#145. Richard Brubaker: Is This Sustainable
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Dude, you keep typing. Yeah, because I have to introduce a guest. So I have to introduce the guest correctly. I know. And then I'm like, let's do it. Because we can't just wing it. I know. And I'm like, let's just do it. And you're like, okay, we'll do it. And then you keep typing. You keep looking at the phone. Okay.

We had an awesome, I mean, this is shitty, but we had an awesome conversation with a really awesome guest. He has such a wide breadth of knowledge. Yeah, this was actually pretty incredible. This idea of sustainability is something we haven't really talked about in the show, and it's so huge and complex. Yeah, and we use sustainability as a lens to look at a lot of things, and

And at the same time, it was like we went into a lot of different topics as well about urbanization, economy, like progress, like issues that we're facing with global warming. But sustainability is just such a powerful lens because essentially, it is like how do we keep everyone sort of like alive in the next 100 years?

Yeah, that really opened up our eyes to how connected everything truly is. We fail to grasp how connected we actually are to everything. This is just a simple...

Yeah.

He has spent the last 20 plus years in Asia acting as a catalyst to driving sustainability and systemic change, to improving the world and helping companies face growing social and environmental challenges. He is the founder and managing director of the Collective Responsibility Consultancy, the Sustainable and Corporate Responsibility Committee Chairman to the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, and the host of the Mission Driven and Sustainable Ambassador Podcasts.

Rich regularly is invited to speak at social innovation and sustainability-focused conferences around the world. This was an awesome conversation. So, without further ado, please give it up for Richard Brubaker. Well, one more time, cheers, Richard. Cheers. Thanks for coming on the show. Can you just briefly...

kind of give us and the listeners a little brief description of your journey and how it started on this whole sustainability thing. Sure. So my name is Rich Brubaker. I've been in China for 22 years, pretty much non-broken. I did 10 and a half months for COVID in the States. Came over, worked in finance,

Worked in valuations of buildings and companies and piece of land to help companies expand in China. That was my reason for being here. That transitioned into understanding that there's a whole different country that I wasn't seeing outside of the shiny glass buildings that I was spending my afternoons in usually, Monday to Friday. And so my entry point to the state of the world is not actually what most people think of like carbon, polar bears, global warming, that level.

As I mentioned, I started my charity 20 years ago and that took me into migrant schools, early care centers, schools, children's hospitals, and I'd see the people and I'd see the systems that actually exist out of sight. And so that was my entry point for sustainability. And I start with the people, I look at cities, I look at supply chains in terms of like,

labor input, material input, the economics of all these materials. And then I try and figure out where systems are going to fail. And that kind of just always brought me back to the people. It's like you often see it in the people. They can't afford education, healthcare, smog, air pollution. It's all an externality. And so, yeah, for me, sustainability basically boils down to urbanization, supply chain management, macroeconomics, and people. Somewhere in between there, right? You need to really understand like the

the material flows of water economics, but you also understand like what's the city for? And then you can talk about sustainability as like a lens for how you can view going forward. So I talked to a lot of business leaders, obviously, and they're looking quarter to quarter. It's kind of like they're looking through a little keyhole kind of at their feet. And I like to call sustainability a telescope into their future. It's not that you need to save the world, but at a minimum, you need to understand like where the world is going and what decisions you need to make today to

to make yourself, your community, your company, starting point more resilient. But then I would say identify the ways that you can turn that into somewhere where you can contribute back against that problem. And that for me is sustainability. So let me ask you, and I know this is like probably a very heated topic, but like where is the world going? According to you, Richard, where is the world going right now? Richard Streitz

First off, let's just appreciate how far we've come. We've made a lot of progress in terms of humanity's overall condition. Urbanization has been a big part of that. Through that, we developed our economies. We've improved our education systems. We've made huge leaps in healthcare. Our food systems deliver affordable, accessible, safe food at a rate we've never had before. You're talking about the world as a whole. The world as a whole, right?

Now, there's some cost to all of that that I think that we're starting to recognize are becoming something of a problem. And so if you're talking about global warming, I mean, through my podcast, through my research, let's just say 1.5 degrees has less than 10% chance that we make it to that point. Four degrees and more has a 15% chance. Wait, can you explain that? Yeah. So if I... All right. If you look at the IPCC report from Paris, this is before the Paris Agreement was...

when everyone celebrated that the world had saved itself to a voluntary, non-committed agreement. The chart was very clear. Like if you read the research behind the work that was being done, that was put out by the IPCC itself, they have a beautiful little chart and it's got kind of like different lines. One is we throw the kitchen sink at this problem.

To make sure we mitigate all problems and we avoid everything. We stay underneath 1.5 degrees. That was like the agreed upon number. That means a rise in 1.5 degrees in climate? A rise in 1.5 from pre-industrial levels. In what timeframe? Their aim was like by 2050, roughly. Right. But they want to keep it underneath 1.5 like forever anyway. Like that's- Yeah. Is that global average temperature? Global average temperature. Right. They assigned roughly-

10% chance that we make it there. We throw the kitchen sink at it. We throw everything we have at it. We have a 10% chance of maintaining. Yeah. Business as usual, eh, 1.5 to 3, 3.2 degrees. I'm not looking at the chart, but it's somewhere between 70 and 80%. That's the probability they assigned to that range. And four degrees and higher was about 15, 18%.

So 1.5% was the least probable outcome. The best outcome that we need had the least probability of getting there. Everything else was much higher. And when I talk to people now, and to preface this, I've talked to about 150 experts around the world from nonprofit, academic, science, corporate, you name it. The average best guess is 2.7 to 3.2 degrees where we're headed.

Now, what the hell does that even mean? Well, depends on where you are. And this is the problem with climate and the earth. Not everyone's going to feel this the same way. And so you may not, you may actually benefit from it. If you're in the Northern hemisphere and you're a little bit, and you're in Canada and you're in Siberia, this is going to not be a bad time for you. Your farmland is going to open up. But if you're in the middle where it's a breadbasket right now, it's going to dry out. If you're on the coasts,

and one of the ice sheets melts, and that's three meters. If both of them melt, that's 10 meters of sea rise. Goodbye, Singapore. Goodbye, Pudong. Goodbye, New York. Like, that is a possibility. Now, I'm not here to scare anybody, and I'm not here to say that climate science is just a weather climate. I don't care. I really, I don't care about the debates anymore.

My interest is trying to figure out what will the impacts be, assuming that is happening, who is doing what to prevent that from happening, and how does that make our economy and our people better? And I think oftentimes we lose sight over the role of the economy and the need to continue growing it, but really the focus being to remove the negative externalities. So if you think like, what's a negative externality? Carbon is not a problem. It's a negative externality of a broken energy system.

Let's fix the energy systems. Now, that could be greening. Sure. I would argue energy efficient buildings is actually a better investment, oftentimes, depending on where you are. Like in Shanghai, I have a friend that took a building down here, you know, Kewa. He had one floor. He put in an extra $150,000, $200,000 in equipment.

He redesigned the office to have the HVAC come out of the floor instead of the ceiling. He brought the lights down and he created a green wall that was 60% of the wall. And his energy bill was like 40% less than the average of the whole building.

Within three months. He paid back really quick. So it just showed a few things. You could drop down 40%. Well, not to stick on it for too long, but what does the green wall do? How does it drop the energy bill 40%? It just creates more insulation. It also creates more brightness. It also purifies the air. It does a lot of things. It helps to balance the thermal load, right? It does all kinds of things. So you don't have to have the AC running as hard or the heat running as hard. When I was out at Siebes, I used to teach out there.

We were the first business school in the world to be net zero. And I think it lasted for a year. But I had an MIT scientist as one of my students, and we were working through this. And we had one of the big Chinese solar companies going to give us all the solar panels we wanted for the whole school for free. And that came out to about 10%, 12%, 15% energy. It's been a decade, so rough numbers.

And we went through a bunch of other things that you could do. But the other thing that was really interesting was like the 10, 12, 15% savings was window film. Just put window film up. And that was like a couple hundred thousand renminbi versus a couple million dollars in green energy. Now, I'm not saying that green energy doesn't have such space, but if we can start with efficiency first and then greening second, this gets a lot easier. And then the carbon emissions come down, right? And so what I just look at is like,

You look at these systems, you try and figure out what's from a process wise broken, what's from a regulatory can be improved. The economics of things, like I look a lot at the water economics right now. And I mean, this is getting really nerdy so early in. But if you think like water, it feeds everything from primarily food and energy. So there's a food, water, energy nexus that is really important. And if you think like the Sichuan water crisis from a couple of summers back,

You had to shut down like six provinces of power to the manufacturing sector for what? Four weeks, six weeks? You had to shut down retail malls. You had to shut down an elevator. How expensive was that compared to just putting up a greener system? But this is going to happen more and more frequently. Right now, the Mississippi River and Missouri River are at all-time lows. But that's the breadbasket of America. That's not just the breadbasket of America. 60% of the Midwest agriculture is exported.

So that's the world's food. So imagine if the price of water goes up 100%. What's the challenge to food inflation? But also, how does it feed into the water, into the energy sector? Because coal energy requires significant sums of water to keep it cool when you're going through that process. So at one point, about 10, 12, 15 years ago, Shanghai's, about half of their water system here was used for energy cooling in the city. So if you're worried about your water,

You have to worry about energy. You have to worry about food. Well, in a global warming world where water shifts around the world, drought here and more there, that has a huge impact on our systems. And so that for me is what sustainability is. It's really supply chain, macroeconomics, and figuring out how does it impact people when things go wrong.

It's not just about polar bears, although for a lot of people, that is what's important. It's like actually preserving the Earth's overall systems. And I give a lot of credit to those individuals for that work. It's just not tangible to me, which I think is where it comes down to your, this might be controversial. A lot of issues around sustainability are totally intangible to most people, but are very tangible to others.

And not every issue is the same. So human migration in Africa, in Central America, in Asia, very big topics, but not in New York City, unless of course they're in your hotels, right? You're wondering why are they all here, blah, blah, blah. Like the tangibility of a lot of these issues is the big problem. And I think that's, if I'm talking to the professionals I talk with more and more, it's like, how do we communicate and create tangibility in

And do we need to do that for everything or just for some things? Like how do you create focus so people can get things done? Because even if I agree that polar bears need to be saved, I still got to pay my bills next month. I still got a kid in sixth grade. I still got a mother who is aging. Like I have other real issues I got to solve in my life. How do you expect me to get to polar bears? And yeah, that's where I think the controversy comes in sometimes. Because we tell them if you don't care about polar bears, then you're a bad person.

No. I mean, some people, yeah. Like, I hate a polar bear. I don't care about them. I'm going to go and do what I want to do. But most people are just like, I have things I got to take care of that are actually real in my life. That's a great, that's a great, I just learned so much from what you shared. And part of it comes from you being such a, just like a fluent communicator. And part of it is from your passion and expertise. Yeah.

And these are things that we don't think about because we don't understand the impact until these things are too late. But we're finally in a time in society where

- Yeah. - Education information is widely available and we need to come together, not just in our local communities, but it's almost like we need to create a global community of awareness of these are, we all have to band together to get to that 1.5. And it's unprecedented because people across the world have never had to work together in that way. They've worked in smaller communities. - Yeah. - But we're talking about extinction. We're talking about like dinosaurs going, you know, that kind of stuff.

But you can't scare people into kind of thinking that way. I want to go back to a comment and I just want to make sure I understand because I think this is

It's so fascinating. I mean, these are really important things. Like I am so blown away that so early in your career and coming out here, you made these connections. And so like we meet so many people on the show where we're just kind of like, what are we doing, Justin? It's like, what are we fucking done with our lives? But it's never too late. But I want to go back to urbanization. And I mean, that is...

Sort of the premise of everything. It's that people have come together, smart people have come together and really, you know, allowed us to improve the quality of life almost universally across the planet, right? We have like running water and plumbing and electricity and all this stuff. So progress and technology have really touched almost every part of the world. Yes. And there's still massive gaps. Yes.

which I want to come back to in a second. But then there's that trade-off because the result of that is that now we're tapping into this

you know, the earth and we're destroying it. And so now we have to figure out the strategies to help us do this in a sustainable way. Because ultimately, if we keep doing this, there will not be sort of any earth left, right? So I guess you're trying to tell the story to people who can make an impact. So I'm just curious in terms of the work you do, is it

What's the campaign look like so that you can then tell the story and influence the people? Because there's politicians, there's CEOs, there's the average person. Yeah, they're all different. They're all different. And what segments are you going after? And-

You know, what gives you optimism that you're going to be able to make an impact? Because it sounds like, I mean, you're so... I'm not optimistic at all. No. Okay. So let me... It's like the smile and humor of like, just, we're fucked. It's like, yeah, you have to like cry to keep from... You have to laugh to keep from crying. You know it's over. You know the earth is... And you're just kind of like, well, let's just enjoy the last few moments. If you're listening to this right now, you should go to the video side and just see the looks on our faces. Yeah.

Okay, so let me back up a little bit and just say, I don't believe that we're in an earth-ending environment. There will be a lot of pain. Yeah. And I will say 10, 12 years ago, I just accepted that. I did not, I don't fool myself. I don't listen. When people says 1.5, I'm like, would you shut, you're in this sector talking about 1.5? Shut up.

You have not accepted where we're headed and you're not mapping your solutions, your stakeholders, your conversations to that reality.

If you were, we'd actually have a greater chance of just maintaining 1.5. We'd get much farther if we accepted that. But we're like, oh, we'll be fine. It's like your doctor tells you to lose 10 pounds. Like, I have three months. You know, like, no. Yeah. You're likely to add 30 pounds. Then you ought to take away 10 in those 30 months or in those three months. So get to work. Sometimes it's... Right. I mean, it's like people set New Year's resolutions and most people fail. And it's because...

The perfectionism in a way, right? And it's like, you should just, you know, one of the best tips I ever heard was just cut your goal in half. Not your long-term goal, but just cut your goal in half, do it and be able to sustain that habit. Yeah. And then start building up. You're much more likely to make any kind of change. It's when you set the goal too high and then you end up giving up and you're just like, fuck it.

So this is where on the back of my hoodie, it says stop complaining, start doing. Honestly, I've been saying this for a long time. Like as humans, we wait for the Williams-Sonoma rock, like perfect set to show up before we get started. Where in Asia, honestly, they'll like pick up a shoe and start doing something with it, you know? And that's what I think like,

Coming back to China and urbanization, that's why this region has been so amazing as someone focused on sustainability to be in. I'm glad I've been here for so long, not just in China, but in the region, watching these cities come up out of the ground. And not just that, like you go to Pudong, you go to Bangkok, you go to these cities and you're like, these people who come into the city who are from outside the city, they're beaming with pride. They're like, my country has developed and I'm

Some of them are living really rough. I don't think we should ever look past the poverty that so many cities still have and still trying to have an answer for. But even the poverty that I'm, I mean, I remember traveling through Bangkok in 1995 and the poverty there and the conditions were just, it's a whole nother order. You were looking at people on the side, they weren't going to make it a week. Didn't matter how much money you gave them. Didn't matter if you took them to the hospital, they were suffering.

And a lot of those issues have been solved through urbanization, through development of economy. And that's great. But again, like we have these excesses that are costs on that growth that what I always found funny is like, of course, this is going to happen. Why are we even debating this is going to happen? We should plan better. And that's where I think like sustainability for me is like, I knew about China's demographic fall 15 years ago.

I started looking at elderly rates here. One of the best programs I ever had was working with one of the districts here on Meals on Wheels. They want to do a Meals on Wheels program for all their elderly. They knew down to the street how many elderly people there were. I started doing heat maps around that. And I come from a real estate kind of background a little bit. So I knew how to develop it. And I have heat maps of Shanghai's oldest people.

I have like 25 years every year of the demographics for all the major cities of China. And you can see how these things change. And if you were following Japan and Hong Kong and Singapore and Taiwan and Korea, you know,

The fact is that women who are educated, empowered, employed, they get married later. They have families later. They want fewer children. And that's not a negative on the women themselves. That is empowering. I mean, you used to be told you have to be married at the age of 16. You were told you'd have your first kid by 18. Now these women have the ability to say no on my time. And that radically changes things, right? Yeah.

But if you were paying attention, I think this is what it comes down to, is like being curious and paying attention. You saw the stuff coming 15 years ago. That's why it's a lens into the future, not a scorecard necessarily for today when it comes to sustainability. One of the best projects that I ever embarked on was in the early 2010s. I was taking on a bunch of interns. I was teaching at SEABs. I had hundreds of students. And I used to send

probably a dozen, half dozen people out every three months in the city to interview 100 people. And it was all modeled off dirty jobs. And I'm like, go out and talk to these people. Ask them about their lives. What do they hope for? What are they working on?

you know, just learn about. And the stories we came out from that time were just phenomenal. And that really allowed me to then start to understand like, what's the city for? So I wrote a paper called Hope and Opportunity about migration into Shanghai. And it's just phenomenal. We did videos around it, the whole deal. And, you know, the last question was always like, would you want your kid to have this job? Out of the hundreds of people that we interviewed, only one person said that, and they were a KFC delivery person. And their son was working as a fry chef.

Everyone else is like, no, we're doing it so the next generation has it better. And so, yeah, I mean, humans progress. And we're really good at that. That's why I'm like, I'm not a doomer when it comes to climate. Actually, yesterday's conversation was about climate anxiety. And it's just so fascinating as a topic. It's like how we can so quickly just take the negative and let that stop us from making progress. We just get stuck. And you're like, guys, we've made so much progress. We need to make a lot more.

But we're not on the best path, but we're not on the worst path either. But it's a path that isn't downhill in the sun at 70 degrees. You're going to have some really shitty rainy days. You're going to have some really hard summers. You're going to get lost. We need to accept that as part of this human experience. And I guess to the environmental part,

change our system so that we are far more respectful of the fact that when we make changes to earth, it's not free. When you monoculture a whole country into palm oil, there's going to be an impact to the ecosystem and it might take 50 years to repair. But the nice thing is you can repair it. When fish stocks crash,

It only takes a few years for the fish stocks to come back. So nature is actually super resilient. We just need to give it the time to do that. Yeah. You know, it's interesting because there are

There are multiple problem statements, but that core problem statement for probably much of humanity would just be survival and then elevating the quality of life. So that was like the, you know, we just wanted to feed ourselves, we wanted to have good meals, and then we want to start enjoying our...

And then the other problem statements emerge because when everyone's going after that thing, then you're changing the planet. And so now other problem statements are emerging, right? There's other things that we kind of solve, have to solve for. And it's almost like we've just never thought about these things. Like for most of humanity, like it,

It was very micro and local. And we only considered the second and third order consequences in my local area. So for instance, and I'm, you know, I don't have any

scientific knowledge, but I imagine, okay, if I farm this area, but I do a tap it out, then it's done. So there's probably more sustainable farming methods, but everything was localized to my lifetime. So how can I do things in a way that's sustainable? So, you know, me, maybe my children, we can survive. Yeah. But now this is at a macro level and like, we haven't really, now we're paying the piper. Right.

Now, all of those years of doing all these things that we really didn't consider things at the macro level, they're coming, of course. I mean, there's always going to be- So that's what I was going to say. We haven't paid anything yet. Yeah, we haven't paid anything. We're just starting that process, but it's coming. I mean, if we don't, it's going to be very bad. And you literally have to build an entire global cross-humanity habit of thinking about this stuff like it's-

You know, like I wouldn't imagine that people long, long time ago didn't know about germs and bacteria. So no one washed their hands. Yeah. The civil war changed that. Yeah. And like no one would even know. But now it's like, I mean, I haven't, you know, I'm not a scientific expert in biology, but like everyone knows that you need to wash your hands. And so I think there's like an entire collection of habits that have to be developed. Culture shifts can happen really quickly. That's where I think the challenge comes in, right? Like I think...

I think, I don't know, if you look back at human history, I think it takes extreme events for it to change people's minds on a collective and to change their behavior. And Richard, what you were saying before in terms of, you know, we're not on the best path, but we're not on the worst path either. I think that kind of works against the movement because you're not on either extreme. And as humans, when you're talking about everyone trying to get on the same page and on board, because this is what it's going to take.

People want to be told a compelling story. And we're so driven by extremes and narratives to motivate us. When something's kind of not the worst, not the best, we don't feel that sense of urgency. Almost like a pandemic, if the disease isn't deadly enough, people don't start taking it seriously, right? I know. So-

I think that's like the predicament because everything you're saying is like these huge monumental changes need to happen. And in order for those things to happen, everybody needs to get on board. And it just seems, at least for me, looking from the outside, it just seems like not everyone's on board because you have people out there with loud voices saying this whole climate change thing or whatever, even if you talk about ESG, it's overblown and it's not as big of a deal as...

People might say it is. So you have voices working against that as well. But so this is where I would argue, I don't think we need everybody. Okay. I'll be honest. I don't think a lot of the people who talk matter. I really don't. And I think that we spend too much time caring about what detractors think without considering who are these detractors? Do they know anything? Are they influential? Are they important? Are they going to adopt this? Are they even exposed to this?

And if not, just ignore them and keep going. And it doesn't, I mean, you just think like the NRA in America, 3 million members, 1% of the population, super influential. It doesn't take huge numbers. Elon Musk can create the world's most amazing electronic car infrastructure, and that starts to shift people, right? One person had a crazy ass idea of

slept on the factory floor to make it work. And I'm not the hugest fanboy, but I respect him as an entrepreneur. I mean, a lot of other people would go into Coachella and watching their aircraft go down in flames. You don't need that many people, right? You need the right people to understand the issues at hand and to make progress against those issues. And also recognize that you're not going to fix every problem 100%.

You're going to be making incremental progress. Hopefully, every once in a while, you get a disruptive pop through, like say penicillin. The reason why we're living longer is not because we're living longer. It's because more of us are living past the age of five because of things like penicillin and polio and one or two people. I can see something that other people can't. I'm going to fix that and done. And that's where I think it's not the sustainability movement overall.

has tried to convince everyone that it's their responsibility to solve this. I would say as much as it's important to have that message, to have people be aware of the challenges and aware of their own responsibility, you can build systems that aren't reliant upon people making better decisions. You can help them make better decisions by delivering a better outcome.

product, a better service, a healthier economy. There's so many ways you can improve people's lives without asking them to sacrifice if you're in the right position to do so. However, oftentimes in doing that, it does have costs. It does have consequences. Nothing's free, right? And I don't think we talk enough about that. So actually on my own podcast and on my own discussions now, I'm having like, okay, we're

What's the transition look like? And to kind of to your point earlier about the uncertainty and things changing, like we've got a generational shift happening right now, a technological shift from labor to AI. We have all kinds of economic shift, urbanization shift. Urbanization shift and education shift often results in, say, value shift from religious oriented societies towards more liberal or more scientific air quotes, right? Yeah.

All these things are happening. And then you have something like climate, which might show itself as a drought or hurricane or some other crisis. It's just, it's adding to the existing challenges and systems that are already changing. So it's fascinating. And I just, through my conversations, through my work, what I just like to do is try and figure out like, what's important to that person? What can they influence? What kind of investment are they willing to put into it?

And how can I help them versus try to morally beat the shit out of them and make them feel like an idiot because they don't know or an asshole because they don't care? Because you're getting nowhere with that. Like that's half the world wouldn't wear a face mask, even though that that virus was a threat to their family. I don't believe in it or I don't believe the mask will help or. And it's like, so how do I convince that half the world to care about polar bears?

I deliver something better to them for them. Yeah. I start by solving a real problem. And that's what I, you'll hear me say that almost all my podcasts and every presentation I give is solve a real problem for somebody. And you will make us, you'll get us closer to where we should be. Yeah. This reminds me of the, um,

of the Tesla conversation and also, you know, a previous guest we had Franklin who is the founder of zero plant-based protein here. And the whole concept of that is exactly what you're saying is we're not trying to convince anybody or preach that

for them to turn vegan or vegetarian. And because that's, you're never going to do that. And that's not the right message in the first place. The first place is to actually just legitimately create something that's a better option. So people will naturally have it just like,

electric vehicles. And if you can create something that's plant-based protein that genuinely tastes better, then people are going to eat it whether or not they want to do good, right? It's just a better option in the first place. So I won't speak to his actual view or I've never met with him, but I will say the average vegan entrepreneur who was in plant-based and I mean, they were a vegan and they create their own products.

They were absolutely making it a moral issue that you should eat this product because it's better for the world. And that's the mistake. It's better for animals. It was a mistake. There were many mistakes. And actually, I was on stage with several of the biggest players early on with the start. And I was like, you know, first off, you should thank the paleo movement for this being even possible because they came up with vegetable porn. Paleo movement made vegetables cool again, right? Without them.

because you couldn't have carbs. You had to make pumpkin look great, broccoli look great, and all these different ways of getting it. And they just kind of laughed. And I'm like, the last thing you should be doing is selling a steak to someone who enjoys a steak. You should find ways to take your product and sprinkle it into things or create entire new product categories. So you go to school lunches, you do lasagna, you do spaghetti. No one will know the difference because they don't care what's in that to begin with. You go to work, people don't care about their food first.

versus someone who's snotty about their Wagyu 5 that's been dry aged for 38 days, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and it's paired to the perfect whiskey. That person will never eat your stuff more than once because they're going to look at it and go, ugh. And I'm not saying these products weren't tasty. The first time I had the Beyond Burger, I was just like, wow, this is amazing.

And the first time I made their sausage at home, like this most disgusting thing I've ever seen cooked because it leaked oil everywhere in the pan. And I don't think people realize like how unhealthy, not just the product may or may not have been. Some of them were very clean. Some of them were not. Also, the way that you prepared these foods was often by frying them or by sauteing them in oil. And so a lot of people who are really health conscious,

They didn't want that food to begin with anyway. So they lost that market. Then you've got to be environmental. And they started to show like, okay, there's some environmental impact, but compared to everything else, I'm not going to spend more for it. They just made so many mistakes. And I think, you know, to my podcast I released yesterday, listen to your market. What do they want? Create a new product category. Create something new that people want to buy and they love and they'll support and

And then you can add in like, this is still better for the world. You've done something good. Congratulations. But that's not the buyer's driver. That's a side benefit if you're lucky. Yeah, you know, what you say is, I think, really echoes some of the conversation we had with Franklin. I'm looking back at some of the things that we talked about. So if we know that environment sustainability is important, right? If we know that like,

we want to create food in a more sustainable way, right? That's just the goal. But that's not the means. And people conflate those things. And, you know, a couple of the notes that I took from the Franklin conversation that really, I think, really echo with what you're saying. I think, by the way,

by the way, I think we should all, you should meet him. I think it would be a really great conversation. I think you, you, you're kind of cut from this. Because he's also very anti, like the original kind of vegan movie. Yeah. Yeah. He doesn't stand for that. He has the same views. So really interesting things, right? He said, and he learned over time, like over years. And he comes from a consulting background. He said,

that it's not about what you want, it's what the customer wants, right? Exactly what you said. It's like, how do you serve them better? So like, you have to look at it as a business. Ultimately, you have to look at everything foundationally with the fundamentals, right? Like what you were saying, like you got to look at the building blocks, which is like, you know, the macroeconomics, human behavior, all of these things. This is just one element.

It's something you might care about as someone who's passionate about this area, but you have to figure out how to make it a great business. So he said that they changed everything. So it's like they had to develop products that developed out of thinking of what the customer wants. And then what he said, interestingly enough, as the early players in China, to your point, jumped on the bandwagon, they didn't do a good job.

And then they actually gave people a bad taste in their mouth because the products didn't taste well, taste good. So like he's trying to overcome now the bad association. So like the people who have the right intentions, it's like you're actually trying to fix like all the things that are broken. And he also said like this element of preaching, it's like lecturing is not good business. It doesn't help you sell stuff, right? So they went to things that were just like

It's like the electric car. Can you make something that in and of itself intrinsically is better than the current product? And if you can do that, it doesn't fucking matter if it's plant-based or electric. You've already sold people on it. And then you've won. And then you've won. And then he said something I think really powerful. He said, change takes time, patience, persistence, and capital. It's got to work from a business perspective because...

That's how Elon has changed the industry. It wasn't because of his preaching. It was that he made it economically viable. And once it becomes viable, because you can't change human nature. You can't change economics. So if you can build something that fits into those frameworks, I mean, not in the short term. A lot of these guys, they bend the economics by investors' money.

It's not a pure economy. To this day, Tesla is still not super profitable, right? Without investor money, they would not survive. And most of their competitors either, like Xpeng or BYD, you're living off the investor's subsidy for now. And they need to find that. So I would argue that you either find that business model or regulation makes it work for you. Right. Now, the happy medium I find often having lived in China for a long time is what's the government's problem they're going to fix? Right.

What regulation are they going to use? And how can you plan your business model around that? And if I know that water is going to become an issue, which I can tell you in 17 provinces of China, they have an encouraged investment scheme for foreign investment right now for water and agriculture efficiency technologies. Boom. Right? So a couple of things you said, right? One is-

That you can't change like 10 billion people's behaviors, right? You've got to find the people that can create the domino effect, right? That's something that you were saying a little bit earlier. And the second piece is that the economics don't always work in the conventional sense. So you've got to find like tailwinds and stuff like that. So I'm curious, like how do you get, like it sounds like alignment's really important, right? You've got to align with the big things because those are things that are already happening. Yeah.

But how do you actually get public policy in the government to be a little bit more flexible so you can maybe not meet in the middle, but like meet somewhere where the government's sort of doing something to meet enterprise in a way that it's a bit more fluid? Look, I mean, we're in China and it's like a great place for this stuff. Think back to 2008, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, smog. Greenpeace was talking about it.

Everybody's talking about it. Government wasn't really willing to do anything because the economy needed to grow, right? 2014, crazy bag smog. And the government said, all right, we have to do something. And at that point, all the stakeholders aligned. And so I kind of feel like there's the catalyst for change. You have to have a recognized threat that everyone agrees is a problem. You have to have the ability to act on it quickly. So I think about gun control in America.

Most people generally, I think it's like 70% of Americans want more strict gun controls. But there's never any speed of action when it comes to regulations, right? Like it's stuck in Congress or whatever. So it just drags on and people fall off. They're like, God, I got something else to do. So the system itself that's in place to- You have to have speed of action. Act on it can also be like a massive barrier. Right. And then that's a systemic thing. It's a systemic thing. And-

The majority of the stakeholders involved have to agree that business as usual can no longer persist. Something has to change. And then there has to be the commitment of the stakeholders. And also, I mean, you have to be able to do something, right? Like it can't be the impossible task, right?

It can't be like, oh, we all agree we have to move to the moon. That's not physically possible. But can you pass a regulation? Can you change the economics? Like in China, the NRDC, they control the economics for all the core parts of the economy. Price of water, price of food, price of healthcare. They can make a simple switch. They say, you know what? Water is 300% more expensive next year. Suck it up.

They can do that, right? But they wouldn't do that unless there was all the stakeholders involved around them that said, this is required right now. And then they get the blessing to do it and then get it done. So you need these things to happen. Now, for that to happen, obviously, sometimes you need a crisis. I would say that COVID was one of the best crises to learn from because we had one of those things where actually the world all agreed that

that there is a huge problem that we have to collectively protect, like basically protect ourselves from. Now, for some countries, that was a week that we need to protect ourselves. Then they tap out. And for other countries, like the one we're sitting in, took a couple more years. There's models in between. But at some point, every government took some proactive measure to protect their people from this virus that was spreading around the world and could potentially kill millions of people.

But you think about how hard it was to maintain that commitment, right? Like almost everyone tapped out because it was too economically costly or society pushed back or the scientists were right, wrong. Like there's all kinds of ways that that commitment was undermined.

But to get to 100%, you have to maintain that commitment. You have to be able to tune out those voices that don't really matter. And I think this gets really hard with social media and it gets really hard with

what you think you're learning on Google. Yeah. Right? Like everyone has an opinion now and there's always two sides. It's like anyone can stop something. Yeah. And you know what? And there's some beauty in that. And I think that's, again, this is part of the human condition. This is debating. This is, we're just in a new space and tool set for how we recognize what's a great point that I should consider to improve my position over time. Like I should listen to my consumer say something. Yeah.

versus what most of the people in the plant-based movement do is like, oh, they just don't get it. No, actually, you're not getting it, right? And it's very difficult. You said several years for Franklin to work that out. Great. Others, it took months. Others do in advance. And some still haven't learned. The problem is with these macro challenges, you need the right people that understand these systems and know who to listen to and have the power to make decisions.

and then eat whatever comes after that bitterness, right? Because there's no easy decisions anymore. Yeah, and I like what you said about, I mean, there is a balance. The balance between, like if you find yourself, you know, saying your customers don't get it, that you're probably on the wrong track. I mean, what is this quote? If the quote is like,

you know if you meet an asshole then you know maybe maybe this person is an asshole but if everyone you meet is an asshole maybe then you're the asshole and yeah and so i think there is you feel that a lot that you're an asshole you know you're an asshole yourself no no like i mean i'm i'm like well the only asshole i know are the people that i work with in the studio no i'm kidding um

But I will say I'm perfectly happy being the asshole in a room at times. Yeah, you have to be. Why is that? Why? Because... It's more fun being the asshole sometimes? No. It depends on who you're in front of, right? You can be in front of people who just generally don't care and don't understand it. Because people are sheep sometimes. And they're happy to be. Not in general. They're happy to be. People are sheep... Okay, first of all, people are sheep in general, but no one's a sheep on everything. But...

Even for the people that are most contrarian, there might be one issue where everyone's a sheep on, and that's where you have to come out, right? Especially if they asked you into the room to talk about that issue. Yeah. Yeah. I'm here to help you. Yeah. And you're just being assholes. Yeah. Well, we like- This sounds like there's something deeper there from personal experience. I've had tons of experience. Really? I've been in rooms where some of those senior people at some of the largest organizations, it's just a brick wall.

And there's for many reasons. I've noticed that in some companies, I was working with one company, food company, man, there was 30 people in the room. And at every table, I think they're in tables of six. If you add up the years of service at the table, every one of those tables passed 100 years. It's like 15, 20 years for almost everyone at that table. We're talking about sustainability. We're talking about trust. We're talking about these issues. And I can pull all kinds of quotes from that day, but the takeaway was

I was the person in front of the room telling them they have the last five years of their working career at this company to fix everything they did wrong the previous 20, 25 years. And they're like, no. Now, the people below them got it, right? But they were like, no, I'm not. So that was one version. But then other times, I remember actually the same company, a different session. The chief legal officer is like, this isn't a problem. Like, oh, okay. It's not a problem. It's like, no, we won that vote in that state. Okay, bye. How many votes? One.

Come back to me in five years. Now, I won that exchange, but I lost the room, right? Because I was the asshole telling them, like showing them where they're going wrong. And yeah, I mean, I was paid to be in that room. So it was my job to really throw that in their face. But on other instances, I've been in front of, say, a bunch of young students and they're worried about the stuff they want to know what to do. Don't make them feel bad because they haven't done anything. Don't be the asshole in front of them. Like,

Even if they don't know what to do, that's not their fault. It's a journey. And I think you just have to recognize like when do you need to be a little bit more forceful about your experience, your insights, your opinions, while at the same time also saying, you know what, they have their own reasons for, and not proselytizing, which I think if I get back to the plant-based movement, just because we were there, it's like there were people that I know were absolutely the most rabid of that sector who will still not listen to anyone because they ate a steak once a month.

right like i can't listen to you because you eat meat yeah you know like you gotta find that you gotta find a balance yeah you gotta find the balance because you're not gonna make progress yeah yeah and and like the you've got to go back and forth sometimes as well because sometimes and you learn through that experience yeah i think it's like you have to be open to learning yeah and if you're not then you get stuck as a industry or as an entrepreneur yeah yeah and i think it's

It's very clear when you see something move to an extreme. So for instance, like, you know, what we're talking about is people that are preaching, right? And they haven't really thought through the issues. They're only looking at it from one particular dimension. And, you know, they're advocating for that

you know, that one thing, but they're not looking at the bigger picture. They're not looking at the stakeholders. They're not looking at what people care about and they're never going to be successful because they haven't considered other points of view. But at the same time, like once you've considered most of the points of view and you made this point earlier is that then you can't listen to

that really small group because right now social media has amplified that effect. So it's really navigating that balance. On one hand, when are you being closed-minded because you haven't considered something that's truly important and essential?

On the other hand, it's like, well, sometimes you just got to move forward, right? Like you got to just say, okay. Yeah. We got to block something. Yeah. Like those people don't matter. We've got to do this. But I think we can very easily point out to cases where people didn't get the balance right. It's hard to point out cases where you really, it's hard, right? To navigate it. It's time. It's reflection. It's having a good process for learning.

I go back to one of my – I was working with an American retailer here on the Left Behind Children Challenge in China. So 60 million up to 100 million children are separate from their parents because they go to work in the factories. Huge social issue that government recognized and a lot of programs around it. And the retailer I was working with, they were like, okay, so we do parental training at the factories.

But, you know, we don't really see the impact. We want to try something different. We want to do something technological. All right. Nobody's ever done this before. We'll take it on. And so we do a bunch of research. We have a hackathon with a bunch of students, come up with some ideas. And what was the best part about the research process was everyone we talked to up front said, that'll never work. These people don't know how to use technology. Technology doesn't reach that far out into the country. And just to be able to disprove experts because those experts hadn't done their work in a while.

was so gratifying because we actually found a solution, delivered it and impacted 50,000 families within about six months. And I mean, I can statistically prove that we made the lives of those children and their parents and the factories better through this program because we went out to the field. We went to such one. We looked at the kids. We talked to them in focus groups as children of like eight, 10 years old. And we,

I got to say, none of that mattered. The only thing that mattered was actually my team brought back a picture of the focus group. And it's this group of kids. And I can send it over if you want to put up on the screen at some point. Four of them are wearing those watches, the 360 watches where you communicate with your parents. And I was like, that's it. We bought 5,000 of those things, sent it out to the field, and immediately created a connection with the kids and parents. And that was it. Simple idea.

very focused on solving a real problem and not listening to other people doing your own work. But again, oftentimes we think we can go to Google, we can go to six different links, we can read the Harvard business, blah, blah, blah. And we're experts. And we're experts, or at least we know who the experts are. But we don't go any deeper. It's a surface level. And I think that's the other part is once you start getting deep into it, then you start to realize who am I talking to? Are they as deep as I am? Is the research as deep as mine?

Is there one nugget in there that I missed? Right. Because your filters is getting much stronger and you're, you're, I often kind of call it like a, I attribute to like when you walk out of a movie theater after a three hour movie, you can see like just right in front of you. Right. Over time you get field of vision back.

That's kind of how you learn over time. It's like you're so my optic and you can ignore everything if you want, but that's a failed process. You should just understand you're going to get wider and wider and you're going to get better and better if you're asking the right questions and open to the right voices. But a lot of times we just shut down. My narrow field of vision, it's outside, doesn't match. I'm not going to talk to you anymore. We fail. I like the...

I mean, in your example of going out to sit down with the watches and everything, it's kind of like your motto. It's, you know, the action part of it, the actionable things you do. It's easy, I think, and a lot of us, maybe we get stuck too much in the discussion around it and we forget about actually acting on it. So I think there's two things from a macro level, and I want to get to like the individual level later, but like from a macro level,

What are things, like what's the state of the union right now in terms of what are countries, governments, corporations, what are they actually doing right now that is making any progress in this front? Well, I'd point out, say, European unions did a lot lately. There's a lot of regulations coming out. There's one on the carbon border adjustment mechanism that is coming out. And

Things like that have real systemic application. So CBAM, carbon border adjustment mechanism, the idea is if you're exporting from anywhere in the world into the EU, there's a carbon assessment and you will pay a tax based on that assessment and then against what the EU regulators think that you should pay a tax on. For me, I'm like, wow, that will fundamentally change supply chains because that environmental delta that everyone took advantage of is now

theoretically gone in many industries or over time as more and more industries are added. And right now it's on steel and a couple of other like really heavy ones. Okay, great. But imagine like if you're China and you're exporting all these goods to Europe,

Well, there's kind of two paths. One is play defense and say like, we don't accept and we're not going to certify and we're going to play that game because we don't want to hurt our suppliers. And the other one is like, get all the suppliers to get up to speed. Like, you should be ready for this. So what is this regulation? It's basically they assess the carbon of that product that's being exported to us.

the EU, and they have a tax that comes along with that. So if you pay 8 RMB or whatever in China for that carbon, or this is the amount of carbon that you have, and this is the tax that you should owe. Okay, you paid how much in China and you owe this much. So there's a differential and you'll pay that back to Europe. So it's basically just to cross the border, you got to pay a toll, right? And for the amount of, so like just from the carbon perspective, what does that mean? Like

Well, this is where the details get a little bit edgy right now, is who certifies what the carbon embedded in that product is. And the idea is that China should be able to self-police itself. Okay, so do you mean, as I'm producing this product, how much carbon I emitted?

into the atmosphere? Yeah, for that product. And how do you, like, so it's hard to assess that, right? Well, lifecycle analysis, they'll figure it out. Like if you have, say, a line of iPhones, right, and you pumped it out through Foxconn and Zhengzhou,

They know exactly how many phones went through at that time. They can assess how much energy. They can back that up through their supplier. There's a lot of work going into scope one, two, and three right now. And who's responsible for doing that assessment? Is it the government or the actual firms? I believe it's going to be both firm-based. So, like, if I make a bag of chips here, I mean, I don't know. I'm just hungry right now. But if I make a bag of chips and I export it somewhere, they'll assess, like, that factory that made it. Well, assuming it falls within the category that needs to be assessed.

So it's not for everything being exported, but the list is going to grow. The list is going to grow. But what's the ultimate benefit we hope to see from that? Is that making it so that it'll basically cost just as much to produce something in China, let's say, versus something domestically elsewhere? I would argue the overarching goal is to make producers pay for their emissions, no matter where they are in the world.

I think a second order from that's going to be globalization may rewire because the advantage of a country to have lower environmental standards should not apply for those categories that are applicable to these regulations. And the U.S. has a different approach. The U.S. is like,

Come on in and we'll give you money. Like the IRA, the Inflation Reduction Act, like a hundred something billion dollars for green energy or green industries to come in. So bring your technology, build your factory. We'll help you with that process. So one's a carrot, one's a stick. China's doing a lot. From 2014, the war on smog, air pollution, to now, there's probably been

40, 50 different regulations at the national and provincial level to address that. So every country has their own approach and some of them are doing it better than others. What's interesting is regulation is a big driver, right? Bar none. The market state of affairs is not great right now for sustainability.

products, like consumer-facing products, because it's a tight economy. People aren't spending a lot of money. Now, there's always pockets, new families. You got a new little baby, you will spend for organics, you'll spend for toxicity-free, you'll spend for all kinds of things that are better for the world because it's on, in, or around your child. And that's true also of yoga people and wellness people.

If it goes on their face, if it goes in their body, if it's in their living environment, they want to be better. And they're also a little bit more mindful of the environment as it is as well. But if you're a 28-year-old barista who's living with your parents, you're probably not going to pick out the fair trade, certified, organic barista.

that's better for the world. If it's better for you, you might. But better for the world, less likely right now. And that's partly, unfortunately, part of the plant-based challenge as well. There are a product that is requiring you to do a lot better unless you really actively see that benefit. Yeah. But like for EVs, if it wasn't for Shanghai giving away a free license plate, no one would have bought those things. Let's be real about that. That saved people $20,000. Yeah.

Right? From having to buy at the auction. Yeah. Maybe 30, I think it's like 180,000 rambia. Right? It was expensive. So you want to, and they did that not for the environment, in my view. Yeah, yeah. That wasn't the only reason. For me, the biggest reason why Shanghai and China did that scheme was energy security. They're tired of importing all the oil from China.

that they can't control anymore, right? These oil tankers got to be shipped, no matter if they're getting from Venezuela or Brazil or from the Mideast or from Russia, they go across the

time, place, space, these ships and these rail yards, they didn't want to control their own energy, much like the US does. That's why we went to energy dependence. We don't depend on anybody anymore, especially now that Biden's going to apparently block the gas exports. EU wants that. And yes, they want more sustainability. But this is where things happen. It's like, you can't just expect that the next, you know, like, okay, we make a decision and three years later, it's all finished.

You're talking about replacing grid. You're talking about replacing your food systems. You're talking about systemic challenges, opportunities that will take 20, 30, 40 years to realize. Yeah. Right? And that's like, you look at Elon Musk. Tesla's almost 20 years old, right? Is that where China maybe has an advantage? Because I think typically Chinese policy, they think a little more long-term, they're a little more long-term oriented. Yeah.

Well, do you see that? China has amazing ups and amazing challenges. It's got both. It's not so easy. Every province has its own challenge. And the reality is that a lot of these things are absolutely subject to the economy. And there's some areas like Shenzhen that were very proactive on one thing when it was also when it could make the city look better, when they could attract more investment. In many ways, it's no different than many other parts of the world. But

China's economy is definitely different than the EU or the US's economy. So as it's challenged, they may turn away from it. But actually, as we saw in the recent GDP numbers, it was something like 2.2, 2.3, 2.5% of the boost in China's economy last quarter was green energy.

So they found an economy in green energy. Hey, fantastic. Don't build any more airports. 255 solar fields for grid application. Fantastic. And I think that's a little bit different. But that's not just because one guy makes all the rules and everyone listens to him. There's millions of government officials who, at the end of the day, they are making their decisions, how they're going to spend their money, what money do they have,

And you hope they're spending it wisely. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. But these guidelines that come out of the national level get played down to provincial. There's all kinds of different schemes, incentives, regulations. There's all kinds of different enforcement layers involved in that. And some cities like Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, they have more resources. They have more power to deliver. Where somewhere in inner Sichuan might be like, look, we need five more years.

You know, they often give them that space. But I also think one thing about China that people don't see in terms of, say, energy or food or any of these other categories is they're running multiple parallel programs.

Like they had 20 plus carbon markets. They had a bunch of different waste regulations being pilots at in different cities, trying to figure out what's going on. They don't really announce it until they're really close to the end. And so the nice thing is like when they have a household waste separation program, well, they've tested it in 15 different cities, but they had 15 other pilots and they come to a common standard. And, and,

So there's a lot of work that goes into it that's behind the scenes. Where I think in the US, everyone's like, I'm trying to do this. And they're actively trying to, because they have to get voted in. So they have to say everything they're doing. So there's a lot more signaling sometimes. But also the market in the US and its ability to adjust is something that China just doesn't have. Yeah. Right? And there's plus and minus to both. And it depends upon the opportunity, the challenge that's presented. Yeah.

But yeah, when it comes to household waste, China's done a pretty good job improving habits over time. And the US, we did 30 years of campaigns, reduce, reuse, recycle. And we take that green bin and we send it to Asia anyway. What was the point? Yeah, that's a rabbit hole. And we can get down into that later. But I was trying to do a little research during the week and I went down that rabbit hole of

What really happens to your waste? Where does it actually go? Obviously, depending on where you are, where you live. I can tell you. And the whole kind of idea behind recycling was just mind-blowing to me. It's crazy. It's great. It is, in some ways, the greatest grift ever. But also, at the same time, it's one of the best ways it shows, like, education works, right? Because in the States, reduce your user cycle, same for Europe. Put in the green bin, separate. All right, we're all good people.

Where does it go? Well, it goes into a container and it gets sent to China for until about six, seven years ago. Right. And what was insane was I, so I mentioned I used to do these interviews. One of the interviews that we did years ago is in Zhongshan Park. So probably about 2009 or 10, I had an office out there and we interviewed this couple on Anhua Lu in this little park area. And they were, they were doing some separation of waste.

And so we go through all the questions and would you want to do this? Would you want your kid to do this? Like, no, we're doing this so our daughter can go to college. Oh, okay. And there's a husband and wife. Where does she go to school? Fudan Dachwe. She went to Fudan University. Top school in the country, right? For business. It's kind of blown away. Like, how much money can you make from this? We started getting into economics. I don't know how much money they make.

And that sparked basically an 18-month ongoing project where we followed all the waste of Shanghai. And we used scooters and bikes and interviews and GPS devices. And we followed about 80 things through the system. And what was fascinating was at the time, there was no separation. Like there was two bins, but there was one truck. So it didn't really matter. We followed, I don't know, 75, 80 different things, I want to say, in the end.

probably half 50 of that using GPS. I can only remember two things that left the city limits. Everything else went to a factory downtown or in Songjiang or in Fengxian or in Nanhui. This is a very circular economy because you have a manufacturing base in the city itself. So plastic, metal, wood was the only thing that left the city limits. It went to Jiaxing because there's a huge furniture base there.

And it was just fascinating to see, like, it didn't go anywhere. It was consumed locally. And it didn't matter if you had a green bin or not. You had 100,000 people sorting through all this waste, putting it on three-wheeled bicycles, and getting it to all these different locations around the city. And I think we found out there's, like, three different levels of consolidation, depending on the product.

Then you start to realize like, wow, the electronics one is separate from everything else, right? So something like 85 or 90% of the phones, it doesn't get thrown away. It doesn't go to a landfill. It doesn't go to an incinerator. It goes to a secondhand market in some other city.

Same with printers and CRT and like all these things that we just throw out. Even to this day, if you threw out a big TV, it would probably just go somewhere within China, maybe within Asia. It'd be resold. If it was functional, someone plugs it in. And it was just incredible to look like, wow, this is what really happens to our shit. But what about like plastics and paper? What happens to that?

If I throw a paper box out the door, within three days, it's a new paper box in the city, roughly. So this factory you're talking about that's within the city, that's like a reprocessing plant? We found three paper and pulp factories in Shanghai where we're talking massive facilities. And at the time, it was actually really great because this was before the –

And around like, I want to say like six months after we got into this project, maybe a year into it, they started giving incentives to clean up the air. And what you saw was a lot of the facilities were covered up before they used to be pretty open. And so you could see them from Google Earth. You could see all the paper piles. I saw some great pictures. And you call up the factory and be like, all right, we know you take all this stuff in. Where does it go? Yeah.

Like, yeah, we just turn into new boxes, right? Every box either out the window becomes a box. What's the turnaround time where it becomes a new box? Three to five days maybe. It becomes like a new box. Yeah. What happens to like the unusable, like the waste waste? Because it's just so- Incineration. By and large, more and more in Shanghai, it's incineration. There used to be three landfills and three incinerators. I don't know how many landfills there are. I want to say there's two, maybe one now.

And I want to say there's between six and nine incinerators. I know there's definitely six. There could be more. I believe the goal was around 20 to produce around, to produce a significant amount of energy for the city. Like 20 to 30% of the city's energy was going to come from incineration. Went into a couple of the incinerators. Just amazing, man. Like, and this is the thing about this is like,

Just to see these systems at work, it really is something magical. You watch this paper box get on, like any of these, any of these three, the salunchas, the three wheeled cycles outside, they will have 700 kilos of paper per

and cardboard on them with these ladies take these little electric gear and they go like 10k, 20k, 30k, whatever. And like on 11-11, like singles day, the big sales, they'll run two routes, right? And they're just, it's just like, it's sort of up there and like you walk past them and these are just absolute entrepreneurs. They own their corner, they own their little, they own their lane, whatever it may be. They run the shit back and forth and they're

They trade along the way. I'm a paper person, but I've got metal today. I've got a kitchen sink. I've got cans. Now, some things are really subject to the economy. Like if the economy goes to hell in a handbasket, you're going to lose aluminum. You're going to lose glass. You're going to lose some of the plastics, especially like right now because the plastics was over capacity for many years. So the recycled plastics didn't really make economic sense, but they still did it because when China shut the border,

That basically removed all the recycling from the world and they could just consume their own stuff. And then every once in a while, the government was like, okay, we want to do an electronics recycling scheme. Let's start digging stuff out of the landfills. Here's 100 kuai. It's incredible. So how much of our waste goes into... Okay, what percentage of our waste goes to the landfills? Oh, I don't really know those numbers anymore. It used to be...

Pretty significant. I don't remember. I can go dig it out. Yeah, yeah. I mean, the incinerator, I would say, used to be the least amount. Recycling was probably one of the largest by weight. Yeah. Right? The challenge is the recycling stuff tends to be dry. Plastic's very light. Metal's very heavy. But what goes to the landfill used to be very wet, so it was very heavy. So this is actually...

One of the genius things that was done through the household waste separation was they separately created the brown food waste, wet waste. Shilaji. Shilaji, right? And when they did that, we're getting in the weeds here. What that did was it allowed the rest of the waste to remain dry. So when it goes to the incinerator, the incinerator can be super efficient.

Before that, the incinerators here were very inefficient because there's a lot of wet waste going to the incinerator, which slowed down the drying process. So is that the main reason why we have to split the dry and wet? So that'd be one of the main reasons. The other reason was because a lot of that food waste was being sold to farms in the surrounding areas of Shanghai.

for pigs, for compost. Now, the city also has different composting schemes. So they'll take some of this to an aerobic or anaerobic digester. They're turning the compost now. God, I mean, we saw one at Tongji University. It was like two stories tall. Massive. We also saw, we found this guy up in the north. He had this farm. It was like, I can't remember, 60 mu or something.

3,600 square meters or 36,000 square feet roughly of space. He had all these different things being grown and it was rock hard soil, like parts of it. And other parts have been rehabilitated. The city was giving an entire district worth of food waste from all the government canteens. So it wasn't an official program, but it's definitely a pilot. They're trying to figure out like

what's the process here? What's the benefit? If we can get all this canteen food out and we can turn it into a compost, can we rehabilitate the soil? Because if you remember around that time, the soil report came out showing how bad China's soils were, really depleted, really dirty, like all kinds of challenges. Can we start to fix this? They brought in some Nanjing University professors to kind of monitor this. And I was found, I mean, this guy was putting through like

50 tons a week or something of food waste just from the government's canteens. And he was rehabilitating. And they were measuring the fruits. They're measuring all the vegetables to see if they're clean. So they're trying to find solutions in one district. What were the results? Pretty good. As far as I know, they proved it. So it's a lot better? They proved it. Yeah. And so that was the other thing. Like when you separate that wet waste, you'll notice there's a separate truck for the round.

And that was the big structural investment that the city made was they created a whole separate system just for the brown stuff because it's risky for food. It's bad for waste management itself. It creates a lot of methane in the landfills. They remove that and they create a whole nother system just for that. So, but the other stuff really stayed kind of, you know, you had four other bins, you had red, green, black, and blue, right?

And, you know, those kind of stayed a little bit messy. People, you know, they separated pretty well. Like the red was hazardous. So, you know, batteries and stuff. But the rest of it was interesting because they left the informal people in place. So just fill it up, whatever. And there's always an informal guy next to you. He'll either sift through it or you can sell it to him directly. And so they recognize the efficiency of the informal system, but then they also improve the formal system significantly. And so, yeah, but that took time.

I want to say it took 15 years to really bring that whole thing together. Wow. Right. I want to just, just for any listeners that don't live in Shanghai, you know, we have to kind of split our garbage now between dry garbage and wet garbage. But that's, that's not a national thing, right? Because I've gone to other cities in China where they don't do that. Right. Or at least the people I was with weren't doing that. You have to be in cities where they have the ability to afford that infrastructure.

Right. And I know like in Guangzhou and Chengdu and Beijing, they have it. But yeah, if you go to like fourth and fifth tier cities, probably not. Right. I also want to ask you in terms of, I know, again, we're kind of getting into the weeds, but I'm honestly just curious. With incinerators, how much pollutants are the incinerators emitting? Because there's got to be smoke, right, that comes out when you're burning things? Well, there's scrubbers and there's filters that exist to pull a lot of that out.

I'm not a scientist. I've never stuck up anything down on the smokestacks to measure its output. But if I trust the experts, it's not something that we should worry about if it's a well-run incinerator. I see. And I've been to two of them here that were run. All the equipment was European. They had European managers on site. They had well-trained, very transparent. But yeah, I mean, you can go to a lot of open pit incineration around Asia and that's awful. Yeah.

Right? I mean, they're burning plastics, they're burning food, they're burning all kinds of shit. And I've seen that in pretty much every country I've traveled to. I mean, I've kind of had like this weird thing every once in a while. Like I used to fly around obviously to interview these entrepreneurs, but I'd also be like, hey, take me to the landfill. Take me to see the elderly home. Take me to see these things so I can actually understand what the hell I'm talking about. Or I can see like what's the quality. And around 2017, 2018, I realized like Bangkok is a city. The garbage trucks started to pull over and separate their waste.

wow, there's an economy here for this stuff now. Where's it going? Oh, it's going to the factories. So you could see like there becomes like a time and place where these materials have real value, right? And actually one of the best quotes I ever heard, and I say this on a regular basis, like waste is nothing but a misallocated asset. It's not actually waste. You just put it in the wrong spot because you don't value it yet. Now, at some point,

All these cities start to realize like, wow, we're wasting a lot of money. We're wasting a lot of resources. We have the ability to close some loops here. And that's kind of like the birth of the circular economy as a construct. But honestly, if you're going to tell me that any European city observes circular economy better than the average, better than Shanghai,

I want to see your math. I want to see where your stuff goes. And I want to make damn sure nothing's leaving your city limits. Because by and large, you just put it in a box and it goes somewhere else. Right? And that's not circular.

you know, and that was a big problem with that. Actually China highlighted with this was you had a hundred percent recycling certifications because a hundred percent of the stuff that you put into the box was no longer your waste, but it wasn't a hundred percent recyclables. It might've been 20% and the other was garbage. Right. And so they put an end to a lot of that, which is great. Yeah. The, um, I mean, one other thing is about the efficiency of the whole recycling thing. The, um,

In the rabbit hole I was referring to when I was going down, I was on YouTube. So they were talking about- Uh-oh. Uh-oh is right. They were talking about recycling in the United States. Yeah. And growing up there, it wasn't a green bin yet. I think it was a blue bin when I was there. And then the whole recycling campaign and everyone was on board and you split your plastics and glass and paper and all that.

It wasn't until this recent research that, according to what I was listening to, the efficiency in terms of how much of your recycled goods actually gets recycled is huge.

Is mind-blowingly low. 9% or something in plastic. Yeah. It's awful. And most of it still just goes back into the landfills and dumps anyway, even if you put it into the right bins. Yep. And that's because, as they were explaining, the difficulty in terms of the recycling process, like if you recycle a cardboard, like let's say you recycle a pizza box. Yeah. Well, the bottom of the pizza box that's like stained in grease, that's not recyclable.

They were saying like it messes up like the machinery or the process or whatever it is. All these little things. If you have a cardboard box and there's other things in it, that's not paper or cardboard. Getting back to the balance of who should be on board with this stuff and who should not be. This is a great case study, right? Because if you think about it, particularly after China –

They closed the border to these goods coming in. And the reality is it wasn't a recycling ban. They didn't put that in. They put in a standard. It was like a 98% purity standard for a single material. Who put in the standard? China. Okay. And it started with plastics and it moved on to other things. It wasn't a complete ban. It was like the first year was like plastics. Okay. Because you're talking about China buying most of the US garbage, right? Right. Okay.

it was under the guise that these were recyclables that were valuable to the manufacturers. So we'll keep it going. Then they realized it's just a bunch of garbage and the manufacturers will still buy it because yeah, it's cheap. Like why not? But then they would take all the waste and like put it back into the Chinese system. And like China's like, why should I be burying American trash? Right. Okay. That's a, that's a solid question to ask. The problem is to kind of get into this is the,

Many of the U.S. municipal systems at that point, except for San Francisco and New York, I'm not even sure New York qualified, but San Francisco definitely made it through. They could keep sending their trash to China because they slowed down the lines. They were really careful what they put in there. They met the standard. No problem. St. Louis, Missouri, no. And they stopped collecting it. Just as a city, it makes no sense.

So think about it. You spent 30, 35, 40 years telling people to reduce, reuse, recycle, reduce, reuse, recycle, and now you're going to back that up. Think about how much distress that would create within government. So sometimes you just have to keep going and just not say anything because you might undermine the wider picture of this. And for me, sometimes it's okay to do that if you're building a system that

that you're creating awareness around that may not be ready, but when it is, you need engagement. You need to kind of pre-sell it. And any attempts to go against that are vastly detrimental. I mean, just look at COVID, right? Like how many flip-flops did it take for people to like really start just distrusting their doctors? And it's going to take a generation for people to unwind that. And I think

There's a time and place for some of this, but it's very dangerous when you get it wrong. It's very dangerous. And that's also why I think just stop telling people to reduce, reuse, recycle. Just build a system that does it like these informal recyclers. Or you have a complex that's a waste separation place.

You just take one bin and you just do it. Now, of course, contamination is an issue. I get it. But that's where technology can come in. And I've seen some great technologies now. They'll even break down shoes. Shoes are one of the hardest things to recycle in the world. And it is a massive problem. But I've seen a few pilots recently, one in Hong Kong and one in the UK, where they're able to make a lot of progress. And maybe in 10 years, they'll have it 100% and at scale. And at that point, I don't care if people...

actively recycle the shoes to get a green sticker and feel better. All I care about is, is the back end of that shoot pointed at that machinery to actually capture those materials and without the thought of the consumer and having to sell them, can it be closed? And if it can, then we can move on to another issue that's important. But until then, we're fighting over

You don't participate, so you're not a good person. Or your system's not ready anyway. It's all bullshit. And that's the debate that gets in the way of progress. And so just correct me if I'm wrong from understanding what you're saying in terms of the danger that comes from the debate around that is that even though if the system is massively inefficient, it's dangerous to go back on it

Because the next time you want to implement something that might actually work, you need people to buy in. And if you destroy their trust with this thing, their chances of buy-in might decline next time you try to do something. Think about if we have another pandemic of the same size, scale, and deadliness of COVID in the next three years. What's the reaction going to be by the average person now?

And how is that going to be different than when we started this four years ago? Yeah. And I'm not making any judgments of anyone who had any of the spectrum of reactions to it. I can definitely tell you people will be a lot less afraid of it because not because it's less deadly or less whatever, because of the distrust that was built in on both sides of that spectrum that,

The doctor's flip-flopped. That's actually just science. This person's trying to force you into doing it. It's going to be a lot less. And that's where I think the danger comes in. Because again, we haven't built systems that just remove that debate and just make it easier, faster, better, safer, whatever. Yeah. So I have a few questions and I think it's helpful to go into some of the weeds to...

to uncover like the nuance behind this, right? And then through looking at some of the smaller details, then be able to zoom out and see different patterns. So like hopefully the listeners will find this line of thought interesting, if not just that like we don't know a lot of things, like we don't know what we don't know, right? So I wanna, first I wanna just clarify a couple of observations first.

So it sounds like from a recycling, reusing point of view, a lot of things are renewable in that sense. Like you can just keep reusing these things sort of like in a way indefinitely.

In the sense that, okay, if it's like, you know, if it's like way sludgy, whatever, then you can feed it to the animal. I mean, at a high level, there's going to be some dilution effects, right? Like at every level. I can talk about that. Yeah. You're going to lose some of the, like, you know, whatever I eat, I shit out, you know, give to the pigs. Like maybe it's not a hundred percent at every level. Right. But let's say that there's some level of efficiency and then with the paper boxes and electronics, whatever. Right. Yeah. And then you said, you know,

In some of these cities, especially the more entrepreneurial ones, you've got an informal. So like even if no one separated anything, there would still be like a secondary tertiary market for people to like collect the boxes and then resell it. And so like there's a whole economy sort of built around it. So-

Part of it is relying on some human behaviors just to build some initial filtering. But essentially, if we had the right technology, then you just throw everything into the trash. And then ultimately, we could reclaim like 98% of it. And then the benefit being that you have the circular economy. And like, I imagine that the landfill sites are like, you want to minimize that because there's only a certain size. Yeah, it's a lot of land. Yeah. Yeah.

So, like, so that's the thing. And then maybe we can send it to the space or whatever. Okay. So, I kind of get that. And that's part of this whole sustainability thing, the better we can do. But it sounds like there's also lots of variation because in some places they don't even have any internal mechanism. So, then they have to ship it out to China and outsource, basically outsource that. Okay. So, that's, I think that's interesting. And that's one piece of it. Now, like zooming out a little bit. So, I'm thinking about

So much of this is driven by incentives. Yeah. What we've been talking about is, okay, if I can make a great product that's better than the existing product, but it's sustainable, then at the consumer level, there's incentive to buy it. But I know it's hard because even as you pointed out and corrected us in the EV market, it isn't purely that we built a better product. It's like they've actually had to create external incentives. So if you look at the consumer level, the market level, the economic level,

the government level. I mean, it's a complex, you know, like it's almost like systems thinking, right? Yeah. And they're integrated. Yeah. And they're all integrated. There's an interplay of the elements. And even within a certain segment, like consumers versus government, like the government and like Hubei is going to act differently to the government than in Chicago. And so, like, but so much of this is based on incentives, right? So I'm curious, like, what's the most powerful catalyst for

In all of this, right? Is it science and technology? Like if we find a way to extract carbon out of the atmosphere, is that like maybe the most powerful catalyst? Or is it like the policymakers where they do this carbon thing and like the EU where they're trying to maybe incentivize companies to build more? Catalyst for what? Catalyst for allowing this interdependent system to basically...

start synchronizing with itself, right? Like, so if you implement a very powerful, let's say in an ideal world, I, you know, I issue some mandate and that basically ripples through the whole system and it just starts, it's like a massive clock and everything starts going together, right? But I see, because the incentive, like, okay, I can incentivize, I can get consumers to do certain things with certain campaigns and that has a certain level of impact, but we just saw that that's not going to be the,

the end result because human behaviors are so, and then the government itself can, you know, like you said, you know, you kind of made the argument that, you know, China was trying to be more self-sufficient with energy and that's why they issued the 40 or 50 regulations. Right. So like, do you feel like the catalysts have to kind of occur at all the different levels and then get this clock sort of spinning together? Or is there like one sort of magic bullet where it's like, we just figured we just,

get that thing, we can get the whole system moving in the right direction and it'll self-correct. I think it depends on the problem that you want to solve for. Or just like fucking up the environment basically, right? Yeah, but how? We fuck up the environment from overfishing, but also from throwing so much plastic in there that the fish now have plastic in their body. It's like, what? Like there's so many things happening at once. Okay, just the warming piece then. The warming piece. I mean, that's an energy problem. That's a cow burping problem. That's a...

That's a permafrost melting problem. This is why I love sustainability. It is a never-ending, interesting construct to look at things. And you're talking about the warming problem. One of the biggest problems right now is the permafrost is now starting to melt. And as that happens, it kicks off methane. Now, methane is a far more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon.

But fortunately, it dissipates faster than carbon in terms of its impact, right? Now, I don't know the exact numbers. I've heard different things. But I had a friend who sent me this, and he doesn't believe in climate change. He doesn't believe that humans can do anything. Okay, fine. He sends me this great article about the role of permafrost.

And the role of water, particularly in how methane is coming out through, you know, from the bottom going up into the atmosphere. And that's becoming one of our biggest kind of tipping points that we need to talk about. Now, actually, I emailed the scientist behind this because he was like, see, we can't even do it. It's all blah, blah, blah. And I was like, yeah, but see, we were talking about this 15 years ago. If we don't slow this down and the permafrost starts too, this is what's going to happen. I wasn't wrong.

He's just kind of looking at things today. And I was kind of like going back and forth with the scientists. They're like, they just, this climate to weather, climate to weather. It's like, no, these things are, you can't predict to the nth degree, but you can show where things are headed. And then you get into these conversations around what can we do? But you're kind of like, but from whose lens? From the guy who doesn't believe and doesn't care? Or from the person who's seen this 15 years ago?

This is where we're headed. Or from the scientists, like this is what I found today. And then you have like the technical solutions, which systems we need to change. But if you want to like to know the most powerful way to action that gets everyone involved, I say either the loss of something completely like water or the cost of something rising that creates a behavioral change. And I'll talk about the second one. In China, we looked at the price of pork for pork.

from like the 1970s until recently with the amount of pork that was eaten per capita and then the pricing of through it. And what was fascinating is the price of pork has risen roughly, again, I don't have the numbers, like eight to 10 kilos, maybe 12 kilos per capita per year at the country level from like the 1970s to the 30s for the whole country. Might be upper 20s, lower 30s. Like three times. Like three times. But if you just take that macro number, what does that mean?

What should I do to fix that? If I think that that's a problem that's feeding into soy, that's feeding into water, that's feeding into antibiotics in the rivers, like we have a problem because we're eating too much pig. Okay, how do we solve that problem from a consumer level? Well, which consumer are we talking about? China. There's a lot of consumers in China, right? Let's just do a basic split. Rural and urban consumers.

If the average urban rural consumer was eating 8 to 10 in 1979, 1980, how many kilos on average do you think they're eating now? Take a guess. If they were eating 8 to 10, how much are they eating now? And the average of the country went up to like 30. So the question is like which grew faster, rural or urban? Right. I have no idea. But they were probably past the average of the country. Rural grew faster. Okay. So rural grew faster.

And how fast, if they were at eight to 10, where do you think they are now? I mean, the average for China is at 30. Okay. Eight to 10 was for rules, right? That was total. Well, everyone started kind of off of the same. I think it's also, okay. So, but like, let's step back a little bit. And like, I mean, as a thought, like just thinking through. So it's also based on like, where the standard of living is.

Because I'm just assuming that if you ate more meat, you became wealthier. Because China was really, really, really poor back then. Right? So let me take my statement back for just a moment and I put it through this filter. Yeah. So basically, where did the standard of living grow faster? Okay. Like urban versus rural? Because I think that is...

the best proxy I can think of on the spur of the moment for like meat consumption, not just pork, but any kind of meat consumption. So I'm curious, like, what do you think, Justin? - I would agree with you in terms of you're talking about the rate of change and the degree of change, I would say rural areas, but we're talking about per capita, right? Not as an absolute number. - Per capita. - Yeah, because then a lot of people migrated to the cities. - Yeah, but what I'm thinking now-- - So who eats more? - Well, hold on. - The person who stayed in the rural?

Or the person who migrated from rural to urban. Hold on. Oh, wait. The person who stayed in rural. China went from like 30% urban to more than 60% now. Yeah. 55, 58%. So it was actually that trend that drove a lot of the increase.

So what do you, on average, the average rural... Then the urban people eat more. Yeah, so if you're saying I drove that... Okay, so like... We're like three glasses in right now, so... No, but here's another, the other angle is that... It's like driving in the half right now. Like the people in the rural... Okay, first of all, if you move from rural to urban, it's because you can make more money in the urban areas. That's the fucking reason why you move. So now you're an urban consumer. Yeah. I want to know the people that stayed behind. How much are they eating now? So I changed my answer because...

first of all we're doing everything we can not to answer you no no no I'm actually like very lucid and reasoning through this and if there's a flaw in my logic then you'll be able to Rich will be able to correct me

But you're giving us some clues, right? Number one, if more people move to the urban areas, why do they move so they can make fucking more money, right? So if they can make more money, they should be able to eat more meat, right? And so, and if all the people in the balance of people move to urban, then that's also a proxy for they had a disproportionate impact on the whole system. So I would say that the urban people ate more meat and more pork. How much do you think they eat per capita in the urban?

And so what's the breakdown between rural and urban now? 60-30? Roughly 60-40. Okay. Per capita? 80-100? 80-100, okay. What's a rural person eat if they're at 8-10? 15-20? Okay. Rural person, I would go in the 20s. Okay. Maybe 20-30. All right. No, no, no, no. I would go above 30. No, around 30. I'll just say 30. All right. Urban areas...

Where were they at before? What was it like before? Roughly the same. 8 to 10, 10, 12, somewhere in there. I'm going to be so wrong. Maybe not quite as high as 80, but yeah. All right. I would say it leveled off. I don't like... I'm of the mind that the pork consumption probably didn't rise as much in the urban cities just because it was probably already pretty high. Okay. I'll just throw out number 60. Okay. So, hey, you're kind of... You're at one end and he's on the other. So...

Broad stroke. The rural, I think there's somewhere around 15 to 18 right now. Okay. Over time. So we were pretty good on that one. And the urban is somewhere around 60. Yeah. Because when I thought about my number again, because you said the three times, then I'd have to dial mine down a little bit. But what was interesting is, you remember the blue pig ear disease? We had a real culling of the herd, like in the 20 teens. Price of pork went up like 20, 30%. There was a drop off.

It was the year of the pig, actually. It was a huge peak and then it fell because price. They're very sensitive to price. Rural didn't really change much because they only eat it a couple times a year or a little bit. They don't eat it with every meal. It's not sprinkled into everything. They eat it around certain events. And so it just showed like price, economy has a huge impact on consumers and how they spend. And so if I'm going to come down to like one thing, if I'm focused on one thing right now,

And what that takes us forward is the price of water. Going back to food, water, energy nexus. The price of water rises globally. The price of energy rises globally. The price of food rises globally. The price of industry rises globally. The price of real estate, all these things. And what that means is

you'll see consumers, you'll see industries start spending differently. Now, sometimes they'll just stop spending and we have a recession, right? But oftentimes what you're going to see is they're not going to buy fast fashion. They're going to buy fashion that lasts longer. They're going to buy more durable goods. They're going to eat less meat and more vegetables. Hey, that's good for the vegan vegetarian community who've been trying to influence all these people. In reality, it's just a 30% rise in meat. And

And you can see that rise of beef when the price of beef went up, but more chicken was sold because as the beef consumption came down, people swapped to something else that was less water efficient or sorry, more water efficient, more food efficient, more economical. And so what you see is economics for me, I think is ultimately the thing that drives all this. I got to pick one thing, but in reality, it's just like, it's so complicated to get there. And then the other nice thing about when the economics around some of the stuff changes, right?

the investment thesis around the solutions that are currently being subsidized radically change, right? I mean, as our resources grow scarce, the reusability of our resources grows, right? Or the investment thesis around that grows. And that's where I think things get really interesting. And when that happens, you don't need people to buy in. You need people to be

basically delivered the same reasons why they come to a city now ironically enough one of the best keynotes i ever gave was what does it mean to be better city better life in front of like this like 2010 expo right better city better life and it came down to like there's like five things that a city has to do to attract people number one is jobs great urban planning quality of life

Security, like when you buy something that there's a law to support that. Or physical security, there's a police force, there's a fire, there's these things. And the last one was environmental. You need to have a good environment. And when these things wobble, people start to leave the city. So you think like quality of life, a lot of migrants that came to Shanghai, they don't feel at home. They go home. What does home mean? Well, it could be Sichuan. Could be actually Mianyang, their hometown. Doesn't matter. I think that's just the challenge. And I think we're also...

We often look through a lens that's too short in terms of the time arc. If we look generationally, we look 100, 200 years, we're making a lot of progress. We're always going to face challenges, but we're still kind of on the path. And the question is, how do we take the best ideas to move forward? What are the tools to get there? What's the subsidy required to get started? But if that subsidy works and that helps make the thesis work, what's the better later?

And this is where things just get tricky with sustainability. It's everything. But focus on something. I can focus on everything because I really enjoy that. But a lot of people just need to focus on food. And within food, they need to focus on getting people off meat. Well, for some people, it's going to be plant-based foods. For others, it's going to be the price of water. For others, it's just going to be a new plant technology. There's so many ways to solve the same problem

Because the same problem has a thousand different inputs, right? And I remember I was teaching at Fudan one time and I had a, I just put water in the middle. And I started to do this root analysis. Everything's wrong with water. And we filled up like three whiteboards with this stuff. And it's like, figure out where you want to get started. What's the one thing you want to solve in there? And that's what we did with the watches in Sichuan.

We looked at what are the challenges that families face when they're separate from each other. We had at least 75 different things that manifest. You can't solve them all. You got to start with one. So we start with communication and that solved a few of them. Right. And I think that's, if I'm like kind of three glasses into this, trying to bring all, it's like, it's very complicated, requires a lot of thought, requires a lot of focus. And as Paul Shapiro said, who's the plant-based entrepreneur, he,

You have to believe that if you're going to be ramming your head against the wall, that the wall's going to crack before your head. You've got to have that patience and that belief that you're on the right path. But he's not so religious that he believes he has the only solution. And if there's one thing that culturally I get a little bit frustrated with by my sustainability peers is that they all think they're going to save the world.

Actually, we are as a community going to address challenges to move us a little bit further. But nothing needs to be saved. It just needs to be improved upon, reduce some risk. But again, it all comes down to the people. And if you're not making people's lives better, whatever it is you're selling is not going to be supported. And that could be by consumers, that could be by governments, by anybody. I'd like to ask, okay, so...

It sounds like this problem is so complicated that there isn't really like no one has, you know, a clear answer to the whole thing. Like we have clues to it and like there's no guarantee of success, right? But there's no guarantee of failure either. And so we have to like break things down to the point where we can individually act on it depending on who we are. Because if I'm a CEO, I could do certain things. Yeah.

And it really has to just align on like my understanding of the situation, the people that are advising me. And then maybe I stop eating meat, maybe I, whatever it is, there's no guarantee. Maybe like we find out that like some of the assumptions we've made on what will actually help the environment will actually through this whole ripple effect, actually come back and hurt things. You know what I'm saying? Like we don't know, right? But let's just assume that

we say, okay, we each work on some of these things, what those core problems are, whatever, and then just let the chips fall where they may, right? So, I mean, I think you can, like, I can subscribe to that belief just based on the information I have, and I'm not going to go down rabbit holes or whatever, but I think, like, you know,

there are certain things we need to do, like buy an EV, eat vegan, whatever it is, right? But I did have one question, which is who are the top thinkers in this field at this moment?

Who maybe have the depth and the breadth in terms of their thinking that might be able to give us insight into the more holistic strategy, right? Because we can each do things. We can each turn off the light. I mean, there's just things that we can do great and we think these are generally the right thing to do. Whatever, right? But are there top thinkers in this area that are really looking at it from a mastermind point of view?

And maybe like at some point we identify a fix to all this stuff that is more. So I want to address a little bit of this and just say, in a way, part of this is just being clear about what problem you're trying to solve for. And being okay with the fact that you might create a new problem in an area that isn't the problem you're solving for.

So you solve a water problem, but you create an energy inefficiency problem, right? But that's somebody else's issue. Now, I'm not saying that you need to bake that in to everything you do, but oftentimes I think we're trying to solve, and I've seen this in a lot of companies and a lot of entrepreneurs, you're trying to solve for too many things at once. Just solve for one thing and be unapologetic that you're trying to fix that one thing

But then also be open to the idea that once you solve that, you can then take a step towards something else later. Right? And I think this is another problem with the movement as it were. It's so perfect. We don't solve everything. We're failing. Failure is guaranteed.

You're going to fail to deliver whatever it is you're aiming to. The question is, are you learning the lessons of that failure to improve upon and deliver on something better the next round? Is the plant-based market going to learn, build new products, capture market, and have a measurable impact on animal welfare? I would hope.

That if there was one issue they were trying to solve, it would be animal welfare first. Because that's something that you can all agree upon. Right? Like I think that moves people. Or it could be we're going to solve an economic issue because we have a drought in one of our major growing areas. And this is one way to offset it for a while. Just being clear about what you want to solve for. And again, not being so rabid that you have the only solution to this problem. I think it helps that. Are there some thinkers?

I've got two podcasts around this, and I love every conversation I've had. Very few people, I'd say, absolutely have their minds around all of this, but a couple of them definitely stand out. I'll just call out, I spoke with Richard Damania, who's a chief economist at the World Bank for Sustainability.

And man, that was a great conversation about economics and how you make decisions, timelines, valuing materials. And I spoke to the head of data science for the International Migration Office at the UN. And she connected some dots that I was like, okay, we talk about human migration. We've heard a lot about migrants crossing our borders.

But have you thought about the animals that are migrating around and how they're migrating differently because of climate change and how their migration results in conflict because farmers are watching these animals come across their fields at the wrong time and they're eating their crops? And so,

I won't say there's a lot of people that necessarily I have replicas of. They definitely exist. But what I appreciate is the people who can see big picture about the challenge and they can see how different things are moving around and they're not blanket state. They don't have blanket statements for what's wrong, what's going to fix it or who's at fault. They really are nuanced in how they think about some of these things. The most engaging thing

Proactive, inspiring people tend to honestly be the entrepreneurs for me. Not because they're right, but because they've blocked all of it out. They're focused on one thing and they believe they've got an idea to solve a problem that they understand. I'm not saying they understand it. We talked about the plant-based movement. I don't think they understood the problem they're trying to solve, but they might have had a tool that they believed was important. There's a mismatch. The next generation, I think, will be much better off.

But I've talked to some great government officials who really get this. I've talked to some amazing corporate people who get this. But within each of those kind of constructs comes the, I've been at this for 30 years. I have not made as much progress as I'm hoping for, but I'm going to keep going. And I think that's the thing is no matter what their perspective is, just the ability to say, I'm going to try and make this a little bit better

I'm going to try and hack the system. I'm going to try and create a regulation. I'm going to drive innovation. I appreciate all the perspectives in part because 20 years ago, I thought that I had something that if everyone listened to, the world would be safer. And the reality is like, it's not me. It's going to be a community of people who are each attacking this thing from different angles and taking little bites and we'll make real progress. And I also, I now definitely fully

appreciate the pain that others are feeling. And it's my job in many ways to try and address that through my work and through be my podcast or the entrepreneurs I support or whatever, but also not taking total ownership over it as if it's my fault because I failed, but to be focused on where I think I can add value. And yeah, I think that's kind of it. Like

Yeah. It's a process. We are making a lot of progress as humans. We've also got a lot of challenges ahead. The next five to 10 years is going to be absolute batshit crazy for many different aspects, politically, economically, environmentally, socially. And I think you just have to find a path to go through it and do what you can to deliver something better in your work, in your family, whatever. And separate yourself from people who say that you are

X, Y, or Z, right? I mean, it's fascinating. And I'll leave my last word, but Justin will have, I think, something also probably usually pretty powerful to say. But I think- No, you just put all this pressure on me to say something powerful. I had nothing- Let me release you the pressure. Well, no, I think-

He'll come up with something, right? I literally have nothing to say. If he shuts up after this one and I mic drop it, then it's like, then it's unprecedented because like he's, he's got, he's always got a bigger mind. I've done my job. But I, I would say, I mean, obviously there's so much to comment on. I mean, we can do, we could have like a conversation after just to talk about what we talked about, but.

You know, I think you're leaving us with some optimism, right? I think Steven Pinker's written a lot about this. It's just like, you've got to zoom out. Ultimately, it's like, you've got to get into the weeds, but you've got to zoom out. And if you look at the overall arc of humankind, there's reason to be optimistic because there's so many times probably in history where we were like, this is it, right? We're done. And so, like, we can only hope.

you know, for the best. And I think the second piece is that through the lens of all the work that you've done with your charities, communities, sustainability, all the people that you've met, all the learnings that you have, there are so many lessons that have been sprinkled into the conversation today that can, that can be applied, you know, when we're trying to solve the big problems versus like trying to just let go and chill the fuck out. Like even you, like,

someone with such a broad perspective is not immune to having these things impact you at a personal level, not being able to let go, right? Because we, as humans, we want to control everything and we want to like, I mean, I'm like, okay, who are the top thinkers? It's like, I want to go solve this shit, right? And I think we go through this emotional journey in our podcast as well. And then in the very end,

Like someone with a little bit more reason than myself was like, okay, well, let's zoom out. Let's chill the fuck out. It's just a show and we can't solve everything. But I think that every time we talk through these, these connective tissue of like lessons, whether it's like building habits, focus, letting go, like,

Not trying to solve for everything, solving for one thing. And then if that opens up another can of worms, then you take that, you know, you take that road when it comes. And so I feel like, like our listeners will listen to the show. And if they made it to this point, it's like, there's probably one or two things they want to take away from it that they probably can apply, you know, at a day-to-day level.

So anyways, that's usually my last word. I usually have a last word on this show. I mean, my last word, but I don't know what Justin has to say. You were very beautiful, very eloquent. I mean, I've just been sitting here in awe in terms of listening to you, Richard, and absorbing this because honestly, like I said in the beginning before we started recording, I'm really much –

Right now, just in a learning mindset in terms of what this whole discussion is about. And it's so mind-numbing in terms of how complex it is. And I hate to say complex because I think that goes against the very ethos that we're talking about in terms of, hey, let's break it down into actionable steps, take one thing. And when you pose it as like, oh, this thing is so super complex, it kind of turns people off in terms of thinking about it in the first place. Yeah, sure. Yeah.

But it is. And so right now, I'm just thinking, I want to talk to you again. I want this almost to be even a recurring podcast we can do because this topic deserves to be talked about continuously. And there's always going to be things. Let's put my logo right there. Yeah, put your logo right there. Put a big picture, portrait of you. No, because there's so many more things I want to get into. And I don't want to open up those can of worms now, but we can do that next time.

But yeah, I mean, I think first of all is thank you. I'm just starting to learn so much about this space and I'm going to be thinking about it all night tonight and probably for weeks to come, honestly. But real quick. Does that mean that you're going to binge watch my podcast? I already started doing that. That's awesome. But talking about your podcast, where can people find you?

The easiest way to Google my name, Rich Brubaker, but mission driven podcast, sustainable ambassador podcast. The URLs are co-responsibility.com or mission driven XYZ. Easiest ways to find me. And look, guys, I think these topics often can be really big.

And very judgmental about what you are or are not doing and what you can or can't do. That's why I try to disarm it. It is big. Don't worry about it. Find one thing. And just start with that. And just be outside. Like, what is it that I do when I get on an airplane and I take off my, I just show that I'm open for a conversation which shows empathy to somebody else. That's all it shows. And a willingness to connect with someone that I don't even know. And I'm telling you nine times out of ten, I realize like, holy shit, we know the same people.

Like we are a community of people and that just opens up the next step. And then, yeah, I mean, I think for some people you need to shut out the things you can't control and that's fine. But maybe sometimes think about what's the impact you're having on those things you can't control and then what chaos are you creating or what opportunities you're creating.

But again, like just make progress where you can. And, you know, if you can get to the gym today, great. I'm not going to because I just had three shots of whiskey, but I enjoyed it and it's okay. Right. Because they've proven that community is just as good for you for your heart health as, you know, as a glass of wine or, you know, going to the gym. So again, like you make progress where you can and it opens up conversations and I'm happy to come back anytime. Awesome. I'll leave it with one more thing.

Eric did this right. I will have one more last thing to say. But I just want to say, it's going back to my point, and I just want to re-emphasize in terms of taking it down to the individual level, because we're not all CEOs. Not all of us are going to be innovative entrepreneurs working on this. We're just individuals trying to survive in our daily lives. And so I think your idea of just, hey, just

focus on one thing. What is one thing you might have more interest in or more passion about in your daily life that you can start adjusting to help make a better impact? And, you know, for example, if you're, again, into water, maybe use less water or be more thoughtful about how you use water. And just focus on that one thing. And if we each can do that, maybe collectively, you know, there will be an impact made. Yeah.

So, I mean, that's what I'm taking away from it. It's like, what is that one thing I can change in my lifestyle that could at least help in some way? What I love what you said, and I want to just kind of put a wrinkle onto it, is that you choose that one thing.

And what you've taught us, Rich, is that it doesn't have to be necessarily the ultimate be-all and end-all right thing. You just have to think that it's the right thing and you get started. And it's more about building the habit of wanting to take action on something. And then you do it, like you drink, not drink less water, we should drink more water, but you use less water. But not out of water bottles. And then maybe the science changes and all of a sudden it's like, okay, you should do this.

And, but you have to give it enough time to kind of build up that muscle memory and you do it. And it's the fact that you're willing to make a commitment. That's the most important thing. And then what it is that you actually do, if it's right or wrong, the community will help you, you know, adjust that. So, but ultimately like it,

Like the two lessons, and I think it's great, like, because you had so many mic drop moments and sound bites. Like, I mean, literally, I was like taking notes. I'm like, I'm going to quote you. Podcasting. But really, it's just like community and then commitment. Like, just keep those as your two concepts. I even think like if there was one thing I would tell people to do that ubiquitously every single person in the world could do, just be more open to people. Yeah. Right? I don't care if you're like, I'm from Missouri.

Some of the best conversations I have are with Republicans who I don't agree with because I listen to them about the challenges they face in their world

things they want to see, da-da-da-da-da. And then I try to map that to who they believe is going to help them. And I don't judge them for what they're going through. I may not agree with them in terms of who they're choosing or the actions they take in their life around COVID or politicians, but I at least try to understand who they are and I communicate with them without making them feel like idiots, assholes, degenerates, whatever. Same thing on plastic. Same thing on energy uses. Same thing on obesity. It doesn't matter. And then also that offers the opportunity to like,

How can I help you? Because that's what community is all about. And the fact is, I think that's probably maybe the biggest problem we face is just we're kind of splitting apart because we all think that we know what we're supposed to do. Maybe we actually don't all know. Maybe we don't know anything we're supposed to do except for find ways to help each other. So if you can't make, you know, plastic your thing, just make people your thing and you're surrounded by them.

I have zero to add to that. Eric, I hope you have zero to add to that because that was perfect. Cheers, Richard. Thank you so much. Thank you. That was beautiful. I hope you get that clink on the microphones. Okay. Well, that was an amazing conversation. Thank you once again, Richard. I'm Justin. I'm Eric. And you just spent three hours with two Republicans. Good job. Yeah, you really pissed us off today. No, I'm just kidding. Now let's talk about some policies.

That would have been the ultimate mic drop moment if we were really Republicans. But we're not. Be good. Be well. Peace.