what the eye masks are made from. And linen and organic cotton, I would love to, I'd really love to expand the product range into my own stock rather than just essentially other people's products and ideas. So I would love to do that. And I think with Brave The Skies, I'd love to I would love to focus more on working with brands on their marketing strategies, and what they're going to do with that new collections and new products and possibly even be part of that process would be amazing. 

Krissie Leyland  36:07

Wow, good. Nice. 

Lucy Roberts  36:09

Yeah, a lot. Quite a lot of things

Krissie Leyland  36:13

I love the vision, though. It's good. It's all good. Brave The Skies are very lucky to have you. And also it's very nice to hear that the, did you say Managing Director, not your Managing Director, but your new person is going to be a woman? 

Lucy Roberts  36:34

Yes. Oh, my God, I'm so excited about that. Yeah, I'm super excited. There's, there's not enough of us. There aren't enough of us in management positions or leadership positions, you know, industry, industry wide, but specifically in a e-comm and tech. I think we're very underrepresented gender in that sector. And I think, you know, it's, it's so nice, I speak to so many of our clients who have, who have actually said that one of the reasons that they like working with our agency is because we're female lead. And there aren't really any other plus agencies, there might be one or two in London, who have women at the top as managing directors or COOs. And I think naturally, as women, we're a lot more empathetic. And you think a lot more about the bigger picture and the end customer and you know yourself how you feel when you open a beautiful new delivery and whether or not that's a new dress, or a pair of earrings, for example, you know, the feeling that you want that customer to have. And if you, if you know that feeling, and if you know how to create that feeling through technology, through packaging, through branding, it means that the client has the most amazing experience with you, because you understand this to be their customer, and you understand how their customer wants to engage with their brand. And you know how to advise them how to make that brand feel like that comes really naturally to me because I am a customer. I'm an avid customer of so many of the brands that we work with. And it means that I can get a shipping email or an order confirmation email and say, not really too sure on the tone of voice here. Like it doesn't really make me feel particularly engaged. It feels a little bit business-y, a bit cold. How can we change that? So yeah, it's yeah, again, I feel like it's an unfair advantage, being a woman.

Krissie Leyland  38:31

I think it's great. I think it's great. And, um, congratulations, by the way on being nominated for amazing women in e-commerce

Lucy Roberts  38:42

Thank you so much!

Krissie Leyland  38:45

I honestly was thinking about nominating you because I saw it I was like - who... ah I know! How does it feel to be nominated? 

Lucy Roberts  38:55

Oh my god. Honestly, I was so excited. I was so so excited and so touched that somebody or some people, you know, thought that and it was yeah, it's an amazing, I suppose recognition to have your name out there as someone thinks that of you. And I posted it on my LinkedIn profile. And I just got the most amazing comments from, you know, people who I haven't spoken to for years. And it was just oh, I honest, I felt quite emotional, to be honest. Oh, I know. It's only you know, there are hundreds of thousands of women who are in e-commerce who are absolutely incredible. And I have no expectations that I'm going to even come close to winning. But it's just, it's nice on a personal level to feel I suppose, recognised and supported. Yeah, it was. Yeah. quite emotional. I think is the word. 

Krissie Leyland  39:47

Yeah. I mean, it's great. Its Yotpo isn't it?

Lucy Roberts  39:51

Yeah, it is and they're donating I think $5 for every nomination to a girl's charity which which is just incredible. I think supporting, supporting young girls with education and progression. It's just it's such a hugely important part of like, the global economy and like what girls can do and what women can do when they're educated and empowered is just, there's no limits. So it's it's definitely an amazing thing to be part of, even if it is just for the, you know, for the support of the charity.

Krissie Leyland  40:23

So exciting. So exciting. So, yes, I think I need to wrap this up. 

Lucy Roberts  40:30

We could chat for another solid few hours. Probably. 

Krissie Leyland  40:35

I mean, we need to meet in real life one day.

Lucy Roberts  40:37

We do! Well COVID has kept us apart hasn't it like we've been chatting for months now. And it's always been video calls and and Facebook Messaging. 

Krissie Leyland  40:46

Yeah. I'm normally me with another idea. 

Lucy Roberts  40:51

Or me being like, Krissie, what do you think I should do about this? 

Krissie Leyland  40:56

I love it. So if you could give your say, I don't know, one or two tips to an aspiring brand, a sustainable one, What would that be? 

Lucy Roberts  41:10

Oh, and I think, I think I would actually have to repeat Beck's advice to me, which is just to be your brands, be honest, be authentic, and it will be the easiest thing in the world. just build a brand around you and what you think is right, and your passions, and I don't think you can go wrong. 

Krissie Leyland  41:31

Perfect. And did you kind of like write a list? Or, you know, at the beginning, where you're like, what is my Why? What is, Who am I? 

Lucy Roberts  41:42

So, so that is something that Joel, my fiance was trying to get me to do for years. And I really put off doing it. Because I was like, these questions are so intimidating. I don't know the answers to these questions. I really don't want to do it. And he sat down with me and did it. And he was like, I know the answer to all of these questions because it's just you. So yeah, he was, he definitely guided me through the whole process, I wouldn't have done it on my own. I was ready to just wing the whole thing. What happened? And he was like, No, you can do this, answer this question. You know, write this down. See, I can't I genuinely can't take any credit for every, it's all been my mom and Joel and my sister and  my dad and my best friend. They're the real brains behind the operation. 

Krissie Leyland  42:33

I should have interviewed them on the podcast.

Lucy Roberts  42:37

Next time, I'll bring them all you'll get much more from them. 

Krissie Leyland  42:43

Because that's like my favourite thing ever to just, I'm probably very different to you then. Because I like sitting down and just like brainstorming and being like, Who am I? What's my vision, what's my why I can get grounded. And then I'm ready.

Lucy Roberts  42:57

That's such an amazing quality, though, like you're so good at that you've got because you've got so many ideas. And you're really good at getting them all out and putting a structure to them and writing it down and mapping it out. And I think I naturally find it quite intimidating. And I feel like things are very safe inside my head. And like I kind of know what it is I know what it looks like, if I close my eyes, I can really visualise it. And the second I put it down on paper, it becomes very, you know, it feels like it becomes very real and quite scary. And I feel quite intimidated by that sometimes, which is something that I need to work on. 

Krissie Leyland  43:33

Very interesting. And so you're probably if you're visual, then maybe it'll be mood boards. And like you said, Pinterest boards and stuff like that. 

Lucy Roberts  43:42

Exactly. I've got thousands of Pinterest boards, and my Instagram saved items is quite out of control.

Krissie Leyland  43:49

Wow.

Lucy Roberts  43:50

But I feel like I get so much more from an image and I can look at an image and be like Yep. Okay, so that's how I feel. And that's how I want it to look. And that's how I want people to think when they look at it, whereas writing it down is I don't know, it makes it very black and white and it doesn't feel as I suppose warm and cozy to me. It's like a big image mood board does. 

Krissie Leyland  44:10

Yeah. Or like your Instagram feed. 

Lucy Roberts  44:12

Exactly. Yeah. And it's nice to you know, when you're looking at different images, we looking at the colors and like the tones in them and the way that they make you feel like that makes me feel very comfortable. I wish I could do mind maps better. And Rachel Jacobs, who we both work with. She is amazing at mind maps, and she did this major one for me in our catch up last week and I was like, oh god, this is so good but also so intimidating. Where do I begin with this? 

Krissie Leyland  44:42

Yeah, that's so interesting. It is funny, isn't it? How everyone's got different ways of just mapping things out. I mean, I like oh my god. My reason I think the reason why I do start so many different random businesses. I just really like the Ideas phase and then like the branding, so like colours and then like the fonts and yeah, like and then and then it happens it is like it comes to life. 

Lucy Roberts  45:10

Exactly. But you're so good because you do all of the planning, you do everything. You've got all of the information, the whole structure and plan is down before you do anything. It's so good. 

Krissie Leyland  45:20

Yeah, but then I'm like, oh, okay, now I've got it. What do I do now? 

Lucy Roberts  45:24

Now what? That's fine. We work well together. We bounce off each other really well.

Krissie Leyland  45:30

Yeah. Oh, well, I'll let you go and have your lunch. 

Lucy Roberts  45:3

It was so great to talk to you. Krissie. Thank you so much for inviting me to do this. 

Krissie Leyland  45:40

Thank you. And best of luck with everything I know you're going to be great. 

Lucy Roberts  45:45

Too Kind. Thank you so much, and we'll catch up soon. 

Krissie Leyland  45:49

Yes. Perfect. 

Lucy Roberts  45:51

Thanks so much Krissie. 

Krissie Leyland  45:53

This series is sponsored by Kollectify. Kollectify is a content marketing agency working specifically with Shopify solutions to successfully position and promote the app or agency. Episodes go out every Monday, so don't forget to subscribe or you might miss a few knowledge bombs. And finally, if you'd like to join the MindfulCommerce community with lots of conscious brands and ecommerce experts, who are all working together to make change, please email [email protected] and I'll send you the deets

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Where to find Gerry McGovern:

Gerry McGovern's website
Gerry McGovern's Books - Including World Wide Waste
Contact Gerry - [email protected]

Sponsor:

This podcast is sponsored by Kollectify, a content marketing agency working specifically with Shopify solutions to successfully position and promote the app or agency 

Show notes:

Krissie  0:00
 
Hello, and welcome to episode three of the Mindful Commerce podcast. I'm Krissie, and I'm your host for this episode. In this episode, I talk to a very inspiring man who knows all about sustainability on the web and his name is Gerry McGovern. Gerry has written a book called Worldwide Waste, which is all about how digital is killing our planet, and what we can do about it. In this episode, we talk about how the digital world is killing our planet and what Gerry thinks e-commerce brands and tech companies can do to combat the problem. Amongst many other topics, we discussed the ideal synergy of going back to localisation and community with a dash of innovative technology and less data collection. I hope you enjoy this episode. It's really fascinating. If you have any thoughts or comments, please feel free to email us at [email protected] and all the details will be in the show notes. Enjoy.

Hi, Gerry, welcome to the MindfulCommerce podcast. Thank you for joining us today. Would you like to kick things off by just telling us your story and how you ended up where you are today?

Gerry McGovern  1:22 

Okay, Krissie, and Thanks for the invite to be here. I used to many years ago, I was a freelance journalist back in there in the 90s, in the early 90s, and doing all sorts of different work for music and some, a little bit technology as well. And I came across the internet very early, maybe about '93 or so '94, sometime around then. And I thought wow, this is gonna, it's gonna change the world. And basically, from then on one way or another, either true, you know, for a while, I got commissioned to do a report for the Irish government around '94, about the future of the internet and society. And so that kept me busy for a while and then started some companies and you know, some of those companies went bust and had the whole, had the whole dot com bust experience. And then, you know, started writing books, this is my last book, worldwide waste is my eight. And traveling and doing workshops and working with clients and developed a methodology called top task, which is a kind of a prioritization system for, you know, really focusing on what matters, and that's been my main kind of work for the last 10 or 15 years is helping organisations implement top tasks projects.

Krissie  2:56 

Okay, interesting, then, so when was it that you kind of realised that digital is not so great for our planet? So, obviously, if used in the right way, it's, it's great, but yeah, tell me a little bit about that.

Gerry McGovern  3:12 

Yeah, really, only maybe two or three years ago, you know, because I always changed my computer every two years, changed my phone every two years. And, you know, I really had the impression that, that I was lucky to be working a digital like, I was, you know, watching, you know, the movements out there, and, you know, Greta Thunberg, and all those other wonderful young people, you know, really being passionate and idealistic and trying to make changes, and I kinda, I thought that's, that's nice to see. And, you know, isn't it great that, you know, where I'm, what I'm doing is, is helping them and, you know, but I taught in the back of my head, then I realised I was taking back over my careers since the 90s. And just, it kind of struck me that so many times in so many organisations, what we needed to do, specifically, say I did a lot of work for Internet's for a number of years. And that internets were just dumps and that to make them work, we nearly always had to delete 80 or 90% of the data and then systems, going into organisations and finding five or six or seven systems for training and, you know, all these duplications of systems that just got the sense of "Wow this is an incredible amount of waste in here", and nearly all the projects I've worked on where, you know, huge dumps that either the public websites, I remember, you know dealing with the US Department of Health and in one area there 200,000 pages, and they deleted 150,000 of them and nobody noticed. They didn't get a single inquiry. And I kept just seeing that. So that kinda was in the back of my head. And I thought, wow, you know, maybe digital listeners, as green as I, you know, Todd was and then when I started doing research and looking at e-waste, you know, recognising e-waste in particular, because, you know, I, I never really saw where these old computers went or cables or stuff like that. So it was really digging into the dark e-waste story that, you know, began to open up some talks that maybe digital is, is not nearly as green as I had been thinking as was over most of my career.

Krissie  6:01 

Yeah, so e-waste in terms of like, you know, your laptops, your phones. And then like, do you know where they end up? Do they end up in landfill as well?

Gerry McGovern  6:12
 
They do most of them. See, what we have, you know, us in the rich countries, we've created a really nice system where our air is clean, and, you know, our environments are very clean. But we've essentially outsourced waste. So we go to poor countries, and we get them to manufacture the products very, very cheaply. And whatever waste is accrued there. And, you know, in the manufacturing process, or getting the raw materials, it's rarely, like a lot of these raw materials are for, they're called rare, rare materials, because they are rare. And they're difficult to find. And often they're found in virgin habitats, or, you know, in Western Africa, where the great apes, you know, there's certain type of rare, rare that's only found there. And, you know, in unusual places, that humans had not really been in insignificant numbers. So that's how we, you know, we suck all those raw materials out of certain countries then we give those materials to people in other more poor developing countries. And then we get our nice shiny products. And then two years later, we dumped them. But what happens is, they often get back to the very set back to the very same countries that the raw materials were dug up in. So we recycle less than 20%. And even recycling is incredibly crude, like a lot of like, somebody was telling me that in data centres, they just shred, they shred the servers that are working perfectly well, you know, every three or four years, they just shred them for either security or privacy, or they're worried that data might be accessed on them. So there's these perfectly working servers, because they've got this commitment to uptime, you know, they, they have to meet 99.9% uptime. So they don't want to take that statistical chance that the server will break. So even recycling is most recycling does not actually recycle in any real sense. And then the other 80% are put on big containers and, and are sent back to poor countries where they often end up in landfills, and they end up being burned, you know, with toxic fumes, so as to get out some gold or wood. So they're in open pits. So this, we never see these pictures when we see the Apple iPhone or the or the Samsung, we see the most beautiful things. But behind the scenes is a very ugly, very ugly world that we've created. But our world looks great, you know, because we outsource. We outsource all the nasty stuff to places that consumers won't see.

Krissie  9:18 

That's crazy. That's really crazy. So would you say, so someone like me? Oh, what can I do? Can I just you know, don't upgrade my phone every year or two?

Gerry McGovern  9:32 

Yeah, that's the single biggest thing. Like somebody did a study recently at a UK entity and they said that "If you kept your phone for five years versus two years, you essentially have the water issue in making devices" so they're making less phones, right. So you, you cut in half the amount of water required and the amount of co2. So keeping it between two and five years, has a huge makes a huge difference. Because, see, the problem with electronics is that electronics are very manufacturing intensive. So, the piece of electronics requires much more energy to create than a screwdriver or a knife, you know, or, you know, some other physical object. So there's a much higher intensity of energy. And as with energy is waste and often material. So these rare earth materials to get one tonne of Iridium or whatever it is, I can't remember they did, there's about 16 or 17 rare materials, well, you probably need to do 100 tonnes of mining. And often that mining is a kind of a pollutant, they add a kind of chemicals to actually filter out these materials. So, so the the very act of mining is very toxic in the environments that it actually happens in. And it creates these huge large kind of lakes because they use a lot of water and chemicals, that kind of have got to be dammed up in in the area. So, if we hold on to, and I think I think what we need to do, as well as somehow is to agitate for repairability and fixability, because many of these phones are deliberately designed to break.

Krissie  11:43 

Yes

Gerry McGovern  11:44 

So they deliberately designed them so the designers sit around, deliberately specking out how do we make this not work after 2, 3, 4 years? And often it's with software updates, you know, so there's a deliberate strategy to actually break our phones. So that sort of, we have to buy more stuff. So, you know, there's the right to repair. There's movements beginning in the European Union are looking at, so holding on and if your phone breaks, trying to get it fixed, and going into it, why can't it be fit? Because they know if enough of us are getting in touch with the local politicians are saying this, I should be able to fix this? So fixing it when it breaks, like, so I've committed now, you know, there's my computer I've got, I'm gonna stick with it. And if and when it breaks, I'm going to try and fix it like, and I'm going to go and say, Well, how do you replace to hard disk? I want to replace to hard disk. You know? And how do I replace the screen? And why can't you replace this? You know, because if enough of us started saying that, basically we accept this world that we've been given. So hold on to it as long as you possibly can, and demand the right to repair and repair it and get it, you know, repaired and ask about those issues when you're buying. I never asked, I never considered warranty or stuff like that, or issues or you know, and get a five year often longer warranties, you know, are better. You know because they make a commitment to the organisation that they will repair it, you know, for X number of years. So, so holding on and thinking about repairability it's stuff that you know, I've already started thinking of in the last two or three years like I can't, I don't know, it's just invisible to us in so many ways.

Krissie  13:55 

Yeah and then I think if they can't repair it, they can't fix it. Well, then can they recycle it? And then are they actually recycling it properly?

Gerry McGovern  14:05 

exactly, exactly ask questions, ask. Because if thousands of us, like, somebody told me this story about a lady, I don't know if it's in Ireland or the UK or whatever. And every week she goes to the local supermarket to do her shopping. Then she buys her shopping and then she just goes beyond the tail and she takes everything out of the plastic that you know, she tries to avoid plastic if she can, but anything that has plastic, she unwraps and puts it into a bag she has carried with her and then she she just gives the plastic. Here you go. I don't want it. You know? And if only we could scale that woman. You know by a 10,000 or a million. Then we'd see change. Yeah, I think we have got to have change. at a national level, there's not this idea of blaming the consumer. Yeah, that's what the plastics industry did for 50. That was great PR, you know, we got this better recycling. We know that 90%, well, a huge percentage of plastic is not recycled. You know, that's stuff I learned. Most plastic is not recycled. It's does all we think we're doing good in the green bin, but actually, most of the time we're not. And even being aware of that, you know, that, really demanding that if you make it, you take care of it, you know. And that making the manufacturers responsible, I think, until we make the manufacturers responsible, we will never solve this problem. But I think it's up to the consumers to make the manufacturers responsible, because unfortunately, politicians, yeah, many good many bad, but are often more controlled by the hidden powers behind the scenes than we would want them to be and will nearly always defend those powers over ordinary citizen, and certainly over planet rights.

Krissie  16:18 

Yeah, definitely. I think if so, because it is to do with consumerism and overconsumption and, you know, mostly, it's the big businesses that need to change. But what do you think the small to medium size like I don't know, any e-commerce brand doesn't matter if they're, they've got sustainability at their core or not, but what can they do to make a difference?

Gerry McGovern  16:43
 
Well, I think what you just said they're genuine sustainability at your core, because I was reading an article there at the weekend about luxury brands and luxury thinking now. And I don't know if that's true or not, but the writer was saying that there's a real shift in what is luxury? You know, that, that it's a movement away from, you know, this, whatever that Kardashian logo, you know, that visual bling, or whatever, or variants of that gold, to days, how it's made, how much water it use, you know, that there's a shift in thinking about what is luxury, and, and what is quality and what is things I want to buy? So, I think, if we are genuinely sustainable and sustainable at the core, I don't know how much of a business that's, that's out there. But certainly, I think there's a feeling or a mode to buy local, you know, because the closer you are from the thing you consume, the less waste. So if you've got onions out in your garden, there's less waste in consuming those onions than if you buy the onions in the supermarket. So distance, so there's ideas, you know, around, you know, being local, and being nearby and, you know, calculate, and people genuinely, because a lot of times you look at it, here's a T shirt that costs, you know, 40 euros, but here's why it costs 40 euros, and we give three euros to the person who made it. Whereas she typically only gets 50 cents, you know, and there's some very good e-commerce entities, I think ask it is one of the console, where they're calculating the entire lifecycle of the product. And they're saying, and we make 10 euros on that, you know, and that's okay. Yeah, be honest and transparent and tell their story. And, you know, and yes, it costs a bit more, but here's why it costs a bit more. And actually, this will last you 5 years or 10 years, and you know that and I think I've been thinking as well like my old jeans and things like that, and then committed to where and I think, wouldn't it be great if we had a whole network of designers, you know, local design within an area, and that you say, Hey, here's, these jeans, they're beginning to shred now in places I don't want them to shred and to do something and, you know, be willing to pay the price of a new pair of jeans for the design of that pair. I would be. I don't know how many other, you know, and so they've used 70% of the materials of the jeans that I gave them, but they added 30% new material, and they put a nice design, you know, and then you're going around, and then you're genuinely unique. You've got a custom pair of jeans. But um, you paid 30 euros or 40 euros, or whatever you paid for it. And that is going to be good for the planet. And it's good for local business, and it's good. So I'm quite hopeful in many ways of, you know, genuine sustainable business is not, there's so much unfortunately, in marketing that has been a con you know, over the years, but genuine stories of genuine people, like I see, you know, I cracked my wedding ring, there a couple of months gone. I got it fixed in, in this, you know, workshop that just specialises in this sort of stuff. And it was just, it was just lovely to, obviously, the mask on and everything on the screen. But I could see the people working behind. And I could see that it was just lovely to see these people who you could just know that have 30 or 40 years of experience and, and you know, all at all cost me I think was 30 euros. I was I was thinking to myself, why would I get from a writer or a developer or a programmer for 30 euros? Like, here, I got the ring back and it closed. It is like new, polished. And there's no way you could see the crack, the old crack. This was just, just beautiful work. And it cost me 30 euros. So it's not that expensive to give craftspeople work, and you get beautiful stuff back. You know, so I think there's models and this is how the web can be used that to connect up with Google and then to connect up with Coca Cola, or, whoever wants to manipulate the next election that we we can connect up with, you know, John, the goldsmith, you know, or Susan, who's a great at designing, you know, clothes and, you know, she just lives 20 miles away, or that you can somehow get it to people it who are more distant, but it's sent by a really economical energy conserving transport mechanism, and they'll do it. And I think there are ways and means that whether it's genuine sustainability, whether it's making cheese, or, you know, like, I think there's a mode for that.

Krissie  22:53 

So basically, going back to the old times where there was no online shops, there was no, you know, it's all local and lovely, and community of makers and craft, crafty, men.

Gerry McGovern  23:07 

Yeah, but with technology, like with, like that, that you get a notification that says, oh, your friend Marius is in the coffee shop now, you know, I mean, obviously, all of this has to be careful in privacy and but with the, because often we don't know what's local, that's the funny thing. You know, we don't know what's near us, in many ways where we're more aware of what's 10,000 miles away, you know. We don't know that there's a craft cheese maker down the road, most of us don't. So the technology can connect that, can be a connective local tissue. So it's not, I don't want, I grew up on a small farm, you know, where we didn't even have machinery, I don't want to go back to that work. As nice as some people might think it was, I thought was absolutely horrible. Like, I like having a phone. I love checking up stuff. You know, online, I like connecting up with interesting people. And so I don't, I want the benefits of both. And I think we can, we can have both. So I'm not, I'm not anti technology. I'm just anti waste. And a kind of us being owned by Facebook and Google and Amazon and just making another trillion for Jeff Bezos. I have no interest in that.

Krissie  24:32 

Absolutely not. I think there needs to be a really nice happy medium. But I think, so the biggest thing of technology is data. And big data is a solution to many problems, but only used in the right way. And I just think, I'd like to ask you if you think there's a happy medium between the amount of data that we need and the data that we don't need, so for example, Facebook, Google, like, what do you think is the happy medium there?

Gerry McGovern  25:09 

I think most data is not useful and is not used. And there's a very crude way that we work in that we try and collect everything with the expectation that we are, at least we have it, and we might find a use for it later. So I think we need a much more mindful understanding of what we need to collect and what we need to use, like, i've had an email newsletter since 1996, just a simple 500 words every week. And then, you know, over the years or recently I was trying to say, How do I get it? Because I don't want or I don't care who opened it or didn't open it? It's no, I don't want to track people. Like I don't I don't want to do any of that. It's almost impossible to find a company that doesn't track that you know, tracking is just inherent what you mean, you don't want tracking? You have to have it. Like No, I don't want it does, it has no benefit to me. It is zero benefit and have zero interest in it and in tracking. So I don't want it, no, but you have to have, like we collect, whether people want it or not. Whether it's used or not. It's collected. And, you know, for years as well, like I just wanted a text newsletter. And the systems I choose, I set it up as text, and then six months later it be HTML will become an asset. How is this happening? Like, it's like, the system is demanding that you go to that ultimate level, like we've designed systems and structures that they always seek to max out either on features or collection of data. And I think, really thinking do we need this because when my core has been this the research, the top tasks. And then with the top task list, there's a number of segmentation questions. And, you know, really trying to get, I always say no more than 5 to 8 maximum or whatever. But often keeping people within the maximum is a real challenge in many situations. And then even with that, often, they don't even look at the detailed data Even then, to 5 to 8, the look at it once, they'll take the top level data and maybe use it but you know, we don't, it's like we're buying tomatoes, and we buy, you know, 10 kilos of potatoes every week. And we only use one kilo or a half a kilo. And nine and a half kilos is just get stored in the cloud. And,  it's nine and a half kilos or gigabytes every week. And we only use half a kilo. Why don't we collect the half a kilo that we use? Then, you know, the impact on the data centres on our servers on our computers on our processing. All these stats that say 90% of data is never used three months after it's created. If we could, if we could only deal with 50% of that. Think of how many less computers, less meetings, the amount of meetings I've sat in over the years of teams on a Monday morning or whatever, talking about the The Google Analytics and trying to seem intelligent about bounce rates and time on pages. Most analytics is bullshit. It's analytics theatre. It's, it has no meaning. And people go and they do things that oh, we should. Oh, that page was really looked at a lot. Yeah, well, yeah. What are you gonna do? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, we're really popular now. Yeah, you're the WHO, It's a pandemic.

Krissie  29:14 

Yeah!

Gerry McGovern  29:16 

You know, most of these metrics can mean, horrible are good. You know, lots of people visiting the page. Yeah, maybe your product is crummy. Like, your pricing is confusing. Like so, so much of this stuff. And when I talk to people, they really don't know what they're doing. I think there's an awful lot of people and an awful lot of companies that actually don't know what they're doing.

Krissie  29:45 

Yeah, especially with data.

Gerry McGovern  29:47 

They're about a month ago, we were looking at the blackberries out on the, you know, the roadsides or the hedges and, and I was thinking now if this was a big data problem, Look, what would what would Big Data people do? They'd hire a huge digger, and a trailer. And they'd go out and they take off all the hedges, you know, for a five or 10 mile radius. And then they'd bring them back to a huge yard, and they dumped them in that yard. And then they'd start looking for the berries. Yeah, that's the way we approach big data, we collect, you know, all of this stuff. And most of it is, is absolute crap. It's totally, it's totally never, it would never be used. Because when you look at it, at a level of data, you get down to a certain level, there is data, that is totally, absolutely without question, useless. You know, it's like you saved, for some reason the system is outputting Excel files, and CSV files, you know, there's these sorts of it, and you only need Excel files or you only need CSV files. Yeah. Or there's a duplication happening here, or there's a, you know, there's this happening, or there's, like, there's things happening in data, that anybody any sort of analysis would look at it, we don't need that that's a, that's not used, there's no way we'll ever use that. You know, I don't care whether we bring in 50 Einsteins, that's just not usable. And that can be 20, 30, 40, 50% of the data being being collected, and not alone is it not useful if you're training the AI on crap.

Krissie  31:35 

Yeah for sure. And then their technology isn't right, then, if they're learning.

Gerry McGovern  31:42 

It's getting these strange biases, or these strange, you know, behavior patterns. Because, you know, if AI was a human, you know, we bring it into McDonald's every day and force it to eat everything, you know, 15 Big Macs, and eat and then go to the West Bend and eat that as well. You know, that's, that's the way we're training our AI. Our AI is will be strange beasts.

Krissie  32:09 

Oh weird, what a strange thought. So in your opinion, then. So say if you're building an app, what are the most important considerations that they should think about? For example, like, I don't know, a customer review app, which integrates on Shopify stores. Like how can they decide which data they collect, and which they don't?

Gerry McGovern  32:40 

Yeah, so number one, do you even need the app? Or do you know like, I downloaded the government app for COVID-19? I don't know if it works any more, you know, or is it really useful? Or, you know, is it practical? You know, we don't ask those hard questions like, Oh, you know, this really requires Bluetooth, to work effectively. Like, is that, you know, is Bluetooth stable? Will it really collect? You know, so really asking, is this one, you know, kind of, can we collect this properly and efficiently and  really digging into, you know, we're coming out at the cult of move fast and break things and we've seen, they've broken a lot, you know, Facebook, et al, they've, they've really managed to break America kinda to break the USA. They've move fast, and they broke the USA, in,  their cult of speed and stuff like that, and a little bit of thoughtfulness and about, what are we trying to achieve? And can we achieve it through the website? Why do we need an app? You know, why can it not be, can it not work, true to you, what does it actually need to really do? And then, you know, even if we're unsure of our data, well say, well, well, let's collect for six months or three months, or, like, why do we need to track like, and what can we achieve by not tracking? Like, what if we say to, you know, what's the cost of tracking? You know, what can we say, to, you know, the customer, like, we don't track you. What's that world? You know, what sidewalk as a branding statement, you know, no tracking here. You know, we we'll chat with you, but we don't track you. We don't collect information on you, you know, other than if you buy something from us, but here's exactly what we collect. And otherwise, you know, we don't and how much faster will our page with things be if we don't track and you know, and If we don't do this not enough people ask, what's the benefits of not doing this?

Krissie  35:05 

Exactly! And also, I was going to ask you, if I was trying to persuade a tech company, like don't store this data, because it damages the planet, because dot dot dot? What would those... how would you fill in those dots?

Gerry McGovern  35:21 

Well, speed will be well, privacy and, you know, definitely, you know, and I think there's a big moment. I think there's a building tsunami of privacy coming of people, you know, wanting to be protected and wanting to be more anonymous, and, you know, much more skeptical about people collecting their data, I really get a sense that a movement gathering momentum, so I think the organisations that are positioned in the future, that actually are the least intrusive, you know, in people's lives will, you know, have a real positioning statement of, you know, sustainability will probably be a key element of that will be, you know, minimum collection of data, because the less data, the less waste. You know, there's every piece of data requires energy to create and to store. Yeah. So, you know, and of course, the less data created, or the less tracking, the faster, the better the experience on the page downloading. I see. Yeah. New York Times have announced they're, they're stopping cookies, you know, they're, moving. And see, most of this doesn't even work. You know, I've seen in studies that you get just as good an advertising return from contextual advertising than from all this. But most of it is, most of it is trickery. And it's, it's, it doesn't actually work. Like it actually, it's just phantasmagoria stuff. It's magic. You know, Google said years ago, they got rid of the magic in advertising. No, they didn't, they just, they brought back the magic micro targeting God, called Google. Most of the times, it doesn't actually work, putting an ad for sports shoes, or whatever, in the sport section is just as effective as trying to target me, you know, and understand that now I need sports shoes, like so. So no, this stuff actually doesn't work. So find out what actually works. And, you know, at least if you're going to destroy the planet, have a purpose to destroy. You know, if you if you're going to create waste and use energy, at least use it for a purpose, but to create waste just to fill a dump. Yeah. You know, so purposeful. And knowing that, you know, there is a there is an argument to go out there to consumers and say, well, we are, you know, we're in the lowest tier of tracking, we collect the minimal amount of information on you. Certainly, that's the type of company I'd be interested in doing business with.

Krissie  38:24 

Yeah, for sure. I think at the moment, the struggle is that, you know, personalisation in e commerce is a really big trend. And it has been for a while. And so you know, you get personalised emails, where the recommended products based on what you've previously purchased. And so if your company is based on that, and like, that's what your USP is, we're a personalisation app.

Gerry McGovern  38:51 

Yeah, and if it's working, it's what, you know, but a lot of these are not working, you know, they're actually not work. I saw studies that you know, something 80 90% of these personalisation projects did not show return on investment. A lot of this stuff is magic. You know, it's, it's snake oil sales, it's actually not as effective as it's been made out to be. You know, so is it actually working? You know? Like, is it actually all these personal emails? You know, or is it just annoying the hell out to your customers? You know, for every for every one that you convert, have you have you pissed off 20 more?

Krissie  39:36 

Yeah. Because I think, you know, yeah, like you said, you're gonna piss people off, and if they're more switched on to it now, it's like, oh, that's just a personalised ad.

Gerry McGovern  39:49 

I don't know about you, Krissie. But every time I get an email from anybody, you know, and like that, the first thing I got is straight unsubscribe. I said I didn't give them permission, you know, everybody  seems to think they can bombard you? You know, and and I go straight unsubscribe or, you know, they're going into junk or whatever. So I think then, because everyone is doing, everyone's trying to be personal with you, and, you know, think of how creepy that is.

Krissie Leyland  40:29

Yeah, yeah. So I guess, then the three things that you would recommend is to think, is this actually going to be, Is this going to work? Do I need this data? And if not, then don't store it.

Gerry McGovern  40:49

Yeah, don't. And maybe there's an angle, you know, that you could test even if you've got numerous companies, or you're an open start and you say, you know, you come out, you're young, you're a start, and you say, we're not creepy. We don't personalise, we don't collect. Well, you won't be getting tons of emails from us, I promise, you know, you, we will not be bombarding you. You know, that's our commitment. Could that work? Or we will only send you six emails a year maximum.

Krissie Leyland  41:25

You know, only if we really need to email you.

Gerry McGovern  41:28

Yeah. You know, so we're not going to annoy you. That's part of our commitment. That's part of our total calculation, you know, of, the total cost of this T shirt. You know, because the 15 customised emails are part of the T shirt as well, cost as well. You know, and, the data it sucked up. So, you know, I think there's a conscious consumer out, or more conscious consumers. I mean, I hope there is because if we, if there isn't, we have no chance.

Krissie Leyland  42:03

There is. That's what the MindfulCommerce community is. So, but then a brand might argue, right, so if I'm not going to send any emails, I'm probably not going to be on social media that much. So how do I get my message out there? How do I tell people about this new product that we've got that is sustainable and it is ethical?

Gerry McGovern  42:26

Well, maybe maybe, you are on, you are calculating you know, are you saying, we will just send you six emails a year, you know, we will just say, you know, and our emails are, X number of K, you know, and actually two of those will be text only, you know, for those who read, and we will, we use social media, but we don't, we only use video, every 50 post and we really think about video. And we tend to use text. And, you know, we use SMS messages in a clever way, because an SMS message creates 295 times less pollution than an email. You know, so there's different scales up from, from a text message to an email, to an audio to a video, like 30 seconds of video is like 60,000 or 100,000 or 200,000 text messages, you know, one 30 second, you know, so, you know, we're careful. And we compress well, and we do all these sorts of things. But if I thought, you know, somebody was consciously, you know, connecting with me, like, I'll open, if they do send me an email, then, you know, from, you know, that ring, they fixed the ring. Yeah, but we're bombarded you know, we just bomb everybody's telling us how much they care about us during COVID-19 whether they're airlines, you know, like, whatever.

Krissie Leyland  44:08

I delete those ones now.

Gerry McGovern  44:10

Yeah, well, it's all a blur, isn't it? Like, it's all you just, you just thought you want to live your life a bit like, you know, so? I think that there's a space as you say, for, for mindful commerce.

Krissie Leyland  44:26

Yeah, definitely. And and I think, you know, when we are back to normal, because we will get back to normal, or the new normal. Instead of emailing and you know, social media, maybe we'll be able to do more events and like, you know, community events. And then they can promote their brand that way. But yeah, I like the idea of just having just saying, right, we're not collecting your data, we're not going to target you. And here's all the reasons why.

Gerry McGovern  44:57

Yeah, or here's all the data, here's what we collect on you. And it's typically only 20% of what others will collect. And you can go out and check that, you know. So we say, we need to collect it, you know, or we feel or this helps, because we want to keep the size your size of your shoe. You know, and, and we will let you know, but only, you know, if, in a maybe in two years or, and we take back your shoes, we will repair them and sell them or, you know, or, you know, that's our sort of stuff. It's really, truly useful from both sides. You know, it's not it's not "No", you know, but some, some environments will say we actually, we don't need any. Some will say, you know, actually, when we look at it, the nature of our product, we don't need to collect anything. So all we need to collect very little, but really thinking that every, every collection is an invasion. Tracking, I mean, when the tracking ever seemed like a positive thing. You know, think of the very word tracking, you know? And the dangers inherent in being tracked? Who wants to be tracked? 

Krissie Leyland  46:20

I just don't know if anyone is aware, like, because businesses aren't that transparent about it, or, you know, there's this really long chunk of text telling you about the data, and you just accept it without reading it, because you just don't have the time to read it. So they get away with it.

Gerry McGovern  46:37

Yeah.

Krissie Leyland  46:39

Yeah. So if, if brands are more transparent, about if they are collecting data, why they are, then I think that's okay.

Gerry McGovern  46:49

Yeah, and, you know, let's see real sustainable brands, mindful brands that, you know, are not out to screw us, are not out to fool us and not out, you know, and say, here's a reason, here's our problem. Yeah, great. You know, I think there's lots of people want to buy gold from those sorts of people. Yeah, you know, that, work hard and create beautiful things and that are genuinely useful and are repairable and are, you know, use as natural products as possible and don't use too many chemicals in the creation. You know, there is nothing wrong with that. That's a nice story. That's a good story. And, and if we need to collect some data, to make that story work, that's okay. But we do, we think about it, you know, what do we need to collect, what's really necessary, you know, and, you know, we're constantly trying to reduce the waste, whether it's the waste in the data, or the waste and the garment or the waste in the laptop, like, you know, for not, if we're not processing all this stupid data, then the laptop will last another year. 

Krissie Leyland  48:13

Yeah, good point. 

Gerry McGovern  48:14

Oh, you know, because the less stress I mean, if you don't drive your car as much your car last longer to, generally speaking, you know, so. So computers, like everything else, are affected by use, and if there's lots of intensive use, and so if you're not processing, if you're only processing, one gigabyte versus 30 gigabyte, that's, it's less energy, it's less stress on the parts. And you didn't need that other 40. And a lot of it is comes back to this mindfulness of really thinking about what you're doing, rather than just grabbing everything, and then bringing it all back home and saying "Now what? Oh, I don't want this, I don't want this, don't want this, don't want this" you know, be much more conscious about our decisions. And technology, the great danger of technology, Is that it is it stopping us actually thinking.

Krissie Leyland  49:15

Yeah, it is. Especially when you're sending an email and it finishes your sentence for you. And you're like, Oh, so I don't need to use my brain nails.

Gerry McGovern  49:27

Yeah, and that a, then you use it less and less and then we just become addicts. We don't, you don't, we lose our sense of agency in our very lives and then we start doing things to our customers because we don't, they're not it's not even that is, It's some it's some AI record on McDonald's data. Yeah, no, that's bombarding customers because of some flaw in the, in the connection or the interpretation of the data, because here's the thing about customisation. It can be wonderful. It can work. But when you get it wrong, you can get it extraordinarily wrong.

Krissie Leyland  50:17

Oh, gosh, so true. Do you have an example of someone who's got it? 

Gerry McGovern  50:22

Well you know, try, you know, all of these things like, you know, figuring out, you know, that, hey, someone in your household is pregnant, why not buy some clothes for the baby, or, you know, that has actually happened, or, you know, or, you know, all sorts of things where, you know, Facebook would be showing pictures of children who had died and families and so on the, the remembrance, or the, you know, what nice things happened this year, you know, it can get really, really ugly in people's lives. I mean, and look at the way these algorithms really operate. The work on our worst instincts. I mean, we see, I mean, the society that AI is building is not a pretty society in the USA at the moment, you know, it's not a pretty society, it is not building the society that tech is building. We are the customisation in or the targeted advertising. And it's not it's not a pretty society, we, you know, the USA is the most tech advanced society on Earth. Is that, is that the future we want for the world?

Krissie Leyland  51:43

Probably not. I think we need to talk about all of this more so that people realise what's going on. And then... because basically it you know, big tech companies are manipulating us. 

Gerry McGovern  51:55

Yeah, and all they care about, and these those big tech companies, they have no, they have no nations, they don't belong. They may be in Silicon Valley, but, you know, their accounts are in the Cayman Islands, or they they don't exist in any community. They have no loyalty to nothing. Other than the accumulation of the maximum, they don't, they will... Look at them, they make the biggest profits of any companies on earth, and they pay the least taxes because they are optimised to screw the earth basically. I mean that's what Facebook and Amazon are, screw the earth, that's their optimisation model. You know, maximise profit, minimise tax. It's not that they're bad people or, you know, it's just that that's the machine they've built. 

Krissie Leyland  52:47

Yeah. Oh, crazy times. 

Gerry McGovern  52:52

Yeah but not, but not, beyond our reach yet.

Krissie Leyland  52:56

We can still stop can't we? We can still make a difference.

Gerry McGovern  53:01

I think so. I mean, we at least have to try.

Krissie Leyland  53:04

Yeah. More conversations like this, I think.

Gerry McGovern  53:08

Yeah.

Krissie Leyland  53:10

Um, so if you could give one tip to our listeners. So they are e-commerce, tech developers and e-commerce brands, what would that tip be?

Gerry McGovern  53:22

I mean, I think move slow and fix things, you know, and be thoughtful, be mindful. Think about your decisions more. I mean, this, you know, agile and sprinting, it's great, but you can sprint in the wrong direction. Like, and really thinking about the decision before we make it and the parameters of the decision, I'm thinking, we've got trapped in this total short term loop of, we can't think beyond a week or a month. We got to think longer. And we can, and it requires exercise and requires disciplines and requires doing maybe games or whatever, to actually stretch our minds, you know, like, like, we stretch our muscles who we need to stretch our minds. We still can, we've got this wonderful human brain that is actually still much more efficient than the most efficient AI, you know, like that consumes the energy consumption, you know, of the brain, it's about 20 watts an hour. Think of all the stuff that the brain does for 20 watts an hour. It's good value. And it's an it's the most sustainable thing you know, that that's out there. So getting people and, designing things, you know, that get people out there, away from the machines. Like that they're taking walks or you know, enjoying food or they're, you know, because everything in digital is consuming energy. So how do we get help people using technology partly but to live their lives more in nature rather than in technology? In technology 20% at a time rather than 80% and I don't mean no technology, but that like getting people to be more human, because we are human. We are not machines yet we are not circuit boards.

Krissie Leyland  55:32

No, not yet. You said yet, does that mean we might be one day?

Gerry McGovern  55:36

We will be, we will gradually become, you know, over 50 or hundred years, we will become, we will have brain implants. And we will have, you know, eye implants and become a time where we either when did the human stop and the sidebar begin I'm sure that, you know that. But that is a potential outcome of the way things are progressing. If we're not, unless we say well hold on a minute, do we really want to go this path but right now, we're still human. Unless in giant here, we made lots of mistakes. And hopefully we can learn. But right now we are flesh and bone and brain and if we do that, right, we can be less impactful on the environment, and less destructive. Combining the best of technology with the best of humans. I think that's the perfect outcome, but just treating technology as if it's some sort of a magic God, like, we are so susceptible to this idea of the God that knows it all. That'll figure it all out for us. And really, we replaced, you know, the traditional gods, with Apple and Google and Facebook and AI and they will no more lead us to a blissful world than the old ones really did.

Krissie Leyland  57:13

Amazing, very powerful. Very powerful answer, Gerry. Thank you. Thank you so much. So Gerry, where can people find you and how can they find out more?

Gerry McGovern  57:28

Worldwide Waste is available at GerryMcGovern.com. You can read it for free there or buy a copy of it.

Krissie Leyland  57:38

This series is sponsored by Kollectify. Kollectify is a content marketing agency working specifically with Shopify solutions to successfully position and promote the app or agency. Episodes go out every Monday so don't forget to subscribe or you might miss a few knowledge bombs. And finally, if you'd like to join the MindfulCommerce community with lots of conscious brands and e-commerce experts, who are all working together to make change, please email [email protected] and I'll send you the deets!

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Links mentioned:

CarbonClick Website
CarbonClick Facebook
CarbonClick Instagram
CarbonClick Climate Friendly Cart on Shopify
Contact Jan - [email protected]

Show notes:

Krissie Leyland  00:00

Hello, and welcome to episode number two of the MindfulCommerce podcast. In this episode I, Krissie, talk to Jan from Carbon Click, a carbon offsetting platform that makes it really easy to add carbon offsets to the checkout. We talk about how e-commerce merchants and their customers can offset their carbon footprint and why CarbonClick feels this is important. We hope you enjoy this episode as much as we did. If you have any thoughts or questions, please feel free to email us at [email protected]. And as always, the full details of this episode will be in the show notes. Would you like to introduce yourself and CarbonClick?

Jan Czaplicki  00:41

Thanks, Krissie. Pleasure to be here. So yes, obviously, my name is Jan. Difficult surname Czaplicki. The origin of that, I guess is, I'm from Norway, but my parents are Polish. So that's why I have that difficult surname. Spent some time in London and funny that we, you know, used to live not too far from each other a few years ago. Well, now I'm actually in New Zealand. So on the absolute other side of the world, which is, you know, quite exciting and really the grand scheme of things because it feels like we're just, you know, neighbours. So, yeah, well, as you said, I'm co founder of CarbonClick and CarbonClick is carbon company, what we sort of the story that we normally say, when introducing CarbonClick is it started when I was working at an airline back in the day when you know, used to fly, one of the selections in that booking process is, do you want to offset the carbon emissions of your flight? And it got me thinking, this is a relatively simple question. But for the airline, it was not an easy feat to add that. So that sort of initial thought led me to go into a rabbit hole. And a few weeks later, me and a few other colleagues, we ended up thinking, what if we could make this question, make it very simple for businesses to ask their customer "Do you want to contribute with a carbon offset at the checkout?" And yeah, two years later, we have pretty much launched our system and we might get into this in detail later but it's really a off the shelf carbon offsetting platform with multiple ways to enter that platform. One of the ways is a Shopify plugin. But we also have other channels to that core system. And, yeah, we officially launched during COVID, which is terrible time to launch any business. But it's been a very exciting journey so far, and got some good, good traction and good early results. So really excited about that.

Krissie Leyland  03:04

That's great. So did you first launch in e-commerce straightaway? And or was there anything else that you thought about launching the app for so offsetting?

Jan Czaplicki  03:17

Yeah, great question. So yes, because we were sort of born at an airline, we were initially focusing on airlines, airports and tourism. Then COVID came along, and that entire sector went sort of to a hibernation mode, where the business, the core business is at risk. So sustainability, unfortunately, for a lot of those businesses, takes a second sort of back row seat and those projects we had going with those businesses were either put on hold or cancelled, which is really unfortunate. But because we had built that core system that was effectively untouched, and when I was initially designing the system, I was designing it with the size of the problem in mind. So climate change is absolutely the biggest problem out there. So I always thought we need a very flexible core system to support more or less any business to use it, use CarbonClick. So it was very easy for us to, I avoid using the word pivot, it was very easy for us to refocus to e-commerce and we went ahead, we had a prototype Shopify plugin and we decided one of the industries that COVID will not impact will be e-commerce. So we decided to focus purely on e-commerce for a number of months. And yeah, we tidied up our Shopify plugin and started offering that to the world. And 450 merchants later, we're starting to see some some good early results. Which is very exciting.

Krissie Leyland  05:01

That's really cool. So in e-commerce then, what are the things that you offset? So where's the biggest impact coming from in e-commerce?

Jan Czaplicki  05:10

Yeah. So this is, this is a great question because we initially thoughth "Hey, let's try to have some smarts behind the system." Let's try to offset the freight or offset, and then approximation of the product's carbon footprint. But when we went out to talk to users, and we tried to do this, as much as possible is just to understand who our users are, and what do they want? They were very often kind of confused when we said "Do you want to offset your freight for 17 cents?" or whatever it was, it was normally a very low, low figure. And I remember specifically, this one gentleman told me "You know what, if you're asking me to carbon offset, just make it meaningful. Like, I've already read that sentence, I don't want to offset 17 cents, I want to offset at least a dollar." So that became our go to market offering and although we're still working on a clever calculator in the background, normally, merchants and consumers are very happy with a round figure, because with $1, or with £1, you're offsetting, sorry, I can't do conversion in my head. But it's quite a few hundred kgs of co2 that you're offsetting with a relatively small contribution. And when you're looking at individual product, that's actually not that big of a carbon footprint. Take a T shirt, for example, that's about 15 kgs, similar with a pair of shoes, 10 to 15 kgs. So why not ask the customer to offset some carbon and make it as impactful as possible, which is where we're at right now. And it's having, it's a interesting approach that merchants are really enjoying and customers are also providing great feedback on so we might actually stay with that.

Krissie Leyland  07:07

Yeah, that's great. And it might be then that they're actually offsetting more than the product. So you know, if it's 17 cents, that the product is the weight in carbon, for example. Then they might be offsetting more than that by donating or not donating but giving $1 of offsetting $1. And so when you say that you're doing things in the background to measure more and more accurately, I guess, what is it that you're looking at? How do you see yourself? As a business, how are you measuring carbon usage of an e-commerce purchase?

Jan Czaplicki  07:50

Yeah, so because just coming back to that sort of original thought I had where this has to be scalable, has to be a mass scale, because the problem is so huge. So we thought, any small medium, and quite a few large e-commerce businesses, they don't have the capacity to go in and do deep dives into the carbon footprint of their product. So what we're looking to build, and this is still in the research phase for us, is a system that will approximate the carbon footprint of everything you're selling by using data that's already out there. And what it will do is it will look at, at what you're selling, so identified, let's say it's a pair of shoes, and it will look at any other information that has about that product you're selling. So for example, if your shoes are made in Vietnam, it will look into the database, and it will see okay, we know how much a shoe made in China, the carbon footprint of a shoe made in China. But what that tool will do in the background is will actually just change some of the so called emissions factors in the background, adjust them for Vietnam, and give you an approximation of, Hey, your shoes are approximately this carbon footprint. And I'm super passionate about this project. But yeah, I'm so glad we went live with with an MVP or with a basic offering because I think there's minimum six months left of research, just figuring out how to solve this problem before we can start offering merchants one of these sort of clever calculators in the background.

Krissie Leyland  09:30

Yeah, it's so huge. It's so huge. And that's talking about the product and then, you know, you've got the shipping and then the digital footprint and so much and it's like, like a rabbit hole. Once you start, you can't stop but it's kind of like yeah, it's just an entire journey, isn't it?

Jan Czaplicki  09:50

Yeah, I agree. And it feels sometimes like the more you dig into it, the harder it gets to take a step forward. Which is actually one of the, one of the main reasons why. So I started with the story with, you know, the airline example but what I'm thinking is that this is a powerful tool, this carbon offsetting thing. Because it's difficult it, or it's confusing, or you don't have all the data you need, it becomes too hard and merchants and people, businesses all around the world are putting it into the too hard basket. And that there I think, is real wasted opportunity, because carbon offsets are a tool in the toolkit of sustainability. And they are effective, and they work now. So I think unlocking some of that potential is going to be a real well, it will contribute to solving the climate change problem.

Krissie Leyland  10:53

Yeah, definitely. Hundred percent. I mean, I think you could say, well, just don't buy that product at all. But if you really need it, then that's when you would offset. What, in your opinion, you know, say for example, now you're on holiday, and you've flown somewhere and obviously, your story started from flying and seeing that you can offset. So are, have you already offset this holiday? Where did you go and how does that look?

Jan Czaplicki  11:24

Yeah, so that, that there. You've touched upon something that I'm... is actually contributing to me feeling kind of bad about my holiday. So yeah, we did. We did take a flight to get this holiday and most people don't know, but flying is actually one of the worst things you can do in terms of your carbon footprint. So local holidays, if you can swap flight for local holiday, that makes a huge difference. But yeah, I'm also moving towards the slightly more practical approach that there's a certain lifestyle people have, and there's around, I would say there's probably 10,000, at least solid initiatives globally, that are being researched or implemented to help people reduce the carbon footprint of their life. For example, flying sooner, I think, than many people realise we will have lower carbon ways of flying. So coming back to your question, I think one of the things... Firstly, yeah, do avoid holidays or flying if you can, don't avoid holidays, avoid flying if you can. But if you decide to fly, try to make it short, which is what we did. And if you are flying, make sure you do carbon offset, because it is a way to reduce some of that environmental impact that your flight is having. And what we've done at CarbonClick is we have created and this is still in early beta, but open to you sharing it with your audience if they would like is a product for teams or groups of people. So we as CarbonClick the company we have subscribed, or yeah.... subscribed is the right word. We have subscribed to our ourselves, our own offering and we are creating a climate positive team. So all our staff at CarbonClick, we buy carbon offsets on a monthly schedule. And we will offset the average person's footprint. So people have a lesser impact or sort of our team has lesser impact on the environment. And that's just one way we're using that core system to help reduce environmental impact.

Krissie Leyland  13:57

Yeah, okay. Actually, I've never, so I used to fly quite a lot. And I never knew until recently about offsetting. I think it could be made easier and more, you know, there should be more awareness around it. I also think you shouldn't feel guilty for you know, because, like you said, it's lifestyle, and as long as we're reducing our impact and you know, like you said, taking shorter flights and just considering it before you do it. "Do I really need to do this?" or  "Do I really need to buy that?", then yeah, I think...

Jan Czaplicki  14:33

Yeah, exactly. We're certainly on a journey and that goes there's so many parties involved, like governments are on journey in a way "Are you adopting strict sort of climate change policies?", then businesses are on a on a journey, you know, "How much are you embracing sustainability as a business?" and individuals are on a journey. So I guess what is I think important is for people to recognise that they're on a journey and start to take action on on certain things. For example, one of my favourites is slight diet adjustments. So, you know, I love my burgers, but I'm actually pretty much equally satisfied by a high quality vegetarian burger as I am with a meat burger. And that I think those are some of the ways you can personally take action to reduce your footprint. Same with secondhand clothing. I think there's a huge opportunity in that space for more people to start using secondhand clothing. And yeah, offsetting as well, I guess, very few people are engaging with carbon offsets. And it is, like I mentioned earlier, it is a valid tool that does support projects that are fighting climate change. And yeah, if we made that easy, little bit more like an Uber experience, then hopefully we can see more people engaging with that and eventually seeing even more funds being funnelled to projects that are either avoiding emissions or actually sequestering carbon from the air. So quite a few exciting projects out there that are doing that.

Krissie Leyland  16:14

Yeah. So when somebody uses CarbonClick to offset, say, for example, at checkout, when they've just bought something online, where does that go? So you mentioned project. So what are the projects that you are supporting?

Jan Czaplicki 16:29

Yeah, so what we did here was, we wanted to understand where do people want to see their money go and add that sort of gut reaction, or the first thing people say is "I really want to see my local environment being reforested." And this is one of the things that I struggle with with carbon offsets, is there's a general perception that carbon offsets are tree based, because people associate carbon offsets with trees, but trees are just an average way to sequester carbon. They're prone to lots of issues. Not all trees survive, and there's forest fires and things like that. So what we did is we decided, Okay, half the funds are going to go to a tree based project, because this is what people really associate with carbon offsetting. And we try to make it local as well. So we don't have a local UK project yet. But we have local projects in the US, Australia and New Zealand, where we're from. So there is that component of the local environment being reforested or yeah. Then the other half goes to, I call them high impact projects and there's a number of different types of projects that fall into this basket. But generally, they're in developing countries, where there's generally a high carbon intensity of various things. And what I can mention here is solar power and wind power, so that those energy sources are replacing coal. Normally, that's used to power the grid. But there's also lots of other cool projects like clean burning cookstoves, so people don't need to go and collect firewood, they're using a much cleaner burning gas, that it's often collected, actually off of a waste, agricultural waste to cook on. That has lots of benefits, really much better for health because people aren't breathing in smoke. And actually, that really, that's a really good segue to co-benefits, which is one thing I think people really need to recognise with carbon offsets is that they have so many great benefits in addition to carbon and those benefits are often encapsulated with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. So I recommend anybody listening if they're looking at carbon offset projects, look for projects that address many of those Sustainable Development Goals. So yeah, long story short, we put half the funds into local reforestation or forest conservation projects and the other half is to international projects and we really love clean energy projects and those cookstove projects.

Krissie Leyland  19:26

Amazing! Yeah, what was it? You said the co...?

Jan Czaplicki  19:29

Co-benefits? Yeah, so it's almost like carbon is just the currency, right? You could look at different currencies like biodiversity  currency or health of the community currency or equal working opportunities, or education, sort of community, education currency. All those could really be included in a carbon offset, but it's generally the carbon that is the currency of these projects. So in terms of carbon offsetting projects, I think there's a movement towards even greater recognition of all the other things that these carbon offsetting projects contribute to.

Krissie Leyland  20:12

Yeah, that's amazing! So changing the subject slightly, as Christmas is not that far away. What's your opinion on big sale days like Black Friday, Cyber Monday? Do you think brands should participate? And do you think you'll see an increase in people offsetting?

Jan Czaplicki  20:37

Ah, that's a great question. I was recently informed there's a alternative to Black Friday called Green Friday, I don't know if you've heard. It's quite, quite exciting that sort of counter trend there. But just having learned much more about the realities of e-commerce and how these businesses are struggling actually to, to sustain it's a very tough business to run an e-commerce business. I think Black Friday, will exist and in a way, it's, you know, like I mentioned earlier, this is the reality of the society we live in, people are buying, and there's sales, and there's days where there's extra good sales. I don't really have any particular issue with with Black Friday, or the fact that humans consume What I think is useful, or would be great is if we include sustainable sustainability in that consumption. So when we go looking for a deal on Black Friday, and I'm talking to the consumer now. Look for businesses that focus on sustainability, like these are, there's so many merchants out there and we as consumers, we have a real power and where we spend our dollar. These businesses are forfeiting, often near term profit, to implement sustainability in their brand. And they are relying on the consumer to go and recognise that so they have a long term gain. So I would say for Black Friday, as a consumer, go and engage, sorry, spend your dollars with businesses that are focusing on sustainability. And equally for merchants, make sustainability a big thing. Make a statement, attract those people that care about sustainability. And here I'm thinking, there's so many ways you can take action as a consumer, as far as a business.

Krissie Leyland  22:34

Tell me a list of things that a merchant can do in terms of sustainability on Black Friday, or in general?

Jan Czaplicki  22:44

Yeah, so there's, there's quite a few things. And one of the things we look for is to help merchants on that journey because it is a journey and some businesses are further down that journey. But I in particular, like there's a few things that I like suggesting to merchants, and one of the things is sustainable packaging, so it's really visible to the consumer, and it actually has a pretty good impact on the environmental impact of the things you're shipping. The other thing that I'm really fond of is, you can really simply change your power provider of the business, to a power provider that provides renewable energy, that's another one. Slightly harder is to actually look for local suppliers. So very often, your products have a, you know, high international sort of footprint in terms of where it's manufactured. Very often supporting local is, is both really great for the local economy and the environment footprint is quite significantly reduced. And yeah, you can very often meet the people that work on your products. And you can also get higher quality products which is which is also a really big thing and the sort of big, big picture of sustainability. We also, there is a relatively big component in terms of the shipment. So fast shipping normally involves air freight, so there's a bigger carbon component associated with that. So maybe look to promote the regular delivery a little bit more. And yeah, that's, that is my top tips. What we do just to because I just got a little bit distracted there what we do is as CarbonClick when a merchant installs climate friendly cart, obviously we add a, as part of that we add a little green button to the checkout, which adds a carbon offset. But what we really want is to help the merchants do things in house that reduce the environmental footprint of their business. So we've commissioned, so we have a lot of fashion merchants. So we recently commissioned the researcher to look into the fashion trends and ways for fashion merchants to address sustainability. We have a e-commerce specific footprint guide, which lists a bunch of tips and ideas how to reduce the environmental impact of your business. And yeah, we we want the business to really join us on a journey of sustainability. So the proposition becomes a little bit like, hey, as a business, here are all these things you can do to reduce the carbon emissions of your business and the carbon intensity of your business and how do you embrace sustainability as a business to have a lower impact on the environment and also attract those customers that care about environmental impact? And then with the green button, the customer can join that journey, and offset. So it becomes a little bit of a complimentary thing. So, the business is doing as much as they can to reduce and the customer, if they want to, they can join at the checkout and add a carbon offset. So that's, that's a little bit of where the storyline is going with us.

Krissie Leyland  26:38

That's cool. So do you have like a place where the business can show like how much impact they're having or not? Do you have anywhere that can show the numbers, so the business can be like, look at what we're doing, you can do it too. That kind of thing, you know, like a community that you've built?

Jan Czaplicki  27:01

Yeah, so we are just building out this area of the system. So we have this concept of cumulative impact. And generally, for Shopify businesses, we are offering the CarbonClick sort of universal, cumulative impact. So because there's a lot of small stores on there, not many... there's not that much impact on a business by business case to show. So having said that, some businesses are in themselves doing, you know, hundreds and thousands of offsets. As in both the business is offsetting, but also the customer is offsetting when those numbers are significant. So what we do there is we let the business have a cumulative impact dashboard themselves.

Krissie Leyland  27:50

Yeah.

Jan Czaplicki  27:51

And that, yeah, we're just, this is shortly, shortly to be launched. But we are looking to have a cumulative impact dashboard that the merchant can show to their customers and include in their, you know, sustainability story. And on the, at the far end, we also have a consumers' cumulative impact. So the idea here is that if I hit the green button on multiple Shopify sites, I should be able to see my personal cumulative impact on something we call "My CarbonClick" and you get that full impact insights all the way from the top of all businesses using CarbonClick, then the individual business potentially, that you ended up shopping with down to my individual impact, and of course, the transactions itself.

Krissie Leyland  28:41

That's really good. I think that's really powerful, because then the consumer or the business will be proud of that and show it off, and then hopefully make other people realise that they should be probably doing it, too. And join in on the movement, I think.

Jan Czaplicki  28:57

Yeah, I think I do. I do think that well, when we interviewed consumers, we know there's a really big portion of people that would offset if it was simple. And the point of where you want to offset is, you know, not end of year or is not sort of your anniversary, of whatever, normally you want to offset when you make the purchase. So that's when people feel it's logical to offset and that's where we're, that's the space where we're playing is "Hey, let's add an offset with the purchase." Let's offer this to as many businesses as possible so that throughout the year, maybe you can offset, you know, 50 or 100 times and that actually makes your life carbon neutral. So that's really the vision. That's what I'm hoping we'll get to.

Krissie Leyland  29:47

And that was actually one of my final questions that I wanted to ask. Do you think it's possible then to live a carbon neutral life?

Jan Czaplicki  29:57

Um, yeah, yeah. I mean, Absolutely it is. And funny, it's almost like carbon neutral, is starting to get a little bit like we've moved beyond that it's now all about sort of carbon positive. So being responsible for taking out more carbon than you've been personally responsible for releasing. So yeah, not only is it possible, it's relatively easy with more and more providers like CarbonClick appearing on the market. So it's really easy for consumers to take action. But with that, I have to really underline that this isn't really, you know, the silver bullet. This is a tool in the sustainability toolkit, or it's one sort of stop along the sustainability journey. It's really, really important that people recognise that there's a lot of reduction to be made, and a lot of really powerful choices we can make to impact the environmental impact that we have. So like I mentioned earlier with the ability to not even sacrifice your love of burgers, but you can choose a vegetarian alternative or an alternative meat product. Same with, you know, choosing local holidays, or buying secondhand or buying with businesses that are really passionate about sustainability. There's so many things we can do as individuals to reduce your environmental impact that, yeah, we really need to recognise that. And that is actually one, one little thing as well, that we try to do is because people, we have some some people that aren't really thinking too much about sustainability, but they are happy enough to click a green button. We have a chance to help educate those people on how to reduce your environmental footprint and that could have 10 times the impact really as as a carbon offset. So, it's a really complicated picture and it's a really complicated story that we're telling in a way. But I think we all.. well, people that are playing in this space, we're all kind of trying to make it as easy and as as good for the consumer as possible. And yeah, that's kind of my thoughts on them.

Krissie Leyland  32:23

Nice. I definitely agree that you know, reduce or refuse first, and then if you really, really have to, like, for example, if you really have to fly somewhere, then offset. I guess, in the other event that we were doing, speaking to a carbon, a low carbon design agency, and they were saying, you know, just don't do it and then but if you really have to, then yeah, offset it as like the final choice, I guess.

Jan Czaplicki  32:54

Yeah. Yeah, that is the it's such a typical sort of story, or, like visual representation, the upside down pyramid. So avoid, reduce, reuse, recycle, and kind of offset comes at the bottom there. So yeah, I'm  confident that, you know, offsets at the bottom of that pyramid have their role. We need a lot in the higher tiers as well. And, yeah, I think that's where businesses can play a big part, consumers can make choices in that space and we can move towards reducing our footprint. But also really exciting, i'm really excited about a lot of technologies that are kind of outside the hands of consumers. For example, electric vehicles or just cleaner grids, solar power, battery storage, is really taking off and hopefully, and this is really like all hands on deck situation. Hopefully, technology, lots of providers, like CarbonClick, we'll all work together, and we will help humanity reduce their carbon emissions or fossil fuel emissions and time. Because time is really running out. The atmosphere really cannot take much more carbon. We're probably looking at a very daunting task in the next 20 to 50 years to take some of that carbon out of the atmosphere, which is very difficult. But I I encourage everybody to play their part and let's do it together.

Krissie Leyland  34:40

Yeah, definitely. And I think like you said, technology is playing a really important role in that but also, everybody, humanity, we need to take action together. So, um, where can people find you then?

Jan Czaplicki  34:54

Yeah, we I guess we're on the typical social media. Facebook is the main channel for us. There's an Instagram accounts. So I should really be putting the handle. We'll put the handles in the show notes. But yeah, I'm available if you have any questions or feedback at [email protected]. Our website is CarbonClick.com. Our product on Shopify is Climate Friendly Cart. And yeah, there's quite a few other products that we're releasing to the market. They all use our, our core engine. And yeah, I'm excited to see us all work towards solving this problem. It's going to be tough, tough, next few years, but humanity has a really amazing will how to tackle these big problems together. So I have relatively high confidence on days like today that we will do it. But it's it's really, I think, people don't realise how big of a problem it is and how big of a challenge it is. So we all have to really make it top of our our agendas to play a part.

Krissie Leyland  36:08

Definitely. Amazing. Thank you so much. And thank you for developing CarbonClick, giving consumers and merchants the option to offset. I think that's it. Thank you so much.

Jan Czaplicki  36:19

Thank you Krissie and thanks so much for what you're doing as well. I think you're playing a really important part and, and the ecosystem of solutions to climate change. So keep it up. And thanks so much for your time and opportunity to talk to your audience.

Krissie Leyland  36:34

Thank you so much. Really appreciate it.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

HeyLow Website

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Mentioned Links:

Precious Plastics
Organic Basics Low Impact Website
Mastodon - Twitter Alternative
Signal - WhatsApp Alternative
Ecosia - Google Alternative

Show notes:

Krissie Leyland  00:00

Hello, and welcome to episode number one of the MindfulCommerce podcast. In this episode, I Krissie, talk to Saskia and Nico from HeyLow, a creative studio designing and building low carbon brands. We talk about the disturbing fact that the internet is dirty, and every website has a digital carbon footprint. Saskia and Nico reveal some quick and long term wins to create a low carbon brand and website. This episode is super fascinating and might completely change your mindset about the internet. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did. If you have any thoughts or questions, please feel free to email us at [email protected]. And as always, the full details will be in the show notes.

Welcome Saskia and Nico, I'll dive straight in! What made you decide to start offering low carbon web design as a service?

Saskia  00:56

So Nico, and I met at Precious Plastic, which was a year long project based in the Netherlands. We were designing and building open source machines to reduce plastic waste around the world. There was this huge community activism project but 70,000 users around the world. Anyway, Nico and I were both on the digital team. So I'm background UX, Nico's back UI and we actually worked on the digital tools together. And then, yeah, I mean, it was a year of really understanding, much deeper the climate crisis and how interconnected it is with all about different types of industries. Because we work on the web, and we had some much bigger explorations into it, and kind of finding out facts, like, the internet is actually more of a carbon producer in the sorry, then all of the airlines put together and, and so this is just like, not a narrative that we hear around what the internet is. And it really is just a large dumping ground for stuff that has to be powered by, basically dirty energy. So we decided to pair together and Nico can talk a little bit about it. He has a long background in low impact. But yeah, we just joined together because it seemed like the right thing to do. And yeah, it's been a really great response so far.

Krissie Leyland  02:23

That's amazing because yeah, you've never really think about your, well, I do now but I didn't used to think about my impact on the planet in terms of just googling something or, you know, landing on a website. You just think you can't see it, it's not physical, so you don't really think about it.

Nico  02:43

The story written around the internet, we talk a lot about the clouds. And like, it seems to be a wave, not like a physical thing. But actually, it is like it's a big spaces with a lot of computers, the servers and it takes like a lot of energies. And even you have to build the structure like the cables. You have to build the computers and charge your devices. And  because it's like, digital and not something physical. We think it doesn't exist, actually. It's real.

Krissie Leyland  03:25

Yeah, exactly. And it's just, you know, I guess. So when did you first learn about low carbon websites?

Nico  03:36

So I don't remember exactly. But my side, I think it was like something like four years ago. And, then I loved the fact about like the the flight industry, the fact the internet is more carbon intensive than the oil industry. And actually, in the news, we talk only about frying, like, the shame of things that like that. And then when I thought about I was like "Wow, Oh my god, this is like, not amazing, the opposite". And I was like, wow, maybe I should do something about it. Because it's also my watch. And yeah, it was an idea in my mind, like for four years and learn a bit about that. And yes, Saskia already told, we met last year and at some point, it was like obvious. We have to do something and walk on that small and it's also like a great design exercise actually. Yeah, for designers, it's pretty cool. It's even more exciting like to design in another way.

Krissie Leyland  04:50

Yeah. One of the people that asked the question is actually a web designer and she's like, she's hosts her website on Square Space and was just like "Oh no, this is really bad." And so she asked the question of, you know, how, what are the simple, quick wins that a web designer can do or recommend to their clients to like improve their website that's already up and live?

Nico  05:21

So the first thing is the hosting. So it's where you put your websites, which server. And for that, then you need to be, the data centre need to be run on renewable energy. You save a really a lot of carbon by doing that. And it's kind of, like it's not really about the design of the website, that model structure. It's like when you're designing a product, a physical products, is like the sourcing of materials. Let's say it's like the equivalence, the equivalence with the websites is the server and the hosting services. This is really the first step.

Saskia  06:06

It's a little difficult when it comes, because places like SquareSpace. Obviously, they don't run on renewable energy and a lot of the really big, big conglomerates that exist in the internet space. Kind of, they're not very transparent around how they actually use energy for their data centres. So it's a little bit tricky. When it is just you know, we obviously use green hosting for all of our projects. But when you're using services like SquareSpace, or other ones, it's very hard to have control over that, unfortunately. Yeah, the hosting is the most important thing.

Nico  06:44

For example, there is a lot of services using Google Cloud Platform. I think actually should be fine to use it. And Google is claiming they are like 100%, green. But in the meantime, for events, they help oil company on the job, like to perform even more. So first, that means that Google is not green. And also they got data centres in the world were like, not running on green energy. And they came out green just because they're like, compensate. They offset the emission. And we don't think is the way to do it. Like, you can't really like you can't really claim you're green because you compensate. It's like it's kind of a real thing for us.

Krissie Leyland  07:40

So offsetting is like, a secondary option.

Saskia  07:45

Yeah, I mean, you can imagine what it takes to create the energy, you know, you're pulling something out of the earth, or the infrastructure that's created to pull that oil out of the earth, and then it goes through all these ginormously complex processes to be able to be performed into energy. You can't just plant a tree to take that energy out, you know, like, you're comparing the output of carbon by, you know, powering something versus actually the entire infrastructure. And we actually need to be able to move towards a much more green infrastructure. We need to be putting out dollars, you know, and into an opportunity that makes it easy for people to be like, "Okay, cool. Like, this is really valuable to the earth now." Because while I think offsetting programs can be beneficial, they are not equal to, yeah, what it takes the infrastructure and the damage that's created of pulling it out of the earth in the first place.

Krissie Leyland  08:42

Yeah, so being green first. So using the right server, like a green, do you call it a green server?

Saskia  08:52

Yeah, green hosting.

Nico  08:53

Yeah. We can call it that. We should already like, compensate the green energy, because even the green energy are emitting carbon. Yeah, actually. So yeah, like, green green, green energy.

Saskia  09:12

It's kind of impossible to be carbon free.

Krissie Leyland  09:14

Yeah. So then, I guess, at what point in a brand's journey then, should they think about, you know, being or choosing the right platform? You know, if they've already got a website in place, is that too late?

Saskia  09:31

I think that it is not fair to say that everybody should move to be green right now. I think that obviously, if they're, if there's the time and the space and the money to move, I think that's the right time. But you know, you have to be a financially viable business before you can have the investment for that. And I do really believe in small businesses and like a much more distributed economy. So I really admire people that run their own businesses, but I actually come from a long line of family businesses. I know, I know how hard it can be. But I mean, there's no, there's no real one time. I mean, whether you're a small young business, or whether you're very well established, um, anyone can make the move. It's actually probably easier at the beginning than it is if you're much more established. But yeah, anyone can make the move at any time, I wouldn't say that there's like one time to do that.

Krissie Leyland  10:23

Okay. So do you think then So say, for example, me, I've got a website, and it's also on Square Space. And would it be more efficient to kind of swap my internet provider, build a website from scratch that is low carbon or do things like plant a tree? Like offsetting, which you said, isn't necessarily the best way. What would you recommend I do?

Saskia  10:58

It really depends if you have the time and the space and the money. You know, like, it's not so much like we said it, we don't believe that just offsetting is the same as not producing the carbon in the first place. So when when people have the time and the space, I think that's the time for them to actually move. But I don't think a low carbon website versus a website on dirty energy plus trees planting is an equal game. What do you think?

Nico  11:32

Exactly that. You could also can iterate your switch and start by maybe looking at your actual website on Square Space, try to make it lower, like removing images, or like compressing your images you have or trying to design it in another way or like, make the actual website lighter. And when you have the time, or like the budget for it, with the new one, you can maybe start from the Square Space realm. I don't know if you can export. But maybe you can just keep the same design and build it on another platform. And when you have the time and the budgets, and it's on a green server and like really plan, make a plan, don't have to be like, you know, everything at once. Yeah, it's kind of drawn is like, for everyone actually can be like, totally, totally perfect. From a day to another one, it's a kind of a journey.

Krissie Leyland  12:45

Yeah. So the simple actions would be to change the images to lower res maybe, and perhaps not having animated graphics or stuff that... yeah, takes more energy.

Nico  13:00

First, try to avoid video. Because this is really the the most heavy thing, of your data, like if you put for example, a video on a website, you're gonna know, like, a website is around, it depends. But it could be around five, three and five megabytes, I would say. And the video is just, you can click on play, and it's already five or 10 megabytes and like, just continue to play in like, I don't know, like a three minute video, it could be like 60 or 100 megabytes, depending on the quality of, but this is really offensive.

Saskia  13:46

Yeah. So it's really like lowering your website is really relative to what your website was in the first place. So, you know, like a portfolio site could be, you know, 50% lower or 80% lower versus like a larger e-commerce site. They're not going to be the same like weight at the end, but they would have reduced a similar amount. So I think I think it's hard to get all to make this exact same size. But it's more about the percentage of reduction because there's lots of different industries, some will require more images, or yeah, just depending on what your industry is.

Krissie Leyland  14:24

So then, for example, Organic Basics. Should we talk about that in terms of their lower impact version? So they've got their main site, which has all the what it looks like high, higher res images and graphics and stuff, and then their lower impact site. What do you... do have an opinion on how they've done it? Have they done it well?

Nico  14:51

So I think it's a great website. Great exercise. So this thing is a kind of easy job for them because they sell basic clothes. So like a white t-shirt, it's a white t-shirt. And then they can do what they did for the design. That means they put like just illustration. And after when you click, you can see the image in a low quality image. So it's works for basics issue. But if you have like, dresses, like shoes or like products and everything, you can't do what they did. So it's a super good exercise. But for me, the downside of that is like, they didn't switch their main websites. So that means just for now, like a marketing tool is cool. Like, like, it's really good to communicate about this programme. But could be even more cool to have like, really that as the main website.

Saskia  16:06

Yeah, that's the challenging thing about it. It's like a really great example of a low carbon website. But I would like to see like how many clothes or products they actually have sold using this material. You know, like using this philosophy? I think that it is there's a common, there is a middle ground between what they did. And there are lots of examples of websites, lots of use cases so that you can use a website like that. But yeah, as Nico said, the most important thing, well, a very important thing to a small business owner is that they have something that's good for their brand, and that converts well, and, and so like there's a combination between the two. But yeah, it's a good marketing exercise of Organic Basics, but at the same time now they have two websites. And I think one is a marketing piece and the other is where they sell clothes.

Krissie Leyland  16:53

Yeah, like just wondering if it would actually make a difference in the end? Because, yeah, like you said, they've got two websites now why not just have the one.

Saskia  17:03

I've bought from Organic Basics and I've bought from their normal website. I didn't actually, you know, I didn't go through that. Because you know, it's hard to buy just like that.

Krissie Leyland  17:13

Yeah, it'd be really interesting to kind of ask them the results. I'm hoping maybe.

Saskia  17:20

But I admire them. But I hopefully I think it's probably an experiment. And I think that we might see an evolution of something later on. Because, you know, they're obviously like very committed to finding out what works for them in a more low carbon way. So I think it's just a first step. And I, yeah, it was really cool for us to see because it was like a bigger place kind of, yeah, doing this as well.

Krissie Leyland  17:45

Yeah, I think it might be... Well, I think it's one of the only lower impact e-commerce sites on Shopify.

Saskia  17:55

Mmhmm.

Krissie Leyland  17:55

So it'd be really interesting to see the difference in how many people like shop, or make a purchase on the lower impact site in comparison to the other one?

Saskia  18:06

Yeah, like now that I've bought, I might just go to the lower impact site because I know what they have already.

Krissie Leyland  18:13

Yeah. Maybe it's returning customers that will go to the lower impact site. And then new customers will yeah, use the main one. Because they are basic items, like, you know, once you find out that you like it, it's yeah... you may as well go to the lower impact and choose that item again.

Nico  18:35

The experience is pretty good, because I don't know if I did that, but when you order on the low website, because I order on it, I wanted to see like, the whole journey and actually the email and send you at the end is even designed in a low way. They don't use an image or like weird stuff like that. It's really low. And it's pretty good design. Just it's pretty cool.

Krissie Leyland  19:08

So the entire journey, even at post, like after purchasing then with their receipts and stuff...

Nico  19:16

Only if you order on the low version of the website.

Krissie Leyland  19:20

Yeah. Interesting, hmmm. And I wonder, like, in terms of social media, then because if they're, you know, they've got the low impact website, low impact emails. I wonder what their approaches on social media and then that brings me to a social media question, which is, we've noticed that you're not on social media as much. And is that because they're bad for the planet? Or is it just a personal choice?

Saskia  19:53

Well, Nico is not on any social media because...

Nico  19:56

No, I'm just like, I start fighting against. But more like, it's not about the carbon. It's more like...

Saskia  20:09

Yeah, the power.

Nico  20:10

The power and what's happened like recently with the Black Lives Matter movement and like what Facebook did or didn't actually when like... so Trump tweet, like not tweet but sent a message. It was like "When the shooting starts... no when the looting starts the shooting starts" and like actually, I think Twitter flagged the message, but Facebook did nothing. And I started to realise like, wow, this is weird. And I did some research and I had a  look and like some thinking and realised like, for example, the Far, far right movements are like super strong because of social media in particular on Facebook. Like I just finished. And so I started like, trying to boycott on my side, like, so I removed my Instagram account and Facebook and WhatsApp. So I came back again, because some thoughts are really difficult to not live with. Like Whatsapp is really hard. But just like realise the power of this platform. And in other way, also Black Lives Matter is really important also because of social media. So in a good way or so.

Saskia  21:32

Yeah, I think that like the power, the control of these large internet companies is like way, it's way too imbalanced. And I really want to like promote, well, how power communities promote a more distributed way of how we connect online on social media, because I believe in social media. I think it's a great way to communicate. However, like I deleted my Facebook, sorry, yeah, maybe a year and a half ago, because I was so fed up with the way that they do business and the way that they like, you know, they really market on like bad feelings of anxiety and loneliness. And like, they really try to just promote this, like over consuming behaviour. And I think that that is just so, I don't know if you know the work of Tristan Harris, and he does, like, the humane tech society in San Francisco. And yeah, it's just incredible how they really design a tool like Facebook, to be towards our like animalistic behaviour of like dopamine and like, and how we kind of get these highs from this. And yeah, I much prefer social media that will promote human connection. And so I still, for me, personally, I'm still on Instagram. And we haven't actually done any HeyLow social media yet. Just because it hasn't really been a priority for us. Like we, we really, like I've been in this realm of sustainability and system change and social equality, yeah, for probably like eight or nine years. And so like, yeah, just from all the places that I've worked and collaborated with and design projects, I've just got, like quite a big large network as, as Nico has. So we're, for us in our business right now. It's... we don't need to be on social media channels. And to be honest, like, I think that we kind of went way too much on the other side from from having no social media to kind of like, just spending like 100 hours a week on it every week, you know, some people do. And it's just so unhealthy. And I want to find a way that social media has a role in our society, but it's not a controlling force. And I think at the moment, it just feels too controlling. So I look forward to more platforms that might emerge in the future that, you know, for example, like, doesn't own your data. I mean, it seems so simple to like, have a tool, I would love to use a tool like Facebook, but I don't accept that they own everything that I do online. So it's very easy. I look forward to the entrepreneurial spirits of some more ethical founders that will build products like this, because I think we're all bit keen for it. But at the moment like there's only like three things. And yeah, it's just crazy. I watched the anti trust. Well actually Nico watched all of it. I watched some of the anti trust hearings. I watch some of the anti trust hearing of like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple. It was frightening. It's really frightening how much power they have and how just they give like zero, yeah. Actual like community involvement and stuff like that. So sorry, that was a bit of a rant.

Krissie Leyland  24:55

This is great. I was just thinking then so an alternative to Google, for example, is Ecosia? I think it's called. And you know they don't store your data. So maybe they will come up with a social media platform that doesn't, or someone.

Nico  25:16

Or like we could have also like, nice to have like a decentralised platform. Think about emails, that you can choose your provider of emails like, and there is like a protocol. Like from one services to the other one, like there is like communication, but it's not like on only one. And you're still about to send messages between the providers. So yeah, the idea would be to have something like that and there is like, little ones, like, there is one can Mastodon, which is kind of Twitter.

Krissie Leyland  25:52

Okay. What How do you spell that?

Nico  25:56

Mastadon so it's

Saskia  25:59

M-A-S-T-A-D-O-N

Krissie Leyland  26:02

Oh, yes.

Saskia  26:05

There's some really cool tools coming up. Like I've seen some interesting social networks.

Nico  26:10

But the problem is, like, for example, on WhatsApp, so there is like a really cool application called Signal, which is kind of it's the same as WhatsApp. It's a message app. But the problem is like, there is no one there. Like you have to ask your friends to come in and to use it. So as the mentor, I'm like, the centralisation of like, when you meet some people, they asked for your WhatsApp accounts and stuff like that. And that is really like...

Saskia  26:42

But that might change again.

Nico  26:43

Yeah. Yeah, no, for sure. For sure. It takes time. And yeah, just wants to add about the carbon impact of social media. More on the technical side, I would say. So first, there is like the same thing as Google. They all claim they are green, or like, I think Facebook says there are 100% green, but the same as Google, like, think as they compensate. And also, like they, like they give space for like, climate denial or stuff like that sort of like it's not, it's weird. And also, there is a lot of video, like Instagram, there is the stories and stuff and it shows a lot, a lot of data. So in that way, it's not pretty good for that.

Saskia  27:34

I have a good social media, it could be around, like, curating what you want to say. And just really being careful about your message. And not so much like being careful what you have to say, but maybe not using three posts to say one thing.

Krissie Leyland  27:48

Yeah, yeah. Just being really to the point.

Saskia  27:51

And yeah exactly, which is hard in the like, mess that we have of just like so much stuff coming through there.

Nico  27:58

And maybe, you don't have to say anything, every 10 minutes.

Krissie Leyland  28:01

Yeah, yeah get on with your day. Don't worry about what other people are looking at you for. But like, I just wonder how, because being passionate about, you know, saving the planet, and I feel like my way of getting my message across at the moment is through this community, which just so happens to be on Facebook, or Instagram. And I don't know, do you have any other what, like, suggestions of how people can make an impact without using social media? Because they do have so much control? And that's where everybody is. How would you get your message across instead?

Saskia  28:46

I think the most important thing is to try and affect the community around you. I think, that like, while we think that everybody is on social media, there's also a lot of people not on social media. And I think the most powerful thing is to rally the people, your community, your family, your, you know, like when we both worked at Precious Plastics like we live, we met and live with 40 to 50 to 60 people, you know, like, dead passionate about the environment. But, um, I don't know, I think I think while it's really helpful to engage in online community, which I do, too, like it's something that I still do. And but I don't know, I think there's nothing compared to spending time with people face to face. You know, rallying local movements, local food movements, local localisation movements. It's really, and this really this, this concept around my pleasure activism, which to be a happy and grounded and connected human being is actually a method of being an activist because everything around us in society is trying to feed off our anxieties, trying to feed up what we're insecure about trying to feed off our loneliness and our you know, like our discontent with what we've achieved so far. Like that's, that's what I think is really driving this over consuming, like very much against the planet. Again, this linear economy is like, I don't know, just to, to work on ourselves and to be spend with our communities and to maybe not want to have businesses to, you know, an X amount of hundreds of thousands or but you know, just just what is the enough for you and like, kind of just, like, bring it down a level. I feel like the last period of growth is just been so focused on, you know, the individual rather than the whole of our communities and our ecosystems. And, yeah, it just, it's much more, you know, controversial, I think, to be a happy and grounded person that doesn't need to buy a whole lot of stuff like, but at the same time, like, I know that there are small businesses that need to sell stuff, but I don't know, like, I've been in e-commerce before. And I've had several go's that you know, this type of thing. And, you know, it's about like, yeah, getting what we need, and not more than that. And I think that engaging in local movement, and local communities is just an amazing form of activism.

Krissie Leyland  31:13

Yeah, I love that. And I was, like, I feel now I'm happiest, actually, when I have just enough, like, now I enjoy decluttering my life and just, you know, thinking, do I really need this? No, well, don't buy it. Even if all these ads are telling me to, no, I'm not going to do it because it's, it's not going to make me happier. It's not, you know, and just thinking about the planet more and just being more conscious about everything that I do, basically.

Saskia  31:53

And if you do produce things, and if you do sell things, then you know, do it because people want to buy it and not because you're trying to sell them an idea or, like a something that I don't know might not last, you know, it's much, much more like I buy things, I'm not saying that, like, you should never buy things again. But I think that there can be a much more holistic relationship between people making things to sell and and people buying them. And I believe in economy, and I believe in enterprise, I just don't think that we need to, like, work our entire lives to fill our houses with crap.

Krissie Leyland  32:27

Let's not do that. Um, so I'm just gonna look at, see if there's any questions that we haven't answered. But I think what, okay, so what is the number one tip that you could give to everyone when they're designing their website to make it, you know, more carbon friendly, more environmentally friendly? Out of all the tips that you've just given?

Nico  32:57

Okay, so yeah, all the tips. Because the first one is the hosting for sure. Because just to come back to that, like the carbon intensity between the two energies, like classic one and renewable one, like it's like, it's a huge difference.

Saskia  33:14

Isn't it like 19 times or something?

Nico  33:16

Yeah, maybe. I don't know. Like, we did like quick like, calculation, about a page we did design recently. Oh no actually, it was about the actual page they got. So it's a page around 10 megabytes. And so if it's run on, non, non renewable energy, like this page, if it's visited by 10,000 people each month for a year, you need 47 trees to compensate the emission, but if it's run on renewable energy, I think it's between three and four tress Its a difference like 10 times. So just that...

Saskia  33:58

And thats just one website that's not very big and only visited by 10,000. So you can imagine like the news websites the like, all the e-commerce all these big, it's just ginormous.

Krissie Leyland  34:11

Makes me so sad.

Nico  34:13

So this is really the first step and after that for sure no video if you can.

Krissie Leyland  34:20

Yeah.

Nico  34:22

And after really try to focus on the content and like not putting everything. Actually, it's really also design and like really good for your communication. Because online the attention span of people is really, really small. So it's just send like thousands of messages and you put like, I don't know many image like like lots of images, like you're losing people and but if you focus really on like, your main message and you put one or two image maybe it's way more efficient, and is going to be lighter, actually.

Saskia  34:57

Yeah, I believe that like it's not even about Low Carbon that like, you know, having a really good strategy around how you communicate your message is actually good for the planet because if you can reduce that, you can reduce people understanding what you do very quickly. And yeah, it's it's also a very big tool that we use, is by starting with the communication, which doesn't seem like a low carbon thing to do but, it's really, really, really helpful and making sure that it's curated and well received and easy to understand.

Krissie Leyland  35:28

Yeah, because the less time they're on your site thinking, "What do, what is it that you actually are offering?". then there's less impact.

Saskia  35:38

Yeah and you're less tempted to use more images to break up the content, because, you know, has a big stream of lines, they have animations, and they have images, and they have, like, all this other stuff. So yeah, it's definitely an exercise in trying to achieve that.

Nico  35:54

And an easy win also is to compress the images. There is good tools online like one is called tiny PNG.  You can go there and like, you just drag and drop your images, and you compress it and you can really, really win a lot of data.

Krissie Leyland  36:15

I think that's also good for SEO. Just as a side note.

Nico  36:20

Yeah, no, for sure. Because if you website is fast, Google likes it.

Krissie Leyland  36:27

It's like the load speed. I was just thinking then as well, you know, if you if you're, you know, when you look at Google Analytics, and you've got the bounce rate percentage, actually, now that might, if I looked at that now, I might think "Oh, that's quite good." Because if they're not spending too much time on my site, maybe it's good. Instead of thinking, "Well, no, where are they going?"

Nico  36:54

Yeah, but you could have like, the same use of bandwidth, but with more people. Because you're like, you have better communication. Next, you drive more people to your website, but as because your website is lighter like it just uses the same amount. So it's like a win win.

Krissie Leyland  37:15

Cool. So um, what are some examples of the websites that you've built? So who are your typical customers?

Saskia  37:25

I wouldn't say that we actually have a typical customer, because we do work across... yeah, people that are just willing to go low. So at the moment, we're doing a e-commerce store, like it's sustainable fashion. And that has been a very amazing and interesting journey. Because, you know, it's a lot about taking them along the journey as well. It's just like a conversation like this. And sometimes there's friction, because there's a very standard way of presenting these types of things. But we did that. We did an organisation, it's actually my organisation on it's like an NGO, based in and around India, and women's work over there. And so we were able to Yeah, that was amazing. We were able, we took that from Square Space, and we put it onto our own custom site, and the reduction was just ginormous. And that was really around removing a lot of images. And yeah, really making sure that the messages and the news, the updates, and the information was very loud and clear. We're doing this, do want to talk about some projects?

Nico  38:35

Um, yeah, we're working right now on an exhibition, we are doing the website for the exhibition.It's around imagination and our imagination work with design. Basically, there is like example of illustration, like from like 50 years ago, some snags that were people were imagining the wall today. Like for example with like a TV in the pocket, which is actually now phones and now we can like imagination can drive design and the society actually.

Saskia  39:13

And it's pretty amazing because we have to like use, we have to do an immersive experience but in as low as possible way. So you know, it's not so much like yeah, definitely not lots of videos but yeah, lots of text animations and things like that.

Nico  39:29

Yeah, and with like now, like so we start with like really like at the beginning of HeyLow and we start to add some gems and which is I found myself pretty cool is we have different type of websites, like e-commerce website, like an immersive website, and we can really test this idea of design, like philosophy and like, because it's not about building the lowest websites ever like because, this is easy like you do like on like, the HeyLow website is actually just text. And that's it. That's like for e-commerce websites, you can't do that for a massive expense. Like, you can't do like that. So it's not like getting the lowest possible. I mean, the lowest possible for that case. To still do be able to do like e-commerce websites, but trying to really lower the impact of that kind of website.

Saskia  40:31

Yeah and we're about to do like a big, big organisation website, which might be like 100 pages or something. So like, it's gonna be very different to the NGO website we did for me, which is literally like five pages. So yeah, the goal is not to get to a certain level, but more of a percentage decrease and like, show,  because not many people are doing this industry right now. So we really want to have the best examples put forward for how the internet can be like, this is what me and Nico say to each other. Like, we love the internet. We've like, we've been on the internet for 15 plus years. And it can be a really sustainable place. It's just at the moment, it's just like hurtling towards, not that. So yeah, it's more about the approach and the philosophy and the combination of who we work with plus what we think it should be, and then kind of like arriving at a new destination.

Krissie Leyland  41:25

And that's really cool. So it depends on the type of website. And yeah, so just decreasing the percentage in rather than being like, let's get it to zero.

Saskia  41:35

That would be easy, don't have a website.

Krissie Leyland  41:44

Yeah. Oh, cool.

Nico  41:47

Yeah. See, we try to work with like, sustainable companies. And if we don't work for oil companies, don't even call us.

Krissie Leyland  41:59

So what would you say that your mission is then? To lower the impact as much as possible?

Saskia  42:07

Make the internet a better place. Yes.

Nico  42:11

I do think there is true traditions, there is the design part, the web design parts, which is really trying to, as we said, like, making the internet a better place and a greener place, if we can say it like that. And I do believe there is like a mission, which is helping the brands or organisation to have a better communication and like to, to win, actually to to win...

Saskia  42:37

the hearts and minds of their viewers. Yeah, we didn't, we haven't really talked about that. But like, obviously, part of our work is the website production and the low design. But definitely a big chunk of it is, is like re-imagination, reimagining their branding and reimagining their strategy and their communication and like how they can, yeah, communicate in a much more connected way towards finding the people that are there crews and communities. And like that, which is also very, we think is like quite an important part of moving the internet to a better place, because then it just feels less cluttered and people kind of know what they're looking for.

Krissie Leyland  43:19

Yeah, I feel like by simplifying websites or the internet, it will actually make people a lot happier. Because you're not having to trawl through all this information and all this noise to get what you're looking for. It's just, it will make it easier for everyone I think. And at the same time, yeah, saving the planet.  Um, cool. Well, thank you. Um, did you have any questions for me or for the community, or anything that you'd like to just tell everybody?

Saskia  44:01

I think it can feel a bit scary when you like, learn how bad the internet can be. But I do, I think we both believe that there is a bright future for a place like this. And it is much about the design and communication, it's also about the infrastructure, it's also about the parts that we might not have visibility on. So yeah, we just kind of want to make it easier for other people to do. And in fact, we come from a very open source, like background, Precious Plastic was all open source. So once we get up and running, I do really want to publish a bit more around like, what what brands can do if they don't, you know, if they can't kind of go through a big redesign, you know, I'd really like to help out the community as a whole to say, you know, these are the things that we can, you know, start working together and it's less about having 100 HeyLow, 1000 HeyLow sites, it's more about the internet moving in a direction that is more sustainable, more connected. So yeah, hopefully sometime next year, we'll have a bit more content around like how we think that we can kind of help people in a more community like way.

Krissie Leyland  45:12

Hmm, cool. And we can we can do it together. And because together, we're stronger. And so you mentioned something else then. Precious plastics? Tell me a little bit about that. And I know that it's really cool. So you can tell everyone.

Saskia  45:33

Precious Plastic is an open source, collaborative project, designing and building machines to recycle plastic. So it was started by a guy named Dave Hakkens. Yeah, maybe four or five or six years ago. And he started building some machines and like really low flying machines. He saw that the recycling machines were very complicated, convoluted they need, you know, like the whole recycling municipality recycling system was very difficult to kind of get your head around. And he was a designer working in this area. So he made these really simple machines, that one would tread plastic one would extrude it one would, like squish it into a sheet. And anyway, so he put these plans online, open source, so people around the world could download them and like thousands of people did over the years, and they iterated on them and they sent their plans back. And so the machines have gone through several versions. And last year, but actually 2018, he did a big call out for version four and over 100 people came over the year to contribute to whether it be machines, whether it be like solutions to waste as in like biomaterials or by plastic that biodegradable materials. What else do people do product design? We did the digital tools. Okay, cooking, cooking shares, there were lots of helpers around. And so yeah, it was and it's been adopted. And now it's kind of like a pretty amazing resource like you can, you can even like buy entire workspaces now, if you want. So it's kind of for plastic entrepreneurs. So if you kind of want to make a bit of a dent in your local community, you can go onto the Precious Plastic website and see how you can contribute. Maybe you want to start a workspace and you want to collect plastic, and you want to like produce products where you want to sell something. And there's just a general, mostly active and supportive community online that are all trying to help each other. Learn how to decentralised plastic recycling around the world. So it's pretty amazing. It's pretty cool community, I definitely recommend having a look if anyone's interested in it.

Krissie Leyland  47:43

Definitely. Cool. Well, thank you so much. That was really, really insightful. And all the questions have been answered. Yeah, thank you.

Saskia  47:56

Do you want to add anything, Nico?

Nico  47:58

No.

Saskia  47:58

Okay, cool. Yeah, it was great to talk to you and thanks for setting it up. And yeah, looking forward to making the internet a better place!

Krissie Leyland  48:07

Yay! Absolutely. Thank you so much.

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