The Green MBA Podcast

Where should your business focus its efforts to have the biggest environmental and social impact? As Christina points out in this interview, often the answer is not always obvious. Tune in as we discuss how to find areas to focus on to drive meaningful impact.

Christina Lampert is the Director of Growth & Innovation at HowGood, the world's largest product and ingredient sustainability database. In her spare time, she manages her social channel, The Sustennial Network, which celebrates the sustainable millennial lifestyle and business strategies on a variety of platforms. 

Show Notes 

Here are a few things we discuss in this great chat:

• Business environmental impacts are not always obvious, so it’s important to do the work to understand where your largest sources of emissions are coming from, so you can have the biggest impact.
• For the food industry, most sources of environmental impacts come from the ingredients, not from packaging, despite the focus on plastics globally. 
• The first educator advantage is how to use it to drive real change, both from an environmental impact point of view and to drive loyalty and trust from the consumer. 
• Small changes in ingredients can have a bigger impact than you think
• Where you source ingredients throughout your supply chain matters, is it better to get product A from Spain or Brazil? Christina talks about using HowGood's database helps to easily uncover the answer to these questions. 
• Farm-to-gate stage and considerations around Regenerative Agriculture.
• How retailers are using these insights on the HowGood platform and using them to drive consumer behaviour toward more sustainable products. 

Relevant Links 

• HowGood
• Sustennial Network @thesustennial on Instagram / sustennialnetwork.com

Christina’s Top 3 Green MBA Topics

1. Enhance business sustainability storytelling around meaningful impact initiatives to increase loyalty and drive sales from your customers. 
2. How to calculate a carbon footprint via lifecycle assessment 
3. Learning how to conduct a greenhouse inventory for your business 

Keen to make an impact in this space with your business? Connect with Christina via Linkedin

Join our community 

1. Linkedin
2. Instagram

Ecologi
Ecologi helps you take action on the climate crisis via funding climate projects & planting trees.

Jack is a Senior Manager in Deloitte’s Sustainability & Climate Change team, based in Sydney. Jack works with organizations of all shapes and sizes to develop and embed sustainability strategies in order to improve their social and environmental impact. This covers everything from developing ESG targets, sustainability reporting and disclosure, emissions reduction strategies, responsible supply chain, circular economy, and diversity & inclusion. 

Show Notes 

Jack has a wealth of knowledge in this space having worked with many different companies across multiple industries spanning Australia and the United Kingdom. 

In this episode, Jack touches on so many areas, for those just getting started in this space this is a must-listen! 

Here are a few things we discuss in this great chat

• Environmental Social and Governance (ESG) reporting 101 - Jack gives a fantastic overview of what this is and how to get started.
• Decarbonization - how businesses can start to think about lowering their carbon footprint, and a quick guide to the different carbon emission scope 1, 2 & 3. 
• ESG remuneration - How do you embed environmental and social goals into long-term incentive plans to drive performance. 
• The benefits of ESG reporting to companies and consumers. 
• How does Australia compare to the United Kingdom when it comes to ESG reports. 
• Examples of how companies are successfully embedding these strategies in different ways.
• How to figure out what you should be measuring and how you should set your own company goals. 
• How strong ESG performance can drive up employee value propositions and the ability to employ talent. 
• The challenges and risks in supply chain analysis for example for something as simple as a banana. 
• Jack’s number one action he recommends for everyone to have an impact right now.

Relevant Links 

• Deloitte Climate Change and Sustainability Insights
• Measuring Stakeholder Capitalism: Towards Common Metrics and Consistent Reporting of Sustainable Value Creation.  
• Vivobarefoot has one of the best sustainability reports. 
• All Birds 

Jack’s Top 3 Green MBA Topics

1. Impact - Teaching how to measure impact, for example understanding how to prove a product is better socially or environmentally.
2. Alternative Business Models - We seem to be stuck in the idea and concept of private shareholders capitalism, however, there are many other business models that have ESG frameworks baked in from the start such as social enterprises and co-operatives.
3. Learn how to build sustainability into how you solve strategic problems - for example in a traditional MBA you learn how to increase revenue or reduce costs, learning how to build sustainability into solutions from the beginning instead of retrofitting sustainability can be powerful.

Join our community 

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2. Instagram
3. Website

Andrew Davies is the current CEO of B Lab in Australia and New Zealand. B Lab is the not-for-profit that supports B Corporation Certification. 

Their mission is to help transform the global economy to benefit all people, communities, and the planet. 

As Andrew shares in this episode, businesses today are facing three challenges, the pandemic, a climate crisis, and a social crisis. He believes that wealth creation for businesses cannot and should not, be the only goal, and sees a way to use the capitalist high growth model of today whilst still rewarding innovators. 

Andrew believes we’re seeing a shift in the definition of success for businesses today. During this chat, we discuss the micro and macro impacts of this shift, and how businesses can learn from those already getting this right. 

Here are a few things we discuss in this great chat 

• What it means to be a B Corporation 
• What kind of companies can apply 
• The goal of B Lab and its vision for businesses of the future 
• The areas of the B Corporation certification 
• The changing landscape for businesses as we redefine what success looks like 
• Adding “so that” to your vision statement to articulate an impact you want to have

Relevant links 

• B Impact Assessment 
• B Corporation Directory
• Introduction to B Corps - Free Course 
• The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek 
• B Corporation Impact Business Models (IBMs)
• Cult Status By Tim Duggan

Andrews Top 3 Green MBA Topics

1. The business governance model. How you build a model that allows you to consider your impact on all stakeholders. 
2. Empathy. Especially how you build an empathetic business and consider your impact on others. 
3. Environmental Societal Governance (ESG) frameworks. There are other models like B Corporation that can really help founders build better businesses.

Join our community 

• Linkedin
• Instagram
• Website

This podcast was made using SquadCast.

Carbon removal is an essential strategy to tackling climate change, yet the industry remains small. How can businesses play an important role in helping to grow the availability of carbon removal projects, and reduce the legacy load of CO2 already in our atmosphere?

This legacy load of Greenhouse Gases will continue to warm our planet for decades if not centuries, even if we stopped emitting CO2 today. Join me as Antti Vihavainen the CEO and Co-Founder of Puro.earth, the world’s first B2B marketplace for carbon removal, tells us how.

Puro.earth's mission is to mobilize the world’s economy to reward carbon net-negative emissions. Antti is an entrepreneur with years of experience in strategy creation & implementation, business model innovation, and complex sales to large organizations.

Show Notes

In this episode, we discuss the importance of carbon removal from our atmosphere in our fight against climate change, and the role that businesses can, and are playing, in helping to grow this vital part of climate action. 

Here are a few things we discussed in this great chat: 

• What is Biochar, and why is it an important carbon removal strategy?
• The ability for companies to turn traditional liabilities into assets. For example, paper factories, sewage facilities, and oil wells all have by-products of their normal process that can be turned into Biochar to remove carbon from the atmosphere, or for carbon capture and storage. By engaging in this practice companies can be paid in the form of CO2 removal Certificates (CORCs) which turn traditional waste products or liabilities into revenue streams while also removing CO2 from our atmosphere. 
• The pros and cons of planting trees as a carbon removal strategy. We know it’s an important strategy so how do we use it as part of our carbon removal mix of investments?
• Rewarding net negative emissions 
• How companies can work with Puro.earth to buy CO2 Removal Cerficicats (CORCs)
• The importance of pre-CORS, which essentially entails a company committing to buy CORCs from a certain project in the future at a certain price. This allows projects to get funding and helps to directly grow the availability of carbon removal projects, allowing more carbon to be removed from the atmosphere. 

Relevant Links

• Puro.earth 
• Race to Zero

Join our community 

• Linkedin
• Instagram
• Website

This podcast was made in partnership with Ecologi, a subscription service that helps you take action on the climate crisis via funding climate projects & planting trees.

This podcast was made using SquadCast.

Gunter Pauli has published over 40 books, including his most famous, The Blue Economy. He is an economist, serial entrepreneur, Ted talker and founder of ZERI (Zero Emissions Research and Initiatives). Gunter was the first person to register ‘Zero Emissions’ as a trademark and recently won the 2021 Goi Peace Award for his contribution to society. He continues to contribute by sharing different business models that aim to leave the world in a better place. His vision for the future of business is inspiring and challenges us to go one step further than current ‘sustainable’ models and practices.  

Here are a few things we discussed in this great chat;

• The difference between the “Green Economy” and the “Blue Economy” 
• Listen to Gunter's story of how he started his own “green” business, which leads him to question what a sustainable business should really look like, and the economy that needs to be created to ensure that something that is good for us, and the planet, isn’t the most expensive in the market. 
• The need to change from competition on price, which leads to cutting corners, to competition on value, which is a defining part of the Blue Economy. 
• Concepts and business models within his two new books - Coffee Solutions and Plastic Solutions.
• Why we need to focus more on physics rather than chemistry. 
• Industry Symbiosis rebrand to the Circular Economy, the principles of which have been around for a while. 
• Creating something out of nothing. 
• The need to relearn that we are being taught at school and university, especially, for those studying business, sciences and engineering.
• Where short-term thinking gets us - you might be surprised to learn that our hand sanitizers have plastic in them, causing billions of microplastics to pollute our waters.  
• The importance of multiple revenue streams, burn rate and return on investment when developing your business. Gunter suggests forgetting the use of spreadsheets, Google, or Wikipedia. If we’re using sources that everyone else is using, then we aren’t able to think outside the box to create opportunities that no one else sees. He also recommends not building a business plan until you have your first sale. 
• Listen to Gunter chat through multiple business models and their simple ingenuity to create value both to people and the planet. 

Relevant Links 

• Coffee Solutions  
• Plastic Solutions 
• The Blue Economy 
• Children’s Fables by Gunter Pauli
• Blue Economy innovations & business models

Join our community 

• Linkedin
• Instagram
• Website

This podcast was made in partnership with Ecologi, a subscription service that helps you take action on the climate crisis via funding climate projects & planting trees.

This podcast was made using SquadCast.

In this episode, I chat with Zoltan Csaki about a business he co-founded called Citizen Wolf, a sustainable fashion brand that produces made-to-order garments that use 48% less C02 than fast fashion. 

The fashion industry is faced with huge environmental challenges if it is to become sustainable, Citizen Wolf is an example of how businesses can create revolutionary change by changing the way they do business from the ground up. 

Their incredible business model and technology allow Citizen Wolf to make each garment from scratch based on their Magic Fit technology. Their approach to building a sustainable business truly sets them apart and hopefully inspires others to think outside the box in their industries. 

Here are a few things we discussed in this great chat;

• Challenges and problems faced by the fashion industry 
• Why does material choice matter 
• The waste generated by the fashion industry 
• Product life extension
• Closing the loop at end of life
• What the future looks like for Citizen Wolf 

Zoltan was also recently named one of Vogue’s ‘Future Sixty’ agitators “set to define the coming years” (2019) as well as placing #7 on RagTrader’s Tech 20 top digital influencers in Australian fashion (2020). Citizen Wolf also won a Good Design Award Gold in the Fashion Impact category (2019) as well as ‘Innovation Champion of the Year 2019’ at the National Retail Association Awards.

Join our community 

• Linkedin
• Instagram
• Website

This episode was made in partnership with Heaps Good Packaging a sustainable packaging company for eCommerce businesses. 

This podcast was made using SquadCast.

Elliot Coad is the Founder and CEO of Ecologi a subscription-based service that helps businesses and individuals take action on the climate crisis via funding climate projects and planting trees. To date, they have planted over 18 million trees and removed over 430,000 tonnes of CO2. Elliot has built an amazing movement and growing movement with over 20,000 community members and 5,000 businesses in just two years. Recently they also raised 4 million pounds from investors to amplify their impact to become, the "Spotify of Sustainability”. 

In this episode with Elliot, we discuss a whole range of topics. Elliot shares the knowledge he has gained since starting Ecologi in 2020, and how he and his team have managed to sign up thousands of individuals and businesses, united to help fight the climate emergency and ultimately plant over 18 million trees. Motivated to grow their impact further, Elliot recently closed a round of £4 million, however, he isn’t stopping there, he sees a time in the future when they may need to raise £100 million, to make a climate subscription a must have just like a Spotify or Netflix account. 

Topics we discussed: 

• Why Elliot started Ecologi 
• Their biggest challenge
• What’s next after raising funds 
• How they give consumers value 
• Tactics they have used to grow their platform 
• Why they aren’t a not-for-profit and how this helps them scale their impact further in a shorter amount of time 
• Why radical transparency is the way forward 
• Their journey raising from a non-traditional impact investor
• What it means to be carbon neutral, carbon positive, and net-zero plus more. 
• Elliot also reveals a new project he is working on which will help companies to calculate their carbon footprint in real-time

Relevant links

• Sign up and start growing your own forest - you can see my family’s forest here. If you sign up using this link Ecologi will plant an extra 30 trees in both our forests. 
• Find out how your company can work with Ecologi to reduce its carbon footprint here.
• Carbon footprint calculator - coming soon. 

Join our community 

• Linkedin
• Instagram
• Website

This episode was made in partnership with Onya an Australian-based B Corporation, that has been waging a war on plastic since 2004. Their products include items such as reusable produce, bulk food and bread bags to coffee cups, compostable bin liners, and more.