Kendall Glauber from Lonely Whale and the NextWave Plastics Consortium went from summers in Southern California to the non-profit world, keeping plastic waste from entering the ocean. In this episode, we learn how her efforts through Lonely Whale are helping to drive recycling systems change and how NextWave’s member companies are using ocean-bound plastics to create new goods. We discover the impact of ocean-bound plastics and explore how informal workers in developing countries are a critical part of the system, and why waste is being mismanaged. And learn how multinational corporations and small businesses can help prevent plastics from polluting our oceans and how the circular economy supports social change. 

If you want to learn more about Nextwave, the member companies and how they are making waves by choosing ocean-bound plastics visit www.nextwaveplastics.org. You can follow along with Nextwave on its mission to keep plastic in the economy and out of the ocean on twitter at nxtwaveplastics. Want to support Lonelywhale as a business? 1% for the planet members, you can find them listed as a non-profit, and they are always looking for new brands to join Nextwave’s consortium. 

Links from this episode

• NextWave Plastics

• Lonely Whale

• Forbes: The People Who Collect Most Ocean-Bound Plastic For Recycling Are Getting A Hand Up From A Group Of Companies And Brands

• Marine pollution. Plastic waste inputs from land into the ocean

• UN ocean treaty is ‘once in a lifetime’ chance to protect the high seas

Episode Transcript

[00:02:22] Jennifer Myers Chua: Across the world, 20 million waste pickers, salvage, reusable, or recyclable materials, and are responsible for 60% of the world’s recycling. These people, considered informal workers are collecting ocean bound, plastics that would otherwise end up in the ocean. And this waste is considered mismanaged. There’s no formal waste management system in place in these developing countries. And for discarded plastic to be considered ocean bound, it’s found within 50 kilometers of the coast. Close enough to be washed into the ocean with the next storm.

And the unfortunate reality is that the ocean is already filled with plastic. It’s nearly impossible to collect and damaging. 8 million, tons of plastic is entering the ocean each year. The equivalent of one garbage truck, full of plastic being dumped in the ocean every minute. And the plastic pollution crisis has only accelerated and continues to intensify around the world. Today’s guest Kendell Glauber works at Lonely Whale. A nonprofit on a mission to keep plastic waste from entering the ocean. She’s the director of next wave plastics, a consortium of companies supported by Lonely Whale who are working to keep plastic in the economy and out of the ocean. integrating recycled ocean bound plastic into their products and to help support other businesses in doing the same and drive systemic change

[00:03:43] Kendall Glauber: I was tracking the progress of NextWave from the beginning because I had a existing relationship with Dune Ives, the CEO of Lonely Whale, who has been a mentor of mine throughout my career. It was fairly serendipitous because my background professionally was In consulting, but primarily focused on sustainability. I have a masters of environmental management. And so I had done a lot of work around behavior change, particularly when it comes to sustainability, things like energy efficiency, climate change, and how people can move through the process of change to actually help to benefit the environment, change their behavior, things like that.

When I was growing up, I grew up in Southern California and spent every day of every summer at the beach. My summer camp was called junior guards and it was on the beach. And I was my happiest when I was swimming in the ocean. But it was in long beach, California, which is the port of long beach and the port of Los Angeles. Connected to each other. And also the Los Angeles river flows out right around that area. And so I was having the time of my life swimming in the waves, but also like couldn’t help but notice how much plastic there was in the ocean. Every summer, we would have red tides, which were algal blooms in the water.

There’d be dead birds or dead fish on the beach. So even from like a pretty early age, I had this really clear understanding of the connection between urban systems and the city that I lived in and the environment and, and the impacts to the environment, because I knew I’d been in other places where even maybe a few miles down the coast, I could see that the beaches were cleaner. I could see that, that they didn’t have the same issues with plastic pollution. It was less intense because it wasn’t as close to some of these like urban outlets. And so I understood that really, there was this large impact, but it wasn’t any one person fault. Like it wasn’t any one person who doing it.

It was a lot of people doing a lot of individually, potentially harmless things that then all kind of fed up into this broader systemic problem. That I think actually drove a lot of my curiosity throughout my career in terms of solving systemic problems and figuring out like how do we think about this, how do we come at this from a way where we can actually change what’s happening at a larger scale to meet these goals that help protect our environment as well, but that also don’t make it so that we can’t live our lives and have our businesses and make money from the things that we’ve invented and that people feel really passionate about. And I truly believe that there’s a balance there. And so I think that kind of bringing together those pieces really positions me well to someone that can help do something like convene a consortium that helps position these conversations.

And I think that what’s really great for them, the business people and the companies who are trying to figure out like, okay, how do I make this work from a business perspective is, being a part of something like a consortium or having, key advisors that are helping to guide the work that aren’t just your like investors or your peers in the business that have some more of a, especially if you are working into sustainability and environmental impact or any kind of impact social impact, all the things like there are incredible experts that are doing this work that have the scientific or Process understanding of what the ideal might be. And then you can understand as a business owner, how your business can then help support those goals, whether then explicitly working against them.

I have this opportunity and it could likely be a business differentiator, like my sustainability or my social responsibility, or, the way that I’m investing in new supply streams and innovative materials. This is something that can differentiate me as a business. And at this point, consumers are not putting up with any greenwashing. Like there is, they’re very invested in wanting to know the truth. And so having that transparency, having that knowledge like seeking out those inputs, is something that’s, that’s really interesting.

[00:08:28] Jennifer Myers Chua: When we go back to your junior guard days and you’re playing in the ocean. Do you remember any other moments where you became interested in sustainability? Is there anything that stands out in your mind of like this happened in your life and it led you on this path?

[00:08:43] Kendall Glauber: There’s definitely a few, I think. It’s everything from when I was in college, I was at an event and there was a booth from a local environmental group and they had these jars full of water with these things in them. And they looked just like jellyfish. Like it was, it was almost like a cartoon version of a jellyfish. And I was like, this is weird. And I talked to the people there and they were like, this is what happens when balloons get released and go up into the atmosphere and they expand and then pop and they. Part of it gets shredded, but it stays connected at the part where the knot is. And then when it ends up in the water and it’s bobbing, it looks just like sea life. And that broke my heart. And that I think was actually the moment that took me from the kid being like playing in the ocean, thinking about that, this stuff shouldn’t be here to, oh my gosh. There’s something that I need to do about this. so then I think that, that was a huge moment for me, in terms of just recognizing. How the unintended consequences of the things that we don’t think about and how something like a huge celebration that is, commemorated with a balloon release is something that’s actually really creating so much more harm than good.

And understanding that we’re all connected. I think for me, that was a big piece of it. Connection for me has been a big key value in my life in terms of my connection to my family and my friends and my community and the places where I’ve felt the happiest and most fulfilled have been the places where I’ve had that deep sense of connection and community.

And so I think that brings me back to the idea of How I was talking about systems, thinking like, that sounds like such a buzzword, but really it’s about like how we’re all connected. Like it’s all part of this broader system and everything’s impacting each other. And so like, how can we be more intentional about understanding the impacts that our systems are currently having and ways that we can continue to improve them? Through NextWave. I get the opportunity to do that by helping to continue to grow and deepen this community of brands that have a desire to do good, and help them figure out the way forward together and the way that they’re connected rather than trying to all scrape by and figure it out on their own.

Ocean bound, plastic is really the plastic that is most vulnerable to ending up in the ocean. As many of us know, there’s a bit of an issue with the plastic that we use on land, ending up in the environment, and then in the ocean affecting Marine ecosystems and Marine animals. That plastic is continuing to enter the ocean on a regular basis. In fact, there’s about 12 million metric, tons of plastic that are entering the ocean every single year, that is equivalent to about one and a half garbage trucks being dumped into the ocean every minute. All the time it’s just constantly happening and this is a huge problem.

And so there’s been this development of an industry around how do we stop the flow of this plastic into the ocean before it gets there by setting up systems that help to capture this plastic, in the places where it’s most vulnerable to being in the environment. that gets us to ocean bound plastic. So ocean plastic is defined based on some scientific research out of the university of Georgia. It’s defined as plastic that’s collected within 50 kilometers of a coastline, generally in areas with little or absolutely no waste management. So there’s no truck coming down the street to pick up their waste on a weekly basis. They don’t really have any other recourse. Like this is people in neighborhoods, maybe businesses, companies in places in the world where no one is coming to pick up the trash.

So next wave plastics is a consortium of multinational brands who are all invested in helping to change the trajectory on ocean plastic pollution by sourcing this material, demonstrating that it has commercial value and should be collected and recycled, and that they’re investing the time and energy into using that as new material in their products that they’re putting out on the market. And so our consortium includes a number of brands that you’re probably familiar with. It includes Dell technologies, HP Inc, Herman Miller, human scale, who are more in like interior design and office furniture, Ikea, interface that makes carpeting, Trek bicycles. As well as Shinola, a lifestyle goods company, variative, which makes a number of different packaging applications. CPI card group makes credit cards and soul guard is a startup that makes backpacks and travel goods and other lifestyle goods as well. So just even listening to that list, you can hear that it’s a whole array of different types of products, different industries. There’s really not a limit to what you can do with recycled plastic content, because you can put it into all the things that we make out of plastic.

And so the idea here is this commitment to come together as a consortium to share information so that no one of these companies has to figure this out on their own. They all recognize that this is an issue. They have the ability to help provide at least some level of a solution and so in doing that Each within their own product development, as well as then collaborating together to be successful in doing it, then they’re able to create much more impact and, and help to really turn off the tap on plastic pollution.

[00:15:11] Jennifer Myers Chua: And I mean, these are really household brands. Like I’m talking to you right now, sitting in a Herman Miller chair at an Ikea desk using a Dell monitor. It’s interesting that these brands would want to get involved in this. I’m wondering. How did they come together? What is the benefit for them of joining? why would these brands commit to this? Other than that shared knowledge?

[00:15:31] Kendall Glauber: Yeah, that’s a great question. The consortium itself was founded in 2017, but the conversations really started in 2016, between lonely whale and Dell technologies. And there was this idea that Dell really wanted to be using ocean bound, plastic as a material. Products and packaging. But that they could maybe have an impact on a few beaches and Indonesia. But that, that wasn’t necessarily going to reach the scale of the problem. And so there was this acknowledgement from the beginning that this wasn’t something that they could do on their own, that it was something that they need that other brands and other companies needed to join in on the fight.

But it isn’t easy. I mean, the whole reason that plastic in these areas is ending up in the environment and in the ocean is because the systems there are broken. We have a linear system that pumps just immense amounts of plastic packaging and goods to places all over the world. But there’s no real feasible way for it to get back and to be disposed of properly or reused. Ideally. And because of that broken system, it means that the systems aren’t necessarily set up to incentivize just turning the ship around and getting the plastic back to where it can be used again. So the idea of setting up Ocean bound plastic supply chains really takes an additional layer of investment and additional layer of knowledge around how to work with recycled material, particularly material that may have been exposed to the environment, maybe more degraded or dirty, maybe being collected and recycled at facilities that aren’t as advanced as some of the recycling facilities that are processing the stuff that comes out of our homes in the U S and Canada. There’s just more to it. And there’s fewer incentives that are just making this super cost-effective, really quick, easy to plug and play. But that doesn’t make it less worthwhile to do. In fact, I think it makes it more worthwhile to do, because it means that the products that these companies are then producing are not only just cool products.

They’re not only made with sustainable materials, but they’re also made with sustainable materials that are having incredible impact in places that are left behind by the existing, like systemic structures that exist across the globe. That is not the fault of the individual people in Indonesia. It’s this whole large system.

So basically the whole point then of joining and being a part of this larger group is really that these companies are breaking down barriers for each other in terms of recommending one of the biggest parts of this is that we’re, developing a network of a global network of ocean bound plastics suppliers. And so the idea there is that they’re being able to understand where there are. Recyclers and suppliers of material that actually have good potential to deliver a product that they can turn into something that’s useful. So a lot of it is understanding who’s out there. What’s the network who’s doing this work, where are the needs? As well as connecting to the experts, whether those are the scientific experts that are figure, understanding the problem. Or the implementation experts who understand how to go in on the ground and set up a system that is socially responsible, but also, you know, environmentally beneficial in, in places with limited waste management and more. There’s the financial side. There’s a lot of that. So a lot of it is bringing all the right people together into the space and breaking down those barriers to success with working with Ocean bound plastics. Now the consortium has been around for four years and these companies are in many cases, the leaders who have charted this course.

And so we’re now turning that around and working more to develop thought leadership and, helping to guide others in navigating this space as well. We’re adding that credibility and that knowledge and kind of paying it forward as well, in terms of NextWave and our member companies contributing to additional thought leadership that grows the pie in terms of the ability to actually continue to expand and scale this industry around ocean plastic recycling.

[00:20:02] Jennifer Myers Chua: So these member companies, is there a collective goal in terms of impact?

[00:20:07] Kendall: Absolutely. In 2018, we set out with our eyes on the prize of hitting 25,000 metric, tons of Ocean bound plastic from the ocean by the end of 2025, that is equivalent to 1.2 billion single use plastic water bottles. So Yeah the scale is big. We’re aiming for a large amount for these companies to actually use. In the grand scheme of things. It is a drop in the bucket, but the idea is really. Trying to be the catalyst for then these greater systems that can kind of be up and running and continue to grow and grow and grow from there.

[00:20:46] Jennifer Myers Chua: I just had a thought, which is outside of creating things with ocean bound plastics, the NextWave member companies, are they working in other ways to reduce their use of plastic? I’m just wondering if that’s in their consciousness as well.

[00:21:00] Kendall Glauber: It’s one thing to be replacing the plastic with recycled content, but it’s another thing to be thinking about how we reduce that overall impact together in the first place. So as part of signing up for membership, each of the member companies agrees to reduce their overall use of plastic by making an assessment. What their current footprint is and then ways to reduce that overall. And many of them have been doing this even before being next wave plastics members, or are continuing to deepen their commitment to that. We don’t have a specific goal that’s based on that, but helping the member companies share that information so that they can also learn from each other, similarly, in this same forum where they’re sharing information and learning from each other about ocean bound plastic. They’re also doing that about ways to reduce their plastic overall

one great example, Trek bike ran a pilot to reduce the amount of plastic that was in the packaging for their bicycles. That goes to a bicycle store where they’d assemble the bike and then you’d purchase the bike. But it has to get there first. And there’s a lot of components that need to be properly protected in order to get from their manufacturing site, their warehouse, and then to that store. And so, they did a really comprehensive look at how do we try and get rid of every single piece of plastic in this thing that we can. And I think that they were successful down to maybe a couples, zip ties, and they were even looking into some alternative solutions and, and they’ve even really heard from many of their partners in the actual stores saying that the amount of plastic that they’re throwing away has been reduced as a result of that. And so they ran the pilot with one bike model, but it was so successful that they’re expanding that across a number of their other, bicycle models as well.

These are like wonderful companies that are doing good work. And also the delay on bicycles during the pandemic with the supply chain challenges. It’s been very real. I think what’s really a Testament to the commitment of some of these companies, is that even with the level of challenges that they’re facing in their supply chains with the pandemic and, global shipping issues, in the cost of goods going up, is that they’ve continued to be committed to their ocean bound plastic sources, the relationships that they’ve developed with suppliers and the products that they’re putting out there. We’ve continued to grow, the amount of plastic that the member companies are diverting year over year. Basically doubling each year. And that hasn’t slowed down. It’s actually accelerated since, since the pandemic. So it’s really great to see the level of commitment coming from these number companies.

[00:23:58] Jennifer Myers Chua: Do you have any other insight into the ways that we either humans or industry or small business? Just, we collectively use plastics? and how it. Existing use of plastics, maybe less than ideal.

[00:24:12] Kendall Glauber: The biggest thing is it’s not that plastic itself is bad. It’s an inert material or it’s a material out there that, serves a purpose. And so there’s many places where absolutely it makes sense to have plastic. It helps us create a lot of things that we maybe wouldn’t have invented. Otherwise it helps us ship a number of things. Further, the safer, lighter. And so there’s a lot of reasons that it makes sense to, to have plastic, to continue to use plastic. It’s more about why we’re using it. And then really what the plan is at the end of the day for what to do with it. And the biggest problem there is single use plastic hands down, across the globe. That is a problem is the single use plastic that is used once and then it never degrades. It doesn’t go away. And so, it ends up, even if it’s in a landfill, it’s taking up a ton of space in a landfill for the fact that someone was using it for a moment. And so the biggest issue. It’s really then how do we reduce the plastic that isn’t helpful.

That is more detrimental than it is useful. And like remove that from the economy in many ways, and then be able to really focus on how to be using plastic in a way that is more responsible. So. plastic packaging or reducing the use of things like the stuff you hear, people harping on all the time, plastic bags, plastic straws, plastic utensils. For example, utensils can’t be recycled. They can’t be properly captured in a municipal recycling facility and recycled into something new, uh, Exist forever and they’re just trash. And so it’s rethinking those things and how can we be creating alternatives? And then revisiting the need for single use plastic. In the meantime, it’s also about creating more robust systems for capturing and recycling the plastic. That is out there and designing products to be recyclable so that they can be captured, they can be recycled. And they then can actually be part of a more holistic system that keeps the phrase that we use all the time at next wave keeps that plastic in the economy and out of the ocean.

[00:26:52] Jennifer Myers Chua: So it should the onus beyond the brands then, or the governments that are developing these recycling systems. What do you think about that?

[00:27:00] Kendall Glauber: Absolutely. I think that the onus should definitely be on brands in many cases, that there should be a deeper level of accountability around the plastic that is being sent out, what it looks like, whether it’s recyclable and then what happens to it. It’s at its end of life.

There are many policies across the globe. We’re kind of doing the hashing out what this will look like around extended producer responsibility and having it be that the brands are more responsible for that material that they’re putting out there. But that can’t be the only thing. It’s easy to point the fingers at the big mean corporations and say, you fix the problem. There needs to be more of the system. So absolutely the governments need to be engaged in terms of creating good policy around plastic and good systems and, everything from the municipal level up to the, federal government and then consumers need to be engaged as well and take responsibility for their trash. Understand how to dispose of what they do have or return it to wherever it needs to go to get into the proper return stream at some point. So there is a role to play. I think that historically that’s been pointed towards consumers and we need to shift this to a more brand government centric and then holistic system.

So that. It’s something where everyone’s bearing some responsibility for making sure that this happens. And the thing that’s most promising about that is that the UN just released a mandate for creating a treaty on plastic and how we treat plastics as a global economy. And so I think there’s a lot of promise there in that mandate in terms of really driving for how we look at plastics and its full life cycle, not just what happens at the end of its life, once it’s been used, but really from design through use and into reuse. There’s going to be a lot of changes over the next few years in terms of how. I handled that as a like globe, and also at the state level. So lots of that? is coming so positive developments there.

[00:29:20] Jennifer Myers Chua: And someone with a design background, I am just completely enamored with these innovative ways that some of these companies are using ocean bound plastics. Anytime I see this, I just, I love to see what they’re creating. Do you have any examples that you can share from maybe businesses with the next wave, maybe without the have like use cases for products they’re creating with these plastics.

[00:29:45] Kendall Glauber: The member companies have been working on their products for anywhere from two to six or seven years at this point. More than 330 products on the market that are made with ocean bound plastic, just from these 12 companies. And so many of the products that I think are some really great examples are from HP. They really invested in this inspiring collection and recycling operation in Haiti where there is almost no waste management systems and really started. Integrating recycled bottles into ink cartridges, which is a core part of their business. It’s not like something that’s off on the side. That was like a one-off thing. They really went and integrated this into something that is a core element of their business. But they’ve really taken that commitment deeper and are innovating with this material to ensure that it can perform in a technology application.

And they’ve been able to integrate ocean bound plastic, into components that are in a huge number of their laptops, their monitors and other technology as well. So I think that that’s a really great example. I think some of the iconic ones, even that you mentioned earlier, you said you’re sitting in a Herman Miller chair, Herman Miller, just in 2021, they launched a suite of products that are made with ocean bound plastic, most iconically the Aeron chair just last year they launched these chairs and they’re in the process of rolling them out and soon all Aeron chairs will be released with Ocean bound plastic as the standard, this iconic piece within their product line. They were really looking at how do we really make an impact in something that, will make a difference. And that will really help tell this story to our customers as well.

One other thing that we haven’t talked about but that I think is really interesting is that fishing nets are also a big component of this conversation. So a lot of the plastic that we think about is the single use plastic, the water bottles, the baggies. But fishing nets are the most dangerous. type of Marine plastic pollution. And so a number of our member companies have been working with reclaimed fishing, net material in their products as well. Human scale really stands out in terms of that. They were actually the first to launch an office chair made with ocean bound plastic, they have two chairs currently, and are working to develop more products made with recycled fishing nets. And the idea is that there’s about two pounds of recycled fishing nets in each of these chairs, but these chairs are designed to last for 50 years. It’s trash. This was like going in the ocean and now it’s locked up in this chair will be around for the next 50 years at least. And so the idea really is there’s lots of different ways to go about this. There’s lots of ways to get this into packaging and other things, but what NextWave member companies have really been able to demonstrate is that it can also go into these really premium products. Whether it’s a Shinola watch or Solgaard backpack, or interface, carpeting, there’s all these places that it can go that are really designed to be these iconic products that you have around you in your life and that you live with that are making the most of, what, otherwise just would have been pollution.

[00:33:26] Jennifer Myers Chua: In terms of social impacts, like how are these communities all around the world that are, ocean front communities, how are they getting involved? And what you’re doing with NextWave… how is this impacting them?

[00:33:39] Kendall Glauber: That is a huge component of the work that we do working in the environmental space and in climate change. I think one of the things that I’ve really realized is that. That a lot of this stuff is really about people. And I think that the social component of this cannot be extricated from the environmental component. The people who are living in communities, where they don’t have waste management or oftentimes living in trash. And so what’s great about these, this work is that. In many cases. The ocean bound plastic supply chains are relying on networks of informal workers who are going out collecting plastic that’s recyclable. And selling that material to an aggregator or a recycler who we’ll sell that material on, into an ocean bound plastic supply stream, but they’re relying on that income of collecting plastic for their livelihood. What’s incredible is that waste pickers across the globe in 2016, it was estimated that they were responsible for 60% of global recycling. So at a global scale, this is our most successful recycling system. These people that are living in poverty. Oftentimes they’re part of marginalized groups, but are carrying our recycling system on their back and are the heroes of protecting the ocean from plastic. So one of the things that we focus on at NextWave is really making sure that as ocean bound plastic supply chains are being developed, the social component is absolutely central to the work that is being done. And that we’re ensuring that those workers are receiving fair pay, that they are also receiving benefits like health benefits and other support systems that can help them have better livelihoods, be able to educate their children. All of that, have it be so that their children can go and be in school and don’t have to work.

 I think some standout examples are HPS work with their partners first mile and work in Haiti where they’ve provided work over a thousand workers with jobs and have really helped to create a support system in Haiti for these workers. That then has transcended even things like the earthquake that happened there recently, they were able to help provide resources directly to many of the workers in their system to actually ensure that they were able to get whatever support they could provide. Dell technologies is doing incredible work in Indonesia and supporting communities there. And all of this within NextWave coming together to compare notes on what has been successful, what the needs are and how to ensure that social responsibility goes beyond just the factory level and down into those networks of informal workers.

One of the things that we did as a consortium was created a working group specifically on this issue. And what came out of that was a framework for what a socially responsible ocean bound plastics, supply chain looks like and it really runs through how to understand what the issues in a supply chain and then really how to lay the groundwork and the foundation for supporting a more socially responsible program and system, so that we’re really helping to articulate what are the actual challenges that are out there. And then how do you do it in a way that doesn’t just replace the systems that exist? It doesn’t just come in and say, okay, we’re going to set up our, what a, whatever a Western waste management system looks like, but really works to center the workers that are there doing this work already. And helping to improve their lives, helping to improve the systems, helping to bring more resources so that they can do that better. And that that’s can be beneficial to those that workforce and to those communities in these areas.

[00:37:53] Jennifer Myers Chua: And if you own a business and you want to create impact. Are there opportunities for businesses outside of the NextWave members to become members or interact with you in some way or benefit from your learnings even.

[00:38:07] Kendall Glauber: Absolutely. So we are constantly walking, welcoming new members to come and join this work. Any company who is interested in sourcing Ocean bound plastic. Getting it into products. Whether you are interested in trying to figure it out, and don’t really know where to get started or maybe. There may be some who are further down the line and have already been testing material or developed products, but want to be a part of a group that can help to continue to scale what they’re doing or maybe you’ve come up across specific roadblock that you need to work through, and it might be helpful to have some folks who can help you kind of sort through the challenges that you might be facing to figure out a way through, to be successful with using this material. That’s what we’re here for. We’re looking to grow and to scale this and to expand the impact that we’re able to have to get. And I would say though, that there are a number of resources that are coming out of NextWave. If you maybe aren’t ready to make the leap for membership. things like the framework for social responsibility are really useful tools for navigating some of the ambiguity of this space.

One thing that we have coming out this year is a series of case studies that we’re calling our changemaker series and that’s going to come out in april and may and June of this year, it’ll be a running series with one coming out every week. That’ll focus on a particular topic where NextWave member companies have had key learnings or found particular success or work through a particular challenge. And so just keeping an eye out for those and, taking a look at what information might be most useful for you there? I’m always happy to talk to companies who are trying to figure out how, how do we have better impact is Ocean bound plastic, the right thing for us. And if it is where do we go next? And I’d love to help on that.

[00:40:14] Jennifer Myers Chua: So if I’m a small business owner and I’m creating a product you think there’s an opportunity for me to access ocean bound plastic waste, or would this be an option as this community grows? Like what can a small business owner do in terms of creating this impact in this way?

[00:40:31] Kendall Glauber: Yeah, it’s a great question. And there’s a lot of really incredible small companies that I’ve talked to, who really are invested in being able to do that. I think the biggest challenge is that there is a issue of scale and needing to have a certain level of scale that you’re operating at for it. Then to make economic sense to. Be able to buy the material. And also there’s the challenge sometimes of finding manufacturers who can make a product that you might want to make for your business, that know how to work with ocean bound plastic, or have that in their wheelhouse. There are definitely some that can work at that smaller scale. But I think that it’s going to be the best fit for kind of small to mid-sized businesses who are able to start with kind of a larger investment or that have existing products and are already operating at scale and then want to integrate ocean bound plastic into some existing product lines.

 If you’re really starting from something new it can be challenging, but it isn’t impossible. It really is about finding the right partners. And so I think that in terms of finding the right suppliers out there who might be able to connect you up and provide the right information. There’s some that I would maybe point you in the direction of, and I’m happy to be a resource for anyone who’s interested in that. As well as really just seeking out information from others in the space who have done this, finding out who they’re working with and then piecing it together from there. The one thing I would say is. Don’t be afraid of making mistakes or potentially getting push back. As I said, this is about creating a system where systems don’t exist. So it isn’t as plug and play as it might be nice to have it be. But that doesn’t mean that it’s impossible and that it doesn’t mean that it’s not worthwhile. Keep seeking information, seeking champions who do know this space and continuing to push forward to try and see what you can do.

After your work with ocean experts and Lonely Whale. And now all of these heads of businesses that are working with plastics. I can only imagine that you have a lot of insight into how we as a society are changing how we interact with plastics. I’m just wondering if this has made you more hopeful for our future.

A thousand percent. So much more hopeful for what we can create. I am also scared. I will say that there’s a lot of things that can, and absolutely will go wrong in terms of creating a more sustainable future, where we use materials and natural resources more wisely. Where we treat our natural systems with respect and dignity, and. I can see it. And I think what’s sometimes really difficult is knowing maybe an end destination that feels like this utopia and looking at where we are now, which is that plastic producing is, is plastic. Production is increasing and plastic pollution is increasing and all of that. It’s those data day shifts the little incremental, tiny things that people are doing every day, um, that are moving us more towards that utopian future. And that’s a lot of what we work towards at lonely whale as a organization. But really what I see come to life through NextWave is , I’m not talking to Dell technologies. Like I’m talking to this specific individual who is instigating change in this organization and helping to figure out ways to really articulate why it makes sense for a huge company like Dell to invest in this project to help communities in Indonesia who have too much plastic waste. And the fact that they’ve been able to go from this nugget of an idea to launching products out in the world, that they’re able to tell this story to their customers. is an upswell.

That’s something that’s growing and that can continue to grow. And so I think that in walking through that, like sometimes slow, excruciating process of change. That doesn’t seem like it’s going anywhere. I see that it’s going somewhere and I can understand that, like that is how change happens. It doesn’t happen in like this huge. Sweeping change. It may happen sometimes in leaps and bounds, but a lot of it is about that, like that preparation work and the individuals who are committed to not being afraid to be like, I see this opportunity. Let’s go get it.

[00:45:40] Jennifer Myers Chua: If you want to learn more about NextWave, the member companies and how they’re making waves by choosing ocean bound plastics, visit https://www.nextwaveplastics.org/. You can follow along with NextWave on their mission to keep plastic in the economy and out of the ocean on Twitter at next waves, plastics without the first E. Want to support lonely whale as a business. 1% for the planet members, you can find them listed as a nonprofit, and they’re always looking for new brands to join NextWave’s consortium.

Monique Chan from Bruized takes scraps destined for the compost bin and creates delicious treats. In this episode, we learn how time spent in restaurant prep kitchens led Monique to look at food waste differently. And explore the economic and environmental costs of what gets thrown away. We discover how she sources imperfect ingredients that would otherwise be discarded from local groceries and farmer’s market vendors. And upcycles these and to healthy plant-based snacks. We chat about how she feels about food insecurity and the need for systematic change. What shifts do we need to take to deal with waste, how she plans to grow her business with local hubs over distribution. And how she’s hopeful that others will join in to find innovative ways to make our food systems more sustainable.

If you want to learn more about Monique and how she’s embracing imperfect to make feel-good food for the planet and the people around us or order some of her delicious pulp crunch visit bruized.com. You can follow along with Monique on her mission to upcycle imperfect produce into wholesome eats on Instagram at @bruizedco

Links from this episode

• Bruized

• UNEP Food Waste Index Report 2021

• Where are grocers in the war on food waste? Canadian Grocer

• Scrappy Cooking ‘Tok

Episode Transcript

[00:02:19] Jennifer Chua: This may or may not come as a surprise, but a lot of food is wasted worldwide each year. 17% of the food produced in 2021 was wasted globally. That’s 931 million tons. The United Nations Environment Program Food Waste Index Report 2021 suggests that the worst offenders are consumers with 61% of the waste happening at home. It’s easy to envision that. You make the Tik TOK salad. It was too much to eat. And after a couple of meals, you throw the rest in the green bin along with the broccoli stems or that forgotten spring mix in the back of the fridge. 26% comes from food service, and we’ll be talking about how all that waste comes to be in just a bit. 13% comes from retail and grocery, but there is a misconception here. You may immediately think spoiled or rotting food is all that is tossed, but plenty of it is still edible.

An article in Canadian grocer. Which I’m putting in the show notes, suggests that this waste takes a huge toll on the environment. Produce rotting in landfills releases methane of course, but wasted food also means wasted resources. Water, energy, and the greenhouse gas emissions that occur along the supply chain. From production to packaging shipping and then disposal. This article is really worth a read. It also highlights that we waste enough energy to power 274 million homes. Which personally I found a little surprising.

[00:04:36] Jennifer Chua: Healthy, delicious, and fully sustainable meals can be created upcycled from food that would otherwise go to waste. Organizations along the food chain are tackling food loss and waste or making efforts to do so, by procuring ingredients, not fit for human consumption. Or just not fit for sale. By using things like unused fruits and vegetables to create new products, innovators are finding ways along the supply chain to minimize food waste and create positive environmental impact.

Innovators like Monique Chan.

[00:05:06] Monique Chan: My name’s Monique Chan and I’m the founder of Bruized and Bruized is a women-run startup from Toronto. All about upcycling imperfect ingredients that are discarded across our supply chain and creating healthy plant-based snacks from them.

[00:05:21] Jennifer Chua: Monique studied international development and nutrition with a focus on food waste in her last year at the University of Guelph. And in that time, she had also fallen into a social circle that hosted vegan meetups and bonded over plant-based potlucks. This period of her life left her profoundly changed. And this newfound knowledge sparked inspiration to create a change in the current food industry. With her complimenting passions of plant-based cooking, sustainability and health, Monique envisioned a business and community that could highlight all of these topics and thus Bruized was born.

[00:05:55] Monique Chan: Our main product is called pulp crunch and it’s a high fibre granola cluster that is made with a base of organic juice pulp rescue from a local Juicery. And we take this juice pulp. That’s usually just thrown in a composter or ends up in a landfill and we take all those nutrients and fibre to create a really wholesome snack that’s filling but light at the same time. We sweeten it naturally with ripe bananas we get from retail stores and also feature imperfect apple chunks in our original flavour from a local farmer. And then that’s all dehydrated with oats, coconut and sunflower seeds. So it’s all. Gluten-free nut-free vegan. And it’s really filling and fueling for your day.

Before Bruized, I was mainly trying to figure out my life. I still am. I think everyone goes through that. Fresh out of university and. Finding like part-time jobs. I ended up working a lot more with food as a line cook in restaurants and, I really had a passion for food and cooking and I, I could see my future somewhere in that industry. From learning more about food waste and then seeing the, the waste in my everyday jobs, I made that connection that I wanted to create something that helped to solve this problem.

[00:07:16] Jennifer Chua: Do you remember when you first became interested in sustainability? Like, is there a moment that stands out in your mind?

[00:07:23] Monique Chan: Right when I entered University. I, I decided to take the international developments course because I still wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, but I knew I just had this inner nature to help other people. And I saw myself as an environmentalist and was interested in just caring for our earth. And then I didn’t notice that a lot of the things in my lifestyle didn’t line up with those beliefs. So. I think a key point in my life was when I was literally hauling up plastic water bottles up to my dorm room because they didn’t have like filtered water. There would always be this huge flight of stairs up to my room and I’d just haul like these huge, my dad would help me and it was just something I was so used to at home, drinking plastic water, bottles. And then a lot of my friends that I made in my first year were like super environmentalists. And they were like, like, why don’t you just get a Brita filter or something just to reduce your waste. And they would literally like try to hide my plastic water bottles. And then it was just one day that I realized I was like, yeah, that really doesn’t make sense.

And I need to let go of this ego that like, just because I’ve been doing this for, majority of my life doesn’t make it okay, or good for the environment. So I made that switch. I started eating more plant-based started with being pescatarian and eventually became vegan mid university. And yeah, after that, I just was really interested in cooking and started that plant-based journey from there. Posting more on Instagram and sharing my, my journey with other people.

[00:08:50] Jennifer Chua: Can you tell me a little bit of the story of coming up with this idea and then moving it forward into an actual business?

[00:08:56] Monique Chan: So it was actually in the course where I was studying food waste, where we had to think of a service or a business idea that helped to target food waste. And that was the main project of this semester. So as I was thinking of this, I was at the time really interested in cooking. And also working as a line cook. Why not merge those two passions together and create like a snack bar of some sort that utilizes my skill to be innovative with new ingredients, but also helps the social problem of reducing food waste. So I just kind of merged those two together. I didn’t really have any product ideas at the time.

It was literally just a vague idea that I would work on it and would pitch to my teachers at the end of the semester. over some years, like, I started actually doing recipe testing, connecting with local retailers and farmers to get to understand the problem more on an individual level. And then from there grew into what it is today.

[00:09:53] Jennifer Chua: now I spent a period of my life being a line cook as well. So I do understand kind of the relationship that you’d have with waste, but can you explain a little bit more about how that period of working in restaurant kitchens maybe influenced how you see food waste?

[00:10:11] Monique Chan: During my time working in a restaurant, main places that I saw waste being created was, mainly due to no systems being in place. So if I was working on the line and someone ordered no red onions in their meal, and I accidentally added in made a mistake and added red onions, it would be so busy that people would usually just throw that meal out. But I’d be that person just like hoarding all of the mistakes underneath the fridge and being like, oh, I’ll eat that for lunch later. Or I’m like, I’ll, I’ll bring that home. And people would be frustrated. They’d be like, who left this? burrito sitting here from like 9:00 AM. Do you know? So, uh, I saw a lot of food waste happening on the line.

And then also during just prep. I would observe a lot of employees just, I guess not being taught an efficient way of reducing waste. So I remember distinctly like this one guy would always be the guy in charge of cutting the sweet potatoes to prep sweet potato fries. And he would literally get boxes of sweet potatoes, cut around them to make them cube so they fit perfectly in the cutter and throw everything in the garbage bin. Almost half my height, full of just sweet potato sides just because it’s, it was faster doing it, that he was doing this really fast. And I was so tempted to just throw that big bag and haul it home and like make something out of it.

And it was surprising to me because this restaurant specifically, lot of the production for the sauces were done in a different facility. So every day they would pick up, drop off sauces for the day and then the truck would go back empty and they kind of already started giving the middles of onions from onion rings to the truck, so they could use it for soups and things. And I was so surprised that they didn’t implement this in other produce. So it was like the system was in place. There was just a lack of education, a lack of direction and support with reducing waste and something else I noticed too, because I was the one to make sure all the produce came in and, and check everything. I noticed how much things were costing. So a box of sweet potatoes was 40 bucks. If the guy’s cutting her off around half a sweet potato, he’s wasting $20 a box. We get around three to five boxes on average. So, four boxes and I did the calculations that came up to around $14,000 of just waste from sweet potatoes from that one location. I think when a, you make that monetary connection too, if you multiply that by how many restaurants you have, it’s quite a large amount of money being wasted, resources, energy, labor. I think all of that could have been avoided if there’s better systems in place and more education from the beginning for the employees.

So these are a lot of things that just stuck out to me. We even had a juice bar in the front, so there was a lot of opportunity to even just, bring the kale stems to the front, to put in the juice. Different things like that. I think there was just a lack of priority for those kinds of projects. That’s kind of where my frustration, but like where my drive started by just seeing something like happening and no one really doing anything about it. And then really wanting to see a change.

[00:13:29] Jennifer Chua: Are there any other experiences that shaped how you feel about natural living and environmental responsibility? Like, is there an event that shaped how you see the world this way?

[00:13:41] Monique Chan: I think it’s just an accumulation of a lot of different experiences. I think my influence is mostly from seeing other everyday people doing their best to reduce their waste. Cause I think the most powerful way we can combat these issues is to first reflect on ourselves and see what we as individuals can do.

So I was very influenced by my sustainable friends in university who were like eating plant-based and going to all these like climate event talks and plant-based events and, that it was really inspiring in itself because I got to learn more about how this has an impact and what else I can do as an individual to reduce that. So I got more interested in also trying to be more zero waste and, and how our plastic waste has an impact on the environment, uh, and where it goes at the end of the day. So how to minimize that and sharing and the creative process with other people. I loved to host dinner parties and attend parties when I was in university. And it was just a great way to challenge everyone, to make a dish and be able to share it at the end of the day over the table. I think those experiences were just really inspiring and showed me that like, you really don’t have to sacrifice anything like that to, in order to live a sustainable life.

[00:14:55] Jennifer Chua: So I’d like to chat more about what’s going on with our food what’s going on within our current food system. Like, what is it that the general public isn’t really aware of?

[00:15:04] Monique Chan: So it’s quite a tucked under the rug kind of issue. it’s also very, multi-faceted where there’s always waste at different levels of the food system so whether it be on the farms, restaurants like I described and also in grocery stores. So there’s varying levels to it. It’s very, it’s not like a one solution fits all kind of problem.

What I came to discover is that 58% of all food that is produced is either lost or wasted. And with that also comes wasted resources, water, energy, transportation, land, labor, that’s put into that food. So I kind of like to look at it as, an example, like an apple, not just being an apple, being wasted as like the product itself, but also all of the resources that are encapsulated in that apple that allowed it to reach where it was. And for it to just be thrown out at the end of its life cycle is a huge impact on our environment. When you look at all those, factors that create where it is today. So, yeah, it’s a huge problem. I think we see it more in Western countries like Canada and north America in general. And I really believe we have the resources to, to reduce this waste. And it’s just about educating people on why it’s important and how it affects them and what we can do to reduce that.

[00:16:31] Jennifer Chua: 58%. Sounds like a lot. I’m just wondering why do you think that businesses haven’t taken that next step? Like what do you think the barrier is?

[00:16:39] Monique Chan: I think it’s just the lack of education, to be honest, you know, like if you don’t know what you don’t know, like you can’t really do anything about it. And if people aren’t aware, like when I was doing those calculations for the, just the sweet potatoes alone. When people see it in a different form, like in a money value.

I think people will be more receptive to making changes in their businesses, but when they just see it as like a normal, everyday, cost of waste, um, they just think it’s normal and then it’s normalized for everyone. And no one’s really doing anything about it. So I think it all starts with, it’s just rooted in the education. Of people and, and if they don’t know why it’s a problem and how it affects their business and how it can improve their business, if they actually implement something to help reduce waste, then they’re not really going to take that action to, to fix it.

[00:17:31] Jennifer Chua: But then there’s people that come along that are upcycling food waste like yourself and, and there’s products being created like yours at Bruized. How does all of this contribute to food insecurity? Like I know that food insecurity is hugely top of mind for us. A lot of people are really struggling after the last couple of years as well. How do you think that upcyclers can help contribute to alleviating food insecurity or even the climate crisis? Like why is this so important?

[00:17:58] Monique Chan: That’s a tricky question. I, for me, personally, on a business level, I’d love for us to be at a point where we can make our products more accessible. Creating a closed-loop system of reducing food waste, but also being able to give that food back to people, and to share that with a larger audience. But I guess yeah, ways that you can help reduce food insecurity is just, you know, understanding the problem more. I know a lot of more community fridges are opening up. Our local communities it’s open to anyone who needs it. So even making donations there are grocery runs, like getting together with your friends, baking, cooking meals together and sharing it with non-profit organizations I think is definitely a way to start more locally. But yeah, food insecurity is kind of a big one to tackle and I think you really just got to start more locally. And see how you can create that ripple effect. Once you notice what the problem is in your, in your own community,

[00:18:59] Jennifer Chua: And when you begin to look into creating your products, did you find anything surprising?

[00:19:04] Monique Chan: I didn’t really think that we would have access to, uh, as much product as we, we usually get. Usually what we pick up for our supplies is only a percentage of how much is usually thrown out and wasted. So we’re doing our best as a small business, but it was definitely surprising to realize like, wow, It’s definitely more than enough to go around and there’s opportunity for other businesses to take part in using upcycled ingredients and for this to become more of a mainstream supply of ingredients. And something else I noticed too, was just. Also, I mean, it was kind of expected, but not having consistency of certain ingredients and, and being very flexible in how I created products to ensure that we could have them on a consistent basis and not be short on any products.

[00:19:57] Jennifer Chua: And these relationships that you have with grocery and Juicery that are giving you these less than perfect or by-product really. How did that relationship start? Like did you just go into the grocery store and asked to speak to the manager? And I’m just wondering how you managed to get these other businesses on board.

[00:20:16] Monique Chan: It was pretty much like, cold calling and also I think what was more effective for us was actually going into stores and being. Where’s your manager. Like, I want to discuss some things because a lot of people don’t reply to their emails and. I think it was most effective to just talk to people in person and, and show them what we do as a business and what we’re passionate about and how they can be a part of that. lot of businesses, if w if we just make it easy for them, say we’ll pick up everything, we’ll just message you when we’re picking it up, we’ll provide the, buckets or like whatever resources or materials you need. As long as we made it easy for them. willing to do it. And especially if it was something that was just going to be wasted, like, retail stores that had ripe bananas, a lot of the times they just don’t have time to, or any use for those.

They would end up on discount racks. And if it was a large amount, like it usually wouldn’t sell, it would end up being thrown out. So we kind of help them move a lot of their products. So they would have more space to bring in a new produce and supply. So it was like a win-win like they get to, I guess, move product. We pay a discounted price for it as well. It’s just a, it’s a good exchange and they know that they’re helping to reduce their own food waste. So I guess it’s also a personal win for them.

[00:21:34] Jennifer Chua: Something that’s just occurred to me is I follow some of those dumpster diver people on Tik TOK. I don’t know if you’ve seen those. Have you seen these videos?

[00:21:42] Monique Chan: No, I haven’t, I have dumpster-dived in my, in my lifetime. So I do know what it’ll look like.

[00:21:48] Jennifer Chua: Particularly the ones I’m following based in large urban centers. And I think New York city is one of them and they’re going to, think of a really large grocery store and they’re going in the back and they’re finding all of these perfectly good foods that are maybe close to their sell by date, but not expired by any means. Do you have any comments about those kind of systems? Like the sell by dates, the expiry dates. How can we create change there?

[00:22:17] Monique Chan: That’s definitely a tricky one because I know it is, you know, I’m sure there’s a lot of regulations with who food expiry dates and what you’re allowed to say, and it’s just a liability issue. So it is tricky. I think. What we can do on our part is just to educate people that when it says best before, that’s not necessarily like the day it’s going to go all moldy or, or go bad, I think it’s to teach people how to use their senses and use their own judgment to be like, okay, like it says best before this day, but you know, I opened it on this day and like kind of getting an understanding. Smelling it, I think is the first step. And it’s just using your best judgment and not. Kind of using that specific data as a guideline of what to throw out and what not to throw out. I don’t know if there’s a lot we can do about the regulations around necessarily best before dates and expiring dates. Especially if it’s something that’s like yogurt or something that’s cultured.

In terms of dry goods or like crackers or anything like that really. Just use your own judgment, smell it. And if it smells fine, most of the time it’s usually okay. And our bodies are very resilient, so it’ll take a lot to really do some damage. So I think, yeah, just use your best judgment. And, and I think that’s where we can start.

[00:23:35] Jennifer Chua: Are there any other choices that you’ve made with Bruized in order to make sure that your goods are good for the planet as well?

[00:23:41] Monique Chan: One thing specifically that we do is we try to source as locally as possible before we were kind of. When we first started, we were trying to just, source things from big grocery stores because they had so much waste that we actually saw. But then, after, being more in the farmer’s market space, we realized why not use this as an avenue to also support our local farmers, our own community, and like make it a food full circle on a small scale and be able to first target the problems on our local lands versus tackling like these mass production facilities that are imported from the USA.

That’s also an issue, but I think we want to focus more on just being local to start with also just coordinating our pickups to be at farmer’s market. So we vend at farmer’s markets mostly and, For that to be a pickup spot helps to reduce our carbon emissions. Also it’s just easier to communicate with farmers at the farmer’s market because a lot of them are very busy and don’t reply.

So just being able to coordinate with them in person is the best way. And, we also started using, Glass jars when we first started, just so it could be a way to reduce plastic waste. Now we also introduced like a bulk version of our product that we sell at the farmer’s markets. So it’s completely zero waste option. People can bring their containers in, we, we tar them and then just fill up how much they want of our pulp crunch. Even our cookie. I love when customers just bring their own container. Take out containers. It doesn’t have to be fancy like stainless steel ones and they just pick up our products and it’s like complete zero waste transaction. Those are the small things that we try to do too, as a small business to just reduce our waste. Hopefully as we grow, we can, we can make more impact in terms of how much waste we’re reducing in other aspects of our business.

[00:25:32] Jennifer Chua: So when you did start the business, what was your big dream in those days?

[00:25:36] Monique Chan: My dream was to just, I guess, have something that really resonated with other people and, and created impact in other people and something that was unconventional and not seen on the market. So another reason aside from reducing food waste, Why I started Bruized was because I was very interested in natural food and eating healthy and finding food that fuels.

And a lot of times I would browse, especially the granola section. And most of them would look healthy, like have all this beautiful, eco- packaging. And when you look at the ingredients which is like number one thing you should do when you pick up any product, because at the end of the day, ingredients don’t lie. You would just see a lot of these products are filled with cheap ingredients, fillers, sugars, oils, and nothing really that is fueling for your body. So I really wanted to first start off by making a granola that I could eat every day and feel good after eating it. That’s where I came up with pulp crunch because I also was into juicing.

I had all this juice pulp leftover and I was like, wow, this is a great like base full of fiber. There’s so many nutrients still intact in that fiber. Why not use it instead of throwing it out? So I think that’s another reason that drove my passion for starting Bruized. Create products that were unconventional, helping to tackle food waste, but also tasted good at the end of the day. And weren’t just the gluten-free option or the vegan option, but was the good option. Genuinely people liked and we’ve gotten so much good feedback. Sometimes people don’t even realize that it’s vegan or gluten-free and they usually just surprised or let alone made with stuff that would have just been composted.

That was my big dream and I think we’ve reached a point where we, we have reached, I see the vision, you know, playing out and I still see a bigger future where Bruized can grow nationally, even internationally and start growing its own little hubs locally. That’s another way for us to be more sustainable too, is just keeping Bruized as not a one location, distribution kind of center where we shipped from Toronto all the way to Vancouver. But starting our own Bruized community in Vancouver, in Montreal. And making it more of a local collaboration and collective where people can get together, learn more about food waste. We share good food and have more discussion on how we can make a difference. That’s my big dream. And I’m putting it out there into the universe right now.

[00:28:07] Jennifer Chua: So, what was the first thing that you were proud of though? Like, what is the first thing you were proud of in this business and why did it fill your heart so much that you made change?

[00:28:17] Monique Chan: I don’t know if it was just one thing, but I guess it was just the general response that we got when we first started selling at farmers markets. I think a lot of business owners can relate to this, but having that first sale is like, it kind of just doing your happy dance behind the table and they’re like leaving. I think that just gave a lot of validation that like, yeah, people like this product and they’re willing to pay money for it and support it. I think a lot of that was rooted from us giving out our product very generously, we always were all about sampling because it’s a new industry, a new product, something that they haven’t seen on the shelves before.

We were very generous with always giving samples, always talking about the product and how it benefited our planet and your, your health. And, I think at the end of the day, we also want the product to speak for itself. So we were very generous with samples. And I think to see that response from people and support over the years, has been so fulfilling and that’s truly what brings joy to me in my everyday work.

[00:29:18] Jennifer Chua: and building this business and where you’ve gotten so far, has anything just been like, I can’t believe this worked out this way.

[00:29:26] Monique Chan: Yeah, I guess, I think a lot of times, I haven’t really put a lot of action. I’m going to be honest and to seeking out press or any sort of media coverage, I’ve just been focused on like the everyday grind and any podcasts that we’ve been on or any like interview or grant that we’ve been featured in. Or panel. Literally everyone has just reached out to, to us. And I was just so shocked at how people found us and how they were interested in what we were doing. Even just being here. I was like, wow, this is amazing. Like, people want to know more about what we’re doing and want to be a part of it. And I think that’s, that was the craziest thing to me. I was like, wow, I really don’t even need someone to do PR for me, I’m literally just getting all the emails myself. So yeah, that was a huge shock for me. I’m always happy to, to be a part of other people’s own journeys and storytelling and sharing what we do at Bruized.

[00:30:22] Jennifer Chua: Have there been any moments though that you felt like maybe the odds were stacked against you?

[00:30:26] Monique Chan: I guess usually on like my stuck days where I’m trying to figure out things and, you know, being a small business and doing the roles that I’m usually not that great at. There have been those days and at the end of the day, it’s about taking it all in, not, not valuing the wins more than the lows and like just continuing to move and just going . I think at the end of the day, whatever problem it is, like it’s temporary, we’re going to find a solution and that’s usually how I get through it. We’re going to work it out. We already got here so far, so, nothing’s can really stop us so.

[00:31:08] Jennifer Chua: So if you’ve inspired someone to start their own food waste, upcycling business, is there a common reason that they might give up or walk away?

[00:31:17] Monique Chan: Yeah, I mean, thinking about when we first started, the main barrier for me was just finding consistent supply of things, because this is a very new idea where there isn’t much demand for imperfect ingredients or byproducts that weren’t even seen as ingredients like juice pulp. A lot of people it’s like creating your own system. So I had to really build my own way of sourcing things. And it was really difficult just to find a consistent supplier of ingredients that we used and to also build products around that. It’s very easy to just. order whatever you want. If you already have a product that you’ve developed. But for our business plan, it’s kind of the opposite where we want to help reduce food waste, and we want to actually make an impact.

So understanding how food waste plays a part in different organizations. So using byproducts that are usually discarded specific to those companies is what our business is surrounded by. So. It’s hard when it’s something that you’ve created yourself. And that could be a huge barrier that is discouraging. But I would just recommend keep going. Usually how all new things start. There’s always going to be that friction in the beginning and something that I found helpful to overcome that is just to always have a backup plan. We have like a very long list of suppliers. So you know, that we always can rely on getting the ingrediants that we need, the volumes that we need, because we have different resources and people to source it from. So yeah, I think that could be a huge barrier, but it’s not impossible we’re doing it and you can do it too.

[00:33:00] Jennifer Chua: So how can we avoid food waste? Maybe not in our business, but maybe at home, is there anything that I should be mindful of when I’m looking towards those vegetables that are in the back of my fridge.

[00:33:10] Monique Chan: The first thing I always tell anyone who’s trying to reduce waste at home is to just first. Look inside your garbage or your compost or whatever your waste disposal unit is at home. Take a look at that because that is literally a mirror of what you need to work on. Right? So if you see, like different scraps in the compost, carrot ends, onion, skins, kale stems, maybe looking up different ways to reuse those ingredients.

So whether that be making a, my go-to is just a big pot of veggie stock, you freeze those ingredients anytime you’re prepping your meals. Put them in a bag in a freezer and then just keep filling it up until it’s full. And once it’s full, you take one day to make a big pot of stock. You strain it and then you can make soup, you can freeze the stock to use for future meals. And it’s just a great way to get those extra last bit of nutrients from that produce that you’re paying for. Another way that I like to reduce waste is also to make Grocery lists before I go to the grocery store. I’m trying to improve on that.

I’m not perfect. Sometimes I forget, and I go a little crazy with buying things, but I think that having that structure before you buy your food too, is very helpful. So you don’t buy things unnecessarily or buy things in large amounts. A lot of times I think people have excess because they think they’re getting a deal by buying that big mega family pack when their a family of one or two. And after that, going by the expiry date, they end up throwing away half of it. So they’re not actually saving that money. So I think being aware of like the marketing tricks that are out there and, and realizing that buying what you need and doing more runs to the grocery store is probably better than buying everything in a larger amount. And then letting it sit in your fridge, uh, until it’s gone bad until you forget about it. Buying what you need and, and using it and getting innovative with how you use those ingredients is your first step for anyone just trying to reduce waste at home.

[00:35:15] Jennifer Chua: And what about the future? How do you think what you’re doing now is impacting us or the people around you? How hopeful are you for the future?

[00:35:25] Monique Chan: I’m a very hopeful person. I really do believe like we are early to this type of market for imperfect ingredients. And. I want people to just jump on this and to realize that, oh, if we’re doing it as a small business, there’s so much potential that this can be incorporated into every business on a different level. I really believe like the future holds just the idea of renewing and, and reducing waste because we’re already low on resources even with COVID there’s been food shortages, global warming, climate change. A lot of this is affecting our food supply and we need to just be more mindful of how we’re using the food that’s already being produced versus trying to find ways to create more food, to supply the growing population.

I think the future is going to be all about renewing what we have, finding more sustainable ways to go about, our systems, especially within food. And I hope to be the company that is the leading example for that. And I’d love to be able to connect with other businesses that are interested too, and be able to share anything I can offer to help support them in that transition.

I think we can’t do this alone and real really need to start building our relationships with the people around us and together we each have something to offer and we can put together a solution to help tackle these huge global issues. So it’s all started in ourselves, but also in the collective and collaborative minds of our community.

[00:37:02] Jennifer Chua: Are there any other ways that you affect social change with this business?

[00:37:06] Monique Chan: We are a women of color business and we want to try to be as inclusive as possible as we grow. So, you know, being able to hire more marginalized people to join our team. And also once we were at the stage to be able to donate to more organizations that are making an impact Socially. So we can be able to play a part as a business as we grow and, to support other . Organizations that are . Doing good for that.

I think for our business too, what we hope to offer in a few years is just to be able to expand our line of products. And to also, like I mentioned, be more accessible and where we offer our products so that more people can take part in our mission to reduce food waste and also get that inspiration of why food waste is important and what they can do to help alleviate that. Stay tuned for another upgrade to our range of products and what we can offer to our committee.

We’re in the process of just sorting out the business and having a little restart, just with COVID that really just. What we want to focus on is really just growing our business, making our production more efficient, being able to grow our team. So it’s literally not just two women running this, but having other people that are passionate about food waste to join us. and partake in that. What we’re just focused on is how can we scale this idea and how can we make it also accessible to people?

[00:38:34] Jennifer Chua: If you want to learn more about Monique and how she’s embracing imperfect to make feel good food for the planet and the people around us or order some of her delicious pulp crunch visit bruized.com bruised with a Z. You can follow along with Monique on her mission to upcycle imperfect produce into wholesome eats on Instagram at @ bruizedco

In today’s episode, we chat with Anong Migwans Beam from Beam Paints. We learn how Anong’s father taught her to harvest pigment near her home in M’Chigeeng First Nation on Manitoulin island, how she’s been inspired by her artist parents and indigenous paint traditions, we explore her deep connection to colours, and discover why she’s made the choice to use beeswax, cotton remnants, cedar and birch offcuts and other sustainable materials over plastics for her packaging.

If you want to learn more about Anong and her plastic-free paints handcrafted from harvested pigments and wildflower honey visit www.beampaints.com Looking to support a 100% indigenous-owned business? You can purchase Anong’s beautifully vibrant paint stones direct or through independent art supply stores across Canada. You can follow along with Anong and be inspired by a life full of colour on Facebook or Instagram 

Links from this episode

• M’Chigeeng First Nation 
• Anong Migwans Beam Artist Site
• Carl Beam in the Canadian Encylopedia
• Ann Beam Galerie du Nouvel-Ontario (GNO)

Episode Transcript

 

[00:02:13] Jennifer Chua: “Pollution is nothing but the resources we’re not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we’ve been ignorant of their value.” This is a quote that Anong shared with me and it’s by Buckminster Fuller, she brought it up during our conversation. And after learning more about Anong and her process. It’s so clear why this quote resonates with her. Anong manufacturers, high-quality watercolours by hand blending together lightfast pigments tree sap gum Arabic and Manitoulin honey, her paints are brilliant and they’re well-loved by her customers.

She uses materials that would otherwise be waste as well from a number of other businesses to create beam paints, including byproducts from mining offcuts, from an indigenous sustainable lumber operation and remnants from the textile industry and beam paints are proudly operating as plastic-free as possible. Her packaging is completely free of plastic and we’ll learn more about what she uses and why she does so in a bit. And constantly evaluating her choices to find more sustainable solutions is something that Anong really enjoys. But what makes the story of beam paints so interesting is that Anong’s business is the result of a multi-generational love of pigment, paint, colour, and innovation.

Anong was taught from a young age, how to harvest pigments in the Le Cloche mountain range near her home in M’Chigeeng First Nation on Manitoulin Island. And it’s her early education in indigenous pigments. The fact that she sources the minerals and the pigments for Beam Paints locally. The influence of this artistic world that she grew up in and how clearly so many of her life experiences have woven their way into this venture. Today Anong operates out of two studios, right where she grew up, she’s raising her sons here. There are a lot of people and animals buzzing around. There are goats and cows and chickens pheasants. And on either side of the property are the studios. Anong operates the fulfillment side of the business, the shipping, the packing in her mother’s old art studio. And the manufacturing of the paint from her father’s art studio. Beam paints, what Anong is trying to do with the brand and the impact she’s creating is so tied to this story. And so tied to this place.

[00:04:43] Anong Beam: We’re here in Mchigeeng first nation on, uh, my parent’s family land. So I’m about half an acre away from where my dad was born in a log cabin in the forties.

Both my parents were artists they were fully self-employed as artists for my whole childhood. They had had other jobs. My mom was the first woman ever employed at the Toronto Star in the art department in the sixties. And my dad is renowned Canadian artist. He was a governor General’s award for excellence in visual arts winner, 2004 or five. And he was also the first indigenous artists to be purchased as contemporary art by the national gallery of Canada in 1986. So big shoes, big, uh, big thinkers.

Really so much of what I do now is really so much like what my parents were doing with me when I was a kid. And, uh, they were both really interested in, uh, traditional ceramics and traditional pigments.

So we spent, I was homeschooled. We spent a lot of my youth driving. All over north America, down in the Southwest in Arizona and New Mexico and in BC, all parts of Ontario and, uh, visiting other artists or their ceramic indigenous ceramic artists painters and all the while my dad is looking for different pigments, different rocks. We were always off on side of the road, off at quarries or gravel pits, rock cuts, different different places, looking for stones that had those particular qualities. And that was my favorite thing. I just loved looking around it, all of the rocks and the colors and the differences that could be found.

[00:06:53] Jennifer Chua: Could you explain how pigments work? Cause I think that this is something that people might not understand, where a pigment paint might come from. Can you us an idea of how that whole process works?

[00:07:06] Anong Beam: Yeah, it’s something that I didn’t really understand. And it’s definitely not widely understood. Probably because the ability to make color and pigment is so, it’s so broad, there’s so many ways to approach it. And historically, it’s been such a journey like the us as humanity, all cultures of really. United in this search for great color, like through the centuries. So you see the history of color, really igniting trade routes between Asia and your aunt. Uh, early explorers being really excited about sources of color and a lot of the color becoming so defining to groups of people to countries.

Rose matter, red was the red that England used for the red coats. So, they had huge industry in obtaining routes to get matter, to make that die, to have that in their flag as like a national colour. And that colour becoming widely used was one of the first, uh, synthetic colours. So the ability of. Humans to synthesize colour, which gave us the ability to have more non-toxic choices of color. I think, uh, even early on, because we’ve been such colour hounds, humans, used a lot of, uh, dangerous substances. I think in the natural world, the most beautiful colours are created most of the time from, uh, toxic substances.

So like lead, cadmium, uh, heavy metals create beautiful colours. So one of the most significant things in this century has been the development of, uh, non-toxic synthetics and manmade pigments. Then I kind of weighed into this in an interesting spot because. I do harness a lot, of pigments and a lot of components for my paint. And I also use man-made synthetics. So my view of it as a child of artists was that the primary focus of paint should be the quality and the safety for the user. So I.

My father, actually, my mother is in long-term care. She has Alzheimer’s and my father passed away when I was pretty young. I was 25. Before he passed away there was, there were blood tests done and collation therapy that was to remove heavy metals from his system. He had a really high load of heavy metals. And I definitely attribute that to the fact that he looking back through his paints, made choices to use those colours that came from those heavy metals. And I think that the term natural gets attributed to colours of the earth, these heavy metal colours. These are naturally occurring. So I think in pigments in paint, there’s an idea that oh, natural is healthy and good, and we want to get back to nature. And I think that’s where the awareness of the natural world and the power of what’s natural is not, I think we’re in a time when people want to be eco and natural. So there’s this kind of cartoon idea of mother earth. all things being from the earth as being, cartoon-ally healthy and edible when the true force of nature is that there are a lot of very, very powerful things that are not healthy.

Just to go back to your original question and answer it a bit more succinctly. Paint comes from so many sources and over time it’s come from so many sources. But what we’re really talking about is a substance that comes from plants or minerals. Or is manmade in a way that we would take a piece of iron and let it rust and then collect the rust to make a, a colour. Those processes create manmade and natural pigments. Really, what we’re talking about is a substance that is going to reflect light in a certain way to make your eyes see colour. And the further you get into all of that, it’s absolutely fascinating because the ability of a substance to reflect colour means. It’s absorbing into it, the opposite colour, and it’s rejecting the colour that you see.

So in actual effect that object, like say, a bright red tomato, it’s rejecting the red part of the light spectrum, but it’s absorbing into the green. So when in and of itself, the essence of that tomato really is a green tomato, but you look at it and you see a red tomato. And so there’s a lot of different ways to look at it. It’s no wonder people get confused about what kind of pigments or paints they’re using.

[00:12:56] Jennifer Chua: So it sounds like your father at least was really inspired in his art by the natural world. And I was wondering how inspired you are by the natural world or what you’ve taken from the natural world when creating beam paints.

[00:13:09] Anong Beam: Uh, A lot of how he approached making pigments was really from the natural world. These stones become these paints and I found a way to hybridize his approach. And in some instances, We have a set of natural colours that are, this is slate. This is graphite. This is limestone. And then we’ve been able to meld that with other synthetic colours. So we have really electric purples, really bright, hot reds, and they’re all non-toxic so that’s been really enjoyable. They’re certified. ASTM D4236, which is the standard for art supplies. They also meet LHAMA and the California prop 65. So we don’t use any of those listed anything under those regulations.

[00:14:09] Jennifer Chua: Can you remember an event maybe from childhood where you really feel like it’s the first time that you made this connection with pigments and paints really became aware of of the process of making paint in general?

[00:14:24] Anong Beam: I have a lot of those actually when I think back. I also have maybe synesthesia or something like that where I really am affected deeply by colour. And, um, one thing that really stands out, I think with, uh, being at a rock cut in Akash mountains is my dad. he’s filing a rock. He’s looking for something and that he finds one that’s not it, finds one. and it’s it. He files it off into my hand and he puts a little water on it. He rubs it into the palm of my hand. And then he shows me that, uh, this one, this is pigment because if we wash it off, it’s going to stay and everything else will just wash away. He was showing me how to discern between those., but I remember it feeling it, and seeing it, and having him explain it and really feeling excited and attached that, we found this amazing capability inside this little rock that looks so much like all the others, but it’s not.

[00:15:37] Jennifer Chua: it’s. almost magical. Isn’t it?

[00:15:39] Anong Beam: Oh, yeah, it is it’s. So every day I’m really amazed at what I get to do, even when there’s something like I can mix the same colour. Many times, but even when I take to say we’re making that an ultra Marine blue and I get to take all of this blue and put it into a great big bowl and sometimes I, I have other people who work with me and I’ll have to stop them and say, Jay, look at that. Wow, that’s a bowl of blue. It’s just so beautiful. So blue.

[00:16:14] Jennifer Chua: Is there anything that you learned from your mother and her artistic pursuits that has influenced your current business?

[00:16:22] Anong Beam: Yeah, she was really like, well, they both worked in watercolour and, but she was the one who probably, was always toting me around. Both in their own ways, they both kind of showed me ways to have an idea and explore it. Or have a possibility and pursue it.

Like, uh, this is avocado it’s very delicious and we can plant the seed and grow this. It becomes a tree and, being present and feeling authority to investigate how things are done and different ways to, to do them. They, they both were very much like that, but, directly from her, I think, making rose matter. That kind of came about from her. That was one of her favourite colors. And she was the one who introduced colour names to me, which I, I still really love because they’re so evocative they’re so, uh, they’re so personal and there is a standard to them, but then there’s also all exist variety. So, each paint-making house will have the rainbow of their colours and there are certain colours they’re kind of still. colours, like an ultra Marine, but if you get an ultra Marine in France then it’s Autremer, beyond the sea. Like you, you have different ways of saying the same thing to describe the same colour. One of the only colours that I’ve made as a, as an ink, that’s not like fast is Rose matter genuine.

It’s steeped out of the roots of the matter plant. And I made that for her because it was just to feel close to her because it was her favourite colour. And when I made it available to the public, I told people, we’re in an interesting time wherein ancient more ancient times, pigments had to be lightfast because there was no photographic ability. So. That art or that writing had to endure because there was no other way. It was the recording of an event. And now I think so many things are made to be consumed and recorded in a digital way that I think it could let us go back to exploring different kinds of colour, that change. and are more ephemeral or don’t have a century of life, but are very tender and beautiful in the moment. So the Rose matter ink, I made, it with paint on a peach, yellow, and as the ink absorbed oxygen returned the deeper pink. It was colour-changing on paper. And it was really, it was really amazing.

[00:19:33] Jennifer Chua: Do you remember the moment that you decided to take beam paints and actually create a business out of these traditions and this love that you have for paint?

[00:19:44] Anong Beam: So this is where things get business is personal. Especially I think for, for women, but definitely for me. I was in a difficult relationship where my partner had alcohol issues and it became really, um, became a dangerous situation for myself and my sons. Before that, and in the middle of that, I had started an art supply store. And it was very small and I only had a season of it, but in that small window of running this little store in a very rural area, people would come in and they loved watercolour and wanted to buy paints. And I felt like because it was such a tiny store and they wanted me to say that I made the paint like they would ask where it was from. And I’d say, well, it’s from China. It’s paint. This is the same paint like any other store. And they always seemed so disappointed that it came from somewhere else. And I remember at first thinking, where do you want me to say, like, you want me to make the paint too? And then that was after saying that, that I was like, I make the paint. I bet you I could make the paint. But at the time I think I voiced it out loud.. And somebody heard an old partner and he said, uh, whoops, you ridiculous? Oh, no, no. So it was kind of shelved and my life went through a lot of changes. We, we left that situation and I actually moved into my mom’s house on her couch with my two kids who are under, under five at the time.

[00:21:34] Jennifer Chua: That’s difficult.

[00:21:35] Anong Beam: Yeah. Yeah, it was, it was, but it was a totally clean slate and it was worse than a clean slate because it was a clean slate with debt. And, uh, I, I ended up being left as the responsible party for debt run-up in my name. I felt really free though, because all of a sudden, I didn’t have to take care of this really messy situation. I cleared it away and I was focused on myself and my kids. And I think at that point you do really think about family. I thought about when I was younger and I started making paint and making more and more paint and it was just so enjoyable. I felt fantastic. And that’s when I started an Instagram page about it. And I started offering paint for people and just kind of continued evolving from

[00:22:38] Jennifer Chua: it sounds almost like therapeutic. Really.

[00:22:42] Anong Beam: Yeah, it absolutely was. Yeah, absolutely. Because I wanted that connection to my family who my father had passed away. I didn’t have all older family to kind of shepherd me through this difficult point. So kind of meditating on that and sharing, I think, sharing with my kids, the actions and that the things that I used to do with my parents. And so we’d go out to little rock cuts. My boys would have their little rock hammers. We’d go exploring, looking at stones, looking at things that could be paintable.

[00:23:23] Jennifer Chua: So when people were coming into your store and noticing that the paints were from China and you were purchasing art supplies from, the places that one purchases art supplies for when stocking their shelves. When you began to look at these conventional artists’ paints, did you find anything surprising or what is the challenge with the traditional conventional artist’s paints that you’re finding on shelves?

[00:23:50] Anong Beam: So this was funny to get to this point where I was spending all of this time to create this paint. And it was so physical. It was so tangible. I was making this paint from these natural materials. And then when it came time to like to nest them and nestle them into a vessel or a container, all the containers are plastic and all of the boxes were, you know, it was just really, really ubiquitous in the market that art supplies are in plastic.

Plastic boxes, plastic sleeves, plastic mailing. And then I started as e-commerce. So all of the default packings is really plastic. And then this is where kind of having a, having a relationship. A lot of people, conscientious people through Instagram really affected me because I got to have that dialogue about materials and what I was doing with a wider audience.

And I remember somebody messaging me, Hey, I love what you’re doing. Do you think you could ever make a tape? And I remember getting that and it was the same feeling as like the art supply question, right? Like, do you make the paint? Make paint. That’s crazy. And, and I heard her say, oh, could you make tape? Because the most tape is just plastic. Isn’t it. And I was like, oh yeah, it is, I guess. And that’s when I started really looking more at like the things, the choices I was making as an e-commerce business and the packaging that we were using. And I really, again, got to look back to my mom and I thought about how she wrapped sandwiches. and use wax paper. she was in her twenties in the sixties, and she was part of the anti-Vietnam war movement. She immigrated to Canada in 1967 to protest the Vietnam war. She didn’t want to pay taxes to the industrial-military complex. You could tell, she talked about this alot. And she was always telling me stuff like, okay, well don’t use tinfoil Alcan? They made napalm!

And she would say, well, oh, plastic wrap? No! Like there was no plastic wrap in my house. I never learned how to use cling wrap until I was like, in my thirties. I couldn’t really ever cling wrap anything properly. So she really brought those more strident values of being responsible with your, your choices and personal ethical responsibility.

[00:26:46] Jennifer Chua: How are your paints packaged? What’s your packaging look like?

[00:26:51] Anong Beam: Our packaging is continually evolving to meet our needs and the customer’s needs. And the, now that we’ve actually, we’ve really grown and developed quite a lot the past few years. So we manufactured larger volumes of paint. And, um, now you’ll find our paints wrapped either in a sheet of beeswax cotton.

This is actually an interesting evolution I’m doing right now. This was the first idea that instead of a plastic cap pan that paint would go inside a piece of wax canvas, and that would be folded in a certain way and have a tie. So that was the first thing. And this struck such a chord with people.

Really. It was really amazing to me, how well received this idea. And then moving forward to now where changing this idea a bit to be the same structure. But what happened was, is we started doing business with indigo, indigo books and music, which is a big chain here in Canada. And one of the requirements to work with them is that you have to sign an affidavit attesting to the sourcing of cotton. So there’s this whole political situation in China and this kind of alerted me to that because it was not on my radar at all. And then I found that it was really. I could say yes. And I did say yes. Um, I agreed to that, but I also found that it is practically impossible to really be sure, or you could ask and people would say, but I wasn’t satisfied with my degree of understanding of the supply chain of cotton.

And then I started kind of thinking about, well, the. The cost of cotton, fresh cotton, new cotton is, is quite high as far as why don’t use land use and pesticides. So

we’re shifting now to paper and it’s done in the same way. It’s the same structure, the same look, but instead of a square of cotton with wax.

It’s a handmade paper and the handmade paper is made out of cotton. So it’s still a hundred percent cotton, but now the cotton comes from St. Alma preparatory in Montreal, and they obtain skids of offcuts from the textile industry. So when a fabric, when a t-shirt company, Has all the little off-cuts that can’t be used, they get bundled up into a big skids of fabric.

Those offcuts get repurposed and sent to Saint-Armand where they use the cotton linen, all the different fabrics, and they turn that into artists’ paper. So I’m really, really excited to be, changing again. It was also, I had a lot of nerves about telling people because I didn’t want to like throw a bunch of shade on cotton users. Right? Like, I’m not saying it’s bad to use cotton. I am also using beeswax, I, became a beekeeper in the past few years and I became aware of more of how. How or beeswax is like how little beeswax bees actually make, when they do honey, they make so much more honey or relatively very small amounts of beeswax.

And we had had a really difficult year. I lost a lot of beehives, it’s been challenging. I had a tough time talking with our suppliers of beeswax and kind of hearing them trying to make an order for the same amount as last year. And they were really like, I don’t know. And there was a lot of stress there, so I still did reorder. We still do use beeswax, but we’re trying to, we’re just trying to diversify as far as different ways that we can make so that we can adjust. And, uh, without saying using beeswax is bad. We just want to have a lot of different tools, especially with supply chains in the past year and what that looks like

________

[00:31:38] Jennifer Chua: When you go on to Indigo’s website and you look for your products, you see these beautiful wood pallets. Can you explain what that is and how you came up with the idea to use wood?

[00:31:50] Anong Beam: So this whole process of my leaving to my mother’s house with the kids and, reimagining life, and during that time I meet my boyfriend and we actually go on our first date to a quarry. Look at, to look at rocks and things, and he runs a forestry operation. So he gives me a space to develop my business. he gives me a garage, 16 by 20 a small car garage, he clears it out and he says, okay, go ahead. And so I’m making paint inside of like in this quiet spot, in the middle of a working forestry operation. So there are massive machines rolling past me every day, six-foot-tall tires going by the window, excavators, like large machines.

And along with that, when the hum of the work is done, then large stacks of, wood that go to keep people’s houses, fire, fuelwood, different wood products. And I find myself so attracted to all of the offcuts and all of the small pieces, the sideways cut pieces, things that just end up, uh, different into the waste stream.

So I ended up, um, Collecting these going around the yard after hours and collecting all the offcut pieces. And then I experiment with different ways that I can put them in offcuts. And eventually, it becomes an agreed-on partnership between our two businesses. And now I subcontract wood production to Corbiere Lumber. Which is owned by my boyfriend. And his company, they produce all of our pallets out of their off-cuts from that forestry business. So it’s been really a really rewarding fight because it’s, it’s fun to work with people who are really passionate about their materials. They’re really passionate about their product and creative enough to look at the waste stream.

I also watched you on Instagram live a little while ago, which was great. You have a really great connection to your community. And you were speaking about language, changing the language on your new packaging.

When I started my business, It was really important to me to name all of the paints in my language, which is Ojibwe. My dad went to a residential school at the Spanish school for boys and he’s a survivor, experienced a lot of abuse. And also people say lost their language like that. He lost his language. It sounds so passive. Like you misplaced it on a walk and. For a child to speak a language and go be forced to go somewhere, to be reconditioned, to have that bridge or moved from them that they are so afraid and fearful that they cannot speak it. Even later in adults, there’s so much abuse and trauma there, but anyway, language initiatives, I’ve have been really close to my heart.

And one of the reasons why I wanted it to use the language is because it’s hard to encounter it anywhere. English is the dominant, it’s the dominant language of our times, and it’s really, it’s prevalent everywhere. And I wanted to give our language a spot to be to be first. So all of our labels will be labelled with the color name, you know, in Ojibwe first, and then the English name underneath. And that was part of the shift to the paper wrappers because it enabled us instead of using wax cloth ties to use water, activated paper, tape printed labels, to include a lot more information per item.

[00:36:14] Jennifer Chua: Do you have a favourite color name?

[00:36:18] Anong Beam: It, it changes all the time. I’m a painter too. So my favourite painting, it’s always whatever the last one was. And I just laugh about that because I’ll start another one. And then when I think, oh, that’s my favourite painting. Fast forward six months. Well, this is my favourite and it’s kind of like that with colour names too. My most recent favourite is one of our most recent colours wet grizzly.

[00:36:47] Jennifer Chua: So it’s clear that tradition is important to you with putting Ojibwe on the packaging. You’re honouring your father’s legacy, really with the paint-making process, you are showing your children the merits of entrepreneurship, you are creating like low waste products. Really? You’re doing a lot in terms of sustainability. What part of all of the impact that you’re making means the most to you? Really

[00:37:14] Anong Beam: In a personal enjoyment level, I, I really enjoy, uh, approaching the waste stream and finding possibilities. I actually some of the key ingredients that we use in all of the paints are reclaimed from the waste stream of quarries. And there’s like an indigenous quarry on the west end of Manitoulin that captures different things that are actually hazardous in their workflow because they get wet and slippery, but they capture that moves them out of the way for us. Being able to interact with industry in that way, especially as, as a woman, mom, you walk into the place with all the big machines and talk to people and materials and to have conversations like that, that’s been really enjoyable, but also because I’m being offered a job at a pivotal moment in my life, gave me such stability. It’s really important to me and be able to offer employment to people who need flexible, flexible employment, especially here in M’Chigeeng. We are on Manitoulin island. There aren’t just a lot of jobs and most jobs are really heavy heavy industry or construction. They’re not really ideal for working moms or single moms. People with disabilities. So I’m happy to, to fill in there and, and design it. Like, I didn’t really realize it at the time, but being a very flexible employer has meant that we we’ve been able to withstand the pandemic, I think in better shape than other companies that have more rigid employment. So we’ve split our production over four locations. So having it split like that meant that everybody could have observed that corporate protocols and feel safe about going to work where they were working. It also meant that, uh, a lot of our in who had childcare issues that arise out of the pandemic, we’re able to flex the times that they came into different locations to work. So it’s been, it’s been good like that. I want to, I want to be able to grow our company that way to be able to be a stronger employer

[00:39:55] Jennifer Chua: When you’re looking back at all of the impacts that you’ve created, and when you’re looking around you and seeing other brands that are doing really interesting things with waste, for example, how hopeful are you for the future?

[00:40:11] Anong Beam: I am really hopeful for the future. I think, um, I think part of this was the fact that I had young kids. At this juncture and they’re coming back from school with concerns about the environment. Concerns about global warming and it’s has been really great to me to be able to tell them this is what we’re doing about it in our corner. We’re responsible for making things, and these are our choices and we can be responsible down to this, this, minute level.

And we can look for other companies who are that responsible and choose that. That definitely comes from my mom. So being able to share that with my kids and seeing them make choices like that and feel empowered to be conscious consumers.

It’s my absolute joy to design and imagine new ways of presenting our product. But the core strength of it is the fact that, uh, our main goal is to make the best paint in the world and in terms of performance and in terms of its respect for the health of our users and people who try our product, their children. Then the environment, that it’s responsible, but the bottom line is when you use our paint, we want you to be really blown away. Oh, that blue, there is so much blue in that blue. So I’m always working on recipes to find different ways to compact and get bluer in the blue also make sure that it really outperforms.

[00:42:06] Jennifer Chua: If you want to learn more about Anong and her plastic-free paints handcrafted from harvested pigments and wildflower, honey. Visit beampaints.com. Looking to support a hundred percent indigenous-owned business? You can purchase Anong’s beautifully vibrant paint stones direct or through independent art supply stores across Canada. You can follow along with Anong and be inspired by a life full of colour on Facebook or Instagram at beam paints.

Highlights from episodes 1-10 & Live More Sustainably or Socially Responsible With Tips You Can Take Now.

In today’s episode, we’re going to do something a little different and revisit the last ten episodes, The first 10 episodes of the podcast, focusing on the highlights. The moments where I learned really eye-opening from each guest, but we’ve also included some moments that you, the listeners have commented on were really inspiring. So if you missed an episode or you are just discovering this project? This is a great way to get an overview of what we’ve learned so far and see which episodes you may want to go back to and listen to. I also share some of the actionable tips from the episodes to help make thoughtful choices as a consumer.

if you want to live a more sustainable life, if you want to use your business or buying power to give back, or if you just want to learn about really, really great brands doing really, really interesting things. This is the place to be.

Featuring

• Rebecca Saha from Tiny Toy Co.
• Maran Stern Kubista from My Kindness Calendar
• Kimberlee West from Kids Swag
• Jennifer Myers Chua from Hip Mommies
• April Mackinnon from Anointment
• Lisa Nguyen from Baubles + Soles
• Megan Takeda-Tully from Suppli
• Melita Cyril from Q for Quinn
• Emma Rohmann from Green at Home
• Sheena Russell from Made With Local

Episode Transcript

 

Jennifer Myers Chua: Hello, everyone. And welcome. You’re listening to Cost of Goods Sold with Jennifer Myers Chua episode 11.

On today’s episode, we’re going to do something a little different and revisit the last 10 episodes.  The first 10 episodes of the podcast, focusing on the highlights. These are the moments where I learned something really eye-opening from each guest, but we’ve also included some moments that you, the listeners have commented were really inspiring.  So if you missed an episode or if you’re just discovering this project, this is a great way to get an overview of what we’ve learned so far and see which episodes you may want to go back to and listen.  I’ll also be sharing some of the actionable tips we learned from each episode.  To help make thoughtful choices as a consumer. And if you want to live a more sustainable life, or if you want to use your business or buying power to give back.  Or if you just want to learn about really, really, really great brands doing some really, really, really interesting things. This is the place to be.

 In the very first episode, episode one, we meet Rebecca Saha. She’s a kindergarten teacher and the founder of Tiny Toy Co.  With her business, Rebecca repurposes tiny plastic toys that would otherwise go into landfill into educational kits.

 And part of Rebecca’s mission is to encourage children to do things differently and become a different kind of consumer.  And through her upcycled educational kits and her hands-on educational workshops. Rebecca is taking her background in early childhood education and her commitment to sustainability and doing just that.

In this episode, Rebecca had a lot to share about good intentions, why we need to be mindful as consumers about what we are buying.  And were items like those drive-thru toys will actually go if we donate them. But one thing that Rebecca touched on that really stood out to me. Was about upcyclers.  The businesses that use found or donated materials.  And repurpose those into other goods. And if we can see the benefits of a circular economy, that’s one thing. But in order for this to really work.  We need to purchase these upcycled goods, even if at a higher cost, because donating our unwanted materials isn’t enough.

 Rebecca Saha: There’s this presumption that the way to help these businesses, that the way to help the movement. It is to contribute your, your junk, contribute your stuff. And while that’s important, too, the best way that you can help them movement is to buy the end product until we shop differently. Nothing’s going to change  if you give me your bags and bags of toy junk, and you feel great about the fact that it’s going to be reused instead of going to landfill. That’s amazing. But if you follow that by heading to the toy store or the dollar store  one or the takeout lane and refilling it up, refilling your playroom with the same junk, with the same stuff at the same volume, then then you haven’t interrupted the cycle, you’ve perpetuated the cycle.  And so I think what’s really important for for the movement, the reuse movement, the upcycling movement to succeed is for people to support it  financially at the at the other end.  people need to purchase things differently  as well as contributing to the, to the intake of the circular businesses.

 Jennifer Myers Chua: When working on this episode, I think I was most astonished to learn that McDonald’s gives out 1.5 billion toys in their happy meals each year. And if you’re choosing the book alternative, which is what we’ve done in the past, Note that, that plastic wrapping on the books that contributes to hundreds of tons of plastic a year as  well it’s just a lot of waste.

 And if you want to take action, now, here are some tips from this episode.

1. Be mindful of what tiny breakable plastics you bring into your home. Noting that most can not be recycled.
2. Consider eco-friendly alternatives to loot bags or get the upcycled ones like tiny toy Co.’s ReLoot bag.
3. Look for upcycled alternatives to things that you need for your home. There are some clever and sustainable solutions out there. It may take a little more digging. But you can get things even like countertops made from old chopsticks. 

Maran Stern Kubista was also looking for an alternative to tiny plastic toys or sugary treats. And we meet her in episode two.

Maran wanted to give her children that advent calendar experience without all of the treats. And taking inspiration for moments in her life when she experienced kindness. Maran developed a countdown style calendar focused on giving back.

Her brand is called My Kindness Calendar and her acts of kindness are meaningful, beautiful, even, and you never know the impact that something’s going to make on someone short-term or long-term, it’s powerful. Maran is growing the brand into one that supports children year round with mindfulness activities that cultivate kindness.  And because she says kids are awesome open, and these kinds of activities are particularly important after all they’ve been through over the last couple of years in this pandemic.

Maran Stern-Kubista: “I am always. Aware of the potential of kids. I’m never surprised to see kids doing amazing things because I think that’s the default. Like I think the default is you’re awesome. And you’re amazing. Now, like we, as society and  in our culture, like we just need to enable that. We need to create opportunity for kids to be amazing because they’re so creative and like they’re so intrinsically, there’s so much good there, that it just needs to be fostered and released, and everyone is going to develop into the people they’re meant to be. But when we can do our part of, giving them opportunity and encouraging them when they do positive things and helping them understand when things are challenging. And when different choices could be made in challenging moments, like that’s just. Enabling them to, live through their potential. So I’m for sure hopeful and talk about resilience, what kids are going through right now. There’s no doubt that it’s having a humongous cost on everybody’s mental health, like parents and kids.  This is the story of life, right? People go through things that they should never have to go through that are super challenging. And that can be really deflating and it can be very upsetting and it can also be, a chance. I choose to see difficult moments as an opportunity to really build resilience.”

Jennifer Myers Chua: This episode had me considering my own traditions, particularly surrounding the holidays.  And Maran pointed out how early children understand the concept of receiving gifts. And then that expectation of gifts at certain occasions.  Giving to others and creating special opportunities for kindness. That is something that is more meaningful to me, but how have I been modelling this to my child? And how can we build more meaningful traditions around giving. It’s worth a thought.

Want to take action now? It sounds simple, but the easiest thing you can do to spread kindness is to be kind.  Want to brighten someone’s day today. Here’s a tip. Maran says that one of the most popular of her kindness activities and the one that she sees shared most on social media is baking cookies and bringing them to a friend.

In episode three, we chat with Kimberlee West, who is someone that I have followed for a long time. Since the early days of her business Kids Swag. I’m endlessly impressed by Kimberlee and her shop. It’s a purpose-driven e-commerce brand and she’s built Kids Swag around the idea of mindful representation.  With her business, she’s made a big impact in the lives of BIPOC children who don’t generally see themselves represented in the toy aisle.  And out of all of the episodes featured here, I think this is the one where we learn most about the founder. Kimberlee digs deep into her past. Events that have shaped how she sees the world this way.  And we get a really good understanding of her. Why. Why she is on a mission to help raise confident kids that appreciate difference.

Kimberlee West: “I don’t think people recognize or understand the psychological impact of not seeing yourself. One of the things that I did as I delve more into Kids Swag was reading a lot more and I came across a study and it was saying by the age of three, and it happens earlier, but age three is quite pivotal by the age of three, your child is really understanding their world based off of race. So they’re categorizing people and giving them certain characteristics and traits. So this, basically, this is the beginning of stereotyping at age three. And so you can imagine if in that period of time, they haven’t seen themselves, they’re also characterizing themselves as being something that’s less than, or not really part of the world that they’re in.”

“If it is a child that’s white and they’re seeing themselves, then it makes it that much harder for them to, even as they get older for them to acknowledge or understand the pain, that probably someone that doesn’t look like them has experienced their whole life because in their world, it will be a feeling of like, why does race matter? It’s not really a construct. Why can’t we all be the same? They’ve had the luxury of being able to identify as just being themselves more so than being white.”

 Jennifer Myers Chua: This episode had so many light bulb moments and so many things that. I haven’t considered as a white woman or a white business owner or a mother, even though I’m raising a multi-racial child. And Kimberlee has a really special gift when it comes to marketing and how she engages her community, her customers are instant ambassadors for her brand. I just adore Kimberlee’s approach.

And I really appreciate the stories that she told in this episode. It’s, it’s really worth the listen. And if you want to take action, now, here are some tips from this episode. 

1. All of us, have the opportunity to teach our children to be open and celebrate differences. A great way to start fill your home library with books, featuring a variety of voices and stories from people all over the world.
2. Want to see representation in the toy aisle? Speak up large brands are beginning to take notice and make changes based on consumer demand.
3. If you’re a creator or a curator, you need to be mindful of bias in product design and shop curation too.

In episode four, I spoke a bit about Hip Mommies and how we came to be and why we’ve made some of the choices that we have. In the past seven years, we’ve taken our distribution business into a brand new direction.  Putting the planet and our communities first, when making decisions. It’s been a long road, filled with a lot of learnings and our business just turned 17.  And I share a number of things that we learned along the way.  Particularly in the last seven years since I’ve been involved. And I won’t go into the recap here, but if you’re interested in rebuilding a business, or family business dynamics or value-based business, or even the world of product based business or the baby products industry. It’s all in this episode. 

But to leave you with one thing, do your research.  Make sure what you were buying is tested, safe, authentic, all of that. And if you don’t have the time. Shop with a reputable seller. Who does that work for you? Sustainability, safety. It’s all very expensive. So if a deal sounds too good to be true. It just might be.

April McKinnon from Anointment is who we meet in episode five. She’s been making handmade personal care products in the Maritimes for over 12 years.  She bought her business, a farmer’s market soap company. And she had some really interesting insights to share about that. About buying a business and if it was a good investment over just starting a business on her own. And over the years, April has made a lot of changes and some mistakes. And she’s now the owner of a thriving, natural skincare brand. Which is available across Canada and in some larger natural retailers, like whole foods.

April’s a former environmental engineer and her homestead and Apiary are on this incredibly beautiful marshland in the east coast of Canada. So she also had a lot to share about how she’s inspired by that unique landscape. And how her business really interacts with the natural world. She also very bravely shared that her time spent in the NICU with her daughter with critical illness was the inspiration to give back and that the PPE and the waste created during that stay was something that had really stuck with her and helped create the values that this business is based on. But what got me about this episode was that April talks about the value chain. About how she sources her ingredients, why she chooses the partner she does  and what that means to us as conscious consumers, when we are deciding between two potential purchases.

April MacKinnon: “I’m a huge proponent of relationship-based business. Shea butter is a great example. I work with a with a supplier that purchases directly from a women’s co-op in Ghana. And so you can see from their videos and from their newsletters what’s happening in the village where the Shea butter is produced. The fact that the women there have been able to send their children to school because this is the income that they are making from selling the Shea butter. And so. I really like that for the social responsibility aspect. For someone starting out. You really have to define your, define your ethics, define your values within your business and don’t deviate. So spending time thinking about those things is really important. I think, there are some companies who for whom success is measured by bottom line and to other companies for whom success is measured in their work-life balance and other people for whom success is measured by something else completely. So knowing that is often enough to drive how you decide to purchase.”

Jennifer Myers Chua: Want to take action now? Here are some tips from this episode.

1. Number one. Look online before you buy. Sites like EWG allow you to look in the potential safety risks of personal care products. Now these databases are not perfect. But they can give you some insight into what ingredients are in the products you’re using. Look at the ingredients though, not the verified label, because those are paid opportunities. So just be mindful of that.
2. Passionate about a particular cause? April’s brand supports women through pregnancy postpartum through a number of ways. It’s possible to shop with a brand who have great products and values that align with yours.
3. If you’re in business or looking to start a business, it’s tempting to make something for everyone.  But April points out that it’s best to define your ethics, define your values within your business. And don’t deviate. And over the years, April’s offering has gotten smaller and more focused.  She suggests niching down, niching down and niching down again.

In episode six, we chatted with Lisa Ngyuen from Baubles + Soles. Lisa’s toddler shoes are made of this innovative material of sea salt and soy that are a hundred percent recyclable. And with interchangeable, baubles, really cute hearts and animals and things like that.  You can give the shoe a completely new look with just a twist. Additional features like water resistance, make bubbles and souls incredibly multipurpose and makes them.  Really the top choice of anyone looking to buy less shoes for their little one.

 In this episode, Lisa also gave us a bit of insight into building her business and making it onto shark tank. And she also chats about her heart and souls fund giving back program, which was inspired by her childhood as a refugee. And then time spent in Southeast Asia doing pro bono legal work for stateless peoples. What I found interesting about this conversation.  Was Lisa’s insight into domestic manufacturing.  Lower carbon footprint, less shipping. Greater chance that the workers are being paid fairly. And less chance of environmental catastrophes. Our laws are just stricter here in north America. But often time businesses go overseas right away, because they don’t think there is another option or that it can be cost effective to manufacture close to home.

Lisa Nguyen: “I was doing this research when we were preparing for Shark Tank and one of the things that a CEO that I was working with at the time she pointed out, listen, your effective margins is actually better than if you had manufactured it overseas. And here she is talking about the turnaround time for this product, the time that it, so you have to pay for these products, but then it sits at sea for a month before it gets to, to America. And also like we have the ability to maybe place a lower MOQ minimum order quantity when it’s made here domestically, because it doesn’t have to go so far. When you manufacture off shore, you have to plan out your inventory 6 to 12 months in advance, and then you order accordingly and then your cash goes out, as, as you’re waiting for it to come in. So in actual fact, your margins, like the margins is actually higher than you realize because of the amount of time that it takes and how much money you have sitting in inventory. And then you have to sell out of the inventory. For us here. We have the flexibility of a lower MOQ minimum order quantity and so then our effective margin is actually I think if not lower than the same as if we had chosen to make it. Off shore. If you think about the cost of goods sold and there maybe you add marketing, because  people feel good about that. And, and people feel like quality is there because it is made here. So then that’s actually a little bit of marketing funds that’s already built into the product.”

Jennifer Myers Chua: Less than 0.1% of shoes purchased in north America are made in north America. And the majority of shoes sold north America are not recyclable. Many shoe brands that claim recyclability are really just. Taking shoes back and redistributing them. Meaning they’re donated to populations overseas. So that’s a lot of international travel for just one pair of shoes.  Top tips from this episode. 

1. look for multi-purpose shoes for your little one. Toddlers and preschoolers may go through two sizes and six or more pairs of shoes per size in a year.
2. Another thing to look for with kids shoes, machine washable, some shoes are made with plastics and glues that don’t hold up well in the washing machine. And kid’s shoes get dirty.

 In episode seven, we met with Megan Takeda-Tully from Suppli.  episode was fascinating and really eyeopening.  We talked about how much takeout waste is actually created, how that waste is managed and what the environmental and health effects are from our obsession with convenience. And I think out of all of the last 10 episodes, this is the one that effect my habits in my personal life the most. And if you haven’t already listened to this one, it’s worth it. Because if you get takeout at all, it’s, it’s worth a listen.

 The plastic waste from takeout. It’s extreme. Because even before the pandemic. In Canada alone, we were already throwing out 3 million tons of plastic waste. And only 9% of that is actually recycled. The majority of our takeout containers are still made of styrofoam and black plastic. Both of which are not recyclable in most parts of the country. So it ends up in landfills. Along with billions of plastic utensils and about 29,000 tons of plastic food waste ends up in our natural environment. We find it in forests, washed up on beaches, stuff like that. So Megan is taking on a really huge issue.

Who is responsible? Is it on us as the consumer? The restaurants were choosing the styrofoam. Or should our municipalities get involved? Giving subsidies for alternatives?

 Megan Takeda-Tully:  “a lot of people assume that because restaurants are using single use containers that. They don’t care about the environment and that that’s not a priority for them. The reality is, is that the restaurant business is so cost sensitive. It’s such a low margin business.  Despite wanting to do what they can for the environment, sometimes even the more environmentally friendly single use option. They’re too expensive for some of these restaurants. Right. And if it’s between like surviving or not, then they kind of have to survive. But if there’s an alternative that works with them as Suppli aims to do and really partner and understand what their pain points are and try and solve those in a way that’s cost-effective for them and really that we have buy-in from them on the model. I think  there’s a lot to be gained there.”

“One of the other surprising pieces of of kind of building Suppli and everything that I hadn’t really counted on is is how much individuals care about this and want it to succeed?  I think that now we’re building much more community and it’s not just, zero wasters, it’s, it’s a community that supports each other to  help build this momentum. And I think that’s awesome. And it’s so, so refreshing and energizing and. That’s something that I really hadn’t anticipated,  the willingness of our consumer base to give feedback and help us build this. Because that was my intention from the beginning. It’s a service and product service that is built from the grassroots up. And I think that’s the way to form these sorts of initiatives. And I think that sets you up well for building something that really tackles the issues that people are, are seeing.”  

Jennifer Myers Chua: Top tips from this episode.

1. If you’re in Toronto, please sign up for Suppli. Megan is on a very important mission, and this is an easy and affordable way to make big impact.  If not seek out restaurants that are using reusable containers or that will pack your food into a container that you’ve brought.
2. Avoid takeout containers. If you can. The forever chemicals that keep these waterproof are leaching into our waterways and bloodstreams and causing a lot of problems.
3. Make noise. Tell your local restaurants that you want an alternative call your city councillor because this is really an area that we need to take. Action.

Melita from Q for Quinn is our guest in episode eight. After an impressive career in the financial world.  Melita followed her father’s footsteps into the world of entrepreneurship. Creating organic cotton basics like socks for children.  Initially, she was concerned about toxins and dyes that were causing her son to have eczema. But now the focus of the business is more than that. Melita’s factories are OEKO-TEX certified. And she uses GOTScertified cotton.  In this episode, we learn what all of that means and why it’s so important. And Melita also touches on her giveback program as well, where she donates meals to children in the developing world. And in this episode, we talk all about organics, fast fashion. What’s really in our clothes, who’s making them and Melita explains externalities, which is a concept in economics. That explains how we determine the true cost of a product.

Melita Cyril:  “And this is exactly the challenge I find, being a business owner, Trying to create the best possible product. But it ends up being at a much higher cost than, an alternative. I wouldn’t even say competition because it’s not the same product. It’s more of an alternative, right. I have an undergraduate degree in economics and I won’t get into. Too much of the jargon. But I, I will try to explain this. You might understand the concept of  this demand and supply curve intersecting in order to get to the free market price of, of something it’s called lean equilibrium. What happens if the demand curve or the supply curve is not accurate? It does not truly take into account. As far as the supply curve is concerned, the true cost of something. For the demand curve. You’ve got to look at it from a benefit perspective. So if the demand curve does not take into account, the true benefit of something. Or the supply curve does not take into account the true cost of something. You get the wrong price by society.”

“There is something called Externalities, which occurs when the full true cost or benefit of a market is not reflected in the market economics of it. So what that leads to is a wrong price. From a negative externalities perspective is the wrong price and overproduction.”

“And this is exactly the problem with fast fashion. It’s the same problem that we have with pollution. It’s the same concept. So with the supply curve for fashion in generalizing the market a little bit, I should just say for socks, if the cost doesn’t incorporate the social cost of the workers who have to produce were exposed to these pesticides and chemicals. If it doesn’t take into account the environmental costs off these pesticides and chemicals, then you’re going to get a lower price for the wrong price. And if you’re looking to source that that takes into account all of this, the sourcing price is going to be higher. And, and so that, that is exactly why if we pay attention to all this, we have to source at a higher cost and the price ends up being higher for a consumer. By buying a product, you are making sure you are paying the true cost of the product and not a lower cost where somebody else or even your own children end up paying the price for it.”

Jennifer Myers Chua: Want to take action now? Here are some tips from this episode.

1. Look for GOTS certified organic cotton, especially if buying for anyone with skin issues or eczema.
2. If you’re choosing fast fashion because of the price. Consider things like cost per use, durable items can be used many more times. Are often available to be resold or passed on.
3. Consider the costs when you’re looking to make a purchase. You can reach out to brands and ask about their worker policies or how things are made.

Number nine. Emma Rhomann is a toxics expert. She helps people make greener, healthier choices in their homes. And because she’s been studying things like water systems and chemicals for decades. I wanted to ask her questions about all of the goods that we’re buying and bringing into our homes. Now this episode goes into all of the things that we never consider about what is in the goods that we are buying. But we also get into who is regulating what makes it onto the shelves. How that’s really a system that’s failing us at this moment. And how all of this affects us and our health in the longterm.

Emma Rohmann: “essentially environmental health or environmental medicine looks at the impact external factors have on our health. When it comes to consumer goods, we can think of them impacting our space. Everything that we are putting on our skin  has the potential to be absorbed. What we put in our air we breathe in and what’s in our food and our drink we ingest. So There’s three pathways and a lot of the kind of conversation around toxics got pushed to the side because most conventional practitioners would say, oh, well, the dose makes the poison. We don’t . Need to be concerned because there’s such small amounts and our bodies have detoxification systems. They’re not going to cause a health impact. Where environmental health comes into play, environmental medicine. we’re not just looking at isolated exposures to things. There are toxins, literally everywhere. At this point. It’s not about going toxin-free, we can’t, but it’s lowering the exposure as much as possible and supporting our body systems so that they can better handle what they can’t control. So when we think of the way that our environment affects our health, it is varied. And that’s what makes it such a challenging field of study because every body handles things differently, but essentially you can consider your body’s systems like a barrel. It’s a contained volume. And when we are exposed to certain toxins or stressors, this adds to our toxic load.  If your body systems cannot process these toxins and stressors fast enough at the rate that they’re coming in, they end up overflowing into our bloodstream into our bodies. Some of them get reabsorbed into our fat and it can cause cellular damage. It can cause hormone, disruption hormone disruption is one of the main things that I talk about because it is so widespread. We know that some toxins are contributing to cancer, asthma, and allergies. It’s vast.  But that’s the crux of how the environment affects us.”

 Jennifer Myers Chua: Top tips.

1. Emma suggests asking questions, reaching out to the manufacturer or the shop and ask about the ingredients. The manufacturers that have safety top of mind. They’re expecting this, they have the information available and they’re happy to help. 
2. Be mindful when shopping online, what you think you’re ordering might not be what shows up at your door. Counterfeits are rampant, especially online and counterfeiters cut corners to keep costs down. Skipping things like safety, fair wages and using cheaper and maybe toxic ingredients.
3. If you’re overwhelmed and you don’t know where to start. If you look at the show notes on thecostofgoodssold.com. You can link to Emma’s podcast and to her blog, where she gives actionable tips to make all of this less overwhelming.

Born and raised in one of my favourite places in the world. Prince Edward Island. I’ve been wanting to meet Sheena Russell for ages. And I finally get to in episode 10.  Her popular snack food brand Made With Local is everywhere in Canadian grocery stores. Her bars are delicious, nutritious, and Sheena is like the model of someone who has taken social entrepreneurship. Seriously.  Her innovative business model creates impact in so many ways. It influences how she sources ingredients. Who she partners with and who makes and packages the bars.

 Now I loved how Sheena claims her business. Doesn’t have this traditional founder story with this aha moment. Instead she remained open and all of these experiences, these opportunities have kind of fallen into her lap. It’s been serendipitous.  Like fate, and it’s a great story.

Our conversation led to a moment where Sheena had to shift her mindset. I’ve had a similar shift with my own business. And this mindset is about big box or big grocery.  It’s tempting as a small business to make all of your sales to small businesses and independence and support that. But if you’re really, truly. But if you’re truly looking to make an impact. Mass retail might be the place to go.  Because every time that Sheena sells a pallet of goods to Costco, She supporting that many more Canadian farmers. And the workers in her social impact bakery. Every dollar spent with the big box is a dollar that’s going directly back into our community.

Sheena Russell:  “our bars are all handmade in partnership with social enterprise bakeries that help to train and employ folks who are living with some type of disability or barrier to the mainstream workforce. They’re actually producing these products right. And it creates  this beautiful ripple effect out into  their lives, their families, their communities. So with that, like those two things married, which is the, what it’s made of and the, how it’s made produces this product that has this like very quantifiable, very real social impact that, that goes out in all directions.  I value this and our thousands and thousands of Canadian customers value this, because  they want to nourish their bodies with foods that align with their personal values and their viewpoints in the world. And they have this sense that food, because of all of these things, the food is going to nourish you in a different kind of way than, some other kind of like mass produced bars that are made with kind of meh ingredients it’s a different experience I believe. And that’s what I want people to feel. Like I want people to have this feeling when they’re eating one of our Made With Local real food bars or that it is experience that connects them to their community.”

Jennifer Myers Chua: Want to take action now? Here are some tips from this episode.

1. Number one.  Shopping for snacks. You want to avoid things like unpronounceable ingredients and Palm oil. Palm oil is terrible. It’s not healthy for you or the planet. And the industry has contributed to things like the extinction of a number of species.  Mass deforestation. And it’s found in a lot of snack bars. So look out for that.
2. If you’re looking to build a social enterprise business, or a values driven company. Scaling up, isn’t selling out. It’s increasing the size of your impact. So maybe give Costco a chance.
3. If you want to make sure you’re supporting a company that really is creating impact. Look for B Corp certification it’s rigorous and B Corp’s have a legal requirement to the planet and people before profit.  

If you joined us through the first 10 episodes of Cost of Goods Sold. I just like to thank you so much for listening. And helping to amplify the voices of these brands that are really truly making a difference. And if you have the opportunity to share one of these episodes with a friend or a family member of yours that you think could really learn something from this, we would be forever grateful. And I know the brand owners would be. As well. You can access all episodes of the Cost Of Goods Sold podcast on apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Also you can visit thecostofgoodssold.com, where we have show notes and transcripts from each episode. And all of the links and social media profiles of all of the brands featured so if you want to connect with them you can find the links on our website.

 

 

In today’s episode, we chat with Megan Takeda-Tully, from Suppli and learn about how she’s taking on the challenge of takeout waste. We learn what the costs of our single-use plastic and convenience obsessed culture really are, How viewing a documentary during a team meeting led Megan from boardroom to bicycle – collecting last night’s stainless steel takeout containers across Toronto’s east end, How Suppli bridges the gap between the local restaurants and the zero-waste crowd, and why she thinks that converting to reusable food service containers makes just as much sense economically, as it does environmentally.

If you want to learn more about Megan and her mission to make single-use takeout containers a thing of the past. visit https://www.mysuppli.ca/  In Toronto? Sign-up takes 2 min, and the list of restaurant partners is growing every day. You can follow along with Megan and help tackle takeout waste, and support your local restaurant while living zero-waste on Facebook or Instagram .

Links from this episode:

 

Poma Rosa – the Best Latin American Restaurant in Toronto
Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University in Halifax
Why carrying your own fork and spoon helps solve the plastic crisis – National Geographic Magazine
Fast food increases exposure to a ‘forever chemical’ called PFAS – National Geographic Magazine
Eat your food, and the package too – National Geographic Magazine
‘So much waste’: How can we cut down on food-delivery plastic? – TVO
The fight against single-use plastics has been sidelined by COVID-19 — but activists aren’t giving up – CBC
6 ways to do takeout — without the waste – CBC
Canada one-step closer to zero plastic waste by 2030 – Environment and Climate Change Canada
Post-pandemic, nearly half of Canadians intend to order food online weekly – Canadian Grocer

Episode Transcript

 

Jennifer Chua: Hello, everyone. And welcome. You’re listening to Cost of Goods Sold with Jennifer Myers Chua episode 07

In today’s episode, we chat with Megan Takeda-Tully from Suppli and learn how she’s taking on the challenge of takeout waste. We learn what the cost of our single use plastic and convenience obsessed culture really are. How viewing a documentary during a team meeting led Megan from boardroom to bicycle collecting last night’s stainless steel takeout containers across Toronto’s East End, how Suppli bridges the gap between the local restaurants and the zero waste crowd. And why she thinks that converting to reusable food service containers makes just as much sense economically as it does environmentally.

A couple of weeks ago, I learned about Suppli from the owner of my favorite local restaurant. Poma Rosa. It’s family owned. They serve up Venezuelan eats coffee based treats, usually with their preschooler in tow.  It’s the kind of place that we are all eager to support after record long lockdowns. Immediately after learning about Megan’s business, I was struck by the genius of the idea.

It’s easy at first to see how Suppli supports environmental initiatives, but I didn’t consider the impact on the city’s budget for waste management. And I certainly didn’t understand at first all of the benefits for the consumers or for the restaurants offering Suppli.  Not surprisingly during these lockdowns, we’ve become even more dependent on single use plastic throughout the pandemic.

Some stats suggest that it’s increased by 250 to 300%. Masks and gloves have played a huge part of course, but more so we’re living in an increasingly convenience obsessed world.  And the cost of this convenience is a considerable increase in packaging.

Between fast food delivery, apps, and meal kits, 4.2 million more Canadians are ordering food online. This is up from the pre pandemic average with 45% of Canadians using these services weekly over the last year.  And the dramatic increase is for a number of reasons. Staying safe at home, supporting our local restaurants,  mandatory self isolations. Of course.

And the overwhelm that has come from trying to work from home deal with zoom overload, pandemic, stress, and homeschool. Life in COVID times , many more of us just don’t have the energy to prepare a meal of the end of the day.

It’s worth noting that pre pandemic, Canadians were already throwing away 3 million tons of plastic waste with only 9% being recycled.  And the majority of takeout containers are still made of styrofoam and black plastic, which are non-recyclable in most parts of Canada,most ending up in landfills, along with billions of plastic utensils and about 29,000 tons of plastic food waste end up in our natural environment.

Upping the recycling programs? It’s more productive to look into solutions to reduce waste rather than relying on recycling because it won’t solve our issue either. Recycling requires a lot of energy, water and transportation. Down cycled plastics are shredded, melted, and turned into other goods, but those also eventually just end up in landfill. And plastics are made from oil, natural gas non-renewable resources.

And if all of this impact on the environment, isn’t enough to make us reconsider our takeout habits, national geographic magazine reports that takeout packaging increases exposure to forever chemicals called PFAS. These long lasting chemicals can seep into food and build up in our bodies. They make packaging resistant to water and grease, which makes them the perfect choice for disposable takeout and fast food packaging.

A study conducted on 400 types of food wrappers and containers found that half contain these forever chemicals. And they were found in the blood of 70% of the survey participants. They also leach into groundwater and go straight into our drinking water systems.

I have all these statistics and resources collected with more of this information available on our website and in the show notes.  They’re really worth a read.

I definitely feel some guilt when I unwrap my lunch to go. And a decade ago, back when I was in the corporate world, I fought hard for compostable containers at the salad bar, thinking that compostable was the answer. And my friend, Arron, from episode 04? He would dutifully bring along glass Tupperware to every lunch out, ordering his food for dine-in and packing it up himself for the trip back to the office.

I didn’t really consider the enormousness of the situation or the full impact of my choices. And certainly other than lugging my reasonable travel mug with me, I did nothing to make change in this area. And now when things are really busy, I often won’t think twice about some takeout here and there. Even if I am contributing to the problem.

But there is hope. Entrepreneurs like Megan are developing innovative products and services to solve some of the issues surrounding waste  with solutions designed to protect the environment from plastic pollution. And our cities are taking note. Vancouver and Toronto both say that reducing single use plastics is a priority and they’re taking steps to improve how we manage plastic waste and investing in these solutions. Vancouver jumped on board these initiatives after reporting that currently, disposable food and beverage containers and plastic utensils are making up nearly half of the garbage they collect from public bins. Megan points out that reducing takeout waste is advantageous financially to our cities, too.  We can reduce waste through more circular economy. We can reduce 1.8 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions per year. And we can create approximately 42,000 jobs across the country. And that is food for thought.

Megan grew up in Toronto. She spent a lot of time outside in the urban environment as a child. Seeing garbage littering the streets. I mean, it’s part of city life. But Megan remembers noticing it. And on trips up to cottage country, she’d be collecting litter and cleaning up her environment. Cause she’s a clean and organized person. She’s modeling this to her two young children, and she’s happy to see that they followed in her footsteps.

Megan Takeda-Tully: growing up in Toronto, obviously we’re better than other cities, but we, we have our challenges with waste. And when you, walk or walk along a waterway or visit a campground and there’s garbage on the ground, that’s, it’s never nice to see.

Jennifer Chua: Megan also benefited from seeing behaviors modeled by the adults in her life. She played competitive sports growing up. And feels really lucky to have had such great mentors. And now as an adult herself, Megan is a confident, positive person and she surrounds herself with people that support her vision for the future.

Megan Takeda-Tully: I’ve always preferred to take the path less traveled, it’s more challenging, to me it’s more rewarding as well. And I think you can really push, push expectations and all that sort of thing. And I think, growing up and even now, I’ve always surrounded myself I think with people that are willing to support my dream versus those that just sorta knock you down. And not that I haven’t come across those, but I probably don’t look for follow up conversations with those individuals.  I think, I think those are  big pieces and I think also working with entrepreneurs and seeing what they are doing and, obviously the missions behind what they’re working on, but also the ability to scale something and grow something that’s really, truly impactful. I think, that’s very inspiring for me.

Jennifer Chua: Megan has a background in traditional finance. That’s what she went to university for and where she spent the majority of her working life. But what’s interesting is how her career has progressed. Megan started out with a big bank, a public entity. Moved to a privately-owned larger company and then to a smaller nonprofit. Impact investing, working with entrepreneurs.

Over time, Megan began to really try to align her values with her work and it was becoming more and more clear that she wanted to create change with a business of her own.

Megan Takeda-Tully: My,  last role was working with innovators, entrepreneurs all over the world to help build out  business models to tackle social challenges, the sustainable, scalable business models to tackle social challenges. I needed myself to be running the business, building it out, and that’s where I have so much passion. Instead of being on the investor side, I’m obviously now on the entrepreneur side. And I find it just so energizing and rewarding.

Jennifer Chua: Megan is motivated by waste. The excess and unnecessary waste. One day back when she was working in the financial sector, one of her directors called a team meeting. Megan can recall why she’s sure it was related to a challenge that they were facing at the time.  Her director wanted to show the team a short documentary. He was from India and the documentary he showed Megan and her colleagues was about the Tiffin lunchbox system.  It’s an incredibly complicated system of delivering hot and home cooked meals to workers in offices around urban centers. It’s efficient, seemingly impossible. And those delivering the Tiffins make very little mistakes. It’s . Inspiring.

Megan Takeda-Tully: The documentary he showed us was about the Tiffin lunchbox system in India. And I’m pretty sure there was some other message or reason that he showed it to us that was related to my job at the time. But what I took away from it was, wow, this is an incredible system. Look at what they have in place using stainless steel containers and obviously a lot of logistics management, but to be able to serve meals in reusable containers. From then on basically take out was ruined for me with single use containers. So like it’s so preventable. It’s so unnecessary. So we should have something like this and this was, seven plus years ago. So you know, this concept was something that’s been kicking around in my mind for a long time. But I’d say that was like a big that stuck with me for years and years. And the concept  of Suppli was, is  inspired by tiffin.

Jennifer Chua: The seed had been planted a long time ago with the discovery of the tiffin and their system, but what’s the story about actually coming up with the idea and then moving this idea into an actual business.

Megan Takeda-Tully: I always laugh when I tell this story, we have a close group of friends that we sit around dinner with, or we used to pre COVID. And we we’d pitch,  different ideas to each other, so usually it just sort of casually. But there are a couple of sort of  entrepreneurs in the group. And this was like six plus years ago. I pitched this idea for a reusable takeout container service. And they hated it. Like they thought it was a terrible idea. They’re like, well, I just don’t see how it’ll work. And they were like, wow, i like the black plastic. Cause then if I lose it, it doesn’t matter. I didn’t necessarily agree with them, but I understood that perhaps the market wasn’t ready. And then I was hanging out with the same group a couple of years ago, and the same people were complaining about a bunch of the single use packaging that they got from some of these meal delivery kits and juice kids and all this, all these, and I was laughing inside because I was like, okay, well the market seems ready for this now.

And so. I had just had my son, my second child. Not that I didn’t have enough to do already with two kids, but I had a bit of a break from my job. And so, I’m a person that kind of as a hobby, my mind’s always running. And so I thought, you know what, like, I’m just going to kick the tires on this because I would really feel complacent. I sort of had a view to how this might be set up and I think I’d feel complacent if, no one had solved it yet and I had a bit of an idea of how it might work. So I started kicking the tires on it and kind of one thing led to another. And here we are today.

Jennifer Chua: That’s really funny that you went back to the same people though, and they finally had the, like, they sparked the aha moment that you had.

Megan Takeda-Tully: Yeah.

Jennifer Chua: When you began to explore take out food waste a little bit more, did you find anything surprising?

Megan Takeda-Tully: It was interesting. When I spoke with restaurants, I think a lot of people assume that because restaurants are using single use containers that. They don’t care about the environment and that that’s not a priority for them. The reality is, is that the restaurant business is so cost sensitive. It’s such a low margin business.  Despite wanting to do what they can for the environment, sometimes even the more environmentally friendly single use option. They’re too expensive for some of these restaurants. Right. And if it’s between like surviving or not, then they kind of have to survive. But if there’s an alternative that works with them as Suppli aims to do and really partner and understand what their pain points are and try and solve those in a way that’s cost-effective for them and really that we have buy-in from them on the model. I thinkthere’s a lot to be gained there.

And so that’s one thing I learned.  A how really truly sensitive restaurants are  to cost, but B would be that, I like some other consumers thought, I don’t know if restaurants are really super passionate about the environment. But I can tell you from firsthand experience, they are like, we have restaurants that unprompted go out and pitch other restaurants on this. Cause they’re like, this is the way of the future. You need to be on board, look at the damage we’re doing to our environment otherwise. So that was, I mean, that was a nice learning from my initial conversations as I was kind of, exploring the,idea and the concept.

Jennifer Chua: COVID times everyone’s dying to support their local restaurants. We’ve had these takeout Tuesday initiatives,and everyone is rallying behind the local takeout, places in their neighborhoods. Right. And even if they’re offering the quote more environmentally friendly options, what are the costs associated with our, take out obsession.

Megan Takeda-Tully: I’m not trying to ruin take out for those that are still using single use containers, but things to consider. So, in terms of the, even the eco-friendly containers the fiber-based stuff at the end of the day, it has to go into the garbage, the landfill bin. Right. And most of them break down over time, probably better than plastic. But the challenge is that when it ends up in our landfills, it ends up breaking down without oxygen, the presence of oxygen, which means that it can actually give off greenhouse gases when it does so. Which is, is the same problem we face with food waste, right? When it ends up in landfill or it isn’t actually properly composted, it gives off greenhouse gas emissions.  So that’s a big challenge with those kinds of fiber based single use. And the other piece on the eco-friendly kind of plastic equivalents that are bio-plastics or whatever, those can’t be recycled and then same challenge. They usually end up in the landfill breaking down. Or not in a similar way.  That’s kind of the, the challenge with some of the more eco-friendly products, I guess, but taking it up to just like a really high level. So by 2023, the global takeout industry is expected to reach $150 billion.

That’s huge. But if you do like back of the napkin math on that, we’re looking at. Enough packaging, single use packaging from takeout that would stack 15,000 times higher than now to Everest every year.  So it’s huge. Right. And this like many other things, if we don’t come up with a solution,  we’re really shooting ourselves in the foot from an environmental perspective. Like it’s just not sustainable.

I love that you touched on the economic perspective in terms of supporting local businesses, because that’s the other piece that I think people don’t tie as much in terms of like the impacts, but I think the number of messages we’ve gotten from, or we’ve received from consumers saying, thank you so much for creating this, I really, really want to support my local businesses And local restaurants, but I honestly, I had to either significantly reduce or stop ordering takeout because.  I couldn’t deal with the guilt from all the packaging. I mean, that happens if not everyday, every other day, we received messages like that.

And so if we’re able to bring those people back into market and. Be able to support their local restaurants. There’s really important economic implications for our small local businesses. And so, I love that you brought that up and that’s something I like to highlight too, because it, it makes a difference for our communities. When we think about things on a small scale, too.

Jennifer Chua: A lot of these restaurants won’t accept, your takeout containers from home or your glass containers that you’ve brought in and that’s completely understandable, especially in times of COVID that they don’t want to give that risk to their employees or whatnot. Can you explain a little bit about what Suppli actually is?

Megan Takeda-Tully: The Suppli containers that we use are stainless steel basis with silicone lids. And so the options you’ll usually see are either like a more robust plastic or stainless steel, and you can get double-walled or single walled stainless steel. We have single walled, A because it’s cheaper B it’s more environmentally friendly and it’s lighter to transport, which obviously has environmental impacts as well. And, the reason for choosing that stainless steel is really kind of like best in class for cleanliness.  It’s the easiest to clean. It goes through the industrial dishwasher really nicely. It also can be 100% recycled at end of life.  If you use plastic, it’s well, A not as durable, but B yes while it can be recycled. I, even if you’re taking it back to recycle it, it can’t be recycled for food use. Like you can’t recycle it into another takeout container. Right. You have to have Virgin materials for that.   I kind of asked myself,  you know, do I want to be producing a whole bunch more plastic? At the end of the day, microplastics are the result anyways. I just didn’t feel comfortable with that. And so stainless steel allows us to a hundred percent recycle indefinitely. So that was a big, big draw for that. And and then the silicone lids they can’t be 100% recycled. They get downcycled, but  to me, they’re a friendly, friendlier materialthan plastics because they don’t break down into such small particles. So there are other sort of considerations and that could geek out on lots of container stuff, but that’s that’s kind of like the the quick and dirty on the containers.

Jennifer Chua: So if every household in Toronto ordered takeout and they were using Suppli containers, say once a week, instead of single use plastics, What kind of impact do you think that would have on the environment? Like how many takeout containers are we talking?

Megan Takeda-Tully: We have another quick and dirty estimate. So in Toronto, numbers estimate that there’s around 39 million takeout meals every year. Okay. So 39 million takeout meals, and maybe you have an average of, we use an average of three containers per meal, but to be honest, like there are probably more containers, especially when you think about the little condiment containers and everything.

So if you think about that, the majority of that heading to landfills, we only really recycle 9% of the materials, it’s a lot of wish cycling, unfortunately. And so think about that all ending up in landfills. I mean,  that’s a massive amount of garbage. And so, it’s in the interest of the city to, from a waste management perspective.

I mean, we’re essentially freeing up pieces of their balance sheet. uh, For us, I think it’s working with the  different groups in the ecosystem to understand the benefits from a sustainability perspective and an economic perspective, to be able to, serve more than more than the share that we’re doing now that 39 million. Right. So I think we can start to move the needle, even if we’re at, 2%, 4% and grow ourselves up – our target is really to, to hit that 39 million.

Jennifer Chua: If I’m a small business owner, so I’m a restaurant owner and I want to partner with Suppli. How does that work?

Megan Takeda-Tully: So right now it’s, it’s pretty simple. We essentially stock you with containers. You add a menu item to your point of sale machine and any other online order platform that you’d like to offer it through. Right now we charge aflat fee of 99 cents per order. And and then you just report the orders to us on a daily basis. We’re actually streamlining pieces of this. So, thinking out to the future,  there’s some work we’re doing over the next couple months to sort of streamline and build out the digital and physical infrastructure to be able to  move this. City-wide and then kind of beyond that in the next couple of years as well.

Jennifer Chua: And for the takeout consumer, how do they interact with Suppli? How does that work on their end?

Megan Takeda-Tully: So consumers just go to our website to create a free account. It takes about honestly, 15 to 20 seconds, and then they can go ahead and order from any one of our partner restaurants. If they’re ordering online, they add Suppli containers, menu item to their cart, the same way they would add any other item and they just leave their phone number in the notes section.

They get their food packaging, Suppli containers. And then we ask people to rinse andreturn to one of our local drop-off points in a week. So those are listed on our website, but we’ve tried to make them pretty accessible. And you’ll see them in our, some of our partner restaurants, as well as mission aligned, coffee shops and grocers.

Jennifer Chua: In terms of sanitization, what steps are you taking with these reusable takeout containers to make sure that they’re clean and safe.

Megan Takeda-Tully: The cleaning and sanitization process for. Dinnerware, dishware, all that sort of stuff in the food industry is pretty standardized. So we use an industrial dishwasher. It goes through kind of the same, they’re all Ecolab certified. They go through the same cleaning and sanitization cycles.

Pretty much any industrial dishwasher you’ll see on the market. You have to have a certain mix of chemicals. It has to get up to 180 degrees to, to make sure everything is sanitized. And and then they’re kind of ready to go and we have spot our process has spot checking as well. But yeah, it’s, it’s people have asked People have asked whether what we’ve changed to ensure that, in the time of COVID that everything is properly cleaned and sanitized.

And I tell them like, not a whole lot in the process, because it was already pretty robust. Like it’s we’re not, we’re not doing anything differently. Like no one wanted cold germs on their, stuff before or any other germs. So the process was designed to kill those germs and make sure they weren’t present.

So, yeah, I, I think, I think it’s just being really transparent about these pieces and how the process works. No one’s ever been so interested in dishwashing as they have been now. So just making sure that we’re offering that proactively and to be honest, that that really hasn’t been it hasn’t been like a massive concern for people, at least that we’ve heard from.

Jennifer Chua: When you finally took the leap and started this business, was there any moment where you just looked around and said, I can’t believe it, but this is going to take off.

Megan Takeda-Tully: When we did our soft launch, we launched in just two postal codes with four restaurants and I was watching our consumer sign-ups after I’d put out a few teasers to some Facebook groups and whatever. And I remember being so excited when we hit like the hundred Mark for consumer accounts and And I think, some of that was great to see, obviously in the first few months that people were actually ordering and we worked through some of the kinks and that sort of thing.

And then in January of last year, we launched more broadly, like basically opened it up to everyone with obviously still a focus in the East end and our order volume continued to go up and does continue to go up. Which yeah, to me is like, I constantly see it going up and up, which is amazing. We started  to have restaurants reaching out to us. So a lot of inbound requests, which also was amazing. I got requests from other countries all over the world to bring this to, to their cities and that sort of thing, which obviously we’re not quite ready for that yet, but that’s the intent.

At the beginning of 2021, when we started to see people really post about it and convey the same things that we felt when we were starting this up, for example, like, thank you so much for starting this up because. I couldn’t deal with all the single use waste. I will now order take out again, the number of messages we got from that perspective was super, super validating. And then obviously watching the number of orders and the number of signups  tick up along with that was was great.

Jennifer Chua: The restaurants that were the early adopters. So the restaurants that signed on in the beginning, I’m just wondering what kind of restaurants were they? Were they like the small family owned business, or can you give me an idea of what kind of restaurants leaped on right away?

Megan Takeda-Tully: You know what it’s such a variety and I will say too upfront, like I just, I love our restaurant partners. They are so awesome and supportive. I’ll talk about the first five.  There wasa high volume takeout, Japanese style fried chicken spot. And then there was  anowner run. I guess it’s like friends and family run. Indian restaurant, and then we had a small local Ethiopian food shop and then a caterer middle East caterer and then our fifth partner was the largest caterer across Toronto and maybe in the country. So we’ve actually had quite a mixture, I would say more so, closer to the owners of smaller. Shops. And I think that has really been appreciated by our consumers because they’d like to support the smaller, smaller businesses and those with a bit of a story behind them. And I think for us, it was really helpful because we got to interact directly with the owners, get their feedback, whether it’s positive or negative, so we can make shifts in our model to be able to accommodate and get the best product and service that we can out there to scale.

Jennifer Chua: So if you’re a retailer, you’re a small business that deals with any kind of consumable. I mean, really a lot of different people could interact with you and offer this kind of service. Right.

Megan Takeda-Tully: Yeah, I mean, we’ve had requests from caterers. That was definitely a, a big one. We’ve had conversations with food delivery services, prepared meal kids or the prepare yourself meal kits. Some of those groups I think. Yeah, I think all this is super exciting to think about and talk about, we try and stay focused to make sure we get, this one product service right before we, we get scaling kind of outwards. But I think there’s so much opportunity for impact in all these different areas that yeah, that gets us super excited on a, on a daily basis.

Jennifer Chua: Can you outline some more of the benefits to the restaurant or to the caterer to using your products?  Is it only about reducing waste or is it about attracting new customers? What are more of the benefits we’re not thinking of?

Megan Takeda-Tully: Definitely the attraction of new customers. So what we basically aim to do when we speak with restaurants, we say, listen,  we’re looking to try and keep your costs kind of where they are. But increase your revenue substantially. We come with a very loyal group of customers that want to order from restaurants that are in some cases, exclusively on our platform.

We’d say to them, so listen, just to be prepared in your first, the first second week of the launch, you’re going to be really busy. So we’re going to give you this many containers to start, but we’ll come back. We’ll kind of gauge the interest. We’ll come back and we’ll restock you, more frequently than, than usual, just, just in case. And we’ll check in with you. And they’re like, Yeah. yeah. Okay. Okay. No problem. Let’s get a couple of orders here and there. And every single restaurant, I swear, like, they’re like, Oh my gosh, we were really busy.

In some cases we’re driving thousands of dollars in extra revenue per month , for these restaurants. And they come to us and, I think about like the sushi restaurant we onboard and they’re like, what. We were really, really busy and these are all new customers and, they’ve ordered a number of times and like, we’ve done so much more business through this. I feel like they don’t believe us at first, but I think definitely the piece that we try and emphasize aside from obviously the sustainability component is, is the additional revenue we’re aiming to drive.  What we really are conveying to restaurants is aside from the sustainability piece is that we’re looking to drive revenue to you, not just from other people that are  looking to you. Instead of ordering from this other restaurant is people that actually weren’t ordering from any restaurants because they couldn’t deal with the packaging waste and they are now coming back into the market to help support local businesses like yours because you have this offering.

Jennifer Chua: Are you seeing people converting, like I’m assuming that the low waste crowd or the zero waste crowd are immediately interested in this concept, but are you seeing, people who are maybe only slightly sustainably minded starting to really be attracted to these ideas?

Megan Takeda-Tully: My, my biggest proxy for that is my friend group, to be honest. And there are some that are, are pretty sustainably minded and focused, and those that aren’t as much, like it’s just not a big focus for them. But I do see a bit of a shift in terms of those that are really getting interested in, honestly, asking me more questions about things that I never would have  picture them as asking before. And to me that’s a really exciting shift in, in them, but also I think that’s representative more of the community in general, people are just becoming more aware of, what we. Consume the waste that we produce. And I think that that is something that’s really helping boy momentum from this. Once people try. Suppli , the feedback I’ve heard from users is that it’s going to be really hard for them to shift back to ordering from a restaurant that doesn’t have a reusable containers. Cause it’s just, it’s in the experience, right?

Jennifer Chua: When you were building this company, so within your journey, have you encountered any really big challenges?

Megan Takeda-Tully: Oh my gosh. Yeah. It’s interesting. A lot of people say to me Oh, you started this during COVID, that’s such a great time to start this because everyone’s wanting to be more sustainable and I’m like, yeah, the awareness is good. It’s probably a little bit, more so than it would have been without COVID, but yeah. Running a business and starting a business in the middle of a global pandemic is really, really challenging. I think about things from Suppli chain to materials costs, to shipping costs, to even, cleaning and sanitization. One of our partners had to shut down for a while that did the cleaning and sanitization, we were scrambling around on the back end. Luckily we have amazing partners and caters that have. The facilities as well, but it, I’m glad that from the outside looking in, it looks relatively calm and smooth most of the time, but there’s so much related to COVID in general that has made things a little more challenging for us.

January of 2021. I think we were going to announce, I think it was on a Tuesday or something that we were announcing our expansion. So we are offering, the service to everyone across these, these restaurants and right before that my co-founder and I Juliana, we were kind of running through some numbers and thinking, okay, do we have enough containers to, to manage this? It should be okay. We feel comfortable cause we’ll just do a little bit more frequent washing, we were only doing once a week, so we’ll do a couple of times a week at our partner’s place. And that should be good.  That was Sunday, I think, we were having that conversation. On the Monday, our partner called us. And they were like, I’m really sorry, but we haven’t really been operating, there’s no, there are no events and that sort of thing. So we’re actually going to shut down fully for the next several months. And we were like, Oh, great. Okay. So let’s get plan B into action. And so we scrambled to get these pieces into action, right? And then we thought, you know what? We’ve got the shipment of containers coming into support this next launch in a couple of weeks with more restaurants. And so that’ll be great. And then of course, everything is delayed shipping wise, so it was like four weeks delayed. And so we were just scrambling hard to make sure that our restaurants had enough inventory. And, at the same time, orders are ticking up. Number of customers are ticking up and we have the same number of containers and we’re trying to cycle stuff through. So that was, it was very busy. And I just thought, like, there was like constantly things stacking up on that to make it more and more challenging, but you? know what that’s, when you develop your best. Plan B plan C plan D and I think it makes your business actually more resilient to be, to have those pieces in place. There, there are constant examples of when you’re just like, Oh, come on. Like, nothing is simple here.

Jennifer Chua: Have you considered using Suppli at any point to facilitate any other social initiatives? I was just wondering if there was any ideas flickering in your head about any kind of giving back initiatives or getting kids involved or anything like that you wanted to speak to.

Megan Takeda-Tully: Something that I personally am very passionate about is, and have always been passionate about is youth programming and education. I think for Suppli,  it’s not just providing the business, but I think there’s a lot of education needed. Not for, just for kids for, for honestly the, the entire community. And I’m still learning too. But in terms of, what really is the impact of our decisions what are our different options and really actually, what are the results  of these different options in terms of environmental sustainability? And I really truly believe that we have to educate the younger population, our kids to be able to learn these.

I still remember as a kid, a campaign that made sure we, we turned off all our lights. This was in like grade school that we turned off all our lights that we turned off the taps when we weren’t using them. And there were these, things you could stick in your toilet, the toilet canister to make sure that it uses less water. Like, I remember all of that from grade school and I still like that. I always remember, I think, Oh, we need to turn off all the lights. And we teach our kids that, it’s wasteful to just leave the water running and we try and teach that. But, more of that. And I think it really, it sticks with people like kids are sponges, right?

And so if we’re helping educate them at young ages is  to care about these things and to be involved in initiatives. I have so many different ideas and desires to involve the younger generation and, help them to create things that are looking to accomplish the same sorts of things. The educational component, I think I did do one talk actually with with a couple of classrooms at a school, just talking about entrepreneurship and, but also doing it with  A values driven approach. And, again, to the point of, we need to help boy and support dreamers to action on things. And I think, the youth are the most energetic of our population and have so much to offer in that area that that’s definitely an area of passion for me. I just think  if every child of ours was taught that the sky is the limit and it, that is actually true, I think we can make leaps and bounds in a much faster pace than we do now.

Jennifer Chua: So when you see these kids and you interact with them and you interact with the zero waste crowd and you interact with these enthusiastic business owners, are you hopeful for the future?

Megan Takeda-Tully: I’m so hopeful for the future? Yeah, I think, I just think there’s so much we can do, like every morning, I wake up energized because I just think there’s so much opportunity out there. And I think other people are really realizing it too, and no time Is better than the present to, to get moving on these things.

One of the other surprising pieces of of kind of building Suppli and everything that I hadn’t really counted on is is how much individuals care about this and want it to succeed?  I think that now we’re building much more community and it’s not just, zero wasters, it’s, it’s a community that supports each other to  help build this momentum. And I think that’s awesome. And it’s so, so refreshing and energizing and. That’s something that I really hadn’t anticipated,  the willingness of our consumer base to give feedback and help us build this. Because that was my intention from the beginning. It’s a service and product service that is built from the grassroots up. And I think that’s the way to form these sorts of initiatives. And I think that sets you up well for building something that really tackles the issues that people are, are seeing.

Jennifer Chua: I think a lot of people think that in order to make an impact, they need to start huge or go for every single restaurant in Toronto. And I appreciate that you started with five, like that’s great. You’re making a huge impact with a small group, really in the beginning.

Megan Takeda-Tully: I think you, you just have to be able to see the bigger picture, right? The bigger vision, like, our goal is really to be weaving reusables into the fabric of the traditional takeout system. Right. So, and yes, we’re starting with four or five restaurants, but  if you get it right, then you can grow it. If it doesn’t make sense to try and start so big.I think that’s obviously biased, but I think that’s the way you build these things out into big successful impact is that  you have to be able to get it right on a small scale first.

If you want to learn more about Megan and her mission to make single use takeout containers a thing of the past, visit mysuppli.ca. In Toronto? Signup takes under two minutes and the list of restaurant partners is growing every single day. You can follow along with Megan and help tackle takeout waste and support your local restaurant while living zero waste on Facebook or Instagram @mysuppli.

 

 

 

In today’s episode, we chat with Lisa Nguyen from Baubles + Soles. We explore the environmental costs of conventional footwear manufacturing. We Learn one of the first dinner’s out with her new baby inspired Lisa to design an interchangeable bauble to give her daughter’s shoes a new look with a twist, how Lisa’s early childhood as a refugee and career in law led her to build a purposeful business that supports children in the developing world, how a decade-old pair of drugstore flip flops led Lisa to find her manufacturing partner in the United States, and why she thinks that paying more for domestic manufacturing may be more cost-effective in the long run.

If you want to Learn more about Lisa and her sustainable, and adorable footwear for toddlers,  Visit baublesandsoles.com. Looking to buy a pair? Through the Heart + Soles fund, Lisa donates a part of the proceeds to support women and children vulnerable to trafficking in the developing world. You can follow along with Lisa on her mission to create shoes that are as practical and fashionable as they are sustainable, and to make momlife that much easier on Facebook  Instagram or twitter.

Links from this episode

• Baubles and Soles
• Video explaining the twist lock
• Shark tank recap on Inc. Magazine

Episode Transcript

 

Jennifer Chua: Hello, everyone. And welcome. You’re listening to cost of goods sold with Jennifer Myers Chua episode 06

 In today’s episode, we chat with Lisa Nguyen from Baubles + Soles. We explore the environmental costs of conventional footwear manufacturing. We learn how one of the first dinners out with her new baby inspired Lisa to design an interchangeable bauble to give her daughter shoes and new look with a twist. How Lisa’s early childhood as a refugee and a career in law led her to build a purposeful business, to support children in the developing world. How a decade old pair of drugstore flip flops led Lisa to find her manufacturing partner in the United States and why she thinks that paying more for domestic manufacturing, maybe more cost-effective in the long run.

 If you have a growing child in your home, you know that they may go through a dozen pair of shoes in a year.  Some shoes are for one purpose some are for for one occasion, and most are only worn a handful of times before little one outgrows them.  And while some footwear brands are exploring new materials and sustainability  until Baubles + Soles, no one had focused on the years where we change pairs most often.

 Founder, Lisa created a 100% recyclable and multipurpose toddler shoe  from an innovative material of sea salt and soy.  Less than 0.01% of shoes purchased in north America  are made in north America.  And the majority of shoes sold in north America are not recyclable.  Many that claim to be a really just shoe redistribution programs.  The shoes are collected and oftentimes shipped back overseas.  Baubles + Soles participates in a closed loop recycling.  With the intent to reduce the use of Virgin material  and to keep those old shoes from becoming environmental waste.  Each new pair is made with a percentage of recycled materials. They’re also low carbon footprint being manufactured domestically  and being animal free.  And with features like water resistance, they replace all of those single purpose shoes that are not suitable for both the playground and the party.

 I met Lisa on Instagram when my little one was still a toddler and she has worn these shoes in every size as she’s grown,  collecting the baubles and happily putting them on the next pair, as we size up,  baubles are attractive to kids. They’re rainbows, mermaids, unicorns, hearts, things like that.  And while I was drawn to Baubles + Soles for the sustainable nature of the shoes and the multi-purposeness. They have the added benefit of being really attractive to those looking for a high fashion shoe for their little one.

 And Lisa’s career path might surprise you. She went to law school. She spent some time as a lawyer.  And doing pro bono work in Southeast Asia.  She spent a lot of time in the nonprofit space and advocacy and worked in entertainment with the Vietnamese community as well as a television host. But immediately before Baubles + Soles, Lisa was a first time mom. Working on understanding and navigating new motherhood  and putting a lot of pressure on herself to go back to work immediately.  She was on a flight just three weeks after giving birth, crossing the country  and thinking about how she was going to make all of this work. 

And like many of the founders that I’ve met with for this project, having a child completely changed Lisa’s perspective,  and she began to look for something,  something that could make an impact on the world,  but also give her that freedom and flexibility to spend more time with her daughter.

Lisa Nguyen:  And I remember, putting a lot of pressure on myself to go back to work immediately.   That was definitely the catalyst for Baubles + Soles and it it just, yeah, my wheels, the wheels of my head, it was turning as I was looking for, how I can solve this conundrum of wanting to work and wanting to challenge myself professionally. But that at the same time, like not miss out on being in her life and seeing her every day and seeing all the milestones.

 Jennifer Chua: A couple months later on an evening out with her family, Lisa had the idea that would change everything.  It’s a great story. And I’m going to let her tell it.  Because Lisa is a really wonderful person with a huge heart, and she’s just brimming with optimism.  She’s incredibly determined. She’s creative and caring, and she’s really hopeful for the future. 

  Lisa Nguyen: I think everybody’s engineered for good and engineered for contribution. And, not only are we capable, I think it’s, it’s in our DNA. It’s just whether or not that part of us  is ignited by the people around us, by what’s happening now in our world. You know?  

Jennifer Chua: We’ve talked a lot about your past before and all of the wonderful things you’ve done in your career. To support social purpose really? Is there a moment that stands out in your mind where you can remember when you first became interested in doing this, like using your life to give back?

Lisa Nguyen: Growing up, I. I’ve always had a very strong sense of civic, duty like I think, even before I was academically excelling.  I was always an average student, but I would always be the kid that would like, if there’s a tap, like a bubbler in Australia, we call it a bubble, which is like a drinking station. If there was a tap that was like slightly like running, I would run over and close it. Or if there was a kid who was struggling, I’d always want to be that person to, to help that kid along. So I remember like in primary school I got the award for the. The citizenship award, I guess it’s the award where you help others. I was not expecting it. I had no idea how it happened. I was a wallflower, that was really interesting to actually think back about that. And I had forgotten about that actually. But, like I said, I think that the desire to contribute and to leave this world a slightly better place than, than how you found it. I think that it’s, in all of us. It’s just whether or not, we are mindful of it. And then whether or not we surround ourselves with people who like have these conversations and remind us all the time. Like when I speak to you, Jen, I’m, I feel inspired to like, like, Oh, gosh. Yeah, we gotta be thinking about that again. I think it’s, it’s there in all of us.

Jennifer Chua: Can you talk a little bit about your past in terms of your legal career, a brief overview of what you’ve done for people all over the world.

 Lisa Nguyen: I actually grew up in Australia. My mother and I left to Vietnam on a boat and we spent a week at sea. And then we went to Hong Kong where we lived in a refugee camp for three years. And so that  is definitely a defining part of me growing up, I think. And some of the, like my characteristics, I, I definitely have a very strong sense of survival because I think we’ve really had to vote for that. Then we immigrated to Australia, on a humanitarian visa and the Australian government took us in, I was eight at the time. And then I grew up in Australia.  I was never academic, but then I guess at one point, you have a couple of teachers who just really just change your life and make you believe that you can.  And I was hanging out with like really nerdy girls. So then all of a sudden being smart was really cool. And it was something that I’m like, okay, well, I could. Try this. So I tried to do really well at school and got into the best law school actually in Australia, Sydney university. And I was working in banking and finance litigation, I guess, immediately after I graduated and between my,  law degree and my master and I can definitely see that life and where it would go. But there definitely was a moment where I thought, gosh, life has to be more extraordinary than this. And I definitely remember a moment when, we were acting for the bank, the firm that I was working with and somebody was on the phone, I guess, the person whose house was up for sale because he defaulted on his mortgage. And I remember he was crying on the phone to me and I was, I had so much empathy for him, but then the clock was also ticking because that those were billable hours and I had to, like, it had to continue. And I just, and in the end he would have to pay for that. Like once the bank takes his house and sells that he pays for those hours. Right. And so I just.  It really went against, what I, what I felt like I wanted in my life. I, just wanted something just a little bit more humane.

I was fired at the first firm and then the second firm that I was at it was really great, but then I kind of asked them if I could just go away for four full months. I think I asked at the time, and the partner, he said, yes. And he said, come back, you always have your job here. And then I went and then I never came back. So I went to the Philippines where we did pro bono legal work for refugees and stateless people that like very similar to my mother and I were, I think they just came a little bit later on and they miss, a deadline to enable them the resettlement. So I was there, what turned out four months turned out to be over a year. And then I was offered the job as executive director of that organization in Washington, DC, and hence the move to DC.

Jennifer Chua: And why does sustainability matter to you? Do you have any experiences that shaped you in terms of sustainability?

Lisa Nguyen: I think growing up in like on an Island, like Australia, it’s the smallest continent, but largest Island. I think that we we were ingrained us children to be very mindful about the environment. It’s definitely it, I think in Canada, it’s the same, the emphasis on sustainability was huge in Australia.

We were encouraged to not buy bottled water. Because Sydney tap water is good enough to bottle. That was the slogan of the ads. We were taught to really just be mindful of the environment. And so  I grew up with that mentality. And I knew when when Baubles + Soles came up, I knew we had to do something that was better than what is currently available right now.  If you’re going to bring a new product to market, like, how is it better than the competitors? Like, what are your convictions like?  Why you, the new guy, and not somebody who’s being around, with a lot of marketing budget behind them. At the same time, it was also like, I, was making this pair of shoe for my baby girl. So it better damn be the best possible pair of shoes I could make for her because she deserves it. So that was kind of, sustainability for me. Like I, that had to be a part of this product.

Jennifer Chua: Can you tell me the story of coming up with the idea for Baubles + Soles and moving this idea forward into an actual business?

Lisa Nguyen: It happened on the 30th of September. 2016. And we were heading out to dinner. When your new parents dinner is at 5:00 PM, so it could have been happy hour, but you know, dinner, it was and Kaia was nine months at the time, 10 months. She had this pair of shoes and it had like a big red hot on it. It was a gift from a friend and I, and that was the only pair of shoes she had at the time.  I didn’t want to buy more because I knew that she was going to grow out of it like immediately. But then like there was this pair of shoes that she’s wearing every single day of all the time. And it’s so recognizable because this heart is so huge.. And I remember looking at her shoes and thinking, gosh, I wish I could just take that heart off and like put on another animal or I do something else so that it doesn’t look like she has the same pair of shoes. But at the same time, it would go with all of her outfits and that was it. Like it came to us very quickly. The drive to dinner was only about 10 minutes. And in that 10 minutes I was talking to my husband and I was like, gosh, you know what, this is what we’re going to do. Like that’s how it’s going to be done. The reason why I remember the date so clearly is because I took a photo of the, all of our shoes that day. When we arrived at the restaurant, I took a photos of her shoes, my shoe, and my husband’s shoe together. And I said, I want to remember this day because  I think it’s so special and exciting. That was when the idea kind of first came to mind and it took a couple of months to set everything in place, just, flushing out the ideas, looking at how we can make the shoes, looking at how to design the Twistlock. It took me 18 months before it launched to market. Like it took a long time to, to come up with the prototypes. I could definitely go into the whole story about the R and D for the brand, but , that’s basically what happened when we, I came up with the idea.

Jennifer Chua: Can you walk us through how you’re different from other shoe companies?

Lisa Nguyen: Firstly, we are sustainably, made in America. It’s made off a bio-based material that is predominantly soy as in soy milk and salt. And so therefore it’s extremely soft and mushy and it’s machine washable. They get really dirty these shoes and you can throw them in the wash with your clothes and they come out brand new, which I love. I love that. Especially as a mother. We don’t realize that you can’t just throw any pair of shoes in the wash because some shoes that are plastic, for example, will melt and and some just don’t come out looking the same. Our shoes are machine washable, which I think, in light of hygiene and everything that’s going on in the world, I think that’s a great thing. Of course, when you have kids, that’s very important.

And then finally, it is interchangeable in the sense that you can change out the top, the decoration on top to go with different outfits and occasions. So you can take it off and just wear the shoes on its own and be at the playground and get it dirty and everything is fine. And then you can wash it and pop on a bauble and take her shopping. Or if you’re going to a wedding, then put on a pom pom and she’s going to look so cute. I also wanted to focus very much on the experience.   We made the box so that they could be reusable and, everything is definitely being thought of. And we’re always improving and there there’s always things that we want to do better, but. It’s the shoes with hearts and there are two hearts on the shoes. It comes with already a pair of heart baubles so,  it’s a nod to the original shoe that inspired the brand. I think we put a lot of heart into the making of it.

Jennifer Chua: Often people refer to Baubles + Soles as a minimalist shoe because they are so multi-purpose like they’re water shoe, a dress-up shoe, a daycare shoe, a play shoe they’re a number of things in one.  Which one of these things was the most important to you? The multipurposeness, the social good, which we have to get into still, or the sustainable materials? Recyclability. What, what was your focus in the beginning?

Lisa Nguyen: Some of those things. Overlap with each other. So for me, I think it’s, and a very smart person once told me, but it’s just one shoe from playground to party. And that would be you, Jenn, we trademarked that. And so I think that  that’s the most important element of the shoe is that it’s just the one shoe that goes from playground to party. But because of that one shoe, you are not leaving 10 pairs of shoes in landfill, which then speaks to the sustainability. And then that also speaks to the multi-purpose of the shoe, the ability to use it for different occasions. So I think that that’s probably the defining thing about the brand.

We had another slogan, it was one shoe, endless possibilities, but really it’s playground to party, really like it summarizes up this brand so beautifully and it speaks to the interchangeability, it speaks to the sustainability. And then it also speaks to the playfulness of being a child. Like when you’re a kid, I mean, what are your memories? Like it’s going to be at the playground or going to see your friends for play dates. At least that’s what we hope for our children. Right. And so, yeah, it just encapsulates the brand beautifully.

Jennifer Chua: So if someone has managed to destroy a pair of Baubles + Soles, and they want to send them into be recycled, how does that work?

Lisa Nguyen: We do have a a program whereby we can take back old shoes. And actually if they’re, completely destroyed and there’s no way to repurpose them, then they can be grinded down and made into new shoes. In fact, I want to say that each pair of shoes uses either 25 or 75% of like old material and new material is only is like a proportion of it. I certainly didn’t engineer all of that. We were very lucky to partner with a factory in America that does that. But it is so perfect and we feel so grateful.

Jennifer Chua: As a mother, I do know how many pairs of shoes a child goes through per size, of course, but also per occasion. So I really do appreciate that Baubles + Soles, at least in my case, or in our case here at home were placed like six pairs of shoes at once. So I just love that so much. With conventional footwear for children. Why are our shoe buying habits so problematic?

Lisa Nguyen: Everybody loves shoes. It’s just one of those things,  we love our shoes, especially if you’re a woman it’s in your DNA. I don’t know. But I think the problem that we are solving is that, especially when they’re growing so fast and they’re changing so much, you don’t need 10 pairs of shoes of a size five, and then then 10 pairs of shoes in a size six three months later. You really absolutely don’t and they don’t need it. And I think that people need to be mindful that, these shoes that we buy, then they grow out of so quickly, like that, that will eventually end up in landfill, where it will sit there for thousands of years. 

I have seen images of, of like shoes in landfill, as we were doing some research for the company and we never participate in that kind of marketing, like the guilt marketing, it’s just not the way that I’m engineered. I don’t like to kind of make too many references to that and then, but focus on, what it offers like the good things. However, I do think that if we do see If we do see the shoes in landfill, I think that we would think twice and it is just about mindfulness.

Jennifer Chua: Your shoes are made domestically, they’re made in the United States. How many companies are doing that? Like how, why are shoes not made domestically more often? Why are we always going overseas?

Lisa Nguyen: well, so like 0.01% of shoes are still made in America. Of shoes that have purchased in America, and with children’s shoes, it’s even less than that. Obviously it’s a cost. It’s a cost factor for sure. We could have chosen a different route, which would have made that like our cost of goods sold a lot less. But then at the end of the day, I think that it’s this like, well, do you add the human factor to that cost of goods sold when you’re,  doing your spreadsheet of numbers?

Our shoes is a one-piece construction and it’s great. The buckles and the Velcros don’t fall off. But unfortunately there is a downside to that. Like when a child has like slightly chubbier feet, it’s a little bit harder to get into the shoe, but so the reason why we made it a one-piece construction is because the shoe is not handmade because if it’s hand made in America it’s going to be really hard cost-wise.  I invested in tooling for the shoes and so it’s injection molded. So when only a machine is injection molding, then the cost goes down dramatically for us. Adding Velcro or buckles, the cost would have been exorbitant and we wouldn’t have been able to do it, but when we’re talking about like made in America, like some of the things that we’ve had to do to to cut costs, they are also perks to it, but you know, there were also some downsides.

Jennifer Chua: I’d like to talk a little bit more about your manufacturing, because it’s something that people ask me about all the time and I don’t have the information because I’m not actually manufacturing anything. Can you tell me the story about how you managed to find a manufacturing partner in the United States?

Lisa Nguyen: Sure. So when I was living in DC and working for a nonprofit, I remember going to CVS, CVS. Yes. And I found these flip-flops and they were made in America and they were machine washable and they were the right price. And I was like, wow, this is fantastic. So I would wear this flip-flop everywhere. And I still have photos of me during those years. And it’s like, I’m always in those flip-flops like everywhere with everything like fancy dresses, just yoga clothes, like all the time. And I would buy the shoes for my like friends. For my parents back in Australia for my sister and then my boyfriend at the time who now is my husband, thankfully. I would always gift the shoe. And so when the opportunity came to make the shoe in America, they came to mind, for sure. So I just cold called them. I called, I Googled the factory and I called them and immediately they were like, yes, we do private manufacturing and private labeling. And that was kind of like the beginning of that journey. I mean, they do not always take on startups, so it took a lot of persuasion and follow-ups to have them give us a chance. But I was very lucky because the president of the brand the factory, she at the time had a four year old. So she knew what we were doing. And because of her, it was really the reason why we landed on the manufacturing relationship. Everything great that’s ever happened to this company. It’s been because the person on the other side of the line had a young daughter in our age range at the time.

Jennifer Chua: And they saw the value.

Lisa Nguyen: Yes.

Jennifer Chua: Are there any benefits other than carbon footprint and the local economy to manufacturing in the United States, like in terms of holding stock or lead time.

Lisa Nguyen: Yeah. So exactly. When you talk about margins, the effective margins of a brand like ours is actually even is better than, than if we had had it imported because you’re not losing, a month at sea, import export. You are not losing a very long turnaround time for the shoes when they’re made here in America, I could place an order and have a very big batch made like within a week. My cost of goods sold for the money that is kind of sitting in inventory is not sitting at sea. It’s not sitting, in customs. So, yes, there are some really fantastic benefits. And I know in our media kit, like we talk about like how much diesel we save from not having these shoes ship in from, from overseas. So, all of those things are amazing. And another thing is the material is also a US patented US made material, the bio based material that’s being certified by USDA. So like all of those things, I think just make the shoes so special and, it’s, it’s near and dear to my heart for sure.

Jennifer Chua: As conscious small business owners, a lot of us have been trying to create systems and products that help create less waste and your shoes are truly minimalist and have done so, and one of the things that I would like to mention is that they’re vegan. So in terms of sustainability, they’re not made with animal byproducts, which I think to a lot of people is important as well.

Lisa Nguyen: That is absolutely right. In fact, my sister-in-law she’s vegan and raising her children vegan. I was a vegetarian for a very long time. I’m not anymore, unfortunately, but one day we’ll go back there. But yes, the shoes are vegan which you know more about the products than I do.

Jennifer Chua: If we want to make an impact, we can do so in a number of different ways. And I just love that your products tick so many of those boxes that people would be interested in. So someone that maybe isn’t as concerned about, what your giving back program may be more concerned about like vegan materials. So that’s, that’s wonderful.

Lisa Nguyen: I think it’s just about being very intentional with what you’re bringing into the world. And, and my thing is always, if it can be better than what’s out there right now. Because of this point or because of something else that you trying to put into your product, I think that that’s the world needs more kindness and love, right? So then it just needs more people making products with kindness and love  and understanding what’s out there and understanding what, what else they can do to make the current status quo better.

Jennifer Chua: I wanted to talk about your big dream in the beginning days. Do you remember, or could you tell me about the first thing that you were really proud of and why

Lisa Nguyen: Oh, no, I think that first day when we came up with the idea, it came really quickly. So that was lovely. I certainly like when I was telling my close friend about the idea and I was like explaining what it would be and what it would like do. And then I was like, and it’s going to be called Baubles + Soles and she was like, I still remember her reaction to that. And then another friend was like, Oh my God, you’ve hit your million dollar idea, but I think it’s, it’s that response to this concept  at the beginning, that was really exciting. Obviously, the realities of being in the footwear industry  is harder than those initial days of dreaming. And, obviously we dreamt about being on Shark Tank because when you come up with an idea for a product  that’s what you want to be. But for me, the proudest I think I am most proud of executing the product of my dream.

This is the idea, and this is the thing that we want it to be. And then to make it a reality, that’s probably my greatest joy and achievement as I think about the brand. And as, as I think about the amount of time that I’ve invested in it, I think that there are some exciting things on the horizons, but yeah. It’s, it’s definitely been a great joy  and a huge sense of pride.

Jennifer Chua: And you have had some big wins, like you’re in countries. Countries all over the world.

Lisa Nguyen: Yes, there are some big wins. And then obviously to be able to be on Shark Tank with my family, I, I couldn’t bring out seven month old at the time. Cause that would have been just like absolutely disastrous. But, my Kaia,  the one that inspired the shoe, she was there with us in the tank and then to be in there with my husband and to take him along on this ride, it was great. And then the fact that we walked out of there with a deal when we almost did not like that was all, like, I am so grateful. And I think that all of this happened for us, just, I think it’s because of the karma and the Goodwill that we’re trying to put out there in the community. I mean, it’s not always easy fighting the good battle and trying to be, quote unquote, good. Sometimes, it, it sometimes feels like it’s easier to do the easy thing. But I think with Baubles + Soles, we’ve tried very hard to do the right things and, we’ve had some really great wins.

Jennifer Chua: Are there any other ways that you use Baubles + Soles to affect social change?

Lisa Nguyen: We do make a donation of our profit back to a charity. That’s not something that I like to talk overly about just because I feel like that shouldn’t be the reason why people buy the brand. That’s not the marketing message for us over here for us. It’s about the sustainability and about the one shoe from playground to party and then anything else that we do above and on top of that is, it’s, it’s something that we do within our family. Oh, and you can match with your little girl, we have a partnership. So then there are these mommy and me shoes. How cute is that?

Jennifer Chua: From the beginning built into this business, it looks like giving back was always going to be a part of Baubles + Soles. I was just wondering if you wanted to comment on the heart and souls fund.

Lisa Nguyen: We, make a donation to a charity that educates children. I have always been involved with the education of children. I know that sounds so fru fruit, but, Senhoa is a charity that I helped found it and it’s still very close to my heart. It’s something that we still work on as with my board of directors. And so we do donate a percentage of our profits, to Senhoa In our efforts to educate children who are at risk of sexual abuse and human trafficking.

Jennifer Chua: I think that’s a really big problem that people don’t understand. And I applaud you so much for giving back in that area.

In your journey through Baubles + Soles, have you encountered any really big challenges that were like huge learning lessons for you?

Lisa Nguyen: When we came up with the idea we were looking for Like an engineer, a designer, an industrial designer to help us with it. And we met a person who I guess. We were going to hire him to do the design of the Twistlock. But he was so enamored by the idea that he wanted to be an investor, turned into an investor. Looking back, I think that it would have been much easier had we just paid for him to design the shoe just because, getting an idea from idea to execution. It’s, it’s a lot of hard work and there’s a lot of , Falling down before you stand up. It was very difficult those early days of trying to get the project off the ground.

I think the message definitely is like, believe that you can, don’t think that anybody else is going to be the answer to your problem. No, that you can, with enough determination. The learning lesson there definitely is that, you can, and you will, and like there’s no Knight in shining armor coming to rescue you. You are your knight in shining armour.

Jennifer Chua: Was there ever a point in building Baubles + Soles where you didn’t feel so confident about this? Like, was there ever a point when you felt really differently?

Lisa Nguyen: Yes for sure. I mean, there would definitely that’s when you were like, okay, we had never going to be able to engineer this. Twistlock like, it’s never going to happen. And I think Jen, you also witnessed a lot of the early stages of that, when we did make it happen, but it was just a lot of back and forth about, about getting this product right. I feel like we are definitely there now where like, we’re at a point where, okay, it’s right. But for a long time, there that was a challenge because we needed this mechanism to be cheap enough to produce so that we can price it accordingly. I didn’t want the baubles to cost as much as a new pair of shoes that would go against the purpose of this company. It needed to be affordable so that you can pick up a few baubles and then just use that one pair of shoes. But then at the same time, it was like, it needs to have the clearance so that it’s not so high. So the bauble doesn’t sit so high from the shoe. And then it needed not be dangerous for the kids.

So for example, everybody’s like, have you ever used magnets? Yes, we have thought about magnets, but what, if that magnet detaches from the shoe and a baby eats that, it was just, it wasn’t a risk that we were willing to take. So yes, there was definitely a time when we were like, we had never going to be able to make this happen.

Jennifer Chua: Could you just give me a little bit more insight into what the Twistlock is? Just in case someone doesn’t understand.

Lisa Nguyen: The baubles, the decoration on top, is attached to the shoes using a push and twist lock mechanism. So very similar to a medicine cap. Basically, it’s got a rubber spring for you to push down and then you twist it into place. And then it goes into a cavity that then locks it into place.

We actually just got the patent issued, which is awesome. And that’s how you detach and attach a bauble to the shoe. That took a long time to design and get right. And luckily we had another engineer who’s Canadian who helped us with the final prototype and he actually helped us in a friend capacity. And I always say to myself, one day when I sell this company, I need to make sure that I compensate him and give him a percentage of it, because like, he was very much instrumental in helping us realize this dream of a Twistlock.

Jennifer Chua: So oftentimes speaking with the owners of product based businesses, I hear that they feel that it’s going to be cost prohibitive to manufacture domestically or manufacture close to home. And while definitely the costs are going to be different. If you choose to manufacture somewhere like China, there has to be other considerations taken into place as well. I was wondering if you could speak to things that you’ve learned from choosing the American manufacturing over Asia.

Lisa Nguyen:  I was doing this research when we were preparing for Shark Tank and one of the things that a CEO that I was working with at the time she pointed out, listen, your effective margins is actually better than if you had manufactured it overseas. And here she is talking about the turnaround time for this product, the time that it, so you have to pay for these products, but then it sits at sea for a month before it gets to, to America. And also like we have the ability to maybe place a lower MOQ minimum order quantity when it’s made here domestically, because it doesn’t have to go so far. When you manufacture off shore, you have to plan out your inventory 6 to 12 months in advance, and then you order accordingly and then your cash goes out, as, as you’re waiting for it to come in. So in actual fact, your margins, like the margins is actually higher than you realize because of the amount of time that it takes and how much money you have sitting in inventory. And then you have to sell out of the inventory. For us here. We have the flexibility of a lower MOQ minimum order quantity and so then our effective margin is actually I think if not lower than the same as if we had chosen to make it. Off shore. If you think about the cost of goods sold and there maybe you add marketing, because  people feel good about that. And, and people feel like quality is there because it is made here. So then that’s actually a little bit of marketing funds that’s already built into the product.

Jennifer Chua: And I wanted to bring this up because of other small business owners that may be listening to this, to take that into consideration because if you have 50,000 units made or this massive amount of product made overseas and they’re shipped here and then they’re sitting in a warehouse they’re defective or degrading or not selling, and you have to dispose of them that needs to be taken into consideration as well. Like what’s going to happen to your goods that aren’t selling financially or otherwise. Like, what are those costs?

Lisa Nguyen: Without, feeling like this is bashing off shore produced products, I do know that you need to build in a certain amount of RMAs, like defective Products in your cost of goods sold when you are looking at products that are produced off shore. I mean, We have RMAs for the shoes too. For example, if the injection molding, like if it just didn’t run through the cavity properly, but I can tell you that percentage of that is like, I like a fraction of some of the RMA issues that we experienced with the parts of our products that are made overseas.  It’s just a reality of, mass manufacturing. To the extent that it is when it’s done off shore, you don’t have as tight of a quality control. And like, by the time it reaches America, it’s like, well, there’s no recourse for you really. You’ve already spent that money, and it’s, definitely . Something to keep in mind.

Jennifer Chua: Some really fabulous publications have featured Baubles + Soles, and everybody is focusing on you and your spirit of never giving up, which is amazing.   But I had noticed that in the Shark Tank episode, when I watched it, they did not mention the sustainability or recyclability of your product. Do you know why they made that choice?

Lisa Nguyen: We were in the tank for, I believe an hour and a lot of things were discussed during that time. I actually wanted to spend some of that air time talking about postpartum depression and bringing just a little bit of light to that because I did struggle for a little bit there after I had my first baby girl with just my identity and like, who am I? And I’m this different person from, I was before, but then I also wanted to do the things that I was doing before. So it was like definitely going through an interesting period. And I, I spoke about that in the tank that I had hoped would be picked up in the final edit. In the end, it was eight minutes, that they took of the one hour that we were in the tank. And we definitely talked about sustainability. I think though, my episode, the spirit of never giving up was probably strongest of all the things that was discussed when we were in the tank. And so that was what they really focused on when we were there. We spent a lot of time. We talked about my past. We talked about like living in a refugee camp. They were really interested in that. We talked about, my grandfather and how he shaped, a lot of things that were talked about. And They, in the end there was just a time. And I think that the, the Shark Tank message is obviously the unwavering spirit of an entrepreneur.

And what came out of our episode just fits that messaging so perfectly. So that was what was in the end, the final edit not to say that, that they don’t care about sustainability, I know, obviously people feel differently about Shark Tank and especially those who have been on.  I loved the experience and every single minute of it, I am so grateful and like it’s definitely a claim to fame for my husband and my little daughter. She got her first paycheck at a Shark Tank because they had to pay all of the extras. So she had like, I dunno, a hundred dollars or something for her time. It’s it was an incredible journey for us. And honestly, if you get to work with the producers, you’ll find that they are definitely there for the American dream for the entrepreneur. And it’s very obvious  when, when you’re working with the producers and when you meet the sharks, Like, they’re actually not that as scary in-person as the editing makes it out to be. I have to tell you it’s, I mean, that’s drama for TV, but they’re actually honestly quite nice. I mean, we experienced obviously rejections when we were in the tank, but they were generally overall very nice to us. So we had an we were very grateful for the journey and the experience.

Jennifer Chua: Getting a business off the ground and getting it to the level where you’re now, you won’t be able to do that on your own and well, I’m sure that you’ve had blood, sweat, tears, DIY in your journey. I was wondering what you chose to outsource who you brought in initially, or where you found the support that it took to move your business to the next level.

Lisa Nguyen: I think that when it comes to making things like tooling and, and. Like extremely technical things like assets that you really have to invest in that I think it’s best to go to the the experts in their field to do that. Other than that I think that you are capable of anything that you put your mind to. So there are now a million outsource Outlets or platforms, that you can really find people to help you with areas that are not your expertise.  But what I think is important to realize is that you are in the driver’s seat. You, are the answer you’ve been waiting for. As long as you have the determination and the will to execute on your idea. Then there are tons of resources out there, not crazily expensive, like an Upwork or Fiverr that can help you, cover areas where maybe you don’t have skill sets.

What is something that the world needs more of and what is something that the world needs less of?

Oh, goodness. I mean, this is just setting me up for giving you that world peace answer. I mean, how can you not, but honestly,  you know, definitely love and kindness. I just feel like if we just put out into the world, the energy of more love and more kindness. That’s definitely going to just move the world in the right direction. What does the world need? Less of? I think it’s negativity. I’m sick of the negativity. I think that the message, there are two, the first is, always inspire towards good, aim for good, and for kindness, and for better than what is currently existing. And then the second is that you are the answer like you are it, and you are enough. You are the person who’s going to make that happen. And if you have the will and the determination, then you will.

Jennifer Chua: If you want to learn more about Lisa and her sustainable and adorable footwear for toddlers, visit baublesandsoles.com.  Looking to buy a pair?  Through the heart + souls fund.  Lisa donates a part of proceeds to support women and children vulnerable to trafficking in the developing world.  You can follow along with Lisa on her mission to create shoes that are as practical and fashionable  as they are sustainable  and to make #momlife that much easier  on Facebook at baublesandsolesUSA  or Instagram and Twitter at baublesandsoles. 

 

 

 

 

In today’s episode, we chat with Rebecca about why she feels so motivated to make an impact with toy waste. What the costs of the drive-thru, surprise toy, Loot Bag Toy culture really are, how COVID times have affected her business. How we as small business owners and consumers can better interact with upcyclers to create change. And why she feels so hopeful for the future.

If you want to learn more about Rebecca and Tiny Toy Co., purchase Re-Loot bags or hands-on learning activities. Visit tinytoyco.com.

Links from this episode

• Thanks to the Happy Meal, McDonald’s is the largest toy distributor in the world – via Considerable.com
• Harbourfront Centre Toronto
• Chopvalue – upcycling with chopsticks
• Plastic toy waste recycling with Terracycle

Episode Transcript

 

Jennifer Chua: Hello everyone and welcome you’re listening to cost of goods sold with Jennifer Myers Chua Episode One.

In today’s episode, we chat with Rebecca about why she feels so motivated to make an impact with toy waste. What the costs of the drive-thru, surprise toy, Loot Bag Toy culture really are, how COVID times have affected her business. How we as small business owners and consumers can better interact with upcyclers to create change. And why she feels so hopeful for the future.

This is cost of goods sold a podcast about why the products that make a difference are made. I’m your host Jennifer Myers Chua. And I believe you can use your business or purchasing choices to cause a change you’d like to see in the world. Join me for conversations with intentional entrepreneurs, thoughtful designers and responsible creators and curators building for profit companies that create positive social and environmental change.

This episode is brought to you by hip mommies carefully curated wholesale merchandise for modern retail if you want to stock your shelves with brands that are socially responsible and sustainable, or if you want to be a part of the collection that is delighting Canadian retail visit, hipmommies.ca 

One of the greatest joys of childhood is digging around a cereal box or opening a chocolate egg to find a surprise inside. And most of the time, what you find is tiny it’s made from colorful plastic. And while they bring so much delight in the moment, these play things have short lifespans. Quickly forgotten about or broken and pretty much impossible to recycle, essentially. They’re just destined for landfill.

And we’ll stopping this waste stream is the most ideal. It’s a huge challenge. McDonald’s for example includes more than 1.5 billion, tiny plastic toys in Happy Meals a year. It’s a lot. But there are some creative solutions to help give these tiny toys a second chance.  

Rebecca Saha: i just, started wanting to spread that message and that movement that there’s already enough. For almost everything we want to do. There’s already enough in the world around us.  We need someone who can see the value in it. And who is patient enough to collect it, curate it, sort it so that the other people who weren’t patient or weren’t able to see the potential in it can be helped to see the potential in it.

I’m joined today by Rebecca Saha. Rebecca founded a company called Tiny Toy Co. Where she collects unwanted toy bits and repurposes them into upcycled educational kits. Rebecca has seen firsthand how effective these little toys can be when used as language, resources, for example.  But she’s also seen just how many toys are dropped off at her door from well-meaning declutters.

Rebecca has been in education for nearly 20 years. Many of those years she was also a librarian and this year with virtual learning she’s back to teaching her favorite grade.

I’m teaching online and I’m back in kindergarten.  And I have to say that,  doing it from my Tiny Toy Co. space at home has really brought the two halves of my life together in a way that’s really exciting.  It’s amazing to them that, I’m connected to toys, that I’m excited about toys and that I can share with them ways of tapping into play and toys for learning. You should see the look on their faces, they think that’s pretty cool.

Jennifer Chua: Growing up in Toronto’s Cabbagetown neighborhood in the 1970s, her memories of childhood include hours spent outside playing with skipping ropes and roller skates and bicycles. She’s happy to see this emphasis on outdoor play, having its resurgence. And there was no shortage of toy stores and consumerism in Toronto at that time. Her mom fought hard for the Cabbage Patch Kid that Christmas and the must have toys were a thing of her childhood for sure. The one toy that does stand out as a favorite in Rebecca’s memory  was the classic Fisher-Price corn popper. Which her parents did not love nearly as much. She says that most of her time she spent playing with found non toy materials.

Rebecca Saha:  We played with sticks and bricks and, and abandoned tires  in my neighborhood. And and you used our imaginations, so. My imagination was my biggest toy. I would say.

Jennifer Chua: Rebecca was highly influenced by her dad. A simple guy. She calls him. He came from Europe during the second world war and was practical, thoughtful. He would repurpose something before buying new. Her father saved and reuse things. Labeling old, glass, jars, and sorting and storing knick-knacks. This appealed to young Rebecca and she appreciated the simplicity.

Rebecca teaches kindergarten from her Tiny Toy Co. Space. A large room in her basement, lined with floor to ceiling shelving and bins and bins of carefully sorted colorful toys. Her father would be proud. Rebecca collects these. You’ll hear them called loose parts or toy debris. They’re everything from tiny toys, marker lids, PlayDoh containers, abandoned game pieces, marbles, things like that. She mostly receives them through donations and then begins the painstaking process of sanitizing disposing of broken or unusable parts, and beginning to categorize them. When she’s collected enough of one thing, marbles, for example. She’ll create a new toy from those parts. There might be an educational card or resources added in. And she draws on all of her expertise and early literacy practices as a teacher. To create new experiences from forgotten toys. Or open-ended brain building, learning sparks. That are then sent to be enjoyed in a new home.

Rebecca Saha:  I’ve been a teacher for a lot longer than I’ve been an entrepreneur and my early literacy practice as a teacher,  I have always used toys in a very particular way. We pull from toys to represent sounds or represent ideas. And that’s because little people are concrete learners and they like to have their hands on stuff and it connects the ideas with their,  kinesthetic learning. It just, it, just works for young people to have their hands on stuff for learning.

Children don’t benefit from excess. And I noticed as a teacher of young people and, and a parent myself, that kids were engaging with things much more successfully, much more independently, and in a much deeper way when they weren’t overwhelmed. And so I started to learn that pairing things down makes them more powerful.

And so, having a toy shelf or a shelf in the classroom with space between each item helps the child engage with all of those items. Whereas a bin of. debris  to rifle through is much less engaging. And again, that, that theme of simplicity of keeping things  separate, clear, clean lines, well labeled just,  resonated with me, but I also saw succeeding with kids.

Jennifer Chua: So why did you choose to make your impact with toys specifically? So if you were interested in all of these things, curation, education, why toys specifically?

Rebecca Saha: My first go at the  entrepreneurial life was around kids clothes. And I had  a business before, which I sold to my then partner because I wanted to do this instead. And started realizing that kids toys and clothes went together in terms of, of marketing potential. But I was having all the fun in choosing the toys, and staging the toys, and shooting the toys  in my photography set. And that when my voice came out most clearly in our social media, for example, or talking with customers it was always me saying, Oh, let me show you how to use this. Let me show you how to use this toy or this bundle of toys or this, this toy as an activity for learning.  My passion for, for education and for play started bubbling up to the surface in a way that was more engaging. When I started talking about, toys and about learning through play and even though I think that shopping secondhand for clothes is still essential and that’s still how I dress myself and my family that wasn’t where my passion was in terms of my business.  And so I let that one go to someone who’s passion it was.  Textile waste is a huge a huge fight. And but that’s somebody else’s fight. You know, my passion is, is in toys and and, education.

Jennifer Chua: So, do you remember the moment that you actually came up with the idea for Tiny Toy Co.? When you had the idea for this business in particular

Rebecca Saha:  I’ve always been a yard sale girl, a thrift store girl. I’ve always been someone who who created language kits and language tools for myself and for my own teaching in that way. What was happening for me was I was scrounging together language kits from little pieces and for my own teaching practice, and thinking to myself,  Oh my goodness, I see this in a, in an educational toy store and Oh, look made in China. Somewhere, someone is printing, by the thousands, these tiny lady bugs for their L activity bin. Meanwhile I just stepped on a plastic ladybug in my, in my playroom and a plastic ladle and a  plastic, lemon and all kinds of other things. And so. It, it literally came from like an, not a “Aha!” moment,, but an Owwwww. I stepped on Lego again, moment.   All the stuff under my feet could fill the need of all the stuff that I wanted in my toolkit as a teacher. And, you know, my environmentalism goes way, way back before Tiny Toy Co. Before parenting.  I’ve always been interested in looking for more sustainable ways of living.

Jennifer Chua: So like most people that have a pretty decent idea in modern times, Rebecca took to Facebook to see if this business idea would resonate with her friends and family. It didn’t take her very long before she realized that, “Hey, this could actually work.” 

Rebecca Saha: So there was a Facebook post. I got the idea, right. I launched a Facebook page and I said, Hey.  do you have any like little toys under your couch that you might’ve stepped on? Do you want to send them to me and I’ll make stuff from them? And cause I have this idea and it just, all of a sudden it went viral. And I’ve never, I mean, I’ve been on social media a long time, nothing I’ve said nothing I’ve said has ever gone viral before this. And all of a sudden I had people from Israel and, and , all over the world, but Australia is crazy for this idea. It turns out. All around the world, people were reaching out to me saying, where are you? Like, I didn’t even think anyone would be. listening beyond the people who follow me and knew me. And so I didn’t even mention, Oh yeah, I’m in Toronto, Canada, because in my mind it was like a, it was a local thing that I was planning and the global response was just massive.

The bags and bags of toys that we are collecting for upcycling are tiny are,  the size of your fist or smaller. We’re not talking Barbie dream houses and ride-on vehicles, we’re talking about,  individual magnetic letters, individual marbles and dice and game pieces and yes McDonald’s toys. And while the toys that look like something you can name, the representational toys. So tiny carrots, a tiny purse, those are useful in a language capacity, and those get funneled into educational activities or teaching sets for teachers or speech language pathologists. The McDonald’s toys are not useful in that capacity by in large. And not only are there so many of them, but they come with multiple parts and those parts get separated. So not only do we get bags and bags of McDonald’s toys, we get shooter toys with no ammo. We get spinner toys with no spinner. And, so the patience in what I do is, collecting them corralling them and, and painstakingly pairing the parts back up together.

Jennifer Chua: Rebecca quickly identified that one of the places that most plastic toys get handed out, is in Loot Bags. Those tiny little bags, full of treats and toys handed out at children’s birthday parties.  

Rebecca Saha: Until we change the Loot Bag trend, what can we do with the plethora of cheap Loot Bag toys and, and drive through toys because absolutely we need to work on two tracks. We need to stop that practice. We need to lobby McDonald’s. We need to let Swiss chalet know that we can bring our own crayons.  All of these restaurant fueled toys need to be stopped at the corporate level, but we also need to do something creative with the ones that are already here. And that was a bright bulb that went off for me about a year ago. So I invented the Re-Loot Bag and I sanitize them all and  group them by theme and put in a mission statement. I call it so that, you’re not only sending your party guests home with things that are fun, spinning tops and, shooting toys, and bouncing balls. But you’re also sending home a message that you’ve made a conscious decision to shop differently, to think differently about waste. And that you’d love it if they did too. So two, two tracks, right? I want people thinking big, big picture, and I want people getting creative with the “for now.”

Jennifer Chua: Where do you think these toys are going? So if parents aren’t sending them to you and you’re not repurposing them, where do you think these toys are ending up?

Rebecca Saha: the garbage. Absolutely. They are. Absolutely there. Or you’re dropping them off at, at your local big name, thrift store who has a dumpster out back. And who is looking at the bag, getting overwhelmed by the volume of it. And some portion of it, more than you’d like to think, is probably going in the dumpster. That out of sight, out of mind feeling that you, you dropped it off so you can feel good about that. That’s something that we all need need to think about as well,  how things exit our house should be as conscious as how things enter our house. And that’s the cycle. That’s the circle that you want to that you want to connect. We want to make conscious choices as consumers and we want to be conscious declutters. If you’re so good to just get it out. Just, just pull up the dumpster and just get it out. And you know, that, that cathartic feeling of the big clean-out the sweep and onto a bag is It is cathartic. I feel it too. We, I think we all feel it. But  there’s no away and that’s what, that’s what I always said to my kids. You talk about throw it away. There’s no away, right. Even when we pour something down the drain, We, I didn’t want that juice. I’m going to pour it down the drain. There’s no away, right. That juice is going through the pipes and into with some filtration. Sure. But, but into the Lake and, and when you pour something on the ground, there’s no away. It’s filtered into the water table, carried, to the Lake. We need to change our, our thinking about how we throw things away.

Jennifer Chua: I wanted to touch on something that on your website, you say that reduce reuse, recycle is a prioritized list. Could you explain that?

Rebecca Saha: People get very excited that they’ve recycled things. They they’re proud that their bin is overflowing with things they’ve recycled or set aside for recycling. Not only are we learning more and more about the fact that municipal recycling programs aren’t as successful as we wish they were. The fact that you’ve put it in your blue bin at the curb, doesn’t actually mean it’s going to be turned into some nifty product with no impact. But even if it is, there’s an impact, right? Everything that is produced from recycled materials is produced in a factory, which requires electric equipment. And  human power hours of labor, and energy to keep the lights on, and It has a carbon footprint as it shipped from one location to another and big trucks, cross country. So recycling is a huge factory undertaking. It’s a huge mechanical undertaking that uses power and creates pollution. So if I reuse a bottle, instead of sending it to be crushed, processed, made into something new. If I, if I instead find a reuse for that bottle,  I’ve removed it from that process, and given it a second life with no energy. From an electric standpoint and a pollution standpoint, it didn’t have to drive anywhere on a big truck and didn’t involve a factory. So that’s why reusing is better than recycling. Reduction is really the, the ultimate though. As proud as I am to help the people who send me their toys for upcycling. I wish they wouldn’t buy so many next time,  if they don’t have that companion piece of, of buying less next time, because they’ve learned to be conscious about it, then this will just go on. It would just continue. If this business dwindled from lack of need, I would celebrate. And I would do something else creative with my time and my brain. This is a business born of need, based on a problem that we have as a culture, as a consumer culture. And if we can change our culture, I will do a happy dance.

Jennifer Chua: Running a small business is not for the faint of heart at the best of times. But as an environmentalist. Seeing things like this massive quantity of toy debris. It can be really overwhelming. And Rebecca hasn’t been without struggle. There has been cost to her personal life as well. 

Rebecca Saha:  I’m not a hoarder by nature, but this business has turned me into a bit of a hoarder. Right. I don’t turn it away. So when the bags and the bags in the bags come, I smile and I say, thank you. And I store the bags and the bags and the bags until I can work my way through them. And  COVID has taken my volunteer crews, so they’re stacking up. So I think absolutely it’s put a strain on, on my family and my marriage in that regard.

It also is hugely labor intensive. As much as  the raw materials are free to me,  the amount of labor and time and mental labor that, that doing what I do takes is extreme. I will find one marble today. I will find two marbles tomorrow. Oh look, five marbles next week. And those marbles will accumulate and accumulate and accumulate in a jar. And when there’s a jar full of marbles, yes, I will resell that jar full of marbles and, and with instructions on how to play marbles and they’ll get a new life. But imagine doing that with each and every type of toy, it takes a huge amount of space and it takes a huge amount of time.

Jennifer Chua:  When you started going down this road, so you started collecting the toys and you started sorting them and you started creating these educational kits. Was there ever a moment where you stopped and you said, Hmm. I feel really proud. Like, is there one moment where you felt really, really proud of what you had accomplished?

Rebecca Saha: Yes. Yes. For me as a kid who grew up in Toronto and with an educator, mom, and who went to school in Toronto and who now teaches in Toronto when Harbourfront came calling, that was a super proud moment for me because they are the the pinnacle of, of education done right. And When they were interested in engaging me to to be part of their festival. Harborfront for me was was a huge moment to realize that that the people that I admire admired me back. And and I would say that that is starting to happen a little bit within my own school board now, too. Which is makes me proud also to have my administrators saying to me, why is that you behind? I, Oh, I just made the connection. Wow. Can we, can we figure something out? Can you do a workshop? Can you do some professional development? You know, that makes me proud too.

One of the most exciting people for me to work with is kindergarten teachers and, and DCEs the workshops that I’ve loved the most are sharing my actual Activities with educators to use in their classroom. So to show you how to use this, this sort of toy debris to teach adjectives, to teach conceptual thinking to to teach early literacy skills, early numeracy skills, sorting counting and, and all kinds of different problem solving and thinking skills. Not just related to the waste reduction message, although that’s always, always ever present message. I never miss an opportunity to talk about it with children, but showing educators how to how to set up hands-on play-based learning and how to see toy debris in, in, through the loose parts lens that’s so popular in education right now. It’s really it’s really empowering, spreading that message and, and getting these activities into classrooms.

What COVID has taken from Tiny Toy Co.  Is involving the kids in what I call , kid powered solutions to plastic pollution. At the, like at the heart of Tiny Toy Co. Is getting the kids hands on this stuff. Going into schools and community groups and, doing my booth at Harborfront every year where I’d get kids hands in the mix and I get them not just sorting the toys and talking about how this, this waste got generated and what role they had in that. Getting them, talking about making conscious choices at, at the drive-through. But also getting them engaged in how they can turn their own toy debris off their own playroom floor, into fun activities. And inspiring them to to see their own junk differently. So to rethink junk and to reimagine the junk that they already have.

That’s at the heart of what I’m doing too. That’s the educational piece that needs to happen is, we need to help our kids generation do better, do differently, see the world differently and,  be a different kind of consumer.

Jennifer Chua: We just mentioned COVID we are in COVID times, how has COVID effected your business? Has there been anything monumental?

Rebecca Saha: The biggest effect that COVID has had is, well twofold,  I guess .One is it.has robbed us of our volunteer involvement.  I’m a super, super responsible person. I’m a rule follower at my core. And so if there’s a health regulation, you can bet I’m adhering to it both personally and professionally, because that’s just how I’m wired. I’m not involving volunteers at this time. I’m not having kids in the space. I’m not having community volunteers in this space. And so that’s just chugging us right down in terms of efficiency. But it’s also dried up temporarily. I promise our workshop. Wing, right. I’m not going into schools. I’m not  having kids hands in the, in the toys and the materials  in the way that Is an essential part of what I do. So I’m excited for those to come back. You know, all the, the, the minor stuff, like sanitizing, the toys that’s that was happening anyway. The toys are quarantined 30 days before even I touch them. And then they’re washed as, you know, as fits the, like the material. So they’re either run through the dishwasher or they’re sprayed with an alcohol mist. So in terms of like those kinds of COVID measures, wearing a mask and cleaning things. No problem. Those are, those are small measures that were happening anyway. The big losses temporarily are the people, connecting With the kids and connecting with the the community of volunteers who are interested from a from a waste management angle.

Jennifer Chua:  Is there any other way that you use Tiny Toy Co. to affect social change?

Rebecca Saha: I’m starting more and more to If you, if you want to call it giving away, but just to give away ideas to parents online of how to use what you already have at home. And, you know, from a business perspective, that’s maybe not smart because there’s no way to, there’s no way to monetize that or, or, or reap the rewards of that. But. You know, gosh, I don’t care that much. I just, I just really want people to get clever and think about how to turn what they already have into something great, and how to not buy more. Just don’t.

Jennifer Chua: So if someone was inspired by your story or inspired by anything, the circular economy and they wanted to start a conscious toy business, is there anything that you can think of that might trip them up and make them want to quit? Like, is there any roadblock you think they might face.

 Rebecca Saha:  Anything that has done consciously, it’s going to be more expensive. And and I know you have experienced with this as an entrepreneur and, and anyone who’s running a, a consciously fueled small business knows that if you care about the means of production, if you care about the people who are producing things, if you want  fair and equitable renumeration for labor, these things cost money.

And so.  As an entrepreneur, we’re constantly working against the, the, like the Amazon culture of people wanting a deal, people wanting free shipping people, wanting something for, for nothing. And getting excited when something, you know, like, woo. It costs next to nothing. And if something costs next to nothing, that that should be a red flag that something’s wrong. I understand that that COVID has made money tight from consumer’s perspective, but from an entrepreneur’s perspective I would say that anyone who is wanting to be really conscious about the the ethical origins of what they, of what they sell is going to fight that fight. of you know, the consumer desire for low prices and and the high cost of ethical production.

What I did when I, when I sat out was to try to reach the the thrift store. Audience, the thrift store lovers like myself who want things secondhand for maybe environmental reasons or maybe financial reasons, but who who expect it to be  yard sale priced well, or dollar store price for that matter, but who, who expect things to be cheaper because they’re second hand and. As I have lived with the labor involved in what I’m doing, I’ve realized that it’s much more akin to what you might find on Etsy or craft market. I mean, when you, when you look at the amount of labor, the hours and hours of meticulous attention to detail and labor. That goes into any one product that I, that I,  curate and sell. It’s much more similar to,  a hand stitched handcrafted, something or other, and, and should have been premium priced  to reflect that that amount of labor and care rather than Bargain priced because it’s second hand.

Jennifer Chua: Amazon culture. It’s worth the conversation. Consumers now expect free shipping and free returns. And they’re not conscious perhaps of what happens to those returns once they return them. It’s a big fight that a lot of businesses are going through trying to educate the consumer that a lot of the time, those returns, those brand new goods. If you ordered three, cause you wanted to see which one works best and you can return it for free. Those goods are usually being disposed of.  Everything. Has to end up somewhere. And Rebecca has been educating children. About this concept for a long time, particularly in these workshops. And when she’s interacting with the children, she feels that they are being impacted positively. And she’s very hopeful for the future

Rebecca Saha: When I see I mean, not just, not just about consumerism, about everything, when I, when I talk to my own teens about everything from racial equality to gender to, I mean, the way they see the world is different from our generation and, and in so many ways more  positive, I think.  Kids care about the environment they do. And , they’re, mad. That we’ve wrecked it for them. And and they know that they know that big things need to change.  Kid activism is the start of, of a grown-up activism, you know?

There are things that I’d like to do with the business. For example, Terra cycle. One of the things that I’m very conscious of is what happens to the pieces that I can’t use, the pieces that are sharp or, or truly snapped and broken and, and no longer resemble anything. They’re just toy plastic. It’s important to me. To the extent that I can afford it, to have that mechanically recycled and rigid plastic recycling even through the amazing, amazing TerraCycle Canada is expensive and it’s expensive because it’s laborious. And meticulous and time consuming and energy consuming. And so for me to be able to afford to do that with my unusables unre-usables takes a lot of money. And so if I had priced things at a premium  knowing that that the proceeds are,  helping this happen for the environment. That should have been my messaging from day one. And instead of trying to be all things to all people.

Jennifer Chua: That’s actually a really good learning is there anything else you’d like to add to this conversation or the ongoing conversation around upcycling?

Rebecca Saha: I had a a reflection that came to me this week. While I was excited about another circular economy business that I saw on my Facebook feed. And I thought, Oh, yes, someone’s finally doing something with all those use chopsticks.   And they’re doing. Great creative, amazing things with these use chopsticks. They’re sanitizing them and turning them into countertops and all kinds of other things. And I thought this is amazing. The, the number of upcycling businesses that are reclaiming materials for new purposes. But then I looked at the comment thread and it occurred to me that the public has in some ways missed, missed the point. All of the comments were Oh, I have six years chopsticks how can I get them to you? Everybody was, was willing and excited to get rid of their used stuff and not feel bad about it. Nobody was asking, Hey, how can I get a cutting board? Or I would love to use your product and my new renovation, show me the specs for the, the different countertop models. There’s this presumption that the way to help these businesses, that the way to help the movement. It is to contribute your, your junk, contribute your stuff. And while that’s important, too, the best way that you can help them movement is to buy the end product until we shop differently. Nothing’s going to change  if you give me your bags and bags of toy junk, and you feel great about the fact that it’s going to be reused instead of going to landfill. That’s amazing. But if you follow that by heading to the toy store or the dollar store one or the takeout lane and refilling it up, refilling your playroom with the same junk, with the same stuff at the same volume, then then you haven’t interrupted the cycle, you’ve perpetuated the cycle. And so I think what’s really important for for the movement, the reuse movement, the upcycling movement to succeed is for people to support it financially at the at the other end. You know, people need to purchase things differently as well as contributing to the, to the intake of the circular businesses.

Jennifer Chua: So how did that feel when that happened? When all of a sudden you’re getting all of this attention for something that is still just a little idea in the back of your mind.

Rebecca Saha: Even if people are, are just. Inspired by it and thinking about it and attracted to it. Now it’s percolating for them.  And my little baby idea, it’s going to percolate with maybe thousands of people and give them ideas. And even though I’m only having an impact in, in my small neck of the woods, maybe they’ll do something, something similar where they are and or something related or, something that, that sparks passion for them around reduction and together that’s the only way we’re going to have an impact. That in lobbying McDonald’s no,  I mean that quite seriously, right? Like as tirelessly as we work as a small business entrepreneurs and as individuals in our communities I think we all know that that, that labor is a drop in the bucket to the lobbying of government and the lobbying of corporation that needs to happen for, for global impact for the environment.

The world needs less stuff and the world needs more creativity.  We need more creativity for problem solving for thinking our way out of this mess that we’ve got ourselves in that we’ve got our planet in. We, we need more human connection. We need more brain power connection, more collaboration, and we need less stuff. One spatula will do. Yeah. And then just, just stop. Okay.

Jennifer Chua:  If you want to learn more about Rebecca and Tiny Toy Co., purchase Re-Loot bags or hands-on learning activities. Visit tinytoyco.com. While you’re there. Rebecca is taking donations to help raise funds for toy waste recycling with Terracycle.  It’s a really worthy cause. You can follow along with Rebecca on her mission to reduce plastic waste on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter @tinytoyco. Thanks for listening.