The Current State of Corporate Sustainability ft. Lauren Scott (The Resilience Report)

For those who don’t know, an important part of my sustainability journey involved philanthropic work in the environmental space. Core to this was the time I served on the board of directors for Sierra Club Canada Foundation, the Canadian arm of one of North-America's largest environmental advocacy groups. 

I am not going to lie: this time was incredibly humbling. While I have carved out a space for myself professionally given that the corporate sustainability is just really getting going, my fellow Sierra Club board members included scientists, lawyers and activists who had spent decades in the environmental space. I met some truly incredible people during this time, one of which was their Head of Communications, Conor Curtis. 

I recently had the opportunity to reconnect with Conor on his show, The Environment in Canada Podcast.

The following is our crossover episode, which really turned into a love letter to the guests and community we have built around The Resilience Report. I have learned SO much from you all over the past year and half of this show, so it was extra special to be able to share some of this with Conor and listeners of The Environment in Canada Podcast. We dive into corporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG), examples of good ESG, and ways to set common standards for measuring success. We also chat about ways you can assess a corporation's commitment to the environment, advice for businesses getting into ESG, the circular economy, and finding cool stuff on the streets of Montréal.

This was so fun to record, and hopefully you all feel my gratitude for you throughout this episode. Enjoy!

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Welcome to another episode at the Environment in Canada Podcast, a podcast about environment in Canada by Sierra Club Canada. I'm Conor Curtis, head of communications in Sierra Club Canada, and today we're going to be talking with Lauren Scott about corporate environmental sustainability, her podcast (The Resilience Report), and why companies should look at standardizing how they measure impact. 

Hi, Lauren. Thank you for joining me today.

Thanks so much for having me on the podcast. I'm really excited to be here.

For those listening in, who are you and what you do? And full disclosure to our listeners here, you've been on the board of Sierra Club Canada in the past and have chaired our Communications Committee. So, you and I know each other well and have worked together before.

Yes. To your point, we've had the pleasure of working together, so it makes me really happy to be here with you personally and professionally today. So, I've worn a couple of different over the years. More specifically, and I guess most relevant to this podcast, is I've spent the past ten years or so working in the cleantech sector.  That has been somewhat working in renewables, but it's also been primarily working in the technology world as it pertains to buildings. And so we really focus on how to make buildings more energy efficient by using our technology. To help kind of narrow down: it is our software, our sensors and our controllers within the building to make them more energy efficient. And to make them smarter, safer and greener overall. So that's been about the past ten years. In parallel, I've definitely been involved in the environmental space, namely with Sierra Club. I was on the board for about 6 years and couple of additional years with different committees, but it's been interesting kind of marrying the two because I've definitely dedicated all of my 10 past years professionally to the space and then also outside of those hours, it's been finding ways to deepen that connection. So, whether it's volunteering or also I host my own podcast, The Resilience Report, which is purely a passion project but kind of complements all the work that I do in the business space with all the work that I've done over the years in terms of philanthropic work as well.

Yeah. And we're going to be getting into your podcast a bit in a moment. One thing that I'm curious to chat about, though, you mentioned about like being in the environmental space and then it's sort of becoming a part of your personal life and other things. I mean, I think that that's a common experience most people feel when they get into that space. I'm curious how you find balance and all that because it sounds like you're doing a lot of different stuff.

And probably not the most natural transition either: I didn't study environmental studies or we have a lot of connections in this space that happened to be lawyers or scientists. I studied business and I studied marketing, which I know is not the most direct path to sustainability, but it was something that I always really cared about. I would definitely credit it to having a lot of exposure to natural spaces when I was young and feeling that connection from a really young age. And so I've often felt that by having that connection with the environment and then certainly professionally knowing that I'm taking steps to help protect that which I really believe in keeps me going. 

I mean, I think we're both people who probably work at 110% all of the time. And so it was really important for me quite early in my career. I shifted from working in the marketing world to working for values-based organizations and that transition took a little bit of time. I was working in a marketing agency then I worked in the nonprofit world for a number of years. And then I really, truly believed and continue to believe that there is space for businesses to do business better. And so that was where I made the transition over to the for-profit side and got involved still in the marketing world, but then working for those values-based organizations.

I can sympathize with that. I think I was thinking about my own path to “environmentalism” on vacation and sitting on a beach and thinking about what exactly was, you know, my reason for feeling that. And it was that connection with nature that drove it and then realizing all these things that could be done and how important it was, which I think, you know, a lot of people that I've chatted to, that's actually where how they get started. They're not necessarily people who went off and did an environmental degree or like had a specific because they were doing their thing. And they got involved. And on that note, your podcast series looks at business leaders and entrepreneurs and their work on sustainability. Out of all the episodes that you've been doing, are there particular people you've interviewed who stood out in terms of their work or we're doing something really unique?

It's hard one to pick favorites. But maybe I should just backtrack a little bit to help explain why I find so many of our guests are so energizing, and it was really the catalyst of launching the podcast. 

It has only a year and a half ago, but I remember I was reading the news (and that can do plenty of things to an individual) but I was reading the news and it all felt so heavy. And as a fellow person who has dedicated our careers to sustainability, I remember I was reading article after article after article and it just it got to the point where I had this moment of “is it even worth it? I'm dedicating all of my time and energy - It seems like it's just not moving the needle even slightly with all of this heavy, bad news”. And that's coming from somebody who is super passionate about it and very energized about the movement. 

And then I turned the page and there was an article on a local startup who is doing something super creative in the space, and I felt the little switch go off in myself and I felt completely reenergized. I thought “OK, it's these stories”. It's these brilliant minds that are trying to make a difference, that reenergize me, and I realize there's probably a space to highlight those stories for other people who really want to have a positive impact and just want to feel that energy, that spark that maybe originally got them into this space. And we can do that, I think, by sharing some of those stories. So that was the catalyst as to why I launched the podcast - to highlight those businesses that are doing things really well and those entrepreneurs and business leaders who are changing things in the market. 

And so I'd say for my favorite guests, maybe some that come top of mind that have been recent. One of them was purely from an energy level, but also his creativity. He was the founder of a company called Loop Mission and they do cold pressed juices and they are such a beautiful example of circularity and circularity in motion. So they work with grocers and kind of those intermediary providers to get fresh fruits and vegetables that maybe (based on the way they look or just the shelf life) are perfectly good but are otherwise going into waste and not even composted because they're in all those plastic shells. So this company goes in and works with all these third party providers. Again, LOOP Mission and their founder is David Cote. And then they make these beautiful juices and it's actually one of the top companies in Canada now from that business side. 

Another example, completely different, and we have everybody from finance to fashion, but another one that was phenomenal was At Kim Chackal and she works for a company called Equifruit. And they sell and import fair trade bananas into Canada and beyond, and which sounds like a very different kind of take as a guest. But what I loved that she was talking about was that it's not just about doing business better. It's like she's had to completely split the focus of the company of being half, being this importer of this great product, as socially, environmentally responsible, but the other half is marketing. So much of her work is educating as to why the general consumer should spend a few more cents on a banana to make sure that the farmers behind it are getting paid fairly. 

And then maybe the last one, just because it's really impacted me and my role. It was not an episode I was expecting to, so it really kind of changed my view, but it was somebody who is here locally in Quebec where we're both based and he works for a company called Les Plastiques DC, which focuses on recycled plastic and how we are upside upcycling plastic in the manufacturing space. So I work in the B2B world and I also as I mentioned work partially in marketing but then also half of my role is sustainability. I help oversee our sustainability initiatives. And from the plastic context and with my marketing hat on, for example, I've never really considered my environmental impact from a marketing lens, but he gave such a good example of when we're trying to sell a product, we want to make sure that the casing is the exact same color to represent our brand well. If you're using recycled plastic, you're going to have to get a lot more flexible because they can't always color match that same precision when you're using this kind of upcycled plastic. So, he made me realize how all of our respective departments can make these choices if we're just educated. So, I'm hoping to get that through to our listeners with their different episodes.

I've used this example a couple of times on the podcast, but we did a website redesign for Sierra Club and part of that was how do we make that website more sustainable? And yeah, there are things you have to make choices in. In that case, do I want to have a ton of video pop-ups or not? And maybe there is some functionality to that but yeah, there are those trade-offs. Like if you can't get exactly the brand color that's supposed to be your brand and what does that mean for branding too? Is it now that your brand is actually something that's more abstract, and that's the point of brand. Maybe rather than it is this very clean because we see that that trend too where nowadays people want something that's been more down to earth that isn't necessarily pristinely packaged or not, that's really interesting and a lot of it seems to tie into circularity. So that idea of, you know, going to circular economy. Do you find most of your guests are involved in that sort of area?

Definitely, it's a concept that I think more people are becoming familiar with. I would say that it's still not fully understood. I see it in the business space as a word that I think a lot of leaders feel like, “OK, I need to understand what this means” and then they maybe are trying to pepper it into different messaging without fully grasping it. And then you have others like LOOP Mission. To go back to them, David and his team were doing all this incredible work and he got contacted by a university out of New York saying “you're the most incredible example of circularity”, and he and he responded back “ what's circularity”? So he didn't even realize he was doing this. 

But I think it is such a natural part of - if you go way back of our economy - of thinking of how my waste is like “what's one man's waste is another man's treasure”. I think it's just kind of coming back to that concept of how can we support one another? So we've had some guests where it's part of their business model. We had another guest where he works in marketing and he was helping different online platforms figure out how to add a second-hand section on their website if people wanted to resell. We just saw IKEA is piloting this where they are going to start offering selling your used IKEA furniture on their website. So you're starting to see companies figuring it out that this is happening naturally. How can they make it more accessible to their consumers? And we've had other guests on the show who are helping municipalities, for example, even do this: connecting the different merchants within a local municipality to help them achieve change. So, a lot of it is education, some people are doing it. They don't even realize they're doing it, but it's going back to, I think what comes very naturally to us economically and that we've stepped away from over the past few decades. But from a business model / sustainability model. But even a financial model: it absolutely makes sense to not need to have this net new input for every everything we've built.

Talk about that like natural, instinctual aspect of living in Montreal, right? ‘oving day is like that. Great, because you just walk down the street, people put out a bunch of stuff they don't want / they don't need anymore. They put it on the sidewalk and inevitably, like almost all of it, I don't think there's very much waste. Almost all that gets picked up by somebody, right? Like, I've got a bunch of stuff that was just free that I can furnish my apartment. Watch Montreal on the right week and just going like, yeah, I can take that. I can take that. And it's good stuff. People just don't need it anymore. And it is one of those things. It comes back maybe a bit to that marketing thing. Like our personal thought that we need the new thing is, almost part of the reason we've moved away from some of these very obvious things. Well, that's a great table. It doesn't really matter if it was down the street for two days? 

Absolutely. And I it's interesting because I think, like many people, I have a bit of a love hate relationship with social media. And I am so late to the game, but for Facebook Marketplace, that's the perfect example of you can get rid of things.

For example, this chair behind me, it's from Marketplace and as is my table. I knew I wanted to change my setup for where I'm recording my podcast and I was able to not only find a second home for the pieces that were in my space, I was able to make money off of it and then I was able to go then purchase pieces that fit the space that I needed, whether it's this chair and table. And I think, all in all, I actually made $20 completely redoing my office space. It's, again, that love, hate relationship with social media, but the platform like Marketplace is a great example of how we can maybe use technology for good to amplify what you're just saying of that moving day shopping experience that we have here in Montreal.

Yeah, I mean, I might be a bit old school in the sense of just walking around town and trying to find stuff. I think there's increasing options for that. You know, there's also lots of local organizations in in Montreal around like food waste and stuff like that, which is the curious then jump into in terms of best practices. Businesses looking to be more sustainable or wanting to focus on sustainability. Are there common standards or approaches businesses are doing that you think are kind of applicable across sectors that a lot of businesses could take from this. In listening to your podcast or in just things you've learned?

It’s definitely evolved over the years in the sense that I see how companies are taking it more and more seriously, and they're understanding this is no longer just a feel-good thing that we don't just get to do it. We are having to do it. 

And so it's requiring a little bit more, I'd say orchestration and formal approach from a business, but it will really inevitably vary depending on the size of your business. I would say if you're a medium-to-large company, you're going to be feeling the push and pull for sustainability, both from the employee base. (I'd say that grassroots movement) or you maybe have some leaders who are coming in or are there and really are passionate about sustainability and they want to bring it and cascade it down. It is normalizing it to a certain degree. 

I think a lot of companies don't start with the sustainability budget. I would say even some of the biggest companies don't have the largest sustainability budgets and they don't necessarily have the budget to go hire somebody dedicated just to sustainability. And what you often see is, as a first phase, you will see the setup of some sort of governing committee within the company, and oftentimes that will be multi stakeholders. So you'll have representation from different departments, which I strongly recommend because you'll have those different perspectives and lenses, but also you'll get greater buy in. For example, in the space that I work in, that might look like someone like myself from a marketing and or sustainability side. Definitely increasing reach. So you're going to see representation from your legal team. You might see representation from your finance team. And then if you're in the cleantech space like myself, you absolutely need your R&D team in there. You need your product management team to see what your different concerns are and pull all of that together. If you can, try and create that formal committee within your company. Again, it's probably not going to be anybody who wears just a sustainability hat to begin with. You're going to have this informal structure of different folks who are just super passionate about it. But they all have their day jobs. 

I have heard this this time and time again on the podcast, the first step has often been to bring in a sustainability consultant on a contract, so it's for a set project, and often the first thing that they'll do is do a real assessment as to all the different sustainability levers that you have within the business. And they'll help you prioritize. And I think that third party lens is important because sometimes you also get stuck in these pet projects where maybe somebody who started the Council or maybe your CEO has something top of mind that they feel like a super important. But when you do the calculation as to what would be the greatest impact, it's not necessarily that. So the consultant can come in and help do that. Obviously, at the end of the day, the goal is to try and have somebody who can be dedicated just to sustainability. And it's not just so that they know everything because sustainability is such an evolving landscape, but they can at least be the point person. They can do the research, and they can really project, manage everything across the organization.

And I imagine for companies too. I mean, yes, you may have to hire any person or bring on a contractor, but we just talked about how individually being more sustainable is something that's also economically beneficial. I imagine for companies too that those benefits to be had from that growth, sustainability can actually come back as a bottom line benefit too.

Absolutely. And I've seen that. I mean, I work as I mentioned earlier in the built space and, at the end of the day, nobody wants to be spending more money on energy, and so we are fortunate in the sense that we are addressing that problem by helping drive down energy consumption and the consequence of that is lowering emissions of the built space. The business case of that you can easily sell that all the way through the organization of we're going to be saving you money on energy and then also if you are somebody who reports in your emissions, this is going to help drive them down. If you're somebody who's paying for carbon offsets, which we're seeing a lot of companies doing, then that also allows you to take the steps to lower your cost because you're having to pay out less because you have less emissions. So, there is a total business case there.

You mentioned this too the importance of different departments talking to each other, because an example of a company that shall remain nameless that I've talked to in the past where I ran into a situation where, like the person I was talking to, clearly worked for a different department, had no idea what the other department had actually proposed and would make in front of them if it was like “well, we don't do that”. And I was like, what are the departments here that you're clearly not talking to each other? This is what they actually proposed. And it did strike me how things that maybe are definitive, upper level choices that can change that your operation. But then there's also just interdepartmental lack of communication, which seems to sometimes be an obstacle.

You're absolutely right. And in speaking to different guests on The Resilience Report I've seen it's often easier to control when you're still a small organization. If you're just a handful of folks, you have your Monday morning meeting, you can update everybody. And then I've also seen from our guests that, as they start to feel and as they're getting bigger and bigger and maybe more international, that how do they make sure that everybody is aware of the strategy of the different levers they're pulling? And so 100%, you're absolutely right: sometimes we tend to think of sustainability messaging just being external, but it really starts internally. You need to make sure that people understand internally why you're doing it, what you're doing, what are your plans to make it better and kind of have that almost sustainability one-on-one knowledge internally. And then that can only amplify because you'll probably get these new creative ideas from people who maybe aren't in those day-to-day meetings about sustainability, but then also when they're then interfacing with your own customers, much like you were with this company, I guess, then they are able to actually not only kind of ingest that information, but then share it with others.

Yeah, totally. Back to that general thing of the best place to start – you’re in communications. So I think a lot of people on that note are naturally critical of the green claims of businesses, and I personally fall into that group. And that's maybe because I'm focused so much in my work on issues of greenwashing. I therefore tend to have a certain perspective after that and you yourself frame some of the guests that you have this on your podcast as disrupting their industries. I'm curious, what do you think of the tension that naturally exists within businesses to generate profit on one hand and then this work towards sustainability being done internally on the other and maybe even like how are these people finding entering that space and maybe when it's a bit of an uphill struggle?

And I think that's such a natural and healthy question to be asking. Admittedly, how I ended up in business, I think shapes my perspective on this because I was studying marketing and commerce at university (and this is probably almost 20 years ago). But it was at the time that “An Inconvenient Truth” had just come out and Al Gore was doing a tour with David Suzuki at the time. And, in the room it was just university students. We're about 5000 and David Suzuki asked us (which I know your podcast listeners will know who he is - I don't have to give him any introduction), but he was asking those in the room to raise their hand based on their department and when they were hitting Arts and Sciences or Engineering or Law, there were so many hands shooting up. And I remember when he asked business we were maybe less than a dozen out of 5000 in the room. And I was thinking, “OK, if I really care about the environment and I'm studying business, we need leaders who can combine and marry the two together”. Because the reality is we live in the economy that we live in. Businesses drive a lot of decisions. So, we need leaders within organizations who are really looking for meaningful change. I think that landscape has changed a lot with millennials and Gen Z coming in. You see them graduating from these business programs with a far more well-rounded internal desire, but then also education in terms of sustainable business practices. But that certainly has translated into maybe a little bit of a distrust of the business world I would say, which maybe somewhat has seen that cascade of who has been within the business space. 

But I do think there's also just like a misunderstanding between maybe the for-profit and the nonprofit world. For the longest time, I really thought that I would either have to work in a governmental space or for a nonprofit to have environmental impact. And then overtime, I really realize that there are large companies that are trying to have a positive impact. And I can personally have a bigger impact by being part of those. I definitely saw that I had this opportunity to work for a larger company and still have a positive environmental impact in my own role as a leader and certainly as a collective / as part of a company and an industry bringing cleantech to the space. And in my role in marketing, I definitely recognize that I had an important role when it came to greenwashing claims and I would say like looking back, I don't think that most companies (even those who were for example, guilty of greenwashing claims), necessarily had this evil marketing or sales team intentionally trying to trick anybody. I think we weren't necessarily provided the guidance in going through this in marketing school as to what is a proper environmental plan. There were no directives on a regulatory landscape. The great thing is that we are seeing that change and we're seeing it change internationally. So at the start of 2024, there were new regulations that came out in Europe around greenwashing. We just saw this get cascaded over to Canada. So if you are a marketer in Canada, certainly keep your eyes open there. And we do expect for this to then be cascaded down to Federal Trade Commission in the US as well, but essentially the guidelines are to make sure that any of your claims are clear and specific and have a documented calculation behind it. So for example, if somebody is saying “My product saves 30% water consumption to create this product”. Well, 30% versus what? Versus your previous model? Versus the competition? So, benchmarking and clearly giving the context of your claims. 

Then let's say it's versus the previous version. You're going to make sure that that methodology is documented somewhere. The next step is that you're going to make sure that it is a repeatable process. So just because somebody once tried something to see what the possible calculation could be, you need to make sure that if you get audited with these new regulations that it can be backed up. You need to make sure that it is specific, that it's documented, and then it's scalable. So now that we as marketers have this guidance, I do definitely see greenwashing is going to start scaling back, which is beautiful. I know it's always challenging the more regulations get involved in business, but I do think that this is a great opportunity to provide the clarity. I think clarity is kindness and this is definitely true for our marketing teams now and our businesses and that we know how to communicate properly. And so, I think as the regulations come into place again, that just happened in Europe this past year, it just came into Canada over the past few months and it's going to get cascaded to the US - we should start seeing some adjustments there as well.

And it's interesting: in in one of the episodes, you talk about the importance of standardizing the impact in a way that's measurable and comparable across different businesses. Can you elaborate on specifically how that can be done? I mean, obviously there's now regulatory frameworks that they're happy to see as well, but are there ways that businesses can be standardizing and working with each other to standardize those measurements?

It's definitely getting easier. I would still say it's not the easiest thing to do. I think the most challenging thing for businesses and ultimately for us as consumers is that there have been no real global standards when it comes to different sustainability levers. There's certainly been the UN’s Sustainability Goals. There's been different iterations and regulations, but it's been so piece meal that there has been no one definitive approach. That's starting to evolve, where you're starting to see agreements between different regulatory bodies, different standards saying, OK, well, this is the way we believe that we need to calculate XY and Z. And so for my space, a lot of it is around emissions calculations and so now we do have the Science Based Targets Initiative which certifies for businesses any claims that they're making around going Net Zero, for example, and so they come in and they certify your path as a business to reduce your emissions overall, and they can validate your calculations. And they really want to see all of the methodology. They make sure that it is realistic. And that is going to help us better understand, as consumers, which companies are kind of aligning to these third party certifications to allow for that credibility.

I'm sure it feels still pretty abstract in a sense that if you're not in this space, you don't necessarily always know which regulations are the real ones. Which one is trustworthy? But I think by their very presence, they're helping to reduce the number of business leaders just kind of saying like, “Oh yeah, let's just go sign that kind of pledge and say we're getting to Net Zero” without actually having any idea as to how they're going to get there between now and 2050 without impacting their operations. I would say it's not necessarily going to be felt immediately by the consumer, however, it is being immediately felt by the businesses and so those businesses are realizing that they are on the hook to make sure that they are backing up those claims.

On the flip side of that, how can people best access reliable information on the impact of businesses that they might be thinking about buying from or doing business with?

Again, it's not the easiest thing and I do absolutely empathize, and I experience it myself. When I'm out shopping and I'm looking at two different things and I'm reading their labels and trying to see which one is the better one, it sometimes (and again and I'm in marketing and I'm in sustainability) I don't necessarily always know what is the best option between the two. There is starting to be ac certain certification that I see a lot of our guests on The Resilience Report leaning towards: B Corp certification hands down seems to be the one that companies are leaning towards. If you are on the fence and you're a listener thinking about maybe approaching B Corp certification for your business, everyone has been very transparent that it's a huge project.

However, they are saying it allows you to really think more strategically, not just about your sustainability, but your overall business practices and how you're a more fair employer, how you're thinking more long term about the business. So this has been time and time again where our guests refer back to B Corp certification being kind of that gold standard. I think a lot of us know about B Corp maybe through things like Patagonia, maybe Ben and Jerrys, that sort of thing. So there are certain companies that have been at the forefront of it. You're seeing now some really neat examples, even more in the startup space like our next episode we have this great jewelry company out of Vancouver that decided from day one they wanted to be before certified which is by no means required. They're a small organization. They're not feeling shareholder pressure; they're deciding to do this. But they said that it completely helped shape their business model. So it's not just the large corporations of the world that can benefit from it. And they explained there's also a “B Curious” community, where if you're just curious about being a B Corp that you can go in and they have some general guidelines and discussion groups that you can join even without necessarily being certified.

The sustainability movement, I would say is pretty unique in the business space in that it's not this competitive “me vs you”. A lot of sustainability people, even in the Fortune 500, are so excited to get together because we feel like “Oh my gosh, it's somebody else who cares about this. Like, let's share all the best practices as to how we can collectively move this forward together”. And so I think the B Corp community is great for that. 

And then just as you said, there's more and more apps out there that you can start leveraging, one that I just discovered is “Good on You” and they do a ton of research on the back end. And so it's really, you as a consumer looking for clothing or shoes or that sort of thing and you choose your category and you choose your market where you're shopping and they'll pull up the list of all the companies and it can be “not doing enough”, “good”, “great”, “could do better”. That sort of ranking based on their environmental and social impact. And it has been phenomenal for me to try and find new brands I had never heard of that offer their products within our local market. So, this is just one app, but they're increasingly more and more out there that are trying to do this and offer it to the market.

The website we designed we did was done by B Corp (certified): Mangrove web design. And in general, working with B Corps, I do notice that dedication to something that seems to be above and beyond in that respect for consumers. I see where you're coming from in terms of that.

It's interesting that you mentioned the app thing because that's something I'll have to look into personally. I mean, like, I think I've always worked off the sort of instinct that if I sort of know the person who's producing something, I can get a general sense. I think this is another thing that comes up in marketing too, which is that for all the digitization, the apps and the ease of access to information that way. There is still something to talking to the actual person who works at the place and having that one to one conversation, and there's usually only possible with a small business. Honestly like, that's if you're going to like a local grocery store or something and you just know the person who runs it or something like that. But I think that is something that maybe gets missed a bit in some of that marketing or gets missed, gets lost a little bit – it’s a non technological thing, but it's something that I notice.

And that is one of the other reasons that I was drawn to podcasts. Long-form dialogue is so important and so missing from our world of clickbait and headlines, and it's only leading to polarization. And the environmental / sustainability world is one area where we can use all the help we can get to bring people together. For example, I had a guest on the show from Taco Bell, and when you say Taco Bell, you might not necessarily think about sustainability. You might think, oh, that's a big corporation, but when you spend 45 minutes with the person leading their sustainability and you hear about all the different initiatives that they're able to use this big machine to try and change the fast food industry. Regardless of where you sit on that spectrum, you understand where the company is coming from, and you can share certain points of view and then maybe those that you don't share you can understand why certain decisions were made. I think that, especially in 2024, we know what's going on south of the border over the next couple of months. This is the time where we need to have dialogue and it needs to not just be speaking to each other, but really with each other.

Two way communication again I think it's important to emphasize not necessarily saying we're going to agree on everything, whether I'm talking to somebody who works at the corporation or I'm just talking to another individual. I'm not going to agree with everything that they say, but it is interesting at the very least to get a better picture of what it exactly it is people are thinking and you know that can make choices from there. I think there would be a shift in environmental movement, something that I'm very happy to see away from a focus on individual choices. Like the driver of change and more to systemic changes to make changes on those big levels and those are important. But I think within government, the governmental world for sure, making systemic changes to try and address things like climate change, but obviously also within corporate worlds, within the NGO worlds, there are lots of things that we can be doing to have an individual impact. Within corporate worlds, there's a lot of things that we can be doing to have an individual impact that is in fact systemic. And beyond that, before we go tell us about other things you've got on the go and how people can check out the podcast.

Lots on the go right now. I would say, again, because I wear the two hats and I work full time in a cleantech space and then I have a podcast. An interesting intersection between the two is growing internationally. I'm very fortunate to work for a company where we have customers all over the world and coming back to the conversation of long form dialogue, sustainability is received very differently in parts of the world. For example, the US is - even within the US from city to city to state to state - is so different. Across Canada, we know it's very differently received. You go to Europe, some of it is so advanced. In Australia, for example, where new regulations are coming out, so I've had that opportunity from a work perspective just see from a messaging lens and how do we just connect to help create that change. So I've seen that and then and that's been some beautiful parallels and echoed in the work that I'm doing on the podcast where I have people in the Middle East having a very different approach than maybe in Canada or the US and so it's really neat to be able to see that our reality is not the only reality. It's really our perception of it. And so thinking of how the different approaches to sustainability we can all kind of come together to help move it forward. 

Deeper in The Resilience Report space, I'm starting to have an interesting role of guest matchmaking. As time goes on, I'll have guests that listen and they say “I'm working in this space. You were just speaking to this bank that works to help make more sustainable investments. I'm working with these solar projects. How do we connect those two?” Or we have somebody who is in the retail space and then we have a manufacturer of beauty products and they're connecting. So I'm loving that role. I think it's fun. It just goes to show that the very genesis of the podcast, which was to inspire and to help spark all of us further on our sustainability journeys, is working even just within that small ecosystem and my hope is that that just continues beyond there. If people are curious to hear more, they can check out resiliencereport.ca. Also, I am quite active on LinkedIn. I'm trying the Instagram thing. I might be past the age where this works for me, but it's @TheResilienceReport for both of those platforms as well.

Funny - I can share that I've had the same thing where, after interviewing like different people, I've had a couple of offline conversations. I was just like “Yeah, you know, you should chat to this other person who was there”, and I never would have made that connection if it wasn't for the fact that it was that again, like, a 45 minute long interview where I'm actually in depth and I realized that connection that I otherwise wouldn't have realized. So, it is such a rewarding thing when you're doing those calls to find those puzzle pieces and be able to connect something.

Absolutely. The world can feel so heavy sometimes, so to have those pockets and moments where we see we're able to create that light and those connections is so worth it.

Thank you so much, Lauren, for joining me today.

Thanks, Connor.