Taking Care of Business (Sustainably)

Quinn: [00:00:00] Toilet paper. You use it. I use it. Sometimes even my children use it. The point is toilet paper is everywhere. Almost everyone needs it, and so much of it still comes from actual forests, which is insane, and yet so many people, 2 billion people actually, don't have access to even basic sanitation, much less readily available and recycled toilet paper, that's about 40% of the global population. 289,000 children under five die every year from diarrheal diseases caused by poor water and sanitation. That's almost 800 children per day, or one child every two minutes. That's also completely fucking unacceptable. So what can I do about toilet paper and sanitation and [00:01:00] can I do them at the same time?

Every week thousands of people ask us the most important question in the world. What can I do? So every week I turn around and ask someone who actually knows what the hell they're talking about the very same question, someone who's already answered it for themselves, someone who's working on the front lines of the future in global health, in toilet paper, on food stamps, or sustainable agriculture.

I find out why they're doing the work they're doing and what we, you and I, can do to support it, to join their work, to fund their work, to find our own way to the front lines of the future. I'm your host, Quinn Emmett, and my guest today is Bernie Wiley. Bernie's the Sustainability Director at Who Gives a Crap and, oh boy, do I love this company.

We go way back, as you'll hear in just a minute. Who Gives A Crap? Makes toilet paper and paper towels and poop bags, and more out of recycled paper and bamboo. And they give 50% of their profits to help build toilets and improve sanitation in [00:02:00] the developing world. And because of Bernie's relentless focus, they consider every step of the supply chain along the way from water use to power use, all the way to last mile delivery.

This is a great one. For questions or feedback, you can email us at questions@importantnotimportant.com.

Bernie. Welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us.

Bernie Wiley: Thank you for having me.

Quinn: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. My kids are just home from school and probably yelling at my wife about snacks and yours are just taking off.

So it's perfect. We've got the window. Bernie I've got a two part question for you. And it sounds like it's one question, but it's two, so you have to listen to the phrasing.

Okay. Part one, why do you have to do this job? So if everyone in the world who could be doing this work [00:03:00] for who gives a crap, the things you're doing, why does it have to be you and second part, why do you have to do this work? So, of all the ways that you, Bernie Wiley could have answered the call, why do you have to do this?

Bernie Wiley: Yeah, that's interesting. Why do I have to do this? I guess it's because there's, it's such an important topic, right? Working in sustainability and looking at how businesses influence sustainability outcomes for our societies, right? So, why do I have to do this? I feel like this position was just right for me.

You know, there's plenty of other people that could do this work. Almost anyone that I can think of could do this work right? In sustainability. It's not rocket science. Actually, most of it's logical. It's just how it comes together, right. And how people put it together. And having the motivation to try to make change and to make things different, it's not hard to think that we could use something that's not sustainable, like plastic to package goods. Or we could use something that [00:04:00] we could recycle, like paper. It's not really a difficult choice.

It's just have, you know, do the companies have the, the insight, the motivation, and the desire to actually make changes.

Quinn: I think that's all totally fair, and first of all, I don't know if anybody could do your job. Let's give yourself some credit here, but I do appreciate your obviously very learned perspective at this point, which is we know 90% of the things we need to do. It is not rocket science.

There's some rocket science type stuff we need to figure out, you know, clean steel, all that kind of shit. Sure. Fine. It's on the margins, you know, most of the stuff we need to do in the companies can and need to do. It's pretty straightforward. It's not simple, but it's straightforward. Like you said, it's the logistics and it's the insight and it's often the political will inside the company to get these sort of things done.

So I want to tell you a quick story before we get going. 'cause I'm looking this up here, my first order from Who Gives A Crap was [00:05:00] September 14th, 2019. So a long time ago, but now I have to tell you this story. So, I get it. I'm really excited. Again, my kids are small. There's so much toilet paper in our house.

Everything is, it's chaos. And my wife is, she works in Hollywood and I was doing some side work there when we were living in Los Angeles. And you know, you have various representatives if you're working, agents or managers or whoever, and they've all got assistance and all that stuff.

And the smart thing to do with the holidays is to give everyone some sort of gift, right? It's, you know, a nice food or a basket or whatever it might be. Well, I decided in December, 2019, I was gonna give everyone an enormous box of toilet paper from Who Gives A Crap. So all of my agency, these fancy agencies, managers, lawyers, and all their assistants walked into work, I don't know, December, whatever, you know, 10th, 2019, I probably have the order in here.

And I mean, there must have been 30 people I sent this to. [00:06:00] They all get to their desk or their office or their cubicle to an enormous box of, enormous cardboard box and on the side it probably says, Who Gives A Crap? And they're like what is happening? And then I get all these emails and I'm just cackling and they're going, what is this?

I'm like, it's toilet paper, it's bamboo, it's fantastic. You're welcome. And they're like, okay. Holy shit, man. Like you could have just sent like some snacks or something. Well, let me tell you something, Bernie. That was December, 2019. Three months later, world ran out of fucking toilet paper.

And let me tell you how many emails I got from my friends going, holy shit, I'm so glad I have this huge box of toilet paper from people. I was like, yes, nailed it. So that's how far I go back with Who Gives A Crap. I have been on a probably a subscription since then, moved across the country. So that's it.

Bernie Wiley: Well, thank you for being a long-term customer. We really appreciate that. And you know, we often hear stories about people giving a roll of toilet paper to someone at Christmas time, and that was actually one of the ways I got introduced. But you gave a whole box.

Quinn: [00:07:00] No, no, no, no, no. We're not doing rolls here. I wanted, I wanted the effect, I wanted the show of people walking in and going, what? What is this? First, a box much less that says who gives a crap? And then for them to discover it's bamboo toilet paper. So I was pretty happy with that. I couldn't have planned the pandemic part, but you know, you take what you can get.

Bernie, you came to a company that was already, explicitly doing work to improve its footprint, right, per se, of this wildly destructive, but like we talked about with kids, inarguably necessary, tangible commodity toilet paper. Right? It is a very real problem because of its scale. Every single one of us needs it.

And because, you know, in North America so much is pulled from old growth forests, which seems completely insane. But here we are. You showed up and said we need to do more than that. Talk to me about how you went from, you know, warehouse and work on climate to [00:08:00] throwing solar panels on the roofs.

Bernie Wiley: Yeah. So I've spent most of my working life working in supply chains. And as you mentioned, that was everything from working on warehouse floors picking packing orders and forklifts to all the way through to management and control, you know, processes, efficiencies and all sorts of things throughout supply chains.

So, and that landed me into management roles in businesses. But what I've found is working in supply chains is that there's so much waste.

You know, supply chain is all about trying to reduce waste a lot of the time, but often decisions are made without consideration for the environment and without consideration for efficiencies.

They're based on bottom line and based on dollar only. So after an amount of time, you know, 10 years or so of working in supply chains and not being able to sort of make the change that I wanted to, I decided that I didn't really wanna work for companies that weren't aligned with my values anymore. And ended up making the move into companies that were. So, I've been with Who Gives A [00:09:00] Crap for seven years now, just on seven years. And most of that time has been working in supply chain, but I was working on projects in supply chain that were actively making a difference, right? Actively making a difference from a sustainability perspective. So whether that was reducing the amount of kilometers or miles for that final mile delivery. Whether that's changing where our warehouse locations were, whether that was, you know, getting renewable energy installed at warehouse locations or at factories. I was working on those kind of projects while I was working in sustainability.

So, when the opportunity came up to join the sustainability team full-time I took that opportunity. There's two of us in the team at Who Gives A Crap now, and you know, that makes a huge difference to the way we view sustainability within the business and the actions that we can take. Fortunately for me, one of the core pillars of the business is sustainability.

Quinn: I was gonna say, you said two people are in the group, but really, you know that's for the specific formality. Everything is built around that.

Bernie Wiley: [00:10:00] Absolutely, yeah. So there's two of us that work full time on sustainability, but we're working with everyone else in the business to make sustainable choices in everything that we do. So, you know, the business is built on the two core pillars, one of sustainability and the other one of donation, right?

So, we donate 50% of our profits to non-government organizations around the world that build water and hygiene or WASH, we call it WASH programs for people around the world who need it. So, fortunately, I'm at a business that has sustainability as it's core pillar, and I don't need to convince the leadership that we need to be sustainable.

You know, they're already of that mindset and it's more about how do we enact and how do we ensure that everything we do is as sustainable as possible along the way.

Quinn: So I don't wanna, put a pin in having to convince leadership of, you know, more and more in a wider variety of sustainability programs and efforts and [00:11:00] things like that. 'cause I imagine there is still some, it is still a hugely logistical company and it's complicated and all this, and you gotta donate half your profits and all this stuff.

I wanna come back to your history because again, so many people listen to this show, which again, we call it the most important question, which is, what can I do? And it's, man, it's people who run university endowments. It's bartenders, it's people in marketing, logistics, like artists, you name it, who are going either, what more can I do in my community because I already do it at work, or how can I convince my own work or make a lateral move, whatever it is. I come back to one of my first jobs was at the Financial Times in London, and I remember walking in one day and the editor in chief had been sacked and there was a new one.

And people were excited because this guy had worked in a lot of different pieces of the newsroom, so he could really speak to a lot of the different pieces of what needed to happen with the business. He really understood it when he was [00:12:00] talking to someone in news or even sports at the FT, which was weird, and we axed most of it because that's not what they do, but he had that knowledge.

He had a bit of a leg to stand on as they say. You really, you know, for someone who's like, I want to push all these sustainability efforts. I wanna formalize this role within a company that's already trying to do so much of this and expand your warehouses and all that. It seems like you really had a leg up, because again, like you really understood, I mean, the ridiculous comparison, right?

Of course. It's like Tim Cook at Apple, who's like, I know this top to bottom, right. I'm not the marketing guy, but I know this top to bottom, that's gotta be a strength.

Bernie Wiley: Yeah. I think it is a real strength. So we know that 98 plus percent of our emissions come from our supply chain. Right. We're a brand. We don't own or operate the warehouses. We don't own or operate the manufacturing facilities. We buy them from partners that we work with, you know, so we're a brand. Our emissions, as I said, [00:13:00] come from our supply chain so intimately knowing that supply chain, how it works and what happens in there is a huge leg up to be able to drive the sustainability initiatives. And just knowing where our emissions come from makes a huge difference. So, you know, when we're talking about how to make changes and what to make change it really is on the action side for our business, in deep in that supply chain where we can really make the differences.

Quinn: It's interesting because even in what year 2025, it seems like however we stand politically, wherever we may be, so many businesses have at least been told they need to or have attempted to understand their supply chains and their emissions in scope one, two, and three and all of that, whether they're, you know, gonna be a fee on it or whatever it may be.

And it's not always easy if you've never really had to consider that from the start. But like you said, you guys were sort of founded on that, even though you're not own and operating these pieces. Did you feel like you had a good [00:14:00] start on that? Were there any question marks? Were there any surprises where you said, oh, that's interesting, we have to try to accommodate for that?

Or are there places that were obvious for improving on?

Bernie Wiley: Some of it's obvious, some of it's not. So to really understand our emissions profile and where it's coming from, we engaged a consultancy to do a lifecycle assessment on our tissue products.

So what that involves is the consultancy looked at our whole supply chain. They researched a whole lot of peer reviewed documents or other lifecycle assessments, and they looked at everything, from the growth of the raw materials used in our products all the way through to the end of life consideration for where our products are used. So, when we think about that that's called a cradle to grave assessment. For what was done, that really highlighted exactly where our issues were when we're looking at particularly carbon emissions, but also highlighted where our issues were around water usage. There's a lot of [00:15:00] water usage in paper making as well, and that really helped us to understand where the big hitters were. And we understand that it's in the manufacturing of the paper. For us, there's more than 50% of our emission profile is in the manufacturer. So that's either converting a used paper, so recycled consumer grade paper. So things like textbooks and notebooks and et cetera, converting that into toilet paper or it's from the conversion of bamboo into paper.

So the actual pulping, the processing, and then actually conversion into the finished product. That's where most of our emissions sit. So that's our biggest opportunity. Our second biggest opportunity really is in the logistics, the movement of the goods from the manufacturing facility all the way to the consumer or the retailer.

So, that opened our eyes up. What we didn't really understand so well was the end of life and the raw material considerations, right? Like they actually make up a big piece of the puzzle as well. And they're not something that you have as much control over, but they are things that you need to be able to work on and to understand what happens to [00:16:00] your product particularly at the end of life, which is something that you do have a little more control over.

Quinn: Did you all struggle because Scope three, the end of life stuff is where a lot of companies, I think superficially, understandably, I empathize whether like this is a, like we have no idea, you know, like even something as intentional as as toilet paper, right? Whether it's you know, your IKEA’s or your Apples or whoever it be, these things that just profound scale.

But we do have to take responsibility, you know, we do have to at least understand them. So talk to me about what that process was like for you all. Because again, this is the thing I think that most places are gonna struggle with, if not already. And it's why we've seen, you know, so many carbon taxes.

And deal with scope three is left out or whatever it may be. This is the hard part. So you would think it would be easier for you all, but maybe not as much.

Bernie Wiley: Yeah. So when we think about end of life, we're thinking about the whole product and its packaging, right? We're thinking about everything. So we know [00:17:00] where most of our product ends up. It ends up in sewage treatment facilities. we sell into the US, UK, and Australia predominantly, some into Europe, right? Where we're selling into developed countries that have proper sewer systems and have sewage treatment systems. So most of our product either ends up in a sewage treatment plant or potentially in a septic system for people who are maybe not connected. So we understand where that product goes and we know what happens with it, and we understand that it does have an impact at the end of life. So our product as you could imagine it's not really circular. We don't want it to be right?

Quinn: Of all the donut economics, this is the end of life on this one. No, thank you.

Bernie Wiley: That's right. We know that this product ends up as waste at the end of its life, so we don't really control that, but we know what happens to it. So we can design a product to make sure that it does break down efficiently. It does biodegrade efficiently at its end of life. What we can do is really focus on [00:18:00] our packaging, though, makes a difference, right?

So, that's where we can add some circularity in. So using a hundred percent recycled paper to manufacture the corrugate that the goods are shipped in, using bamboo to manufacture the wrappers that wrap the actual paper. So, all of those parts can then be part of that circular economy and go back into making. More corrugate boxes or they can go back into the paper making process, et cetera. So we have a really big focus on the end of life and what happens at the end of life of our products. And it is a lot easier in our industry than something like a, you know, a piece of IT equipment, for example.

Quinn: Sure. I mean, you can argue that my IKEA Billy shelves should keep seeing different lives and obviously they might fall apart and someone down the hall can use 'em, this and that. Again, in the world of sort of, so much of this is control what you can control, it was very obvious to you all that there was an actual end of life for this product.

But again, that doesn't mean you can't affect it in some way. [00:19:00] And like you said, make it more biodegradable. Look at, okay, if we have chosen to do recycled stuff and we have chosen to do bamboo, at least for the TP to start, you know, how biodegradable can they be? And then again, like that's more production possibly.

What does that mean to weigh out the water and the power and all that?

Bernie Wiley: Absolutely. And that's a big consideration. You know, we're trying not to drive consumerism. We're trying not to drive people to buy more products. What we're we're asking people to do is, is to switch a product right? So here's an amount of toilet paper that gets used in the world.

Quinn: Wait, do you know that number?

Bernie Wiley: No, I dunno exactly. It is a crap load though. We're asking people just to change. We're not asking 'em to do something different. Just change what you are, what you're using to make an environmental difference, right? We're not trying to grow the amount of sales of toilet paper in the world.

We're also trying to influence other companies in the world to use sustainably sourced fibers for their production as [00:20:00] well. So that's really our goal is not to drive the additional use of a product, but to switch the use and then also to drive the sustainability of the manufacturer of that product.

Quinn: Were you ever, your children or older than mine now, but when they were first starting to wipe themselves, were you ever horrified by how much toilet paper they used considering you were trying to cut down on consumption?

Bernie Wiley: Yes. Yeah, absolutely. But I've been working for this company for some time now, and for most of that time you know, I've got a lot of toilet paper in this house usually.

Quinn: Yeah, just sometimes I'm in there, I'm like, well, of course the toilet's clogged. Look at what are you doing? That's a whole roll. And I can hear them because of your paper wrappers. Every time I hear 'em opening, I'm like, there's no reason they need to open a new one every day. It's crazy. Monsters or they don't wipe it all.

That's a totally different discussion. I wanna come back to that second part where you said it's not much of a I don't want to put words in your mouth. It wasn't too difficult to convince leadership to do some of these other efforts, right. Clean energy, [00:21:00] less water, using EVs, change is hard even if it would seem obvious with the mission of your company, how do you all, and in your arguments in this former role, prioritize the company's original goals with this wider band of more widely applicable sustainability efforts?

Bernie Wiley: That is such a great question. And that is something we wrestle with all the time. And while it might not be hard to convince leadership that we can do things better and we can do things more sustainably, the actual actions can be hard to get across sometimes, you know, to get agreement on. So when we think, I'd like to use an example if I can.

Quinn: By all means.

Bernie Wiley: EVs. So. We have launched a fleet of EVs here in Australia. We did that off the back of launching a fleet of vehicles that were dedicated to delivering our own goods. So that was almost a no brainer. We were able to contract a company that could turn up at our warehouses with a [00:22:00] vehicle, load it full of our goods, and only deliver our goods for the day. Now the benefit of that is we could measure and reduce the amount of road miles for that final mile delivery. We could also reduce the cost for our delivery. Now the alternative to that is that someone like you know, a FedEx or someone like that turns up, picks up your goods and mixes 'em in a truck with a whole lot of other companies goods, and then they go out and deliver. There's pros and cons of each approach. But for us, we had the volume and scale here in Australia to be able to do that with a dedicated fleet. So that was almost a no brainer. The win there is reduced miles on the road, which is reduced emissions and reduced costs.

That that's a win there's no one in a business that's gonna not sign off on that. Right? When we wanted to change some of those dedicated vehicles from diesel to EV, though, there's a cost and it's gonna cost us more to deliver. So when you factor in that cost and you say, well, there's dollars extra to deliver using an EV, even though we [00:23:00] know it's a better mode of transport and produces less emissions, it also reduces our donation because anything extra that we spend comes off our bottom, coff our donation. So there's a tension there, right? What are we trying to do here? What's our best course of action? Is it to help supply people with water, hygiene and sanitation? Or is it better to reduce our emissions? That's a really tough question.

Quinn: It almost becomes harder for you all than another company, right? Who's just a capitalist monster.

Bernie Wiley: I would say so. Yeah. I mean, you know, we've gotta fund our business and fund sanitation and hygiene and, you know, we pride ourselves on the amount of donation that we can make. So we're always trying to reduce costs within our business, whether that, you know, any kind of cost, whether that's an operational cost or a capital expense.

So keeping those costs down makes the biggest difference. So often when you're looking at something and saying, can I please spend some money on something for sustainability? It's looked at very closely and considered very carefully [00:24:00] before that decision is given a yes or a no.

Quinn: Right. That is that real, that third rail. I wanna talk about, I don't really have much specifically prepared here, but it's always top of mind. I'm trying to talk about it more, both with my own children and locally, nationally, globally, about your water usage. Can you tell me what logistically, sort of soup to nuts that your company's actually responsible for, that you have your hands on.

What is the water usage like? How do you all consider that and at all, where do you see opportunities to reduce it or recycle it?

Bernie Wiley: Yeah. Look, that's, that's a really great question. I don't have the figures on the exact amount.

Quinn: I don’t need figures. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Bernie Wiley: But water is used all the way through the paper manufacturing process. Particularly in the pulping process. Now, there's a couple of things that we consider.

One is where we manufacture, right? So where are these goods manufactured and is there enough water in that area or is that area in water stress? [00:25:00] That's number one. Number two is how much water gets used during the process and consumed.

So, we're trying to provide clean drinking water to people around the world. We're trying, but we're manufacturing a product that uses a lot of water. So what one thing we don't want to do is use water from water stressed areas, and we don't want to pollute water. So the next thing we look at with our manufacturers is how much of that water gets reused back into their systems, and how much of it gets discharged and then when it's discharged or if it is discharged, what's the quality of that water like, and what's the environmental impact?

So one of the key things that we do is we don't use traditional bleaching processes for our toilet paper, right? Everyone wants white toilet paper. When you pulp paper, it doesn't come out beautiful and white like that. It comes out more of a, you know, maybe a coffee or a beige color, right? We know, and we've seen this through, just through consumer usage, people generally don't want a toilet paper that's an [00:26:00] off-white color or they want a really crisp, clean, white color.

It's consumer preference, there's no real need for it. It's just what people are used to. And we've seen other companies put products on the shelf that are unbleached and they still sell, but it's just not the same. And for us to have the impact, we need to have a product that people want to buy.

Quinn: Right. Otherwise, you're not donating anything to anybody.

Bernie Wiley: That's right. So we need to continue to grow our business by selling products that people wanna buy. So what I'm saying here in a roundabout way is that we look very closely at the bleaching processes that we use. We use an elemental chlorine free, or a process chlorine free bleaching process, just depending on the type of paper, we use either one.

And what that helps to do is reduce the environmental impacts that bleaching has on water quality and discharged water from those facilities.

Quinn: Okay. Yeah, again, I try to put myself in my children's feet or talking to people who are, you know, the first sustainability [00:27:00] officer at a company, whatever it might be. It can feel a lot when you start to pull the string on what are we exposed to? What are the externalities of our business?

Whether you're just even, I mean, even just an internet brand, much less a, you know, brand like yours. And then there's obviously the wholly owned and operated type side of things, but it's really easy to start pulling the string on the sweater and be like, oh, fuck, now I gotta fix this. Like, oh. Shit, man.

But that's it. And we, we haven't done that math, which is why we're here. Right. So it's incumbent, and it's so fascinating to see companies like yours really wrestle with these things and go yeah, but we can't just pay for it or else we're not, you know, building WASH supplies, like it really is to fit, you arguably have a more difficult journey.

Bernie Wiley: I think that analogy of pulling the string on the sweater is really important. Very few things in this world, consumer goods, whatever it might be, are perfect from a sustainability perspective. Everything has an impact. [00:28:00] Everything that we do has an impact. It's just how that impact plays out and how we manage the risks or the outcomes from that impact as well.

Right? So us having this conversation there's a lot of energy, a lot of electricity being used in servers and things around the world making this happen. Can that be done sustainably? Yeah. It can be, but it's not as easy as doing it unsustainably, right? And when you kind of just keep on picking things, you realize that nothing or very few things are really perfect, but we can always do better.

Just because something's not perfect doesn't mean you can't do better. And just because something's not perfect doesn't mean that it should be criticized. It can be better than the alternative without being perfect, and that's a step in the right direction. We don't solve climate change, we don't solve sustainability issues tomorrow with, you know, simple decisions.

It's a journey and it's gonna take a long time and it's gonna take a collective effort.

Quinn: I admire your nuance there because I so often veer between [00:29:00] every incremental step matters in all of these different things. And then in the middle it's where can we multisolve? So we build a lot in our app around co-benefits, which is look, my favorite example is electric school buses, right? Yes, they will cost you and they will all, at least for now, cost more to run.

And you have to build the charging infrastructure, all that, clean your air inside the bus for the kids and the driver, which means kids are doing better in school, which means drivers are coming to work, which means, you know, all these different things. You can measure a lot of that stuff. But it's complicated.

And then on the other hand, I have my, I don't wanna say like Batman level vigilantism where I try to make it pretty black and white or simple as you would put it. But there's some things that just you know, make me angry and I just, yeah, you know, air pollution and kids with asthma and stuff like that where I just go, well, I don't care.

But toilet paper is a great example, and I know you guys aren't just doing toilet paper now, but toilet paper is a great example because you do have this leg to stand on where you get to go to people and go, Hey, [00:30:00] you need this. So do I. Let's, we can move past this. This isn't one of those you don't need a new t-shirt type of things.

You need it, it's consumable. It has a real end of life to it, and it's not being done well. Often, it's being done horribly. So any steps we can take both for ourselves to scale so we can contribute more, but also, like you said, as a template, right? For some of these other companies, whether they're startups or these enormous ones, any of that that's measurable and transferable can go such a long way, even if it's quote unquote incremental.

Bernie Wiley: Yeah, absolutely. And we all have choices in our lives that we make when we're buying products, choices on how we might travel. And often those things I think might pass us by in our daily life. You know, it might be that we buy the brand that we like just because we really like that brand without the consideration for the environmental impacts. It might be that we don't have a choice. We can't necessarily afford to do something different than we're currently doing. [00:31:00] But we all have these choices in our lives about how we do things. And the small things do add up. I know they might seem insignificant at the time, but it's that collective action and it's the many small pieces of the puzzle that do add up to helping to solve the problem rather than, you know, being part of the problem.

And I really do encourage people just to think about that and to think about how do you make a sustainable choice in most of the things you do in your life? You know, what are those small things that you can do to make a sustainable choice? That kind of thinking embeds in the way that you work and the way that you think and move through your life.

But it also does then have changes that have impacts on the environment around us.

Quinn: It does in so many ways. I mean we have learned, especially in the past five years, we knew, but we have learned like we are a very social species and whatever your choice, driving in an EV, solar panels, compost, all these different things, right? A heat pump versus a furnace. All these different choices you can make.

We are social. [00:32:00] Someone will come to your house and you don't have to send them a box of toilet paper to their office, but at the same time, they'll come to your house and go, what is this crazy toilet paper with the Christmas decorations on it? And you go, aha. Now I've got you cornered. And you can tell them and they might go and do that.

So you bring in this consultancy, you do this big examination of your whole cradle to grave, which I'm pretty sure is how my children consider me at this point. Cradle to grave assessment of everything. Here's what we can affect from the pulping to the water, to the EVs to the last mile. And then someone at the company says, you know what we should do?

Paper towels and trash bags. What was transferable to those new product lines that you're also trying to improve?

Bernie Wiley: Yeah. The paper towels were a relatively easy one for us. It's the same process as making the toilet paper. Just got a, you know, a different finish on it. So that one was relatively easy. The garbage bags and pet waste bags, they were a different story.

Quinn: The first time I got the email about those, I was like, oh, [00:33:00] well that looks hard. So tell me a little bit about that. Because again, everyone needs them. Everyone uses them at home, at school, at work, whatever it is, they're a nightmare. Tell me.

Bernie Wiley: So, we have spent such a long period of time trying to make sure that our supply chain has as little plastic in it as possible.

Right. And particularly single use plastic. And we've done a pretty good job of it if I do say so, to then have someone say, Hey, we're gonna do garbage bags. It was like, what? We're introducing plastic? But there was a reason for it, right. We talked to our customers and we understood what our customers want from us. You know, we've always planned to diverge from just paper-based products and to grow our product range. And we understood that one of our biggest opportunities and one of the things that our customers wanted was a sustainable way to deal with their garbage. So, this was not just a seed of an idea from someone in the business to say we should just do garbage bags. This is through consumer research and understanding what [00:34:00] our customers were looking for. And you know, we consider our customers to either kind of be eco warriors or eco curious.

We have lots of different kinds of customers, but a lot of them are very focused on the eco side of our business.

So we want to try to make products that work for them and that they want and they need. That started off a long process of what type of garbage bag would we make, what would we make it from? And we looked at so many different options from the different types of plastics, like as raw plastic. We looked at plant-based plastics.

We looked at alternatives to plastic. We looked at all different kinds of things. And where we came to in the end from an environmental perspective as far as the amount of energy used to create the product and the end of life, which we talked about earlier, of the product. And trying to ensure that we're not introducing more single use plastic to the world was to use a hundred percent recycled plastic. That was the best way. When we arrived there, we went, this really mirrors what [00:35:00] we're doing with paper.

We're taking secondhand paper, we're turning it back into a new product that ends up being a single use product at the end of its life. So once we sort of arrived at that conclusion, we were like, this isn't really that different to what we're currently doing, and hopefully we're gonna help improve the environmental outcomes from the use of that plastic.

Even though it is, as I said, at the end of its life, it's gonna end up in landfill. It's single use. It's not gonna be a circular product.

Quinn: You're like, oh, we have eco curious, eco warriors and then crazy people like me. You have to get yourself over that hump of we're building a supply chain outta plastic. Are you, this is what we're like, how could we possibly, how dare you? Like how could we do this?

You have to take that step back and go. The rest of it is a nightmare. It's whenever somebody says, oh, you gotta get these new garbage bags. They don't leak, right? And it's, there's trade offs there. It's oh, you gotta get these shoes, they're, or coats or whatever it might be. Or these pants, you know, that are stretchy and water repellent and it [00:36:00] goes, there's some trade off there, you know, it's probably not great.

But in your case, again, like the alternatives are so not great. And, well, two things, and I'm really curious here. There's this theoretically enormous cash of plastic to pull from for recyclable. But at the same time, we've really learned in the past few years, especially in the US where China stopped taking our plastic a few years back. There's a lot of plastic that is not really recyclable if not most of what we use here.

So how did you guys go down that process of, okay, we're gonna use it, we're gonna use recyclable, but what can we use and what makes a good garbage bag?

Bernie Wiley: Yeah, so for us that was really about finding the right supplier. So as I said earlier, we don't own or operate, you know, any of our manufacturing facilities, but we went out and found the best possible supplier that we could, who could help us understand about plastic and recycling plastic, but could also guide us in the best ways to do that.

So, our garbage bags are actually made in Europe. We use one [00:37:00] factory in Europe. We would love to be able to manufacture them domestically in each market we operate in. But that's not an option just yet. Why we chose this manufacturer is that they source their plastic from local companies. So this is post business waste, really. But generally what it is, what for most of the time is the plastic that's used to wrap pallets for transportation.

So when you think of goods being loaded onto the back of a, you know, vehicle for transportation, they're usually wrapped in a plastic or a stretch film that's then cut off.

It's a single use product. It's used for safety and it's a really great product for what it does, right? I just wanna be clear on plastic. Plastic is an amazing substance. It's just not so great when we throw it in the landfill.

Quinn: No, I mean, it's the same. You can look at the Industrial Revolution and be like, look at us. We're not in the trees anymore. But at the same time we've got some things to fix.

Bernie Wiley: So where this supplier takes plastic from retailers, from warehouses, from other businesses within [00:38:00] its area and then it uses a mechanical process to break that plastic down into smaller pieces and then remakes it into new plastic products like plastic bags. So they're able to do that with using a hundred percent recycled plastic, so there's no virgin material going into it whatsoever. They're able to do that with a local supply chain to supply those goods. You know, the raw materials, as you said, China stopped being kind of the trashcan of the world and taking all the rubbish and recycling it. And that's okay. But hopefully that will help to develop systems within our countries that we live in to better recycle these plastic goods. Yeah, so our manufacturer also runs on not quite a hundred percent renewable energy, but they do use a very high mix of renewable energy. They have their own onsite solar, et cetera to help run their facility as well. So we took all of those environmental considerations into play when deciding where and how and what we were gonna [00:39:00] make this product from. And as I said, it's very similar to our paper goods in, in its kind of transition. It was a product. It got recycled, it got turned into something that's single use, and then we had a strong consideration for its end of life. And what happens with that product at its end of life.

Quinn: Are there models of what they do that now you are looking for in other continents? And like you said, they're urged to try to do that more domestically in the US and the UK and Australia?

Bernie Wiley: Absolutely yes. And to help try to kickstart those industries here. So, you know, in Australia it's something like, I don't know, nine to 12% of our plastic gets recycled. And those types of soft plastics, which make the garbage bags that we use, it's way less. It's, you know, really such a small amount of that plastic actually gets recycled here. And we are actively working with potential suppliers here and in other countries that could do that for us. There are some strong challenges though when you think about the Western [00:40:00] world. As Australians, we generally earn a lot of money, right? For the work that we do. We're a rich nation and wages come into that, costs of doing business in a Western country.

Energy costs, all kinds of different things factor into that end cost of goods. And at the moment we haven't found a viable option in Australia to be able to make those products or in the US for that matter, to make those products locally.

Quinn: Well, the best thing you can do is really try to understand what's the most measurable and transferable from what they do. And you can't replicate it exactly. But like you said, hopefully you can build up that industry again. I have always hoped these past, whatever it's been five, six years, that this China decision would get the rest of us to get it together.

You know, whether it's just in use or how we reuse these things or what it might be. 'cause like you said, look, Patagonia's not gonna argue with you that plastic isn't amazing. I mean, you know, all these, they try to use a hundred percent recycled wherever they can, but you're not gonna get these shells that you can go climbing in or weather storms [00:41:00] in on some boat in the middle of the ocean without some of these materials.

They just say, we try everywhere we can. And I remember a few years ago they had a pretty interesting campaign about we're not there yet. We're trying to crack something and like we haven't figured it out and we're just gonna tell everybody about that. It wasn't the don't buy our stuff, which was always great, but it was a like, this is harder than we thought.

Which you always appreciate again, like however much nuance is to it is like we're struggling with this. And it's like, if they are, then you know, I can't imagine for everybody else.

Bernie Wiley: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, there's been a lot of companies and there's been very public recently companies maybe walking back their sustainability pledges for example, and that's often seen negatively. But I think, you know, being realistic instead of having a goal that's unachievable is probably a better thing for the environment. And a better thing for these companies to adhere to. You know, if there was a company out there that was aiming to be net zero by 2040, which there are quite a lot of companies and they're now saying, [00:42:00] Hey, this is much harder than we expected it to be.

Quinn: Yeah.

Bernie Wiley: We should be able to do this by 2050.

That's much better than getting to 2040 and just throwing your hands in the air and saying, we didn't make it.

Quinn: Right. We bought a bunch of carbon offsets and they're not real.

Bernie Wiley: Yeah. So, I think we need to stop beating up companies that are trying to do ambitious things and maybe not making it. Maybe they're failing or maybe they're only getting partway there.

Right? But hey, they're ambitious and they're all trying to make something happen in the first place. Give 'em a break, let them reset. Let them try to do something better. And unless, of course, they're completely walking back everything.

Quinn: Oh yeah. I mean, there's plenty of ones who are again, literally just buying the offsets or they're walking it back entirely for no reason. But again, I had this struggle, and it's funny, when I first thought of you guys outside of my own bathroom, for a long time we didn't take any advertising because everything was plastic, or for a while it was crypto or whatever, you know, whatever it could have been.

And I was like, ah, I [00:43:00] can't, like we stand on the integrity of our work and my audience would've been like Nope, we're outta here. But what's occurred to me in the past couple years and what we're trying to do now is really go on the other hand, it actually behooves us to work with the companies that are trying to do the right thing in a lot of these, again, essential things that we need, whether it's cleaning products or clothing, textiles or toilet paper or whatever it might be, where you're going like, you're gonna buy this anyway 'cause you have to you know, or shoes again, things like that.

It behooves us 'cause that's actually exactly what our audience is looking for. And no one is doing this perfectly. It is almost impossible. But the more we're throwing at it, and the more we can be realistic and share those stories and share those difficulties, that's how we start to actually move the needle on a lot of this.

Bernie Wiley: Yeah, absolutely. I just like to [00:44:00] always use the analogy that things aren't clear cut, and they're not, not everything's black and white.

You can't just pick one side of an argument and stay on that side of an argument forever, right?

It's just not that, right? Things are nuanced, issues and particularly around sustainability and climate they're gonna take time.

They evolve, they take time to get the thinking through, they get time to get the action right. And just because we can't be 100% sustainable in everything we do today, it doesn't mean we can't be better tomorrow.

Quinn: A hundred percent. I mean, I'd love to spend all day on it, but I know this isn't your side of the work, but could you, let's just speak briefly about the philanthropic side, about the giving and sort of how you identify projects. Any mistakes for you guys feel like you've had to sort of pivot, best practices you've learned, things like that.

'cause again, it's very admirable, but we've seen a lot of versions of things like this where people have gone oh, it turns out they weren't giving as many shoes or eyeglasses, or whatever it may have been. So talk to me about this.

Bernie Wiley: Yeah, fortunately we've got an amazing person, [00:45:00] Robin, who runs that side of the business for us. And there's a few things that we've learned along the way and a few things that we do. So we're very particular about the organizations we work with. We don't just work with anyone.

We're particular about that because we want to ensure that those organizations are putting in place long-term solutions for the communities that they're servicing. There are any number of case studies of water projects and hygiene projects that have gone on around the world that have been implemented, you know, thousands of dollars spent to build infrastructure or whatever it is, only for two years later for those pieces of infrastructure to not be working and have no support there to get them back up to standard or to use them, right?

So this kind of area is littered with failures, I guess. And we've tried to learn as much as possible from those. So we only work with non-government organizations who provide sanitation and provide the services ongoing to manage that [00:46:00] or they provide the education to the community to be able to manage that themselves.

So they have to be long-term, ongoing solutions. So that's kind of the first thing. We're very particular about who we work with them and why we work with them. We practice, we call it non-restricted funding, right? So we don't decide what projects get funded and which ones don't. We decide the partners we work with, and we let them decide what to do with the money that we give to them.

Quinn: Well, that's their job.

Bernie Wiley: So instead of telling them, Hey, you need to, we're gonna give you a million dollars and you need to build X amount of toilets with that. That's not how we do it. They tell us what they would do with a million dollars, and then we let them do that if that's what they think is the best thing to do.

And it provides long, long-term solutions. One of the considerations, and this is just like a, a little bit of a sidestep, but is under service communities. So the way that you can service the most people is to go into a densely populated area and provide [00:47:00] services inside that densely populated area, right? That might leave rural communities further outside of that area who are maybe more in need of that service for water and sanitation, that may leave them under serviced. So we don't specify the amount of people that need to be impacted by the donation or what we're giving. We just wanna ensure that the people who are impacted by it have a long term, viable solution for water and sanitation.

Quinn: I appreciate the self-awareness. There's a lot of, not a lot, some of my job is again, helping people answer this question, what can I do? Or cities or companies, whatever size, people who run investments or have $2. And a lot of wealthier folks or businesses or both wanna start their own thing and go, oh, I'll go do this better here.

Let me go impact this thing. And my argument is virtually always, please don't do that. [00:48:00] There's a lot of you know, missteps, like you said, there's so many case studies and examples ongoing of health and water infrastructure or disaster relief and then the grants run out or they pull out, or no one has been trained to take care of this thing, whatever it might be, refrigeration's great.

And then there aren't any parts to repair it, over and over, totally. But there's some amazing organizations that are very local that really know what they're doing. And the smartest thing you can do with your money is often to let them do their job. And I really appreciate that that's your company's perspective on it because it really empowers those folks I would hope.

Bernie Wiley: Yeah. Thank you. We don’t know how to build toilets. I shouldn't say, we dunno how to, we're not, that's not our expertise. That's not what we do.

Quinn: No, just 'cause you've moved onto trash bags doesn't mean you figured out how to build toilets, bud.

Bernie Wiley: Exactly. I think just one little thing I'd like to add to that as well is that these organizations are [00:49:00] crying out for funding at the moment, right? They've got programs in place, they know what they're doing, they know what they want to do, they have to be able to fund it and drive it. And they're really crying out for that funding at the moment.

You know, there is a lack of funding going on. So I would encourage as you said, for people, organizations or businesses, whatever it is, if you can help fund the non-government organizations that are delivering services to people that is a huge, huge requirement at this point in time.

Quinn: Yeah. It absolutely is. And are there inefficiencies in a lot of these enormous bureaucracies and struggles? Of course, but find me an industry or a sector that doesn't have them, that can't be improved on. Show me your industry and we can talk. But that doesn't mean they're not doing often incredibly vital work.

And again, that work to identify like who is capable of it and who is just desperate for this funding can go, that's almost as important as the donation itself, right? Because you're now leading more [00:50:00] people to be able to do that.

Bernie Wiley: Yeah, absolutely.

Quinn: So listen, last thing we usually work towards is again, helping people answer this question of what can I do? So besides ordering Who Gives A Crap products, which is always great. And now remind me again. Right now, did you do tissues or are we at toilet paper, paper towels and trash bags?

Bernie Wiley: We have tissues as well. Yes.

Quinn: Nailed it. Nailed it. Perfect for children who are truly just never not sniffling. That's really exciting. So those are the four big ones. And are they available everywhere? Sort of, and I don't think, are they in brick and mortar? Are they in retail at all?

Bernie Wiley: Yeah. So, we predominantly sell online through our website, which is you know, who gives a crap.org. So that's where we predominantly sell, but we do, we are selling into retail as well. So we're in Whole Foods in the US. We're in some independent retail stores in the US as well. And we're in the grocery chains of Woolworth's and LD in Australia and also now in [00:51:00] Waitroses in the UK.

So we are starting to have more retail presence. And you don't have to buy a pack of 48 in retail either. They're in much smaller pack sizes, so.

Quinn: Buy a pack of 48. I mean, you're gonna use it. What do you? It's gonna go bad? Come on folks.

Bernie Wiley: It doesn't go bad.

Quinn: Yeah, it does not go bad. I can attest to that. It will just get used. Awesome. That's super helpful. What can, is there any sort of template or model folks can use, and I dunno what capacity you're at or distribution, but to encourage local retail or a Target or whoever it might be?

Somewhere where people do buy these things and often sort of, I don't wanna say on demand, but not everyone has a subscription to toilet paper like me. As much as you all would like that. A lot of times people are going, oh, we're out of toilet paper. So how do they encourage their local stores or chains or whatever to carry Who Gives A Crap?

Bernie Wiley: You can always just ask those brands, right? Send 'em an email, say, can you carry this brand of toilet paper or this brand of products. You know, I think it [00:52:00] does take a fair bit to get there, to get those brands to ask for it. But what we've found is that a lot of retailers are really trying to up their sustainability credentials, and they're looking outside of what they do traditionally to be able to do that.

So they're either trying to up their sustainability credentials because there's a regulation that's coming in inside that market, or they're just trying to be good corporate citizens and, you know, either is fine by us.

But what we're finding is that they're looking to brands like ourselves and other consumer brands, online brands that are doing good things in the marketplace from a sustainability perspective or doing the right things and looking to us for inspiration. So, any encouragement that consumers can give to any of those brands, to stock more sustainable products, not just ours. I would suggest, you know, send an email, send a letter, whatever it is, however you wanna communicate, send a text message. I don't really care, to those companies and, and ask them to, you know, stock the [00:53:00] products or stock the kind of sustainable goods that they're looking for.

Quinn: Where would those, again, because we really try to not leave people hanging. Where would then again, let's say it's a semi-independent shop, whatever it might be, or a small chain or I imagine very few of those exist anymore. But imagine there is, who are they contacting once they've received 500 texts from our listeners about Who Gives A Crap?

Bernie Wiley: They can just come to our website and send us an email directly. We have a team of people who are actively interested in talking to those smaller groups. I always pronounce this wrong, but Erewon?

Quinn: Erewon. Oh Jesus,

Bernie Wiley: In LA.

Quinn: I lived in Los Angeles for 15 years. It's that place. I mean, it makes Whole Foods look, yeah.

Bernie Wiley: We're stocked in there. And we're happy to talk, you know, with companies like or retailers like that. They've currently got a crap smoothie on their menu at the moment, so we've just done a collaboration with them. So, yeah, and apparently it's delicious. I'm not [00:54:00] sure. I haven’t tasted it.

Quinn: I'm sure it is. I mean, everything there's, you feel like a superhuman there and then you realize you have no money left. But it might be worth it. It is full of beautiful people. It's great. What about commercial industry, things like that, people's offices, people's workplaces, schools, stuff like that.

Any sort of specific way to facilitate that besides just ordering online?

Bernie Wiley: Yes. Yeah. So, once again, send us a message, come to our website. You know, there's a link there to ask us a question, but we have commercial agreements in place, so we can supply office buildings, schools, commercial cleaning supplies, you know, at a wholesale rate, rather than just buying from the consumer website.

Quinn: Now I'm gonna go yell at my school board tomorrow and find out how much they spend on toilet paper. That's exciting. I think that's great because it gets kids excited, again, whatever the thing is, this is stuff that people literally touch and feel every day. I always tell people, climate change.

They're like, oh, I'm worried about the jet stream. I'm like you can't do a lot about the jet stream, but it is the heat on your back. It's the trees in your neighborhood. It's the food. It's the crops, it's the water, [00:55:00] it's the toilet paper, right? And for people to again, see your wrappers. I saw you got a National Parks one going.

It's all great. And it just makes people go oh, what is this? It's not new in our house anymore. Again, it's been like six years. But you know, it's a conversation starter. And that matters when we're talking to kids and stuff like that. You know, it matters. Why should they cut down a tree for this stuff?

Bernie Wiley: Absolutely. The more kids we can encourage to lead a more sustainable life, you know, the better our future's gonna be.

Quinn: I love this. All right, last question before I get you outta here. If you have two seconds, usually I have a few to choose from here, but is there a book you've had time to read in the past year or so that could be truly anything, but if it's semi sustainability related, great. Or it could be truly, like me, it's dragons and shit like that.

It could be anything.

Bernie Wiley: There hasn't been a specific book that I've read, I don't find a heap of time to read with just life and what's going on.

Quinn: I mean truly. It’s like my kid tried to get me to read some 900 page dragon book, and I was like, I'm interested, but you should know [00:56:00] this is gonna take me three years. Like I read in six minute increments at night.

Bernie Wiley: Most of my reading over the last few years is reading kids' bedtime stories,

Quinn: Well, gimme one of those. We just had a whole conversation with somebody about Dragons Love Tacos. They're amazing. Your kids are a little older now, but what's the jam? Or what was it?

Bernie Wiley: So I read a whole series of books called the Rangers Apprentice.

Quinn: Oh, yeah, yeah.

Bernie Wiley: The kids loved it. I loved it. I really enjoyed it. It was all fantasy and you know, set in kind of dark ages times, knights and stuff. Really, really great series of books and a lot of fun to read.

Quinn: Was a surprise to me the first time I saw them on my child's shelf is that it is not like a Ranger's Apprentice. Isn't Ranger the person's name?

Bernie Wiley: No, no, he's, he's actually an apprentice to a ranger.

Quinn: Okay. I got that. Maybe one of my children lied to me. That wouldn't be the first time. I thought it was like Steve's apprentice is what I thought it was. Gotcha. All righ.

Bernie Wiley: The other one that [00:57:00] I've liked, which is probably more on topic though was a challenge for me, but was Donut Economics. Really just puts into perspective and the thinking about how economics, you know, works and plays within the sustainability space and how we can build a more long-term sustainable world.

Quinn: No that's a really good one. Again toilet paper doesn't quite make it to the end. But it, but we, but we can get there. Yeah. I really do love that one. I really do love that one. I think it's really helped influence a lot of this movement towards more secondhand third hand goods, but also not just the consumption of them, hopefully the production of, especially, again, textiles instead of the fast fashion stuff that falls apart.

It's such a nightmare. Yeah. That's a great one. That's a great one. Anything else? What am I missing before I get you outta here?

Bernie Wiley: The road to resolving climate issues and sustainability is it's not dead straight. It's gonna have twists and turns in it. It's not black and white. And it's not perfect. So we've all gotta [00:58:00] continue working towards making progress to make this world a better place. We need to do that in our personal lives, in our businesses. We need to reach out to our you know, political representatives as well. And to really push, we've gotta keep pushing in all ways that we possibly can. So for everyone that's listening, everyone that's trying to do the right thing, keep it up, keep trying to do the right thing, and keep trying to make sustainability and climate a factor in, you know, 90% of your daily decisions that you make if you can.

Quinn: If you can get to 90%, let me know. That's impressive. It's admirable because again, like you said there's no perfection here. That's not the way the system's built. Well thank you. I really appreciate your time. Again, I have been interacting with your brand two to three times a day for about six years on my own, much less the rest of my house. A lot of crap smoothies in our life. So I really do appreciate it. This was a great one.