How can a business be both profitable and a force of positive change in the world? Most entrepreneurs think they need to choose one or the other. But this isn’t true! More and more businesses are seeing the possibility of doing both at the same time, without sacrificing profit for impact.
One vital area of environmental impact is plastic waste. We produce 300 million tons of plastic waste every year, and 14 million tons end up in our oceans.
In this episode, Maria McDonald from United By Blue dives into how environmental impact is at the core of their business model. She talks about their one-for-one model, the Quit Single Use policy, and vendor and manufacturer agreements. Maria imparts her journey and shares the possibility of businesses changing the world one less plastic at a time.
If you want to learn how you can balance profitability and environmental impact for your business, tune in to this episode now!
3 reasons why you should listen to the full episode:
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How can a business be both profitable and a force of positive change in the world? Most entrepreneurs think they need to choose one or the other. But this isn’t true! More and more businesses are seeing the possibility of doing both at the same time, without sacrificing profit for impact.
One vital area of environmental impact is plastic waste. We produce 300 million tons of plastic waste every year, and 14 million tons end up in our oceans.
In this episode, Maria McDonald from United By Blue dives into how environmental impact is at the core of their business model. She talks about their one-for-one model, the Quit Single Use policy, and vendor and manufacturer agreements. Maria imparts her journey and shares the possibility of businesses changing the world one less plastic at a time.
If you want to learn how you can balance profitability and environmental impact for your business, tune in to this episode now!
3 reasons why you should listen to the full episode:
Episode Highlights
Resources
Enjoyed This Podcast?
Write a review and share this with your friends.
Connect With the Profit Reimagined
Ready to transform your purpose into an impactful business financial story, profit, and joy? Schedule a chat with the team.
We came to the realization a couple of years ago that our whole company's purpose is designed to reduce and clean up waste in the world, and our mission is to clean up oceans and waterways, so we decided to set this pledge. We call it the QSU pledge, Quit Single Use pledge, and we formally announced our intentions to remove all single use plastic from our company operations, which was a really large undertaking.
Christina Sjahli:Welcome back to Her CEO Journey. In this podcast series, we are featuring B Corp certified businesses who are actively working to reduce their plastic footprint. Last month, we featured two Canadian B corps, Unscented company in Episode 191, and Life Without Plastic in Episode 192. In today's episode, we are in conversation with Maria McDonald, the director of sustainability at United By Blue. Growing up in Indonesia, it was common seeing rivers and ocean litter with trash, while the community who lives around river and ocean, we're using the water for their day to day living. The founder of United By Blue, Brian Linton, grew up overseas, and he saw the same thing I did. He wanted to create a company that had the system and infrastructure to organize and host cleanups integrated into the company from the get go, so they could accomplish something that would have a measurable positive impact on the environment, and scale the good work with the company as it grew. Today, United By Blue has successfully removed four and a half millions have crashed from the waterway. Yet they continue to question is a world without waste possible? Now, let's find out the answer from our conversation with Maria McDonald. Maria McDonald, welcome to Her CEO Journey. It is really a pleasure to have you here today.
Maria McDonald:Thank you, Christina. I'm excited to be here. Thanks for having me.
Christina Sjahli:You are currently the director of sustainability and impact for United By Blue, which is an outdoor lifestyle brand with a focus on waterway conservation. Before we're going deeper into United By Blue and your role, let's start with your own journey. How did you get here?
Maria McDonald:Yeah, so well guilty as charged with your description as me, and my story on how I got here really starts with my background in environmental and climate science, that's my academic background. I kind of joined that field because I always had a really strong personal connection to the natural world and the outdoors, and I was shaped by experiences that connected me to nature. So I knew that I wanted some sort of career in environmental or climate science and kind of the fight against climate change. However, I thought that that meant the career opportunities available to me would be in the nonprofit world or in the government world or in the policy world. Those were the groups, the sectors of our society that were traditionally working on environmental issues. I then learned about this concept of B corps and sustainable businesses and organizations with a four profit model, using business as the driver for positive change in the world. For me, that really clicked, it made a lot more sense to me to have, instead of isolating our society where businesses are on one part of society doing the polluting and the extracting, and whatnot, and then nonprofits are kind of cleaning up the mess, that didn't really resonate with me. It resonated to have a business that was trying to operate in a cleaner way and kind of use capitalism to drive change. Capitalism is really good at a couple of things. It's good at innovation, iIt's good at speed, and I thought if you could attach environmental solutions to a capitalist model, then that could scale. So that's kind of what brought me into the business sustainability world, the world of B corps and eventually, United By Blue.
Christina Sjahli:Before you join United By Blue, you did study the interaction between biological and cultural diversity in the Amazon rainforest and Galápagos Islands.
Maria McDonald:That wasn't a part of my academic journey. That experience was my first real interaction with how different cultures interact with natural resources and with things like waste and pollution. Those ecosystems that you mentioned in Ecuador are some of the world's most delicate and biodiverse ecosystems, and you really can see how global environmental issues such as plastic waste or air pollution can affect those really delicate ecosystems. Even if the problem isn't coming right from within Ecuador, you can find plastics and trash from all over the world on these remote islands that should have no business being there and kind of seeing how the world is all really interconnected, especially through natural systems. Our pollution in one area of the world is affecting these really delicate ecosystems as well.
Christina Sjahli:So what is it about United By Blue when you apply for the job and got accepted that really intrigued you to join aside from the fact that they are a B Corp?
Maria McDonald:Well, I worked my way up through the ranks of United By Blue. I started out actually on our customer experience team, but I always had my eyes on this department, that department that I oversee currently. What intrigued me about it is United By Blue runs on a one for one business model, so similar to other larger brands, such as TOMS shoes, or Warby Parker, we also do the buy one give one model. But for us, it's for every product sold through the business, we remove one pound of trash from an ocean waterway or coastline. That one for one business model and that mission was really intriguing to me. I think TOMS shoes was the first big buy one give one brand, and they were really popular in my, kind of, coming of age, career wise. That was my first real kind of example of seeing a sustainable business, or a purpose driven business in action. I still didn't really have the words to understand the B Corp movement or the Sustainable Business movement, but it was cool that that was something different. This business that was giving back as much as they were selling product. United By Blue, overseas, or executes their one for one business model in housed, instead of keeping the societal roles separate, where the business sells products, and the nonprofits clean up waste. What I liked about United By Blue is they do both in one organization, so the business is not only designing and manufacturing and selling products, but it's also has a department dedicated to cleaning up beaches and rivers and ocean. That was my first role in this department was actually out on the beaches and the river fronts like picking up trash myself, working with volunteers, weighing the trash, coordinating with partners, and that really tangible environmental work being conducted by a business really kind of hooked me. I'm still here five and a half years later, because I appreciate the business taking on both of those roles, instead of keeping them separate.
Christina Sjahli:If you think about the business model of United By Blue, and United By Blue is obviously in the fashion industry. With all the fast fashion dynamic out there, and everybody wants to change every season, and every year buying more and buying more, how is United By Blue is different in this concept?
Maria McDonald:Part of our founders motivation in starting the business back in 2010 was to be the antithesis of what you just mentioned, to challenge the narrative that apparel and accessories and companies in the fashion world have to also be producing an excess of waste and emitting a ton of carbon and treating supply chain partners poorly, that's not really the narrative that United By Blue wants to belong to and participate in. We've actually made decisions over the years that hurt the bottom line that hurt our financial picture, for sake of prioritizing a more ethical or more sustainable option and trying to prove the business case for that as well. So we also kind of pride ourselves by sitting in the slow fashion camp, which is kind of what you hear is the antidote to fast fashion. There's a couple, I mean, just kind of business elements that you have to incorporate if you're going to not participate in the fast fashion or the traditional fashion economy. The first is you have to be clear with your customers that that's what you're doing because they can't have the same expectations of you as they would a major retailer, that comes to fruition in a few ways. One is price point. Unfortunately, we don't live in a world where yet where it's as affordable to produce something ethically and sustainably as it is to not, and so you have to be willing to kind of go into the market at a higher price point to make sure you can do things in the way that you want to promote sustainability and from an ethics standpoint. The other is, kind of, designing products that are more aligned with kind of timeless design features as opposed to seasonal or trendy pieces. Our design team always works really hard because with the slow fashion model, they're designing one to two years in advance of when the product will actually be sold. So they can't rely on what's popular on Instagram that week or even that quarter. They need to be thinking about products that will last a year or two's worth of time so that the customer is still interested when it actually comes to market a few years later. So it's about, kind of, the design, the transparency with the customers, and then just being willing to build your business model around these ethics instead of around kind of traditional fashion industry elements, I guess, where waste and pollution are necessary evils, if we say. Actually, they're not necessary evils. We just have to work harder to overcome them, then that's a different business model, that's a different narrative to participate in.
Christina Sjahli:So I'm always curious about the fashion industry, especially in the sustainability space. Why the higher price point?
Maria McDonald:Well, it comes from a few different, I guess, factors in the industry. The two biggest ones are materials and manufacturing, but also your distribution and your packaging fall into play there too. So from a material standpoint, at the moment, it's typically more expensive to purchase a recycled material, say recycled polyester or recycled cotton than it is to purchase the virgin material. So if you want to reprioritize second life or circular design principles in your products, such as using recycled or repurposed materials that comes at a higher price point, when you're buying simply the yards of fabric and whatnot. One of the tools that we lean on to help us have some visibility and verification in our supply chain is certifications. So relying on third party organizations to certify that this is a recycled fabric or this is an organic fabric, or this is a repurposed fabric. So the cost of that certification also kind of increases the price from a material standpoint. Then on the supply chain side of things, trying to work with factory partners and manufacturing partners that pay living wages, that don't involve any discrimination or any practices like that. Unfortunately, the reality is those usually also come at a higher price point. Then finally, distribution and packaging. Packaging is the same story where sometimes recycled content materials cost more than their virgin counterparts at the moment, and then transporting our product in a more sustainable fashion. Whether that's with a longer lead time or with specific packaging requirements can also add to the cost. So again, I hope this industry shifted is kind of leading away, but at the moment, sustainability does come at a price. Now, that doesn't mean you have to take on that additional price. Sustainability can also mean being more cost effective. It can mean using less materials, less packaging overall, less miles traveled for distribution, and all of that has less of a financial impact and less of an environmental impact. So there's ways to pursue it in a thoughtful fashion, that's a win-win for both finance and sustainability. But when it comes down to raw materials and things like that, at the moment, they're still at a premium.
Christina Sjahli:I completely understand everything that you just said about the fact that everything in sustainability sometimes can be more expensive, but at the same time, we want to make sure that we are using recycled materials. If it's more expensive, how do we balance that out, right, with the other aspect of the business?
Maria McDonald:Well, and hopefully, we're moving toward a tipping point with that. If we can kind of get to a place where there's enough demand for recycled material or a second life material, and this is why I like tying business for profit models capitalism to environmental solutions, because that's how they really accelerate and infiltrate our practices. One example is if recycling infrastructure and recycling processes, if the output of that, so the recycled material is in such high demand that you could get more money for recycled polyester than you could virgin polyester, then suppliers will be motivated to modernize their recycling infrastructure and to improve the recycling system. Now, recycling is a controversial and non-perfect solution, but there's a good argument to be made that it's certainly better than increasing demand for fossil fuel based materials, especially in the fight for climate change. So hopefully, we're moving to a tipping point where recycled materials are more self-sustaining in the market and not a premium product.
Christina Sjahli:I know that one of the mission that United By Blue has been trying is to remove all single use plastic from your operation. Take us on this journey. How did you identify which area within the business to remove the single plastic because you cannot just remove it all, it has to be step by step by step, right?
Maria McDonald:So United By Blue’s plastic journey started a couple of years ago when we came to the realization, which should be obvious, but sometimes when you're just going along with business as usual, you do business as usual. We came to the realization a couple of years ago that our whole company's purpose is designed to reduce and clean up waste in the world, and our mission is to clean up oceans and waterways. We've cleaned up over 4.5 million pounds of trash so far through our cleanup efforts, and came to the realization that a lot of the waste that we were collecting in our cleanup programs in our beach and river and coastal cleanup programs was a similar type of plastic waste to the waste that we produce ourselves as a company, designing and shipping and packing products and selling them to customers. We again wanted to challenge that narrative that we had to create this plastic waste in order to do business. Again, that kind of was driven by the fact that our cleanups mission, the company's purpose was coming across all of these similar types of waste in the natural world, and we didn't want to be contributing to that problem. So we decided to set this pledge. We call it the QSU pledge, Quit Single Use pledge, and we formally announced our intentions to remove all single use plastic from our company operations, which was a really large undertaking. That was in June of 2018. It was right on World Oceans Day, which is June 8, and in celebration of that, we actually invited our customers to take the pledge with us. We had 11,000 customers agree to take the pledge to remove single use plastic from their lives as well. So we tried to turn it kind of into a community movement to join us on this journey. So the first thing we did in that process, we assembled a QSU, quit single use task force from across all different departments at the company. We created an inventory of where the single use plastic was existing in our operations. So where did the operations department have plastic? Where did the production and design team have plastic? Where did our cleanups team have plastic? Even down to the finance department and the plastic ink cartridges that were used in that department. We went really nitty gritty and found all the plastic we could and then we kind of thought about it in the same way that you measure and assess carbon emissions, which is across three scopes. So your scope one impacts are the impacts that you own and control. So that your impacts, they're caused by you, and you control how much they're used. An example in carbon emissions is the vehicle, so you own the vehicle and you control how much you drive it, so you control how much you're emitting. In scope two, these are your impacts that you control but you don't own. Again, borrowing from carbon, an example, there's electricity. You don't own the electricity source, but you control how much time the light switches on versus when it's off to control the impact there. Then scope three is really where most environmental impacts occur. These are basically impacts in your supply chain. You don't own or control those impacts, but they're caused by your business. So for example, you don't own your supplier's factory, and you don't control their energy usage or their plastic usage or etc, but they are operating because you ordered materials from them or you ordered products from them, so the impact is due to you. So we kind of organized our plastic outputs or single use plastic outputs across those and focused on what we could control first. So that was a really thorough scrub of our office, of our retail stores and our cafes, and our direct to consumer packaging in our warehouses. So when the product arrived at our doorstep, how are we then re-shipping it out to our customers, making sure we're not using plastic in those items? That's where we had a really large amount of success. For example, instead of using a polybag, the thin plastic bag that wraps your T-shirt or your water bottle, we transition to using paper or compostable materials for those bags. Another example is tape. Instead of using plastic tape, we can use a paper backed craft tape to seal up our boxes. Instead of using bubble wrap, we are able to use custom cardboard molds to ensure that our breakable items, such as our ceramics or glassware or anything like that, are still sturdy in their packaging, but not using plastic. Step two then is getting outside of what's in our immediate control and really that's working more from a relational standpoint, so working with our suppliers, our wholesale retailers to specifically target certain pieces of plastic and try to remove them. One example there is we worked with our suppliers of our breakable items, such as our ceramic, drinkware, and home goods, and we created custom cardboard molds and sent them to them instead of them using their bubble wrap. So really there, it was a matter of us taking on the work to find the solution that did not involve plastic and trying to make it as easy as possible on the supplier, because you're not trying to add difficulty or costs to the process, but you want to introduce a way to replace plastic without it interrupting your operations.
Christina Sjahli:Is that scope two or that is already scope three?
Maria McDonald:Scope three. Scope one and two are kind of blended together in that first response.
Christina Sjahli:So is there any cost at all or in this approach, basically, all the costs are within United By Blue?
Maria McDonald:These are all within United By Blue. We took on all the costs associated with this. A lot of this is a matter of source reduction, so removing plastic packaging that's just not necessary. A lot of bottles and tumbler cups are packaged with a single plastic sheet inside of them that really serves no purpose. It's not protecting anything. It's not protecting the exterior. So sometimes it's just a matter of removing something that wasn't thoughtful in the first place. Again, business as usual, kind of forcing us to go on autopilot, and this is a way to actually say, “Actually, let's be intentional about this. We don't we don't need these slips of plastic inside of our drinkware.” So some of it’s cost reducing and that you're just eliminating what's not necessary, and some of it is a swap, where instead of paying for bubble wrap, you're instead paying for a cardboard mold. There's a bit of a small trade off there, but it's not a huge addition of cost.
Christina Sjahli:So what else that UBB did for this scope three?
Maria McDonald:So another place where plastic was really tricky to get rid of is in our wholesale retailer relationships. So a big part of United By Blue’s business model is to sell our products through retailers. You can find our products in major retailers like REI and Whole Foods and down to small mom and pop outdoor shops in outdoor towns, and each wholesale partner has their own packing requirements, so ways that the product has to be delivered to them, so that they can either ship it back out to their customers or sell it in their stores. It's really commonplace to have wholesale packing requirements that involve plastic. So needing the product to be packed in a certain way, stickered in a certain way, so that it'll fit into the wholesale partners’ warehouse system or inventory system, and again, a lot of that involves plastic. So something we did last year was we worked with two of our wholesale partners who traditionally required us to ship in plastic, and we said, “Look, can we do this case study with you. We'll trial shipping you non breakable product in no plastic so that there's no risk necessarily of the product or the inventory being lost or damaged. We'll ship it to you without plastic using our plastic alternatives, such as a paper bag, etc. craft tape, etc, and then you have your warehouse team, your logistics team, let us know how it goes when the product arrives, so take pictures, take notes on how it affected your picking and packing system, your warehouse inventory system, how we could make it easier for you. If it works, then you can allow us to ship without plastic going forward.” We were successful in both of the case studies that we did with those wholesale partners. So that was a case of taking one season focusing on two partners, so it's not a huge amount of impact at once, but just slowly chipping away at those relationships and helping bringing other people other partners into the solution than not having plastic be necessary going forward, and maybe that even applies to some of their other vendors as well, at least we hope.
Christina Sjahli:Was there a lot of convincing? How did you approach it?
Maria McDonald:We reached out, actually, to a big handful of our retail partners, and we only had two that accepted our offer at first. It's not that people are malicious or love plastic or want plastic around. It's just that this is the way that business has been done. It makes a warehouse and makes a distribution center, a retail inventory storage closet easier if everything is packed and organized in the same way, and the default across the industry is plastic. It's not always fair to kind of impose your goals on somebody else that would cost them with more time, et cetera. So we had to approach it in a really diplomatic way, be considerate of our partners, and try to make it as easy as possible for them to adopt the solution, and trialing it with just two partners at a time allows us to really put a lot of focus into that project and make sure it goes well, so we can replicate it in the future. That's why we kind of had that smaller focus. However, I will say, after those two case studies, we've been able to use the results of that with other partners. In fact, one of our biggest successes of the past few years is we've been able to sell to target one of our largest retailers, without plastic packaging in our products, which is a really huge win for our plastic journey to be in such a large retailer and not have to use plastic with their requirements, because we've been able to find other successful methods.
Christina Sjahli:What did you sell over at Target? I mean, with the price point that I saw on your website, I don't know how that fit with target.
Unknown:We had the opportunity to do a custom line for target, and we thought that could be a way that we participate in making sustainability more accessible, so trying to lower the price point and make it more widely adopted by entering a large retailer like that. So what we did is our design team and our production team worked really hard to make a custom product line, that was basically a simplified version of our existing product. So for example, if we had a backpack that had six pocket, we would make the backpack for target with one pocket and a simpler design, so that we could still use the same ethical factories and the same sustainable materials, but a less complex design in order to lower the price point. But speaking candidly with you, it was really a challenging project for us to take on, and it challenged our margin quite a bit. We ended up just taking the hit on that margin because we wanted to pursue this accessibility initiative, but it was at a cost, and UBB did eat some of that cost. It also came down to simpler design, simpler products than our normal, kind of, more technical products.
Christina Sjahli:Are you still selling at Target right now?
Maria McDonald:We are still selling at Target’s online business, so that's where you can find our products with Target at the moment.
Christina Sjahli:Now, where are your suppliers or manufacturer located right now?
Maria McDonald:Our suppliers are all over the world, so we have a very global supply chain. We work with suppliers in China and in Vietnam. We work with suppliers in Europe and in North America. So we cover a lot of ground with our supply chain like others, and we're also exploring some other suppliers in South America that allow us to kind of bring some product lines a little bit closer to where we're selling them, that reduces the amount of miles they have to travel, which reduces both cost and emissions. There's a lot of benefits to trying to bring some parts of your manufacturing closer to where you're actually selling the product. But there's also benefits to using best in class suppliers wherever they are in the world, obviously, with super, super heavy manufacturing presence in China and in Southeast Asia.
Christina Sjahli:So how did you get your suppliers to get on board? How do you engage with them to get on board on sustainability and then have sustainability practices within their operation?
Maria McDonald:One big component to those relationships, or I guess our company's success in that area so far, is having sustainability live in all departments and not just the sustainability department. What I mean by that is our design and our production team and our operations team, the people that interact with our suppliers the most also have to be really bought in and educated on how to integrate sustainability decisions into their job. It can't just kind of live in this isolated department. It has to be actually in the design of the product and in the production plan and in the operations and distribution plan built in. So those team members are super essential in those relationships. From the supplier side of things, first, so we engage with suppliers that work with other brands from the Western world but also prioritize sustainability. This is another place where we rely really heavily on certifications, so we look for manufacturing partners that are in line with labor standards, with social welfare standards, with ISO certifications, and that holds some sort of third party verification that they are operating in an ethical and sustainable manner. A couple of ways that you can meet a supplier or meet a partner in the middle, when it comes to plastic, part of our strategy is designing the product without the need for plastic in the first place. So if you don't have a partner that is super on board with your tree hugging philosophy that you want to impose on them, can we look further upstream in the process in the design process in the distribution process to reduce the need for the waste or the need for the plastic in the first place is something we consider. Then, a final tool that we use to make sure our supply chain is at least meeting a baseline of sustainability and ethics requirements is we've implemented a code of conduct across our supply chain. We identified at United By Blue, what are the baseline requirements that we need to have in place in order to work with the supplier as it relates to working condition, wages, a quality discrimination, and then also environmental practices such as wastewater emissions, etc. Just this past year, we had 100% of our suppliers sign our code of conduct, which essentially, is their acknowledgement that they are meeting all of those baselines. However, our next step is to actually kind of conduct in person audits of our factories and whatnot to ensure compliance there, but certifications help back that up as well. If we have a signatory to the code of conduct and they hold these certifications, that helps with the validity quite a lot.
Christina Sjahli:We have been talking about the area that you are successful so far with your quit single use plastic. Is there any area currently that you are not yet successful in QSU?
Maria McDonald:Unfortunately, there are areas. Yes, so some of our sticking points are still those scope three areas where we don't own or control, or importantly, have much influence over the use of plastic. One example that we have tried different solutions for is pallet wrap. So those really large, kind of, swaths of plastic that are wrapped around pallets in order to keep them safe on cargo ships and in transport, we've tried a couple of different ways to reduce that. One way we tried was actually just not palletizing our products, so seeing if we could just ship the products essentially loose instead of bundled together on one pallet, that did not go so well. That increases the amount of miles shipped by the product, which has other impacts. It's a lot harder on the freight carrier as well, and in fact, some carriers just won't even do it. It has to be packed in a certain way. We've thought about things like ratchet snap straps or like reusable straps that could wrap the product around. So really, those are not our employees. Those are not our ship. Those are not our requirements that we have control over. We have to rely on these partners to move our product around the world. So that's one that's been been sticky. We also had, honestly, a resurgence in some plastic due to the pandemic, be part of our operations. That's a tough trade off. I mean, in the name of safety and sanitation, over the past few years, there's been a bit of a reversion to plastic and individual packaging and things like that. Honestly, for the risk that we all faced in the past few years, sometimes that trade off, you have to prioritize certain impact elements above others and in trying times, and so we can't be mad at the pandemic for bringing plastic back. But now we kind of have to redo some of that work in our cafes, even in our cleanups, programs, the types of trash we're encountering out on coastlines and stuff are really actually tied to the pandemic. So that's something we're tackling now.
Christina Sjahli:I also know that you have a goal or United By Blue has a goal to become a one stop sustainable marketplace, where you are bringing in brand partners that align with your sustainable standards into a marketplace. How do you make sure that the brand partners are really aligned with your sustainable standards?
Maria McDonald:Well, you mentioned right before this where some of the other areas that we were challenged in removing plastic, and our third party vendors or third party brand partners that you just mentioned in our marketplace concept were one of those areas. So just to touch on the plastic topic first, other brands package their products in their own ways. We would put together vendor agreements with our brand partners with our QSU policy in the vendor agreement and instructions on how a product should be packaged and shipped, but sometimes that is either out of our control or unavoidable. One example is we had a brand partner that sold dog beds, and in order to make the dog bed shippable, it was vacuum sealed to compress it into a smaller size. So it was vacuum sealed in a plastic casing. I mean, environmental work is all about trade offs, and here's a really good word problem to go through, the shipping impact of a larger box of a the dog bed was its normal size would have a higher emissions footprint to ship that than if it was compressed down to a smaller size and easier to ship. So what's better, more emissions without plastic or no plastic but less emission or more emissions. So these are just just an example of the trade offs you kind of face in sustainability. When we come across something like that with a brand partner, we actually will usually just include a note in the shipment to our customers about acknowledging the plastic was used and why it was used, so that we're kind of clear with our customers about how we're trying to uphold our QSU policy and when it's unavoidable. But to return to your question, United By Blue has been trying to build this marketplace concept, and our thought process there was, we design and manufacture great product, but we can't and shouldn't make everything. We shouldn't try to do everything, and we had gaps in our product assortment that we wanted to fill with other brand partners and other great products, so that we could be, as you mentioned, that one stop shop for sustainable living. Some of the ways that I mean we had gaps in our product assortment, some of that is from an inclusivity standpoint, so being able to offer extended sizing or to bring in BIPOC owned brands to kind of help add some inclusionary principles to our product assortment where we might have had gaps ourselves. So aside of just being a one stop shop marketplace, there was also that kind of inclusionary motivation behind the marketplace concept. All of that said, United By Blue is actually currently shifting away from the marketplace concept, which is hot off the press, Christina. This is something that we are really actively working on at the moment, and so we're gonna move towards having a smaller, more focused product assortment, where we're honing in on our products that we have the most amount of control over their environmental impact, their social impact, the way that they help reduce waste in the world and all of those elements. While working with other great products and brands is a great way to kind of add to our product assortment. We didn't have as much control over the sustainability impacts as we would have liked, and we're even actually eliminating some of our own products that we didn't have as much control over as we would have liked. Again, focusing in on a smaller product assortment that we can do really sustainably, really ethically instead of kind of spreading ourselves thin across multiple product lines and multiple brands.
Christina Sjahli:So who brought up this concern and or make this decision to shift away?
Maria McDonald:Yeah, so we actually had a set of, we call them just what you've said, sustainability standards, and we still have them at United By Blue, where we outline basically, our requirements for our inline product, our United By blue product and a different set of standards for our third party brands, our brand partners and their products. While that's a useful tool, those standards, it's not a perfect science, and we found ourselves making exceptions for certain reasons, and also just kind of spreading the focus of the company too thin across too many different missions and too many different missions is the right way to put it. We work with a lot of other sustainable brand partners, and they all have their own causes that are very noble and important that they're working towards. But I think we're finding that we can be more effective if we're more focused, rather than kind of spreading ourselves really thin across a lot of different causes and products and brands.
Christina Sjahli:So was it a difficult decision to say that we no longer or we are shifting away from one stop marketplace?
Maria McDonald:Yeah, definitely. It's not a black and white decision. It's not an immediate start or finish date to that model. It's something that will, kind of, transition into over time, into a more focused model. An important part of our businesses, we have retail stores that have cafes in them in Philadelphia, and they're really important, kind of, community engagement locations and spaces for not just our brand, but also the causes that we work on. It might make sense to keep the marketplace concept in our physical stores such as that. So that's what I mean by thing, it's not a black and white decision, so it was difficult. This is something that we have been building for years, but it also makes a lot of sense. I mean, the pandemic was this time for all of us to reflect on, not just sustainability and ethics, what business models are, what the core principles are going to out live this seismic shift in our society that we all just went through. For us, the path forward is one of more focus and doing a few things really well, instead of a lot of things, doing our best, but not having so much control over them. But our brand partners and our retail partners, and potentially our stores and cafes will all still be an important part of the United By Blue and not an immediate phase in our phase out, but over time working towards that more focused model.
Christina Sjahli:Now, it seems like United By Blue put in a lot of intentional strategy, a lot of processes in place from a financial impact perspective, and then also, as a B Corp, the focus has always been people, planet and profit. Every strategy that a business put in place, there is always a financial impact, including sustainability strategy. So I am curious, how do you collaborate with your finance team?
Maria McDonald:We work with our finance team in, well, really a lot of different ways, but there's a couple of key ways that we incorporate finance into our sustainability work. One is with the one for one business model, so we make this quantified pledge to our customers to remove one pound of trash for every product purchased. That's extremely quantitative. The amount of items that the company sells each year becomes our following year's goal for how many pounds of trash that we have to remove to keep up with that one for one business model. So we budget for that accordingly, and that's kind of that factored into product pricing and into our overall company budgets for the year. We take usually a specific percentage of revenue from the previous year, and that funds are cleaned up programming and work for the year ahead. To determine those budgets, we often use B Corp frameworks, and under those frameworks, they kind of outline different percentage points that are the best practices when it comes to things like charitable giving or philanthropy. We take items like that, and we think about, okay, we should be spending this much or this percentage of revenue on charitable giving. So that's kind of how we borrow from B Corp to apply to our finance principles. The other ways we interact, so for example, with our QSU initiative and trying to remove plastic that comes with some cost savings and some cost increases, depending on whether a new non-plastic material costs more, or if we're eliminating a piece of packaging that just wasn't necessary in the first place. Again, that's a cost savings and an environmental win. So we work usually with our operating budget for the year on our finance team to determine where we can cut into the product's margin to prioritize sustainability and where we can't. An important thing, an important tenant of this work that we have to keep in mind is that we can't do everything at once. The whole point of sustainability being in a business model is that it has to be profitable, it has to be a successful business, in order for the mission to proliferate, to scale and to grow. So we need to make sure we're balancing those expenses for sustainability, again, still being able to operate as a business. So I think long time horizon planning and thinking,“Okay, this year, we'll focus on this expense, and this year, we'll focus on another one.” Instead of trying to do everything at once is an important principle we take into consideration. We're really fortunate at United By Blue, and that I'm working with team members that are already bought into the mission and understand that United By Blue’s business model is to be sustainable. Without that differentiator, we're not that different to other brands, and so our sustainability and our mission is our competitive advantage. So I think that's where the buy in from our finance team members come from, but they also have to kind of keep us in check and understand, “Okay, here's the operating budget we can afford to improve our sustainability, and here's where we need to be strict and save our margin so that we can continue operating long into the future.”
Christina Sjahli:I love the fact that from your explanation, it seems there is balance, right?
Maria McDonald:That's the goal.
Christina Sjahli:Yes, there is balance. I mean, you cannot do everything all at once. Because you are a B Corp, profitability is still key, so that's mean you have to work together, the whole department, the people within the business has to work together to make sure that the balance between people, profit and planet really happen. It's not only just winning on the people and planet area, but excluding the profitability because we know it's not going to work. I love the fact that you said everybody that works at UBB really have the value alignment.
Maria McDonald:It's a big part of our hiring process, actually. It's in our job requirements and really operating from that same understanding, and we do strive for balance. Sometimes, like any company, we're out of balance, but it is about balance. It's a lot easier when you have this kind of foundational shared understanding across all departments and team members that this is the business model, and this is what we're working towards.
Christina Sjahli:I heard this many times from clients before they work with me as well, right? They saying, well, it's hard to explain to my fractional CFO, what is B Corp, why I want to make all of this decision, but finding someone that is value aligned is just because we get it. Like, Profits Reimagine get it. Okay, this is what you want to do. Let's make it work. Let's plan for this. You may not be able to spend everything right now, but let's make a long term plan over the next five years. How much do you want to spend? How is that going to impact your pricing? How is that going to impact your profitability? I think that's the key. You have to be able to move the needle, little by little. You cannot move the needles like all the way to where do you want to be 10 years from now, right now, at this moment. Where are the areas that you are doing the cleanup operation right now?
Maria McDonald:Our cleanups are really all over the world. They're global. We have a couple of types of cleanup projects. We run community cleanups, which are our kind of volunteer-based education focused engagement events, and those are your kind of stereotypical beach cleanup or river cleanup, where we invite community members to come out, take part in the mission, and those are mostly based in the US. So we usually do 20 to 30 of those per year. But those actually make up a really small percentage of the weight that we bring in each year, usually less than 3%, sometimes less than 1%, which I like to say, so people know that we're not just relying on volunteerism to make good on the mission. The majority of our weight removal, the majority of our cleanup work happens in what we call high yield cleanup projects or our international or passive cleanup programs. So our high yield projects are usually based in North America, and those are where we're finding really large volumes of trash, impacting a waterway for whatever reason. A lot of times, it's practices like illegal dumping or a natural feature, such as a wetland or a cove traps a lot of trash floating in the water in one area. We'll bring in professional crews and technology and machinery and all funded by United By Blue and coordinated by United By Blue to clean that trash up. Then our more kind of passive or more around the clock cleanup operations are happening in Southeast Asia. We have a great partner in Indonesia, called Sungai Watch that helps us run cleanups on behalf of United By Blue in Bali, and that's a program we're hoping to grow and expand. So really, they're all over but most heavily settled in the United States and in Southeast Asia.
Christina Sjahli:Well, I have to thank you to United By Blue for cleaning up my country, Indonesia. You’re from Indonesia, Christina? I didn’t know that. Yes.
Maria McDonald:So we're considering moving over to Java as well. We're in Sudi Mara in Bali at the moment, and we're considering moving over to Java as well to set up an operation there with our partner.
Christina Sjahli:Well, that's amazing. I'm grateful that UBB is working in Indonesia to do all this trash collection and cleanup, so appreciate that.
Maria McDonald:Oh, well. We're grateful to be working there as well, and I hope we can grow the program there.
Christina Sjahli:Oh, I hope so too. I can still remember when I was little, like even the rivers that we used to pass by to go to school, you can see all the waste in there. As a little kid growing up in third world country, that was normal. We didn't think about sustainability, until I arrived here and live here in North America. Prior to that, no clue.
Maria McDonald:Well, it's interesting you say that because our founder was raised in Singapore, and that was his motivation actually for founding United By Blue was he just throughout his childhood and adolescence kept seeing more and more trash in his favorite fishing areas of Singapore, on the beaches, and he wanted to create a business solution to cleaning up trash so he and the co-founder actually just started selling T-shirts to fund cleanups, and that's how the company was born. The cleanups mission was actually there before the product, instead of being added on later on. So his motivation was living in that island nation and seeing the trash come up on the shoreline and he was motivated to do something about it. Something I think about to give me hope in
Christina Sjahli:Do you think the world ever gonna come to a point where we don't need single use plastic, ever? those times is plastic has not been around for that long. Exactly
Maria McDonald:We have not relied on single use plastic for that long. It really only grown up to be so ubiquitous in really the past 50 years, the past couple of decades. So it's not like we have to reinvent the wheel or reinvent the next plastic, we just have to kind of revert our daily practices and our business practices to what existed just a couple of decades ago, so that gives me hope. We really need serious changes in policy and an outside pressures, people that hold a lot of leverage, like investors and investing into institutions and policies and international coalition. That leverage needs to be applied to speed up the plastic transition. But that being said, I mean, plastic pollution had become one of the leading awareness issues. I mean, it's very visible. It's very tangible. Consumers care about it, and there's simple lifestyle changes you can make in your individual life to reduce plastic. Those kinds of movements, I think, have a lot of momentum to them.
Christina Sjahli:Maria, this has been a pleasure. Thank you so much for being here. Where can people find United By Blue and find you?
Maria McDonald:Thank you so much for having me, Christina. Folks can find United By Blue on Instagram, on LinkedIn, and on our website, which all of which are just @UnitedByBlue or unitedbyblue.com. My name is Marina McDonald, and I can be found on LinkedIn.
Christina Sjahli:Thank you so much for being here.
Maria McDonald:Thank you, Christina.
Christina Sjahli:That brings us to the end of another episode. Thank you so much for listening to another episode of Her CEO Journey, the business finance podcast for mission-driven women entrepreneurs. When you are ready to grow to the next level and seeking a finance team and a fractional CFO who are all in on your mission and can help you maximize profit to make a bigger social impact, connect with us at the profitreimagined.com/let’schat.