$26 trillion on the line

Sunil Rao: You're missing out on $ 26 trillion if you're not shifting to sustainable supply chains.

Valerie Morgan: Our individual actions really make a difference. They really add up.

Ben Von Wong: So the question is, how can we ensure all the social foundations, health, housing, energy, access to water, education without overshooting our planetary boundaries?

Sunil Rao: I'm Sunil Rao, the global head of Consumer Goods Go- To- Market at Salesforce and you're listening to the first episode of More Than Plausible, the series where we explore compelling new ideas and predictions with experts across the consumer goods industry. We created this series to open a conversation directly with executives and folks working in the broader consumer goods vertical, and those that are driving transformation and change within consumer goods. We'll cover the most important topics impacting our industry today, starting with sustainability. What can the industry do to unlock the massive potential ahead of us? Who are some of the companies leading the charge? And who are some of the experts in the field making sure the opportunity's understood, but also those educating us on the consequences of inaction? Our current economic models are deeply inadequate to enable us to capture the opportunities that change can bring us. They're also incredibly flawed when it comes to protecting us from inaction. The stakes are huge. Having a sustainable mindset as a brand is no longer a choice, it's a necessity. In a recent report, The Global Commission on Economy and Climate Change found that bold action could yield a direct economic gain of 26 trillion US dollars. If brands continue on the way that they currently are, I can promise you that we will be far away from that 26 trillion. Luckily, leaving money on the table is in no one's best interest. So how do we access it? Today, I'm going to be talking with guests that provide different perspectives on how brands can improve their sustainability efforts. First, you're going to be hearing from Valerie Morgan. Valerie's a specialist in climate change and sustainability. She currently works for EcoAct as a carbon project development specialist, looking after nature based solutions and she brings a really broad perspective when it comes to sustainability and how companies are taking action across multiple industries. So you recently wrote a report on low carbon solutions for a sustainable consumer goods sector for the Consumer Goods Forum or CGF for short?

Valerie Morgan: Yeah. The report was written with an objective to showcase the different climate change solutions that these big companies, such as Walmart, Barilla, PepsiCo, Carrefour are putting in place in their direct operations.

Sunil Rao: It's surprising to see all these brands and retailers come together to write a report like this. What was the reason for them to come together?

Valerie Morgan: I think in general the Consumer Goods Forum was created so that these companies can overcome these common challenges. As we know, there are a bunch of systemic problems that can't be solved on a company level, like food waste, deforestation, plastic packaging, and climate change. So this report was really a way for companies to share best practice and also communicate on what they're doing and to give case studies for one another, and it's just another way for companies to share information.

Sunil Rao: I know that when we talk about climate change, there's a lot of discussion around direct, indirect. Can you talk a little bit about what this report explored?

Valerie Morgan: Whenever we talk about climate change, we talk about direct and indirect emissions. So a lot of times you might hear scope 1, scope 2, scope 3. Scope 1 and 2 emissions are pretty much just the direct emissions of a company. That means they have operational control over those emissions. Scope 3 is everything else. It's their suppliers emissions, it's the use of sold products, it's the waste. So this report really focused on the direct emissions, really what they can control, their distribution, their operations, their buildings, and it's their electricity usage.

Sunil Rao: Which is really a slice of the problem, right? Because most companies, if you think about second, third party, fourth party distributors, you're typically only addressing a very small piece of the body if you're looking at direct.

Valerie Morgan: It's true for consumer goods 90% of their emissions are indirect, are scope 3. It's from their supply chain, the use of their sold products, the sourcing of their products, waste of their products. So you're right to say that it is a small part of the problem, but at the same time, it is a big cost. So they have actual control over those emissions.

Sunil Rao: So look at your own house to start and start seeing what you can save where before you to try to tackle the whole ecosystem, which is probably way more complicated and interconnected than we know. What are the top three areas that they focused or committed to addressing?

Valerie Morgan: In terms of decarbonisation, the areas that they showcased are energy efficiency projects. So for retailers, that's within their stores, that's smart metering, changing LED lights. Also for manufacturing, how do you recover heat from manufacturing and processing your foods? They also showcased the use of renewable energy within their operations and fuel switching. So fuel switching for both their trucks, for using alternatives to fossil fuels, and also refrigerants because refrigerants can have a thousand times more of the global warming potential than one ton of carbon. So any refrigerant leaks results in a huge effect on the climate. So switching to more natural refrigerants has a large impact on a company's emissions actually.

Sunil Rao: That's awesome that we're starting to work towards these things and I think there seems to be that these are areas of [inaudible 00:06: 04 ]. That's why they're tackling these first.

Valerie Morgan: We had this conversation when we were writing the report. Where is the scope, right? Because it was hard to ignore the fact that scope 3 emissions are 90% of the majority of these companies' emissions, but because we had such a different pallet of consumer goods companies, I mean, we had retailers, we had manufacturers, so they have many different scope 3 emissions challenges. So it's not that we want to avoid it, but it's a really important thing. And scope 3 is only recently being tackled by companies in general.

Sunil Rao: And part of that is because the tracking mechanisms to be able to do that, it's just very hard. It's like being able to track something that is outside of your purview or your control.

Valerie Morgan: No, there's no easy way to do it other than influence. If you're a large enough company, you can influence the suppliers.

Sunil Rao: It's almost like the moment we identified taking positive action in climate change, taking positive action to ensure a green earth for future generations, the moment we coupled that with the outcome of business or positive effect on business, it started to take uptake.

Valerie Morgan: I think you're right to say that there is this uptake of realizing that if we don't, as a consumer goods company, take into account climate change, not only are you missing out on opportunities for changing consumer preferences, but the climate can impact your business model. With these different climactic events, we could see flooding in Thailand in 2011 that flooded auto manufacturers and that caused millions of dollars of damage. And there was this realization that wait, climate change can impact my bottom line. So investors came together and in 2016, they created the Task Force for Climate Related Financial Disclosures, the TCFD, and this is a framework now that companies use. They are facing pressure from investors, not only from civil society, to respond to these questions on whether or not they're taking into account climate change into their balance sheet.

Sunil Rao: They're almost being graded by this. This is giving a guideline for investors to say," Hey, this company is not doing these specific things."

Valerie Morgan: Yeah. So the are being graded, and so I think it's important to maybe contextualize what is in the TCFD? what is it that they're grading? What are they looking at? The TCFD really asks the following questions. It asks, how is climate change integrated into your governance? Are you talking about climate change at your board meetings? If so, how often? Is climate change integrated into your strategy? Are you thinking about how your products are adapting to a low carbon economy? Have you evaluated the risks of climate change on your business? And not only that, but realizing there are market opportunities and that's what the$ 26 trillion is referencing in the report, that there are a lot of opportunities to thrive as a business in a low carbon economy.

Sunil Rao: The next 10 years are a unique use it or lose it moment in economic history. We expect to invest about 90 trillion US dollars in infrastructure by 2030. Ensuring that this infrastructure will be sustainable, is critical for future growth and prosperity. The next 10 years are also crucial when it comes to climate change. Unless we make a huge shift by 2030, we will pass the point where we can keep the average global temperature from rising above two degrees Celsius. So what steps do we take? One of the examples you gave me was actually eye opening for me personally. If you think about just arable land. A company that produces a certain amount, let's say potato chips or potato farming, there's a direct impact to a two degree change in temperature in terms of the yield of the crops and now you've got to take that into account in a five- year timescale, 10- year timescale. So it's not even that far out.

Valerie Morgan: In Europe, we know that potatoes are growing smaller as a result of a change in climate. So what do you do when you're a potato chip company or you're a fast food company and your supply of your basic raw material is becoming maybe less certain and becoming more exposed to climactic events? So you have to have a strategy to adapt. Maybe you're going to change the way you grow your raw materials, or maybe you will change the ingredients of your raw material.

Sunil Rao: You are preserving the future yield and output of your business by ensuring that you can continue to operate in conditions that we take for granted today.

Valerie Morgan: Exactly. You're also demonstrating to investors that you're resilient. You've taken this into account. You're not going to build your next building or your next manufacturing facility in an area that is exposed to future 50 degree Celsius heat waves. If you have a really key supplier that is in a zone that's perhaps exposed to flooding in the future, you have a contingency plan. And to demonstrate to investors that, yep, we took this into account. We quantified the risks. If we don't take into account, this is what we're doing to adapt to it and this is how we're going to make sure our business has a continuity in five, 10, 20 years.

Sunil Rao: So it preserves the future of the business and it makes fiscal sense because you're showing how you continue to operate by both impacting the world positively and frankly, even giving consumers what they want. Right? Because I think today, one of the things that we're seeing as consumers and what we ask for is some indication that we're not harming the planet when we actually consume these products that we get.

Valerie Morgan: What you're saying is a really good point. Up until now we talk about really the risks, the climate risks, the physical risks of climate change, but there's a whole nother side to it, which is the opportunities, the market opportunities you can have by providing products that meet consumer demands. We're seeing in North America more and more people are looking for plant- based foods. And so we see these consumer goods companies, these food and beverage companies that are adapting to these changing consumer preferences, which has a market of its own, right? You can make money off of this. At the same time, orient in a way that's a low carbon and a sustainable economy.

Sunil Rao: You think about sustainability, you think about plastics or you think about one small slice of reality. There are many facets just like that. Talk a little bit about how broad the scope is of sustainability.

Valerie Morgan: Sustainable development is typically defined as ensuring that you can sustain today's population without compromising future generations and the ecological limits of the planet. So what I really like is Kate Raworth's visual framework from her book, Doughnut Economics, whereby she has the social foundations as the inner circle of the doughnut and the planetary boundaries as the outer circle of the doughnut, and in between the two is really the safe space for humanity to operate. So the question is, how can we ensure all the social foundations health, housing, energy, access to water, education without overshooting our planetary boundaries? And what we're seeing is we're clearly overshooting our planetary boundaries and we're clearly not reaching our social foundations. There's still 800 million people that suffer from going hungry to bed every day. And so I think the reason why we talk mainly about climate change, despite the fact that sustainability is so broad is because it's maybe one of the most pressing issues. It's something that we can quantify the easiest in terms of one ton of CO2 equivalent, and it's also a direct result of everything we do. Carbon is emitted when we travel, from waste, from shopping, from working, everything we do has carbon emissions.

Sunil Rao: We talk about climate change as being first and foremost, but it's not necessarily the only thing that could contribute to making sure that we're able to unlock that 26 trillion.

Valerie Morgan: It's also a question of valuing the natural capital that we have, the what we call ecosystem services that natural capital gives us. It's protecting biodiversity, it's protecting forests, it's protecting earth's ecosystems that will then enable and allow businesses and society to continue to thrive.

Sunil Rao: There is a possibility of the collapse of the diversity that we have and I think this is what is the hardest thing for most people to comprehend. We take for granted that everything we plant grows because there is a very complex system that exists that makes sure that the interdependent systems are all working and everything's in harmony. We come in and we make fundamental changes and then these big systems collapse, and I keep thinking back to honeybees. People talk about how bees are dying, but there's a cascading fact that we can't fully calculate what the outcome would be.

Valerie Morgan: Without them, we will have a huge loss, not only in terms of food shortages, but also there'll be a huge cost for companies to have to hand pollinate some of their agriculture. So when we talk about these unlocking the potential 26 trillion, it's not just in terms of monetary hard cash, but also the value that natural capital can give us by protecting these resources that will also ensure that we have the water filtration systems thanks to trees, or to also have a potential to have more diversity in terms of food, production systems and more productive food systems, because we're increasing the diversity of our agroforestry systems. I think we, a lot of times economic models, they don't take into account the value of nature and how nature pretty much supports and holds up the whole economic system.

Sunil Rao: But the fundamental understanding that every system is inherently complex, intertwined, and interconnected with all these other biological systems. Having that known as a true fact then changes the way you approach this because there is a risk associated with removing things or removing entire species from the equation because you frankly don't know what the downstream impact can be.

Valerie Morgan: And for this natural capital aspect, this is exactly why there's a consortium of investors and international organizations and NGOs that are working precisely on that, on trying to quantify the different risks and opportunities that businesses can result from. But from nature, they're creating the TNFD, the Task Force for Nature Related Financial Disclosures, so the businesses can then quantify and evaluate their risks and opportunities related to the degradation of natural capital, because businesses just like humans, are fully reliant on a healthy ecosystem, a healthy planet. And the difficulty is, as you said, it's hard to quantify. So this is exactly the type of work that's actually being undertaken now and hopefully it will be as ubiquitous as the Task Force for Climate Related Financial Disclosure.

Sunil Rao: I was surprised to hear that most companies are thinking about this in a defensive capacity. It reminded me of an article I recently read about how some large brands like Nike, Unilever, and Starbucks have come together to battle carbon emissions. They're working in collaboration with the Environmental and Defense Fund to come up with research and blueprints that help businesses achieve zero carbon emissions by 2050. I guess it makes sense, given this preserves the prospects of continued growth and a part of that$ 26 trillion. But then I got curious about what the environmental impacts of COVID- 19 have been and whether these changes are short- term or long- term. COVID obviously has changed how we operate as a species. I think in some regards, you have these photos of New Delhi, a city that's constantly polluted, actually having blue skies. So there's that impact that it's had where people are stopping to do the bad things that they do. Talk a little bit about how that's impacted the view on sustainability or what the correlation there is.

Valerie Morgan: We definitely see the short- term impact, which is true. There was a drop in emissions. There was a drop in air pollution because economic activity slowed down or pretty much screeched to a halt. So we do see these very short- term impacts. The question always comes up is, how is COVID going to impact sustainability? The real impact in the short to medium term will all depend on the recovery plan and how deep the recession is. People, sometimes they're a bit pessimistic in terms of," Oh, the environment gets swept under the rug whenever we have to tighten our budgets." Which is not untrue, but there's just been such a momentum pre- COVID in terms of biodiversity, climate targets and initiatives that it would be very unlikely for companies and governments to backtrack on those commitments. Because at the end of the day, as The World Economic Forum demonstrated in the 2020 top global risks environment is the top five now. It dominates the top five global risks and that doesn't change with a pandemic. If anything, it just accentuates the fact that biodiversity loss is part of the risk.

Sunil Rao: It was really interesting to hear Valerie talk about the different facets of sustainability, how it breaks down from such a broad set of subjects into very actionable areas that brands can use to drive impact. One of the most shocking things was the fact that our biosphere is so fragile. Knock out one species and you knock down the entire thing. Tying these initiatives back, the sustainable initiatives back, to the long- term objectives of these companies really are in their best interest. The fact that food companies really need to think about that two degree change in temperature and how it would impact their ability to farm the land, to produce more food in the future. And this whole concept of doing well and doing good, making sure they take care of the environment and that innocence allows them to do well longer term and keeps their businesses running well. But I also wanted to get a different perspective on how brands are connecting with consumers around sustainability. People tend to disassociate from large problems, the bottom line, economic impact. These may not mean the same thing to a brand as they do to a consumer, but we're all part of this interlinked process. We've heard about the science behind it, but on the flip side, could we use art to communicate the importance of sustainable practices? So I sat down with my friend, Ben Von Wong. Ben uses art to bring focus to sustainability. He's a viral campaign creator, specifically focused on supporting social and environmental causes. I want to start off by letting you all get to know a little bit about Ben.

Ben Von Wong: So I started off life as a hard rock mining engineer. So not data mining, actual gold, silver, copper. Did that for three and a half years. Somewhere along the way I picked up photography and realized that it was a lot more exciting. And so I ended up quitting my day job, not because I wanted to be a photographer, but just because I knew that I didn't want to be an engineer anymore. And so I started traveling the world, doing projects that got crazier and crazier, because that was how you got discovered as an artist. The crazier, the project, the more it spread. And I think things really turned around when I ended up tying a model 30 meters underwater in a shipwreck in Bali. And then that led to a couple more projects, dangling superheroes off the edge of a 40 story skyscraper and lighting a couple people on fire, until eventually I got this big commercial project with Huawei, which I think's the pinnacle of my commercial career at the time, where it just got me wondering, what am I doing? I'm just creating these really epic things for the sake of making them epic and moving product off the shelf. And then it was about trying to figure, well, how might I then pivot into something a little bit more meaningful?

Sunil Rao: I'm curious, when do you think you started this pivot? When did you figure out I'm making a transition to something different?

Ben Von Wong: I think the dream of most artists is to get paid to do what you do best. This idea of pay you, do the craziest thing you possibly can. And I think that was always the dream. And I think for most people, when you reach your dream, you realize that it's not the end. There's just a lot more dreams that are just waiting. In my case, it was just like," All right, I've gotten there and this is actually kind of disappointing. Where else do you go from here after you do a big global campaign with a big multinational company?" You just do the next one to make it crazier, do the next one to make it crazier. And so then I started reflecting back, what were the projects that got me excited? What were the ones that touched my heart? And it was always the projects that had purpose and meaning behind it. I want my skills to contribute to making the world a better place. I don't just want to do something for the sake of doing it.

Sunil Rao: I think there's one project that stands out and I'm thinking of the one related to the sharks. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Ben Von Wong: Yeah. So when I decided that I wanted to pivot from doing big, crazy projects to doing projects that had purpose and meaning, there was a disjoint because I think when we look at fantasy and science fiction and all these really cool futuristic images, you don't really think about impact first and foremost. So there was a little bit of work and experimentation that I had to do in order to figure out how might we intersect these worlds of fantasy and reality. I was invited to Fiji to do a project there and I was asking around," What cool things are there to do in Fiji?" In order to try to figure out what kind of impact I may have while there, and someone said there were some really cool shark dives. And so I started doing some digging and you realize that sharks are a really important species that the entire underwater ecosystem relies on, but they're significantly under threat. And I thought," Well, what's the best way to get people to care about sharks and to not be scared of them? Why not just tie a model underwater and have sharks swimming around and start a conversation by showing, instead of telling people that,'No, no. Sharks aren't dangerous.'" And so I'd already tied a model on the water for some of my previous viral projects, so I knew how to do that. Now all I have to do is add a couple sharks and why not?

Sunil Rao: Put a perfectly reasonable or rational conclusion to reach. So we've actually got a clip of you describing the shark project. Let's take a quick listen.

Ben Von Wong: Most shark conservation imagery is all the same that you've already seen before, the Nat Geo stuff, or the really horrible documentaries that you look at. And what happens is nobody really looks at that unless they actually care about it. So how do you connect with a new audience that has never heard of the problem before? You have to speak their language. And so that's what we tried to do. We tried to speak the language of the internet saying," Hey, we tied a model under water while sharks swam around." And that prompted a whole new series of discussions around," Wait, how did you do that? Is it actually safe? Can you-"

Sunil Rao: What was the response to the shark project message?

Ben Von Wong: The response initially when I was pitching the shark message, trying to get partners on board, was that nobody wanted to come on board because no one wanted the risk of tying someone underwater with sharks swimming around. However, after creating the project, I then took it and shopped it around to different causes, trying to figure out who I might attach this, because otherwise it's just awareness with no action. And we ended up finding a group called Shark Stewards who were trying to push forward a petition to create shark sanctuaries. And so we attach ourselves to them, generated 80, 000 petition signatures, hit the front page of Reddit three times, got 2 million views for one of the images in 24 hours. And so the response was really, really huge. And I think it was just the perfect way to, I guess, trick people into having this conversation, but then also engaging people who already cared about the issue and giving them a different tool to talk about the same problem that they may have already heard about before.

Sunil Rao: What I love about that is how you're taking a topic like biodiversity, which doesn't really mean anything to the average person and then making it personal. And I mean, 80,000 petition signatures, front page of Reddit, this is a pretty significant response. So clearly there was a connection that was made there with all of these people. And then there was the other project, the one with all of those plastic bottles.

Ben Von Wong: How do you get people to talk about something that is ordinary, ugly and boring? I wasn't too sure, but from experience, I know that the internet loves to see things that are extravagant, unique and different. So applying that same concept to plastic bottles, having 10, 000 of them seemed like a great start at making something ordinary into something extravagant. With more plastic than fish in the sea scheduled for 2050, it made sense to add an ocean component to the project. A sea of plastic was interesting and sad, but it needed something unique and beautiful to truly stand out. What more unique and beautiful to represent the ocean than a mermaid?

Sunil Rao: I have to say, I think this is one of those visually striking ones. When we go to your website, this is one of the first things that stands out. And then if we compare it again to the previous one, what was the response to this one?

Ben Von Wong: The response was massive. I think the biggest that I had ever received, I got 37 million views on the Facebook video alone, and this is 100% organic traffic. And then of course it got copied and pasted in all these different formats, including international news stations and newspapers all around the world. But in terms of what has it accomplished, what has changed as a result of it? It's always hard to say. Because at the end of the day, I think movements happen in multiple phases and the first phase in which timeframe this campaign was launched was in 2016, and that phase was awareness. It was all about raising awareness, raising the profile of the issue. I think what was really cool about it, it was that it showed that people cared. It showed that this was something that people were involved in, they were invested in. And I think what continues to show with this campaign specifically is how the same images keep resurfacing. The same video keeps resurfacing and why? Because it's an issue that is evergreen, because until we solve the plastic problem, this thing is still relevant. And by the way, the 10,000 plastic bottles is the average number of plastic bottles a single person uses over the course of their lifetime. And I just think that there's something really compelling there to realize how our individual actions really make a difference. They really add up.

Sunil Rao: That's what I love about your work. Not only are you appealing to the average person in the context of, let's bring this into an area or a domain that I understand or I could relate to, but even that exact point. 10, 000 bottles, I had no idea that that's what you would be consuming as an individual, but then a lot of people will have the reaction when they hear topics like sustainability or climate change. It's like," Oh, I'm just a drop in the pond." Or you'll get that kind of mentality, right?

Ben Von Wong: Absolutely. And at the end of the day, humans are emotional creatures. We make decisions emotionally, and I think that the power of the arts is to have these conversations with people, it's to strike them up and to lower their guards. Because when you speak through the arts, you take a different pathway to communicate with people. And I think we're always trying to measure everything, but the things that matter the most in life are often the things that can't be measured.

Sunil Rao: So why do you think these brands hire you?

Ben Von Wong: I think in my case specifically, there aren't that many people that managed to take a deep dark problem and make it into something that's beautiful and relatable. The work that I create, although it doesn't exclude the conservation sustainability impact crowd, it actually invites them in, but it also enables I think brands to broaden the base of the conversation, because the work that I create is, at the end of the day, it's education through adventure. I'm drawing people in by offering them the chance to come and go on an adventure together.

Sunil Rao: And I think that's part of your secret sauce when it comes to how you're making this so much more attractive to the average person that sees this, because I work with a lot of brands and companies that are trying to connect better with their consumers. We talk about this connected consumer experience. We talk about appealing to their needs, their wants. And I think where you've cracked the code is this concept of the community that gets formed. It's not this transient message that you just put out, you actually are creating something that has some permanence.

Ben Von Wong: I think the components of what makes a good story truly resonate with people are always valid. You'll hear this time and again, the power of the narrative is really, really important. But I think where a lot of brands miss out on is that they'll come up with a really strong narrative, but they'll forget about what it's anchored to and you need to anchor the narrative in something. So I think that the simplest questions are always the ones that get people thinking the most. It's, great, let's create a campaign that gets millions of views. But why do you want millions of views? What are you going to do with these views? What do you want people to accomplish with these years? And how is that going to make the world a better place? And that simple question is always like," Oh, right. Yeah. What are we looking for in the engagement?" It's not," I want a 98% positive sentiment analysis on the return of my thing." It's," Great. So you got a bunch of smiley faces and likes and thumbs up, but has that really changed anything?" It's not just about touching as many people as you want. It's about owning a piece of somebody's heart. So you're looking for the intersection of art, marketing and design. And if you can figure those three out, I think you create something that's really special. I'll give you an example. In one of the projects that we did for Starbucks, we did these surveys and although 90% of the people already knew about the problem, it changed the minds of how 80% of people saw the plastic problem, because for the first time ever, they saw how these tiny little actions, in this case straws, would really add up to make a tremendous impact. We basically made a straw installation out of 168, 000 plastic straws.

Sunil Rao: We've got an audio clip from the plastic straws video.

Speaker 4: We all know about the last straw, right? That last little push in the wrong direction. The wait, stop, wait, that won't stop. We can take no more. It climbs on top and suddenly everything collapses like a wave that rises high then crashes. And this is where we are right now. We all know the stats, a truck load of plastic's in the ocean every 60 seconds, a straw you use for just minutes exists for 450 years. By 2050, there'll be more plastic in the sea than fish. We get it. I know, I know the last straw. It seems like such a tiny thing to tip us over, but it's not, because it's not about that straw. It's about the way they all add up. And that means to take care of all of it, you don't take care of all of it, you focus on something. Each of us, one thing, one effort, one repeated action at a time. And when you think about it that way, the last straw is no different from the first, just one part of a process, no better, no worse. After all, the last straw in one direction is the first straw in reverse. Sometimes we have to move inches to go miles, but with each straw not used, we can smile knowing we didn't contribute to a pile that breaks the back of the ocean, but invested in the notion we can bring the ocean back. And your last straw is the first straw towards that, and that is how it always works.

Ben Von Wong: You might think that this is something that's customer facing, but it's also inwardly employee facing. Now it suddenly gives employees a chance to say," Hey, look. I am proud to work for this company because they're doing this thing. And oh, what? It's not a press release? This is something that I can talk to my kid, to my family about."

Sunil Rao: I love the way that you designed this. It's got a deaf poetry vibe. I mean, it's a mix of poetry and rap. How did you even come up with this?

Ben Von Wong: There is a series of photographs. There's a video that's added on to it. In this case, we thought that in order to really drive the message home, we needed to get a spoken word artist involved and that's where Steve Connell came in and we remixed something together. This was happening as we were building the installation. In terms of how the concept happened, you got to rewind nine months back into the past where it all started with the community. There was a community called Zero Waste Saigon. That was the first sustainability plastic driven group in Vietnam that made sustainability trendy among all of the expat and started building these partnerships, developed a zero waste store, and they really wanted to do a collaboration with me. And so they reached out and they're like," Hey, we'd love to bring you in. What do you need?" I was like," I don't know, 100, 000 straws or something." They're like," Okay, I think we can do that in six months, maybe nine." I was like," Really?" And then similarly, they brought Starbucks into the equation because they had already established a relationship with Starbucks. And so, sort of went the opposite direction of how creative projects normally flow. I think the part that I always try to embed in the projects that I do is, how can we create something that's a visual metaphor, that's simple for people to understand, that's compelling? Otherwise, you're just preaching. And I think there's a very fine line between sharing a story and preaching to people. That's really hard not to cross. This got a Guinness World Record. So 168,000 plastic straws, the largest straw installation and that got it a lot of traction. And the reason we went for Guinness World Record was just because we knew it would bring more traction. I'm always trying to find alternative ways to market the thing, because if you can make something cool, then you're just trying to share something that's cool that happens to be sustainable too, and that makes it doubly cool.

Sunil Rao: There's a hypothesis of if we retain biodiversity, if we make the right changes for climate change, there is a$ 26 trillion opportunity. You're projecting out how the economy is growing, how we as a species are evolving and continuing to create value. What do you think the reason to act now is?

Ben Von Wong: I mean, if we want to take it from a purely selfish perspective, there is so much advantage to being the first mover on anything. And the interesting thing about being first is that it gives you more time to be bad at it, because when you're the only one doing it, you're sort of expected to suck a little at it for a little while. While everyone is focused on competing in the exact same pool, you get to go and innovate and make mistakes and see what works, see what doesn't work, get better at it so that you get completely ahead of the others in terms of how long it takes to set up the supply chain. If you start now, but you double down on it and you work at it three times faster than anyone else, there's such opportunity down the line.

Sunil Rao: I think there's a lot to be said about first mover advantage. I see so many brands, so many large established companies starting to think about the subscription economy, think about how they can convert what traditionally was an EBIT based evaluation of their company and try to switch to what is sexy these days, which is having your company valued at some multiple of recurring revenue. So then you need to start spawning these subscription packages to products that were typically bought on a shelf at a retail store. And a lot of them look at moving into that as a first mover advantage, the market punishes them when they make the shift, it takes a few years, but then all of a sudden they unlock more value than they could before.

Ben Von Wong: The reason why I think people don't trust that companies are truly doing everything they can is because they're not seeing what the companies are risking in order to do that. Because if everything is a win- win- win, then you're not risking anything. You're not challenging authority. You're not challenging the system. I have a podcast called Impact Everywhere and one of my guests called Nora Rahimian had this really amazing line that I think summarizes the way you want to think about this. That is you have to ask yourself if you're taking a risk that is proportional to your privilege. You have to ask yourself if you're taking a risk that is proportional to your privilege. And I think that people see companies as massively privileged individuals that like to do tiny little do good projects on the side. To break that, you need to also talk about what you're risking, what you're losing out on in order to pursue things. It's not just saying," Oh yeah, we have dedicated a couple hundred million dollars to this thing." That's expected. That's normal, but what opportunities have you turned down?

Sunil Rao: I mean, it's a key point. When you think someone else has skin in the game, the trust goes up, the confidence, the respect. There's an element here where, as an artist, you understand the power of what you're producing. You know the power of marketing. What are your thoughts about what sticks and what doesn't?

Ben Von Wong: Well, there are a lot of principles I think that have been written out and they're still true today. They were true 20 years ago. They were probably true 100 years ago. There are a couple of great books. I think one would be StoryBrand by Donald Miller, has a really compelling premise, which is that it's really important to be the guide and not the hero. Because if you, as a brand, take up the space of the hero, then it doesn't leave the customer the opportunity to be the hero. There are a couple of books that are classics. There's Contagious by Jonah Berger and Made to Stick by Dan Heath. They bring together a bunch of different principles, such as the importance of social currency. So by sharing this, does this make me cooler?

Sunil Rao: So,$ 26 trillion is up for grabs over the next decade, but it won't be accessible unless brands start to take action. Valerie told us about the impact on businesses and why it's in their best interest to change. Ben dove into the human element, how emotions can drive people to change through a sense of responsibility and a fear of loss. As Ben said, there is an inherent first mover advantage for those brands that respond to what people are feeling and what they need. After my conversation with both Ben and Valerie, one of my key takeaways is that it's just as much on us consumers as it is on brands to drive change. Consumer preferences are changing, but brands are quick to adapt. And most of these brands know that doing well and doing good is great for business. Brands can see the benefits right away by connecting with their consumers, creating these communities where they're creating products that resonate with their values, while they're driving towards the long- term goal of preserving future prospects for growth. And what's really exciting to me is that there's so much potential if we do this right. It's not all just doom and gloom. It's about unlocking the hidden value in that$ 26 trillion. Thank you for joining me on the sustainability journey. I'm your host, Sunil Rao. A special thank you to our guests, Valerie and Ben for talking to me today. I hope you enjoyed the discussions as much as I did. Please make sure to subscribe to the series on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcast. You can also follow me on LinkedIn at Sunil Rao or Twitter at Sunil K. Rao. Join us next time as we explore other facets of this$ 26 trillion opportunity, but from the perspective of one of the largest CPG companies in the world. Talk to you soon.