Episode 177: Stuart Landesberg, Grove Collaborative
Today's guest is Stuart Landesberg, Co-Founder and CEO of Grove Collaborative.
Grove Collaborative is a certified B Corp and e-commerce company providing eco-friendly sustainable consumer products focusing on home cleaning, personal and sexual wellness, and baby and child care. The company offers over 150 sustainable brands whose products are non-toxic, effective, sustainable, and cruelty-free.
Grove Collaborative was founded by three friends in San Francisco and sought to answer the question: what if it was easy to find healthier home essentials? Since then, Grove has become a billion-dollar company. In 2019 alone, the company saved over 1 million pounds of plastic and funded the planting of more than 100,000 trees. Before co-founding and serving as CEO of Grove, Stuart was an Investment Professional at Toro Investment Partners, an Analyst at TPG Growth, a Financial Analyst at Vincraft Group, and an Investment Banking Analyst at Lehman Brothers. Throughout his time in finance, he focused on global technology and retail investments. Stuart also holds a BA in economics from Amherst College.
In this episode, Stuart and I have a lively discussion about Grove Collaborative, the company's business model, and its core customer base. Stuart explains why the consumer product market is broken, the definition of a "sustainable product", and how to balance government mandates in a voluntary market. We also dive into the role offsets play for Grove, how the company tracks and measures success, and the myth about plastic recycling. Stuart is a great guest with a wealth of knowledge.
Enjoy the show!
You can find me on twitter @jjacobs22 or @mcjpod and email at info@myclimatejourney.co, where I encourage you to share your feedback on episodes and suggestions for future topics or guests.
Episode recorded September 17th, 2021
In Today's episode we cover:
Overview of Grove Collaborative, what the company does, and Stuart's climate journey
What was broken about consumer products from a sustainability perspective
Grove's business model and core customer base
How we define a "sustainable product"
Defining and measuring success as it relates to sustainability and climate action within the company
How carbon footprint and decarbonization fit into the company, from supply chain to partners to brands
The role offsets play at Grove and how the company navigates the offset market
The myth about recycling plastic and how Grove works to reduce waste
A discussion on whether a voluntary market will get us to a sustainable future or if government mandates are necessary
Links to topics discussed in this episode:
Grove Collaborative: https://www.grove.co/
Grove is hiring! Check out their open positions here: https://www.grove.co/careers
Grove Collaborative Urges Swift Passage of Legislation to Address Climate Crisis
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Hello, everyone. This is Jason Jacobs and welcome to My Climate Journey. This show follows my journey to interview a wide range of guests to better understand and make sense of the formidable problem of climate change, and try to figure out how people like you and I can help. Today's guest is Stuart Landesberg, co-founder and CEO of Grove Collaborative. Grove Collaborative is a leading sustainable consumer products company, transforming the industry into a force for human and environmental good. Grove creates and curates high performing planet first products across household cleaning, personal care, laundry, clean beauty and pets. Stuart has been passionate about sustainability for a long time. He began building the company that became Grove in 2012 when he became frustrated that he had to choose between his values and products for his home.
I was excited for this one because sustainability and circular economy are often not talked about as much with the climate crisis. But every little bit matters and there's so much waste that goes into the consumer packaged goods experiences that we have, and there's got to be a better way. And Grove is not only attempting to do so, but they've be- been able to do so with some significant scale. We have a great discussion in this episode about Stuart's journey to start Grove, how it came to be, why it came to be, the different twists and turns and the key chapters in their evolution so far. We also have a broader discussion about how to report in sustainability where the gaps are in measurement, the role of government in driving this type of innovation, and also the role of brand and the role of voluntary actions from consumers to do what's good for the planet and for the collective good. Stuart, welcome to the show.
Stuart Landesberg: Great to be here, Jason. Thanks for having me.
Jason Jacobs: Thanks for coming. Yeah, if I hear Grove Collaborative, I feel like I've, I've heard so much about the company from a distance, but I've never talked to anyone on the inside, except for the few minutes that we were coordinating on scheduling this, and I'm so excited that you made the time to come on the show. I'm dying to learn more as well.
Stuart Landesberg: Well, it should be a super fun conversation. I love sharing [inaudible 00:03:56] how I ended up the privilege of running this company, and mostly I just love talking about the impact that we all need to have.
Jason Jacobs: Well, for starters, tell me and tell listeners a bit about Grove and what you do.
Stuart Landesberg: You got it. So Grove is a company and, you know, was started with a goal to change the world, and the way that we seek to change the world is by transforming the home and personal care categories, which have a poor track record on environmental and human health into categories that can be a positive force, not just less bad, but actually more good for human and environmental health. And the way I got here is, is a little bit of a typical entrepreneur's journey, grew up in a household where sustainability was always top of mind.
Jason Jacobs: Where'd you grow up?
Stuart Landesberg: I grew up in Westchester County, New York, which for those who don't know, is an hour and 20 minutes north of Manhattan. This is before it was like all doctors and lawyers. My parents were, you know, my dad dropped out of college in protests in the Vietnam War. That'll give you a little bit of a flavor. When I was a kid, I thought Seventh Generation was the biggest company in the world. We were like a little bit out there. And so I've always believed that the products around us, both could be better for the environment and really counted. And so in 2012, left [inaudible 00:05:10] good make your parents proud, professional job as an investor and started Grove with really no idea about how to launch a consumer brand, how to build an internet business, any of those things, but really a strong belief that the consumer products we use, they can be better for the environment, they could be a positive force, and why aren't they? Right? And how do we transform, you know, every load of laundry we do from being a destroyer of the environment, to a protector of the environment? And that's the journey that we're on today.
Jason Jacobs: And before we go on from there, if you just kinda double click on that, what is it about the landscape of those products at that time that you saw that was broken? Like, did you have a diagnosis at the time?
Stuart Landesberg: So at the time I only had a really nascent understanding of the category. But what I got fundamentally right is the size and scale of the home and personal care industry is massive, it's about a trillion dollars a year, almost all of which is covered in single use plastic, and a lot of which is based on combination of water, which is unnecessary to ship, you have water at home, and derivatives of a super petroleum laden supply chain, right? Be with plastic, which obviously come from petroleum, or the actual petroleum distillates that are going into your dish soap and your laundry detergent if you're buying conventional brands. There are brands out there that use more sustainable packaging, that use plant-based ingredients that are highly efficacious. And the core question that I asked eight years ago, nine years ago when I started the company was just why aren't more people using those brands?
I've come to realize now that the thing that needs to happen is not, not just access to the great brands that exist, but also a fundamental transformation of so many business models in the category, which is really how we got into the business we're in today, which is not just the direct consumers of curation business, but really, how do we build the Grove Co brand as one that can be zero plastic, and where every product leaves the environment better than it found it? And I'm happy to go into more detail there. But really, it's about how do you take, you know, laundry detergent and find a zero waste model that has some give back that's actually better for the environment?
Jason Jacobs: And so when you look at the business models at that time, what was broken about them, in your view?
Stuart Landesberg: The same thing that was broken about them then is still broken about them for 95 plus percent of the market. And the thing that's broken is that fundamentally over the long-term, the interest of the consumer and the interest of the business, and the interest of the environment all align, because if there's no planet that's inhabitable, like, you can't sell any of your products. And so all of these products rely on forever garbage, right, in the form of plastic packaging, to get their, sort of, products to the end user. And so all of those business models have to transform to become zero waste. And so we looked around and said, where can we take whatever exists today deliver a better experience to the consumer and ideally create a zero waste package to do it? And so in laundry, we can, we can ship you laundry sheets in a paper box and it took real work to create a highly efficacious laundry sheet. But we can ship you something that's zero waste, lower carbon footprint, and instead of putting billions of plastic bottles into landfills and oceans every year, you've just got some cardboard that's recyclable afterwards. So how do we find those business models that don't over the long-term end up leaving us with a planet that's uninhabitable?
Jason Jacobs: So you grew up caring about these issues and looking up to brands like Seventh Generation, you look at the, the waste that was occurring in the traditional CPG brands with these one-time use and ends up in the landfill and doesn't serve any purpose, and doing tons of harm, and you thought there should be a better way, and I guess here's where I editorialize a bit or go rogue, but you didn't necessarily know when you're heading out what that better way was, but you kind of set out on a journey to find it and hung a shingle because you knew that ultimately, you were determined to figure something out, or did you have a clear hypothesis going in?
Stuart Landesberg: Oh, I did not know anything that I was doing when I was getting into it. I mean, I was like a guy in a room with no head looking for a light switch. I mean-
Jason Jacobs: I'm convinced so [crosstalk 00:09:32] like that's why multiple time entrepreneurs don't necessarily have a higher probability of success because they bring a lot of learnings to the table, but they also bring some, you know, they don't have the same ignorant unbridled optimism which for better for worse, you kinda gotta find a way to have that if you're going to be successful, otherwise, you wouldn't be dumb enough to head out and do it because it's so hard and because the probability of success are so low.
Stuart Landesberg: That's totally true. I mean, if I knew then what I knew now, I never would have started this company. It was like insane. The first eight year, I mean, the, I guess, we're in year nine now. I mean, the first four years of this company were absolutely terrible. Like, nobody wanted to talk to us, we couldn't raise any money, like the value proposition wasn't good. We even had a silly name that was no good. Like, we stunk. But we've gotten so much better over time and just having the privilege of learning in the category for a decade now, you know, I think we have a much better understanding of what we need to do, and we've built some real capabilities that we didn't used to have. But no, I mean, it used to be insane to start this company, if you knew what I know now. The joys of being like young and stupid and optimistic.
Jason Jacobs: And if you were like a book editor that kinda steps outside of yourself and looks at the last nine years, and you had to kind of summarize it into chapter titles. What are those chapters look like? What's the highlight reel for the different phases you've gone through and just a, a teaser, we'll, we'll then jump in after to where you're at today.
Stuart Landesberg: Sure. So the title of the book would be the only way out is through, that is my personal mantra. And like, there's a Mike Tyson quote I like which is, everyone's got a plan until they get punched in the face, and that, to me, is kind of what entrepreneurship feels like. But if you just keep, keep pushing and never quit, like 10 mediocre years can make a really awesome decade. [laughs] [crosstalk 00:11:22]
Jason Jacobs: I haven't heard that, but that, that really resonates, I have to tell you.
Stuart Landesberg: Oh, that one I just made up, that's a [inaudible 00:11:28]. [laughs] But the chapters would basically be, you know, ignorance, treading water, then like, I would say, you know, getting traction and scaling up. And then I would say the next chapter is really scaling impact. And, you know, Chapter One is launch the company, had no idea what I was doing. And then pretty quickly realized, oh, shit, this is gonna be hard. And so those first four years, I mean, those are ... does a low point for me, personally, certainly a low point professionally, and the only thing that went right for me in that time was that I met my wife. But those four years were really tough.
The next chapter, we started to understand the core positioning, understand that what we could bring to the market was innovative product, right, the Grove brand started to take shape, and that was really exciting. The company started to grow quickly, the products we were launching were really exciting to people, we strengthened our partnership with a number of other brands in the market, we were growing really fast.
And then the last chapter now, I think, is really we feel great about a few of the things we figured out and we're continuing to launch new products, but really have the privilege of scaling our product across the market, we just launched in Target, continuing to see good growth in our online business. And we're able to because we're a larger company now, 1000+ employees, real R&D team, real resources, we're able to bring really cool sustainability innovation to the market that we could only have dreamed of four or five years ago. And so now we actually have the capability set to drive bigger changes than we ever have before and to take them to more people than we ever have before. And that's the chapter I'm probably most excited about.
Jason Jacobs: I'm dying to ask you some examples of those sustainability innovations that you're bringing to market. But before we go there, can you just give us an overview of the Grove model?
Stuart Landesberg: Sure. So when the business started, it was a relatively simple e-commerce business, that was about, how do we sell, you know, the sustainable brands you've heard of, Seventh Generation method, Mrs. Meyers. Over time, what we found was that we had the ability to bring distinct products to market because we speak directly to our customers. And so we started launching our own products really in 2015 2016. And so today, the business really has two sides to it. There's Grove.com, which is a marketplace for all the best home and personal care products. You can find the full assortment from Grove there, but you can also find great third-party brands there. And so strong recommendation, you check it out. Grove.com, just download the grove app, that works great too.
And then we have our physical products business, which is really about, how do we create the brands that lead in sustainability, efficacy, and customer focus in every single category? Right? How do we create brands that people love to use, that have a materially better sustainability profile than whatever they were using before? And I don't wanna convert people from Seventh Gen to Grove. That's a small change. I wanna convert people from Tide to Grove. I wanna convert people from, you know, whatever your ... from Herbal Essences or whatever shampoo, like conventional shampoo people still use today to Grove, right. I want to move the big mass market into sustainable products and we launched brands that really do that. And so you can find some of our products at Target today and you'll be able to see the presence of those brands growing and retailers over time.
Jason Jacobs: Who defines what it means to be a sustainable product?
Stuart Landesberg: I mean, there's no governing body and there's a lot of bullshit out there in the market, about what is and is not sustainable. I think we define it in two forms, right? Ingredients should be plant based, bio based as much as possible, because if it's not bio based, it's almost certainly petroleum based. I think we wanna move away from petroleum derived supply chains as much as possible, both for human health and environmental health. I think the second piece, right, that's what's in the bottle is packaging. I think there's two elements to this. The first is you wanna shrink the format as much as possible. So if you think about a glass cleaner, you know, your glass cleaner is probably 95 plus percent water. Shipping that water around the country has real sustainability impact. Is better if you ship, uh, we sell a little zero plastic one ounce concentrate. Now that's a significantly better sustainability profile than shipping a giant sort of bottle of water around the country.
So the first is, can you compress the size? The second is, what are the packaging materials? And we have a particular stance against plastic and really lead the market today by a pretty wide margin in zero plastic home and personal care. So we have zero plastic products and everything from hand soap, dish soap, you know, all the hard purpose cleaners, all purpose cleaner, bathroom cleaner, stuff like that, but all the way zero plastic shampoo, lotion, deodorant, uh, laundry-
Jason Jacobs: Are these your products or do you partner for the packaging?
Stuart Landesberg: These are our products. I mean, we use a different material for different products, right? The bar shampoo's packaged in cardboard, the dish soap and hand soap is packaged in aluminum, is infinitely recyclable. The concentrates are tiny, so those are packaged in glass. And all of those materials are infinitely recyclable, unlike plastic. And so the big piece on packaging is, how do you move away from the plastic based supply chain?
Jason Jacobs: Now these ... like, let's say another bar of soap brand, are they typically also doing their own packaging, or is that a rarity in the industry that accompanies doing the product and the packaging themselves?
Stuart Landesberg: I think different people take different approaches, right. We're lucky to have enough scale that we can have a strong hand in product development and packaging development, right. But I think when you're smaller, you started many companies, have to pick one, and I think we're unusual, in that we have the science capabilities, like the R&D capabilities, to drive really, really high efficacy 'cause that takes real work, real chemistry, real dollars, to make sure that your bar shampoo is more efficacious than whatever you were buying before, 'cause, you know, if you come out of the shower and your hair doesn't feel as good, you- you're just not gonna buy the product again, right. And these changes only matter if they're true habit changes.
So we put more effort probably into efficacy, like I have little kids like spaghetti sauce doesn't come out of my son's [inaudible 00:18:01], like, I'm not gonna use that laundry detergent brand again, even if I like the sustainability profile. And so we put a ton of work into efficacy, in addition to having a full team dedicated just to zero plastic packaging alternatives.
Jason Jacobs: So should I think about the marketplace? [inaudible 00:18:19] It sounds like the marketplace is one line of business, then you have your own products. But do your products get populated in the marketplace just like all the other products from third parties, or ... and then is the criteria the same to assess your products versus theirs, or are they really separate? Is it a different sport?
Stuart Landesberg: No, it's not a different sport. I think we take the highest standards for our own brand. But we understand that people are in different places in their journey to transitioning to natural products, right. Some people may not be into all the zero plastic stuff, they may still have a loyalty to a brand that comes in plastic, and we try to use recycled plastic whenever possible and we are 100% plastic neutral today. So we offset all of the plastic from our third-party brands. So the standards are higher for our own brand than for the marketplace. But overall, you know, the company's vision is that consumer products will be a positive force for human and environmental health. And we recognize that all of the innovation necessary is not going to come from us. Right? And so we wanna encourage small brands, big brands, we wanna encourage everyone to improve their business practices, to reduce the amount of plastic in their brands. We won't sell anything with petroleum based ingredients in this sort of like ingredient deck, and we have really high ingredient standards for everything we sell.
But we also ... we wanna be an approachable brand, where people feel comfortable switching away from conventionals and starting on a journey to products that better meet the, I think, criteria we need to change our category from being a negative force to a positive one.
Jason Jacobs: So what's the core customer profile that you serve?
Stuart Landesberg: So when I started the business, I hypothesized that we would serve busy young professionals in New York, Boston, San Francisco, LA, Chicago, DC, and, you know, high income, coastal time starved. But what I found is that, you know, we definitely do appeal in coastal markets, but a ton of our customers, probably actually the majority of our customer base is this incredible group that just wants to be a more thoughtful participant in the world, and we describe our customers as people who are paying attention or know they should be, you know. We do better from a customer penetration standpoint in Texas than we do in California. We do better in Kansas than we do in New York. And I think it has to do with the fact that there are certain issues that are politicized, right, like climate change. But just about everybody recognizes that plastic in your garbage can is a problem. There's 84% agreement across the country that we need to take action on plastic waste. So the way that we go to market, even though I'm like environmentalist, I care deeply about these issues from a sustainability perspective, the Grove brand takes an approach to these, which is really, I think, is equally applicable everywhere.
And so we see, you know, if you look at our, our most successful zip codes, you see places you'd expect, San Francisco, Chicago, but you also see like Elmore, Idaho, right, and you look at the most successful targets for us. There, again, some places that you'd expect, like, you know, yes, we do really well in the Brooklyn, New York Target, because, you know, our brand appeals to that crew. But we also do really well in Duluth, Minnesota, and Fort Collins, Colorado. And people who are just trying to make better decisions about their life and recognize that the way we consume is unsustainable and that Grove reflects a really easy step that we can all take to be a part of the solution. And so I, I think we've been really lucky to have a brand that feels much more like a broad based movement than one that is isolated to, you know, folks who live in a big city and have a certain political view. And that's been one of my favorite surprises over the last eight years, is just how inclusive we've been able to keep the brand.
Jason Jacobs: Clearly more sustainable is good for the planet and can be good for the collective good. But as you said before when you're talking about the spaghetti sauce example, if the product's not better for me, myself, and I, you know, me and my family, let's say, then I'm not going to buy it no matter how good it is for the collective good or for the planet. So given that, how big a piece of your story along the way has been sustainability? Does it matter to your customers?
Stuart Landesberg: It matters to our customers, but it's almost never our leading message. And I think that if you look at what sells and you ask our customers, you know, what's most important to them, the number one thing is always efficacy. None of our customers or very few of our customers will stay with a dish soap brand that doesn't get the grease off. Like you just, I don't know. I'm not sure I would stay with a dish soap brand that didn't get the grease off, right. Like, I do the dishes in my house, like they got to be clean, otherwise, I'm doing it twice. And so we have to over deliver from an efficacy standpoint. And when I look at the course of the history of growth compared to many natural products companies, we're lucky to have had this incubation period where we could really, really double down, triple down, quadruple down on formulations, on making sure that in whatever the key claims are in that category, that we outperform. And so we always start with that. And if our product doesn't outperform, not just naturals, but conventionals, we won't launch.
There's a good example buying our dishwasher tabs, they don't just outperform the other natural brands in the market. They outperform every conventional brand in the market, which is kind of astounding considering that, I wouldn't recommend you ate them, but if you sprinkled a little bit on your dinner like it wouldn't hurt you, right, different than some of the other conventional pods on the market.
So we start with efficacy, but I do think that the fact that we are zero plastic in so many categories, and the fact that our brand is such a clear departure from the high consumption, high waist model, is a reason for people to try, and they stay with it because the product genuinely works. And I think you can't succeed without a clear stance on sustainability, but you also can't succeed without a product that over delivers for the consumer every single use in every single way.
Jason Jacobs: Well, it's clear that, I mean, sustainability and reuse and efficiency and better for the planet and plastic free like that's part of the fabric of your story and your brand. What about in terms of the way that you run the company? How does impact factor in when it comes to the KPIs that used to manage the business, what you report on to the board, etc., if at all?
Stuart Landesberg: Yeah, I think we've picked a business where the business's success and the success of our mission are super closely linked. And we were deliberate about choosing investors who got that. And I think we've always been clear that there's no version of the world where the innovation that we're driving on the sustainability side is an option, right? This is how we're going to build the leading brand in the category. Until, as we report out, we've been clear about setting KPIs that are financial and KPIs that are environmental. And so we have ... I, I totally recommend you check out our sustainability report. It's like 100 pages. We report out on everything from how much plastic we use, how much plastic we offset, where we're going, like, where our plastic offsets are going, our paper brand ceiling is tree free, but we'll plant a million trees in the US through that brand, really transparent about that.
But our sustainability report is everything, you know, scope one, scope two emissions, those were obviously 100% offset today, our plan to be net zero, including scope three by 2030, how we plan sort of hit the all of the climate mandates from the UN and beyond and go to overperformance. So we're really deliberate in reporting out with an extraordinary amount of transparency, you know, by brand, by category, where are we succeeding and where are we lagging? And I'll tell you in some categories were hidden out of the bargain and others were making progress, but more slowly. And I think transparency on that is super important.
And there are easy things to track, which is like how much plastic have we saved? Tens of millions of pounds. But there's even harder things to track, which are, what percent of your product by weight is still plastic? Right? And that's a real effort to track, but if we don't know that number, we can't drive it to zero.
Jason Jacobs: So, I mean, it sounds like what I'm hearing is a lot of almost accounting and reporting in a similar way to financial accounting and reporting. So I'm curious, where does that live in your organization? And do you think that there's a specific place where it should live in every organization, or, or could you see it living in different places, depending on the company and how it's set up?
Stuart Landesberg: I think it would live in different places, depending on the company. For us, we have it live in two places. We have a very strong sustainability team, which is small, but deeply embedded into all of the product decisions we made, because that's our biggest impact, right? You know, it's easy for us to carbon offset our offices and our server using all that stuff. It's really about, okay, we ship tens of millions of units a year, gosh, maybe 100 million units a year. How do we make sure that every one of those is as sustainable as possible? So that's where our sustainability team is most closely embedded, and then those folks partner with our analytics team and our finance team to make sure there's clear and transparent and consistent reporting.
Jason Jacobs: Where do you have a really solid view and then where are the blind spots if you look at the metrics? So forget about just how are you doing on the metrics, but I have kind of, uh, a predecessor question, which is, how are you doing at having access to the metrics that you need?
Stuart Landesberg: Yeah, it's a great question. I think over time, we've sort of tried to evolve how we think about it. And the way that we have approached it, which I don't want to say is perfect, but it's basically just to look at the roadmap to move away from plastic and match our metrics to that roadmap. So we look at it as, the first thing we need to do is get everything out of single use plastic. There are certain places where it's really hard to avoid plastic today, like the top of a reusable spray bottle, right? You sure can't get that in metal.
And so, you know, we may be replacing 95% of the weight of that product, but we're not out of single use plastic. So what we've done that's been effective, is measure what percent are free of single use, what percent are entirely free, and measure it both on a per dollar sales basis, but also on a weight basis. Because if you're selling, you know, a bunch of big sort of plastic bottles, that's different than selling a, you know, small, a product that may have a little bit of single use plastic in it, but it's like 1% by weight of single use plastic. So coming up with metrics that actually reflect the biggest impact, wh- which took a little bit of extra work, right, every product you have to quantify how much of the weight of the product is plastic, how much of the weight is not plastic, etc. But matching the metrics to our roadmap has been really successful.
I think the biggest blind spot for us candidly is understanding, you know, on a forward looking basis, where we're gonna see the biggest changes in consumer trends, because we have, uh, we have what we call our plastic working group of 70 plus companies, many of our customers and partners are in that group, some bigger companies, some smaller companies, and if you're listening to this podcast and you wanna be in it, drop me a note, SL at grove.co, would love to grow the size of it. But we don't know the rate at which the whole industry is going to move until we know the rate at which we are going to move. And I think the biggest challenge for us is, how do we produce metrics that are really useful for our partners in order to help them drive the same rate of progress that we wanna see for the whole industry, because our intention is not to sort of like be the only brand that's better for the planet. It's that everyone will be. And, you know, that rising tide will lift all boats. And so I think we struggle to understand exactly what the metrics are, that will help our third-party brand partners achieve their roadmap and underwrite their roadmap.
Jason Jacobs: Where does carbon fit into all of this? Are you looking at things like the emissions footprint for the supply chain, and freight and air and trucks and things like that? And same question as it relates to your partners, suppliers, the other brands that put products on your site.
Stuart Landesberg: [inaudible 00:31:11] So we think a lot about carbon also. Carbon is a smaller problem for our industry than plastic, you know, of the 1 trillion with a T pounds of plastic waste that are produced every year. Almost half of that is single use packaging. That's like just, uh, I mean, my like soul hurts when I say that. Are you kidding? 500 billion pounds of single use plastic packaging every year. I mean, in the CPG industry is like, we are leaders in creating that forever garbage, like we suck. And so like that is the number one problem that our, our industry needs to solve. With that said, I think any corporate player in the marketplace needs to be paying, in any industry, needs to pay attention to their carbon footprint. And so for us, we already are carbon neutral in scope one and scope two, and if you compare our carbon emissions per dollar of sales to the industry average, we're like less than 10% of the industry average. So it's a much lower carbon business model per dollar of sales.
And we offset all of our inbound freight, all of our outbound freight, everything we do from that perspective is offset. I think in the long term, you know, we have a bigger challenge in terms of thinking of scope three emissions, which is ... for those who don't know, scope one and scope two are e- emissions that we sort of create directly, you know, shipping the product to people's houses, shipping the product to us, scope three emissions is sort of like I sell you a laundry detergent and you use it in your washing machine. And I am making money on that load of laundry. So I should pay to offset some of those emissions. And that's a bigger buy. Very few companies are into scope three, but a lot of companies are looking at, how do we create long-term plans to offset scope three emissions as well?
And so as we look at that, you know, there's a bunch of ways to skin it. The first is, can we create smaller products more compact, which we can often do by taking the water out of stuff and a bar shampoo is a great example of that. The shampoo in your shower, maybe not you and your listeners, because you all are like tip of the spear on eco stuff. But like most people's shampoo in their shower, it's in a big plastic bottle and it's 90% water, right? If you strip the water out, you just got a bunch of actives, you can put into a bar, and there's plenty of water in your shower. You actually get a better experience, more concentrated and much smaller product, cost less to ship, less carbon, sort of like from shipping the product around. You apply that same principle to like toilet paper, right, the amount of carbon emit shipping toilet paper around the world is insane. You can wrap that thing twice as tightly on the roll, get twice as many sheets, you get twice as many sheets on the roll, there's half as much carbon shipping it around.
Anyway, so there's real stuff we can do in supply chain to limit the amount of carbon. And then of course, we work with carbon offset partners to do it. And I think the important thing to note on carbon offsets is that not all carbon offsets are created equal, right, there's like, I love the carbon offset idea and I'm in favor of a carbon tax, but a lot of the carbon offsets are ... they're almost like window dressing carbon offsets, they're way better than nothing, but we're specifically focused on carbon offsets that like improve and regenerate ecosystems so that it's not a one-time impact, but really sets us up for a long-term impact. So that's how we think about carbon. Important that I think every company do and I think it's, it's becoming more [inaudible 00:34:24]
Jason Jacobs: Are you using the offset marketplaces? Are you sourcing these yourselves? Do you have an advisor that holds your hand and helps you through the process? Has that shifted and evolved over time like, because it feels like that's a sport in itself, just assessing and making choices almost like a portfolio manager, allocating offset spend, and given all the crap that that industry gets for good reason, how do you navigate that to make sure that they've got the quality and consistency that are up to the standards that you're clearly applying in every other facet of your brand?
Stuart Landesberg: It's such a smart question because like ... just like any other part of this business, like the market is not transparent, right? So the first thing I would say is, we are lucky to have a great team that cares and cares a lot, because I don't ... I couldn't tell you the difference between a high quality car, I'm not looking at that, right. You need someone whose job it is to diligence the providers and understand if you're really buying the carbon offsets that you want. So number one, and this is sort of like my answer to every, every business question is, is it starts 100% with the people. [crosstalk 00:35:30] Number two, I would say-
Jason Jacobs: Sounds like. You have that expertise and now you've hired [crosstalk 00:35:34]
Stuart Landesberg: Yes, we do it in-house. But then we go to a bunch of different partners, understand what they do, and then, you know, we'll basically compare the programs from a bunch of carbon offset partners and we'll, we'll end up partnering with two or three who we think have the most compelling overall package of your price is a consideration, but not the only one, of price impact traceability and like long-term stability.
Jason Jacobs: Switching gears a bit, but how do you think about recycling and composting, and also bioplastics? Are, are those on your radar as well, or are those outside of the scope of the core given that you're ... by reducing you're, you're addressing it in a different way?
Stuart Landesberg: So I think reducing is always better, like reduce, reuse, recycle, like kind of in that order. Composting, I think totally works, but a lot of places don't offer composting, right? In many parts of the country, you know, municipal composting is not available and not everybody backyard compost and creating products that's backyard compostable is even harder than creating products that are municipally composed.
Jason Jacobs: Have you looked at doing that, making your products compost compatible?
Stuart Landesberg: A lot of our products are compost compatible, but we prefer them to be smaller first, right? Like, it's great if that material is compostable, but even better would be less material. So reduce is number one. Compost is like the second best, right, because I think composting actually does work. And aluminum recycling and glass recycling works. Both of those materials are infinitely recyclable. And aluminum has incredible energy recapture. It takes only 5% of the energy to recycle aluminum as to create a new one. Right? So you're getting 95% energy savings when you recycle aluminum. It's not perfectly circular, but it's actually like, worked reasonably well. Plastic recycling is bullshit. Less than 10% of the plastic in the world gets recycled, no matter how much you put in your bin. And like, do you know the story of how the recycling triangle came to be? Do you know the story?
Jason Jacobs: I do not know.
Stuart Landesberg: I hate this story. But I also love this story. So plastic was created in the 1960s by DuPont around the same time they created styrofoam. They realized pretty quickly that there was an end of life ... amazing material, incredibly cheap, incredibly malleable, incredibly durable, but incredibly expensive to dispose of. And there was an end of life problem here. So in the sort of '70s and '80s, they created this idea of recycling, recyclers came up. And initially, it was basically just one type of plastic that you were able to throw in your recycle bin. But what started happening was people were starting to throw all of the types of plastic in that recycle bin.
And so it was the petroleum industry who is, you know, plastic is made from oil, for those who don't know, it was the petroleum industry and the petrochemicals industry, that got the idea for putting the recycling triangle with the different numbers on the bottom of every single piece of plastic, even though the vast majority of that plastic is actually not recyclable. And so it was the industry's idea to basically trick consumers into believing that it's okay to use this forever garbage for single use applications because no problem I'll just throw it in the recycle bin and I don't have to worry about the impact that I'm having. But that is just a lie. It's called wish cycling, I think. Like I wish it was being recycled, but it's not.
And it's an interesting example of where, you know, the consumer I think if you ask 1,000 consumers, maybe one understands that the oil industry is actually responsible for the recycling signs on the bottom. And California just someone in the legislature just put forward a bill that Grove supports removing ... this is the ... what the bill does, it removes the recycling sign from non recyclable plastics. Like, ho- how is that a thing that there needs to be a bill about? So recycling works for aluminum and glass, and actually for paper too, it's not as energy of sort of saving for paper, but it does work for paper. But for plastic, it just totally doesn't work. But the petrochemicals industry realized the only way they were gonna sustain demand here was if you tricked consumers into believing that it wasn't a problem to use it for everything.
Jason Jacobs: So a similar related question, but, I mean, it's clear that with Grove you're setting out to drive better behavior by inspiring and providing better experiences, which I think is great. How far do you think that that can take the industry as it relates to mass market consumers, and do you think that in order to truly penetrate the mass market, that things like mandates need to come and that there's a role of government that's essential?
Stuart Landesberg: So there's two questions there. Number one, do I think there's a role of government that's essential, and number two, how far do I think that brand can get you? I think the role of government is essential. I think the size of the climate emergency is the great challenge of our lifetime and our children's lifetime, and I think if government does not intervene, shame on us. We missed it. And so I have, uh, a wildly large supporter of government intervention. I think there's a few things that can drive more rapid adoption. With that said, I don't plan to wait for it. It's my expectation, you know, when you ask Grove consumers, what's the number one brand you used before Grove in the laundry category? It was tied? Where did they shop for that? The number one place, Walmart, right? I mean, we are changing the habit of mass market consumers. And I believe that over time, Grove and brands like Grove, we will create a true mandate in the market that everybody has to, everybody has to play by those rules.
And so I believe the free market will get there, but I think it is in government's best interest to accelerate that timeline. But, I mean, uh, the ... our aspiration is not to be a niche brand. Our aspiration is to be the biggest, the biggest brand in the world in all of our categories.
Jason Jacobs: So in, in your most wildly ambitious imagination, if you could dream about the, I'm not gonna say N state, But if you look out, let's say, a decade, and you just absolutely knock the cover off the ball at Grove, what have you achieved and what does the company look like at that time?
Stuart Landesberg: I love this question. I think when you look out at our industry, right, it is an inevitability that it has to change. Right now, most people can sort of ignore environmental crises, right, we can sort of ignore the fact that there's microplastics in our water, and we can sort of ignore the fact that climate change is like destroying our environment and creating massive storms and lighting California and the whole West Coast on fire, and you can sort of ignore it. But in 10 years, it's gonna be a lot harder to ignore. And I think what Grove will prove if we're successful, is that consumerism doesn't have to be the enemy of environmentalism. Right? Consumerism and environmentalism can go hand in hand if you build business models from the beginning, with the intent to regenerate the ecosystems from which we've historically drawn. And so I can answer that question from a business perspective. You know, I expect us to be wildly prevalent across like retail doors and I expect, when people talk about the laundry aisle, they imagine it not just big orange bottles, but also, you know, really attractive, like blue aluminum and paper packages that are zero waste and actually sort of positive for the environment.
But I think the bigger impact that will have on the industry is that people will have to follow our lead and start innovating. And we won't look crazy for, you know, shampoo bars. I won't have to explain on shows like this, why plastic recycling is obviously bad. And I think that's the big impact that will have over the next 10 years, if we're wildly successful. You know, yes, more people will use Grove, but even more important than that, it'll start to feel obvious to what's probably obvious to your listeners. This category 100% is changing over the next 1, 2, 3 decades, and you can either participate, or you can get sort of like evolved out.
Jason Jacobs: And if you think about the key stakeholders in your success, and to achieve the vision that you just laid out, which is awesome, you might need different kinds of help from different ones. So for example, we have a lot of people that listen to the show that are entrepreneurs or aspiring entrepreneurs that are looking for ways to have a bigger impact. And so for them, I would ask you like, what are your gaps or blind spots or things that you wish someone else would solve that would make it easier to fulfill the scope of your ambitions? I would ask you that same question for the government. I would ask you th- that same question for your suppliers or, you know, partners that you have products that are in the Grove marketplace, I would ask the same thing, you know, from a consumer standpoint, so you don't have to address everybody, but pick two or three or whatever number those you think are the most important and hit them between the eyes with a call to action.
Stuart Landesberg: Yeah. So I think A, the number one problem I think we have in society is that the smartest people in the world don't pursue the most important problems in the world. Too many of our smart are not trying to solve our most important crises of today. They're just trying to make money. And so if you're thinking about, if you're in business or you're in government, and you're like thinking about doing something to make a positive change, like, please do it. Thank you. Like, we need the smartest people in the world working on our hardest problems. Selfishly, for me, what do I want to see happen? If you're in government, I think this California bill is a great start. But let's be honest about the fact that plastic recycling doesn't work and let's not act like that's a recyclable material, because as soon as that happens, consumers, consumers get it, consumers understand that like, creating forever garbage is bad. That's why people stop using styrofoam, because it's like not ... it's so obviously terrible for the environment that people stopped using it. Right? The same thing will happen with plastic and just honest regulations. I'm not asking you to override it. But just being honest about it would be a huge thing. That's number one.
And I think from the business side, the ability to have a transparent look into the greenhouse gases and plastic waste per million dollars of sales, created by the big consumer companies is a great metric across industries that should be mandatory, right. We should all be required to disclose how much greenhouse gas we create, how much of that we offset, scope one, scope two, scope three, and we should do the same thing with plastic. And that should be on a level playing field and available to consumers to create the type of public pressure that will drive real change. And there's a business there because every company knows this is coming. Right? People are kicking the can 2030, 2040, you know, Grove's commitment to be zero plastic is 2025. We're already carbon and plastic neutral today. Right? But the big companies are like 2040, whatever. But this is going to be a real thing where people understand that the demand is coming from an ESG perspective. And so I think anything that helps make that transparent is of value to the consumer and sets an organization up to create a lot of value for the businesses that are gonna rely ... they're gonna have to figure out how to report a lot more ESG metrics in the next 10 years than they did in the last 100.
Jason Jacobs: Stuart, anything I didn't ask you that I should have or any parting words for listeners?
Stuart Landesberg: I think the last thing that I would say is, it's really a privilege to get to spend every day grinding to make the world a better place. And I mean what I said about the most important sort of thing that can happen in our time, is that we get the smartest people, the best entrepreneurs working on big social and environmental issues. I would super encourage any listener who's not already devoting the most important asset you have your nine to five, to something, to a cause that sort of furthers that change we need to see in the world. Like, there's no better time than today to start putting your energies and efforts to change in the world for the better. Grove is hiring, there's a lot of great companies that are hiring, start a company, whatever. But like, we need people to create the massive change that will drive society forward. And ... Anyway, so it's fun to ... I, I know you all are like minded and I just feel like I made that choice 10 years ago, but it didn't have to be that way. It's almost like by luck that I made that choice and get to do it. And Gosh, do I not regret it? So that's probably the thing that I would say in closing, and perhaps is my number one personal learning.
Jason Jacobs: It's a great point to end on. And I've, I've made that choice and that was three years ago, and also haven't looked back. So Stuart, thanks so much for taking the time to come on the show. Thanks for all the work that you're doing with Grove and wishing you and the team every success.
Stuart Landesberg: Jason, thank you for having me. Thanks for what you do. All the listeners, thanks for being eco warriors with us. And yeah, man, let's go make it happen.
Jason Jacobs: Hey, everyone, Jason here. Thanks again for joining me on My Climate Journey. If you'd like to learn more about the journey, you can visit us at myclimatejourney.co. Note that is dot .co, .com. Someday we'll get .com but right now, .co. You can also find me on Twitter at JayJacobs22 where I would encourage you to share your feedback on the episode or suggestions for future guests you'd like to hear. And before I let you go, if you enjoyed the show, please share an episode with a friend or consider leaving a review on iTunes. The worse made me say that. Thank you.
