Webinar: Driving Action for Biodiversity, Water, and Forests: Insights from Brands

Hello everyone and welcome to today’s webinar sponsored by Pure Strategiesdriving action for biodiversity water and forests insights from brands. I’mAlex Navaro, director of nature at Trellis Group and I’m excited to welcome you all to this conversation.All right, so for today’s agenda, we’re going to do this quick welcome. We’ll have uh an intro presentation focus oncorporate action on nature. We’ll go into a panel discussion, take some Q&A from the audience, and then share someresources. Uh a quick overview of what we’ll be talking about. We’re exploring how companies are starting to takeaction on nature in a range of ways from setting science-based targets to supporting restoration projects andimproving traceability and sourcing. Over the course of this webinar, we’ll dig into the different approaches thatthree companies are taking, the challenges they faced, and some of the practical steps that are helping themmake progress. I think one of the key takeaways that you’ll find is that no two nature strategies are exactly thesame. And it’s helpful to hear how and why certain decisions are made along the way.We have a few excellent speakers with us today. So, first we have Colleen Corgan,senior sustainability adviser at Pure Strategies. We have Kina Bhus, senior director ofsustainability and sourcing at Everlane. Sophia Cali, sustainability manager at7th generation. K. Gibbart, sustainability director at S de Janeiro.All right. So, actually, we want to start by pulling up a poll to hear from all of you.So, which best describes your company’s progress related to nature? And this ismultiple choice, so you can choose multiple answers. I’ll give youa few seconds to a minute to answer this.which best describes your company’s progress related to nature.Choose as many answers as you’d like.All right, let’s go ahead and wrap this poll and share the results.All right, I definitely seeing some uh patterns jumping out here, but I am going to pass this poll on to Colleenwho will kind of share her quick reactions here and then take us into thepresentation. Colleen, you want to take us away? Yes. Thank you so much, Alex, and thanksso much everyone for being here and participating in the poll. This isn’tsurprising that there’s a bit of a spread and it’s great to see that there’s someone engaging on on differentlevels for all of the the insights that we have here. But you are in the rightplace today if nature is not a current priority. And it looks like about a third of you this is the case. So, we dohope by the end of the webinar today, this has been really helpful for you and gives you some really concrete ideasbased on current actions that different brands are taking. And for those of you who are exploring and learning, I’lltalk a little bit about um some further opportunities related to that. And for those who have already jumped in areyou’re conducting materiality assessments, you’re assessing your value chain, you might be engaged with GRI orTNFD disclosures, you might be setting a science-based target, excuse me, fornature or just looking at how you might have field-based partnerships related to your supply chain or 10% of you have anature strategy in place for those who have responded to the poll. So, it’s fantastic to see that range of of what’shere. And we’ll hear about different examples of these actions today.So, I’m going to close out that poll and share a few slides just to set some context for what this webinar is allabout. And we’re really talking today about taking corporate action on nature.And I think it’s really helpful to start out by exploring what are some of those drivers that lead companies to takeaction because they’re not all the same. And you may actually find that there areseveral influences in the ambitions that um or that influence what ambitions companies take. Some of those might becoming from an internal drive from the seauite or a CEO who’s very passionateabout nature and knows this is an important topic. Uh a lot of companies are influenced by reducing the risks intheir supply chain and so they’ve set science-based targets around climate.They might be conducting materiality or risk assessments that are leading tosetting science-based targets for nature. Other companies are influencedby what their peers are doing, what the competition is undertaking and alsotheir customers are having an influence on some of those actions. In addition,we know the regulatory um view is changing rapidly. There’s alot happening in Europe. There are things happening with policies and enforcement in different parts of thestates right now, especially related to packaging. So there’s a lot happening um in different ways. In addition,investors are asking for a lot more in the disclosure space such as by the taskforce and nature related financial disclosures. Nature Action 100 hasshared some insights from investors and and released a benchmark study recentlythat gives some more insight if anyone’s interested around what some of those drivers are and levels of ambition.And then there’s also the entire nonprofit community that’s providing some pressures on um taking action andhow to take action plus consumer and media attention. And then lastly,there’s a lot of companies who are really driven by growth and innovation especially around the technology space.It’s also really important to think about what is nature when you are acorporation and a business. What what should you be thinking about with relation to nature? Most companies willhave already been involved to some degree in taking action on climate which is part of nature. But in addition,we’re talking about what’s happening in the landscape, what’s happening in the oceans, freshwater and lakes and rivers,and then the biodiversity, just the diversity of life in all of those different places. All of that is whattaking action on nature encompasses. But it’s also really important to think about the social aspects of nature too.And so it’s important for companies to think about where are their actions ortheir business on a daily basis having impacts on indigenous and local communities around the world. And so tobe thinking about taking corporate action on nature, you also need to understand how you are related tonature. Where are your activities taking place on the planet? And so to reallydevelop a strategy and take action, you want to understand as geographically specifically as possible where youractivities are taking place. Where are your operations? Where is your supply chain sourcing raw materials? And as weknow from this map on the right hand side of this slide here, these are the key biodiversity areas across theplanet. and it’s highly variable. So, this is why it’s really important forbusinesses to get a handle on as much as possible where they’re um impacting andconnecting to nature. For a lot of companies, especially those of you on the webinar who aren’tfamiliar with this, there is some useful resources that I’ll touch on here. One of these is a list of high impactcommodities that have been identified through the science-based targets network. And this is a list not just umthose here. I selected some of the ones that are um particularly relevant to alot of companies, but even if you’re just selling a product and you’re packaging that you’re using likely pulpor paper or some kind of petroleum product. So, it’s really important to be aware of these commodities that havebeen identified as having higher nature risks. And some of those risks are theseelements here, the five top threats to biodiversity. And there’s different waysthat these commodities interact with those different threats and have influence in that space. But if you wantto learn more about this, the diagram down on the right shows what it looks like if you do interact with the highimpact commodities um list. There’s a um some resources right online that canhelp you walk through and better understand where those commodities sit within your your value chain.There’s also a range of different tools that companies can use and some of these are really quick and easy and free toaccess like the WWF risk filter suite. And this includes tools that can look atbiodiversity and water and um it’s really insightful just from a high levelto get a sense of where these impacts um geographically are located. And there’sother tools like the integrator integrated biodiversity assessment tool which has some free visual aspects thatyou can use as well as subscription options for high resolution data thatcan be downloaded and used on different GI um GIS platforms to do some some moreintricate uh analyses. And then there’s also a range of tools like earth blocks that help withvisualization and assessment of supply chain impacts for nature. And then againthe sciencebased targets network as well as many other um frameworks are offeringcorporate manuals for different sectors and also for importantly how to engagewith stakeholders. As I mentioned that social aspect is so importantand just to note yes slides will be shared after um so don’t worry about that. Um I’m also mentioning the planetforward playbook which uh you can access in the resource slide that we will sharethroughout um the webinar today. This plan forward playbook is one that wewrote um at peer strategies with the help of different partners just looking at how companies can start and buildupon what they’re already doing in the climate space and incorporating nature actions as well.One thing that the playbook does which is useful I think at any point in yourmaturity for taking action on nature as a corporation is to do a quickassessment of yourself and we call this a simple gap assessment and this helps you identify different areas in which umit’s important to take nature action and the way that we identified these pillars protect restore and sustainably manageis their importance in the global biodiversity diversity framework that came out of the UN convention onbiological diversity a few years ago. So what is helpful as an approach here isto consider in these three pillars where is your company taking action now and byidentifying those actions you can start looking at well where are the gaps are some of your activities highly involvedin the restoration pillar but you’re not doing as much in the protection of nature side or are you really focused onsustainable management but you haven’t really looked at how to protect or restore naturejust doing a quick a sample um stock take can help you figure out what nextsteps you can start taking to fill one or more of those gaps.So, we’ve used this process with with different companies and many others are just doing this on their own as well.But this is just showing you an example of what it looks like. Here’s some actions that have come out of some ofthese assessments in these different pillars. So for example, if a company wants to do more to protect nature, theymight have conducted a risk assessment of their value chain and found that they want to make a commitment for protectionin a key geography where they might have good opportunity to have high positiveimpacts and they would do that through a local partner. Another opportunitycoming out of an a gap assessment is to think about how you can work more with internal teams to really enhance theirawareness of key nature issues, especially if as a company you’ve set aprotection target. An opportunity for thinking about restoration is um considering how toengage in collaborative approaches. So, um, restoring an area where rawmaterials are sourced and collaboratively if multiple companies are sourcing from a similar geography.And I’ll share an example of that in just a moment. And then lastly, some companies might be considering how theycan actually expand or develop policies that support nature specifically such asdeveloping guidance around conversionfree or deforestationfree supply chains.So one example I’ll share here quickly is one from the suppliers partnership for the environment which is anautomotive industry collective and five original equipment manufacturermanufacturers who are part of this suppliers partnership have come together this past year to look at how they cancollectively assess their nature impacts in their supply chain. And because a themaking of an auto is so complex and there’s so many materials, it’s difficult for many of these companies tofind um their data for material origin. So what we’ve done in this process islook at some of those high impact commodities that I mentioned earlier and they’re in this box here. looking atwhere these companies, these five companies did know their sourcing locations and then where they didn’t.Taking a view of some global data sets on nature risks and starting to compile that with some research and literatureto build a picture around mapping and analysis of these of what we started outwith 17 materials and narrowed this down to five materials that had the broadestspectrum of nature impacts. And so this is a work in progress, but I think it’sreally exciting to show what the potential is for using different tools and coming together collectively arounda sector to think about what are our impacts across biodiversity, land, and water. Here’s some indicators that arereferenced in the science around how to look at where these impacts are. Andthen this is a an example of a map just showing where some of these potential sourcing locations are for some of thehighest impact commodities that these different um groups are are sourcing.And Toyota is one of our um one of the folks who works in this space too. And there’s a case study in the resourceslide at the end that will also give a little insight about some of the actions that they’re taking.So I’m just going to quickly go through a slide for each of the panelists herefrom the three different brands so to set some context for what they’ll be sharing about in in the rest of thiswebinar. So the first one is Everlane. And Everlane has used some of the dataand the tools that I’ve just shared. Um they’ve looked at the WWF’s risk filtersum to get a highle view of some of the risks within their supply chain. And this box in the middle shows some ofthose materials that have been assessed in this process. um they’ve used optionswith their knowledge around some of the sourcing locations, some of the volumes of the different materials and createdsome maps that are shown here which are in their 2024 impact report which is also one of the resources that is sharedtoday in the webinar and Kina will share a lot more about her experience um in intaking actions along this line. Then Sophia from Seventh Generation isgoing to share more with us about some of these actions that they’re exploring around these three pillars I just sharedaround protection of forests around restoration using tree planting in in anumber of acres around community- based restoration and then some of the work they’re doing around regenerativeagriculture. And some exciting work too that SeventhGeneration is doing in the space is working with local communities on the ground. An example of a local partner isKlea and Sophia will tell you a bit more about what they’re doing to really change the oil palm production to bemuch more um nature positive. And then lastly, Soldi Janeiro. Um Kayis going to tell us more about what they’re doing to um work with their nature actions in more of an internalway and thinking about how to support their team membersum by training on what kind of nature um sourcing goes into the products andthe ingredients in their products and the review of how those are plant-based, mineral, petroleum or a combination ofthese. So, um, the last slide I want to share before I hand it over to Alex and the panelists is that we have at peerstrategies a nature action forum that we’ve hosted for the past 3 years and we’ll start a new cohort in 2026 in thespring. So, if anyone on the webinar is interested in a peer um cohort wherewe’ll learn together over the course of 2026, you can find out more informationat this um link here and I’m going to hand it back over to Alex.Thanks, Colleen. Real quick before I turn it over uh to the panel, I just wanted to follow up with you. Could youshare a little bit more about how each of these companies kind of found their way to you as as a thought partner andsomeone to work with? Like did it start does it always start with the gap assessment or what what does thatpathway look like for getting started with you? Sure. It’s a great question and uh assome of them will know and even while we were talking beforehand there’s um a lot of links between many companies and somehave started with Pure Strategies years ago. We’ve been around for 27 yearsgoing on 28 years. So we have companies who’ve been engaged in sustainabilitypractice and climate especially for many years. And as nature became more umcentral to sustainability reporting and practices and just awareness morebroadly about why biodiversity and nature is so core to what’s happening around sustainability. We get um clientswho want to expand into that a bit more. Um and they might be building out through a specific strategy. They mightbe looking at how to reduce their impact somewhere. They might be looking at how do we develop a partnership because wesource our ingredients from one particular region or country. So there’s, as you said earlier, there’snot a one-sizefitsall. Um and we produced this um planetforward playbook as a way to help those companies like we saw in the poll whoare just learning. They don’t realize or they’re not understanding how nature isrelevant to the business. So in some cases we kind of start from scratch and in other cases we’re already building onthose who are you know big leaders in this space.Great. Thank you. Um, I think that’s a perfect transition into our panel. So,I’m going to start I I want to let each speaker kind of share a little bit aboutum the company that they work for, the role that they play, and how nature is becoming part of their sustainabilitystrategy. So, I’m going to ask them each to kind of share a story um just like bring a little bit of life to to each ofthese components here. So, I’ll start with Katina from Everlane.Sure. Thank you. Um, so as Alex already mentioned, I’m Kina. I lead thesustainability and sourcing teams at a brand called Everlane. We’re a fashion company that’s direct to consumer, andwe um specialize in women’s and men’s apparel, footwear, and accessories. So, we really cover a pretty wide range ofmaterial categories, product categories. Um and importantly, we have a lot ofwork um surrounding our mission that’s really driving our social impact and environmental responsibilityinitiatives. So at Everlane, we’ve really been operating on a three-pillared sustainability strategyuh for about the past 5 years, but we, you know, a formal strategy, but we haveum much longer and deeper uh kind of commitments from from the foundations ofour organization. But for the past few years, we’ve really been operating around this three-pillared approach,which we put pretty simply. Keep Earth clean, keep Earth cool, and do right by people. And within that strategy, wehave set a lot of goals and we’re measuring progress um against everything from our climate commitments to waterreduction and preferred raw material sourcing um waste reduction, improvingsocial impacts um and worker well-being across uh our value chain. So, it really, you know, spans a pretty widerange of initiatives. Um, but our inroads into this topic kind of formallyaround nature and biodiversity really started with our climate commitments. Um, and I know Colleen mentioned thatthat’s, you know, one of the one of the main inroads for many brands and we’re no different. We kind of took this um,we’ve been on this path with with Pure Strategies now for many years. We’ve been partnering with them. Um but wehave set both near-term for 2030 and long-term 2050 net zero um climatetargets through the science-based targets initiative. And to date, we’ve actually been really successful in theoperational um kind of execution of achieving some pretty big milestones. So to date um wehave already reduced our absolute scope 1 through3 footprint by 52% compared toour baseline in 2019 and that is driven almost entirely by interventions that wehave initiated in our scope 3 footprint. So a lot of this work again tying reallyclosely handinhand with traceability and transparency of our supply chain and our raw materials which we’ve been reallybeen able to leverage into some of this more advanced work that we’re now doing um in nature and biodiversity.So, you know, as we’re kind of as we were going back to the drawing board, thinking about um you know, not justcelebrating the wins that we’ve had and the progress that we’ve that we’ve been able to achieve, but thinking more intothis long-term net zero uh strategy that we’re we’re just continuing to evolveover time. Um, we’re really starting to think more critically about the nature-based solutions as an opportunityfor not just our climate commitments, but also climate resilience, a multitudeof reasons across business resilience, risk mitigation, shity of supply of theraw materials that we require to create products at the end of the day. Um andalso thinking about how we protect nature and biodiversity um for the sake of these natural spaces and thecommunities that um that kind of are involved in or thrive um around them asa form of resilience. So really thinking now how do we harmonize this work umacross the complexity of systems and complexity of supply chains that we work in. Um and really interested and keen infocusing on kind of the landscape level approach which Colleen also alluded to.Thank you. Um, one thing I just want to follow up on. You mentioned uh like leveraging the traceability andtransparency work around raw materials. Could you just say a little bit more about that? Like if there were anothercompany at a similar point, how how what’s like one thing they could do to leverage that to start pulling in natureand biodiversity? Yeah. Well, one of the the things that we’ve learned and we’ve actually gonethrough a number of pure strategies um uh programming to kind of educateourselves starting with that um that nature action forum that they mentioned.Um but one of the things that we’ve learned which is a little bit kind of different and novel to the work thatwe’ve been doing in climate but but closely related um is that nature-based work is really place-based. it kind ofhas to start in the geographies and in the specific commodities um at least fora fashion company um or a products company um that’s where it really needsto be centered from. So, as part of the work we were already doing to betterunderstand our value chain, really leverage traceability and transparency for the work we were doing in climate,we’ve been able to just tangibly take that over to our nature-based work. Um,and and really understand where both the gaps and opportunities are across uh thegeographies that we’re already sourcing in. So, um, yeah, just having that, I think, as a foundation, which at thetime we maybe didn’t even know that we were doing, um, for this reason has really been important for the work andthe way that we take it forward. And um I know Colleen shared some of those earth blocks images um which has beenanother really exciting tool for us to be able to to leverage like a visualcomponent for our internal teams, our board, our our executive leadership umto really showcase where where it is that we’re talking about and why it’s so important and how we tie that directlyto products in some cases. Thank you. I love that. So using some ofthe groundwork from climate um and pulling it right over to kind of skip a step for nature and biodiversity.Uh great. Next I’m going to ask the same same question or prompt I guess. Um I’ll send it to you K. So tell us tell us astory that kind of helps illustrate your work your comp your company how natureties into your strategy. Great. Um hello everyone out there. Thank you. I’m Kay. I am thesustainability director at Sold de Janeiro. And we are a beauty and skincare brand that is basically born onthe beaches in Rio. So in Brazil, a country that holds 20% of the world’s biodiversity. And we source a lot of ouriconic ingredients from Brazil. So like kuboasu and acai and some pakori butter.And I think it for our community, you know, our sustainability story wasalways very much tied to nature and tied to Brazil. But for anybody out therewho’s ever had to formulate a product, you know that your body cream is not just um acai berries. Uh that’s yourbreakfast. So there are hundreds of other ingredients that are always wrapping around those iconic ones. Andour work was really to start to understand those very simple questions that are very hard to answer. Whatexactly did this start as? And where did it come from? What was the feed stock? What was the country of origin? And wehad to recruit external help including pure strategies to do a really highlevelrisk assessment. What other supply chains are we involved in? And that led us to understanding we’re not just tiedto Brazil. We’re tied to palm. We’re tied to coconut corn. dozens and dozensand dozens of additional ties back to nature that we needed to consider and think about how are we going toprioritize the work that we’re going to do in these supply chains. And the team really helped us. But we had anotherchallenge which was internally again everyone’s like we’re sustainable. We’re super tied to Brazil and we needed tofind a way to talk about all of the total you know supply chains that we’re involved in. So, we set up a full daytraining, had Colleen come in and join us, and you know how tough it is to get30 minutes on somebody’s calendar. So, the fact that we got our product developers and product engineers in a room for an entire day to talk aboutsustainable sourcing was a huge message back to the the business, right? That this is important to us. So, we broughtthose teams in, we sat down, we went through just building a common vocabulary. What is deforestation? Whatis sustainable sourcing? Who certification? What does that mean? why is it important? And really goteveryone, you know, into and comfortable with the the idea that we need to reallyconsider more about our ingredients. And the last I’ll share is just my favorite part of that whole day was at the end weput our product developers into small groups, gave them our formula, chose an ingredient, and said, “Reseech it rightnow in the room.” Could be Brazil nut for example. What are the social environmental challenges associated withthat? then come back and tell us what do you think are the bare minimum things we should accept when we’re sourcing thismaterial. Is it livable wage? Is it, you know, they come back and say, “Did you know this thing’s wild harvested? Weshould absolutely make sure nobody really, you know, cuts down all the trees this is coming from.” So, we got them excited. We got them engaged andthat helped us in a bigger way form partnerships. And now when they look at an ingredient, they come to us on oursustainability team and say, “What do you think? What are the risks? You know, is this good, bad? What could we be doing differently?” And hopefully oneday they’ll feel really empowered when they’re talking to suppliers to have those conversations really early on andstart to say, “Hey, can you do better? What do you got for us? Um, how can you improve this?” So, internal educationhuge for us. Thank you. Um, hey, how did how did yourcompany make that full day training a priority? Like who was the key internal stakeholder who said you must attendthis event? Yeah, a lot of our our work is really supported by our CEO because she really understands and has alwaysvalued sustainability and nature and it was saying to the company veryhonestly, we know we love Brazil. We know that isimportant and nature is a key part of us. So, let’s get everyone in to make sure we are authenticallydo, you know, keeping true to that through everything that we work with. And I also think we have a reallycurious community that wants to know more. So they’re they’re very interested in yeah ex actually where are we gettingour stuff and we want to, you know, do the right thing, but we also um you knowwant to make sure that we can talk to our consumers and feel good when we do that.Great. Thank you. Yeah, it’s helpful when the CEO supports the the all day meeting.Um Awesome. All right. will uh Sophia,you’re next up. So, if you could share a story that helps illustrate your company, your role, and your work.Great. Yeah, thanks. So, I’m the sustainability lead at Seventh Generation. Um, I’ve been here justsince January, so pretty new. Uh, but it’s been an exciting time. And uh 7thGen is as folks may or may not be familiar with this home care company which is really founded um and dedicatedin creating a sustainable plant-based cleaning and personal care products that promote a healthier healthier moreequitable world for the future. We’ve discontinued our personal care products but um we continue to provide laundry,dish soap um cleaning products and such. So but so nature really has been part ofuh the seven gen story from the beginning. Uh it was founded in 1988 which is 37 years ago which is actuallyalmost one and a half generations ago. I really love the numbers around thinking about what is seven generations around200 years. Um, but it was really founded in a rad here in Vermont where I’m basedum in Burlington was founded on a fairly radical notion that corporations couldcould be a powerful force for positive change and play an important role in securing a just and sustainable world.So we were really lucky to have that already like that seed was planted and from that it became this evolving storyand these roots grew and we grew into being one of the founding BC Corpcompanies in 2007. Um a foundation was established in 2012 and since 2020 thefocus on that foundation has been supporting indigenous climate leadership and then in 2018 we set science-basedtargets. So we have also our 2030 goals as well are metrics that we’re usingaround climate our climate target circularity and plastic reduction and as Colleen mentioned um similar to Everlanewe our climate work led us very naturally I would say it was a very natural progression to to look atcreating a nature strategy which is what we’re working on now and really because if you if we when we were looking at ourcarbon emissions oil palm derivatives contribute to about onethird of the material greenhouse gas emissions. So itwas like okay this is a no-brainer. This is also what I love about um about thenature strategy is thinking about well what are our risks like if we don’t have access to palm oil that’s going to be aproblem because that’s what we need for the the surfactants and the stuff in our soaps and such. So um we were reallyfortunate that our parent company Unilver has nature targets also set andthey’ve been working with an organization in Indonesia called KA and that was just such a a great thing. Wesaw this opportunity and what we brought three years to the table was saying well what if we invested on um regenerativeagriculture and this was a new layer that we’ve been um our palm oil is RSPOcertified and we’ve been transitioning into that. It’s a roundt um sustainable palm oilum since this is our first full year but we’ve been doing that. So that’s been really important to us and wanting toinvest in how do we do this and the next step for us is going into um NDPE whichis uh no uh no deforestation Pete and umexploitation. So that’s a whole another level. Uh but basically my role isaround continuing furthering partnerships really thinking holistically around strategy and how wecan deepen our work. um really looking at biodiversity. I also love that about the nature work and also other areassuch as water. But I’ll leave it at that.Sophia, one followup for you um on the palm oil stuff. uh how much of that workis driven by regulations especially like upcoming you know disclosure throughEUDR versus voluntary action and like having having the support of the parentcompany with nature targets I’m c I’m curious to like understand better what drives your focus there is it voluntaryregulatory or both I think it’s both um I would say voluntary is something that we that wetry we try to just push And that’s my my department is called corporate consciousness. So we always try to holdwe’re a missiondriven company and we are setting you know the best standards thatwe can set and trying to give us the guiding light. Um and then with regulations continuing to come in thathelps like we we like it when regulations help us do the work that we need to do.Thank you. I like that it’s called corporate consciousness. That’s a cool cool department to work for.All right. Uh, Kina, I have a follow-up question for you also. You mentioned um or you alluded to landscape approaches.Wondering if you could share a little bit more about um what that means for Everlane andum like what does collaboration at that scale actually look like?Yeah, happy to share more. Um, and this is something that is definitely a anarea of exploration in some ways for us, but really putting um more more rigoraround how we develop some of these programs and taking a lot of inspiration from work that folks have done um inlike the cosmetics industry, in personal care, in um some of these other commodities that my co-panelists havebeen discussing already. So there’s a lot of work that we can sort of um mimic if you will, but specifically for us umwhere this idea really comes from is just being able to work together acrossbrands or even across industries to support a broader um kind ofgeographical or landscape level approach. um specifically in that protection and restoration um in thosekind of fields or you know spheres of influence um so that we can really youknow address the needs of nature and biodiversity and local communities on the ground. Um so you know in some casesI think what we’ve learned from uh the work that we’ve been doing inanalyzing both our risks and our gaps and where our opportunities are is umthat we’ve been pretty good about sustainably managing at least the the types of commodities or the types of ummaterials and ingredients that we’ve been so closely focused on on um findingthe right sources for. Um but we’ve sort of left out this broader level of protection and restoration. And as acompany of our size, you know, we’re pretty we’re important, but um we’re certainly not not huge. We’re not agiant. And we have limited budgets. We have limited time and scope. And just as a um a point of reference, um even inour finished good factories that we partner with, we make up less than 10% of any supplers’sum volume. So we have, you know, at at kind of our very closest level of supplychain influence, we have a fairly small um level of leverage that we’re able toprovide. So whenever you think about that and extrapolate it, you know, it’s sometimes 7 8 10 levels um behind at thefarm level or at at the geographical level, it’s even more diluted. And inmany cases um especially where we are just purchasing commodities like organic cotton um we we don’t necessarily havethose in in all cases those specific uh direct relationships with sourcing mechanisms.So thinking about how we expand not just from a specific commodity perspectivebut really looking at the entire geographical region which have so manyum opportunities across these different impacts and spheres in the nature and biodiversity kind of assessmentframework. um thinking about how we can come together with other companies thatha that have a shared risk and have a shared supply chain as us and investing in those impact areas, but also reallyimportantly in the people and particularly the the excuse me the indigenous communities on the groundthat are already doing that work is something that’s really exciting um and just a really great way I think forpartnership and participation. Thank you. So curious like have youidentified then specific companies that do make up a bigger part of the supplyfor like any specific ingredient? Like what yeah what are the steps internally you take to like figure that out? Who dowe who do we partner with and for which material? Well, I think we’re we’re starting totry to put that together right now. Um, I think the what’s really great aboutthis community, um, is that, you know, we might be competitive in different ways, uh, certainly from like a customerperspective sometimes, but, um, we’re also very collaborative. And I think werecognize and there’s a growing number of other brands and companies that recognize that we can’t do this workalone. Um, it really requires a an additional level of investment and time.Um especially whenever we’re thinking about these very you know big complex global issues um whether that be climateor nature there’s absolutely no way that one company can drive um the solutions that we need. So um some of it is alittle intuitive. You know we talk to each other we know um who’s sourcing from who’s sourcing cotton from whichregions. Um we also can get that information just kind of organically through our supply chain vendors. weknow who else is working in a shared supply chain just by nature of that. Umand then yeah, we’re starting to really start to convene and have these conversations with other brands um wherewe’re trying to decide and focus together where can we have the greatest impacts across commodities and regionsthat we share both those risks and those opportunities with.Great. Thank you. Um, so I do just want to make sure folks in the on the callknow that you can drop your Q&A. Uh, if you if you have any questions, drop it in the Q&A box. Um, I don’t see anythingyet, so I’m going to keep asking the panelists questions, but I’m monitoring that. So, please feel free to drop morein here and I’ll uh pull them in as we go. Um, but so I want to maybe follow upwith you, Colleen, since we haven’t heard from you in a little bit. um anything to add to this this landscapepiece because I know it’s something that that you’re focused on and you happen to be convening companies that couldcollaborate. Yes, thanks Alex for for asking that. Ithink as as Katina had just pointed out, you know, no single company can do this at at the geographic scale that’s that’srequired. um as we know just an an ecologicalum approach to things requires a watershed approach, a landscape approach. These are the sorts of termsthat are being used and so it it is important to have those conversations as Kina mentioned in between brands andwhatnot. But what we’ve been exploring is bringing together and conveningmultiple brands around a sectoral um issue. So looking at food and egg,looking at textile and fashion and just exploringfirst of all where are those commonalities in ingredients or in commodities? Are there ge geographiesum where they’re already vested and where there’s opportunity to expand and and explore partnership? And that’s youknow it’s part of one of the the science-based targets nature um landtargets is to engage um at the landscape scale um externallyand with others. So it’s very much part of of the broader nature strategyapproach. So more and more companies are going to be needing to address this and we’re in real time exploring what thislooks like and how how to do this in a way that um is really taking place in apre-ompetitive space because you know the risk is everyone’s and the suppliersare shared, the supply shed is shared, the raw materials are shared and it’s really the only way to address it froman ecologically relevant level to actually stem those threats that I Ishared earlier. Thank you. Um, all right. So, we got abunch of good questions now coming in. So, I’m going to start to link these in. And one that might slide in nicely withthe landscape conversation. We’ve got a few questions around water and alsonature-based carbon credits. So, I’m just going to ask you each to answer this like very briefly. How does waterstrategy or um nature-based carbon credits fit in to your nature work? So,I’ll start with you Sophia. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that fits into the landscape question really and uhwith water I’ll say um and so with the organization that we’re directly beenwe’ve been working with Ka and um central calamontan Indonesia you know they really work to build localgovernance and and I think really looking at the whole ecosystem is soimportant. So water is clearly a part of that and how do we create these resilient rural um economies and sowater I would say is definitely the the the next piece but it has to be likeeverybody has to be part of the conversation to address that.Uh Kay, how about you? Water and andor nature-based carbon credits.Yeah, water shows up for us in a little bit of a different way. Our focus has been again back on formula, thinkingabout biodegradability. What are the choices we’re making as a company from an ingredient selection perspective thatis impacting water? So, are you using biodegradable ingredients in a showerwash that’s going to be going down the drain? So, we’re really approaching it from understandingwhat is and isn’t biodegradable, what are the alternatives, what should we swap out, and these are some tough toughconversations to have again internally with your product developers, but they know they’re coming when we’re saying,”Hey, you know, are there something is there something else that you could be using in your portfolio that’s going tohelp protect water by ensuring that things are going to break down and they’re not going to leave any toxic,you know, chemicals behind?” So, a lot of work to do there, but that’s how our focus right now is on water. Let’s fixthose things first that we most directly touch. Let’s get those right.Um, Kina, anything for you? And also curious like if water risk, water scarcity risk comes into play.Yeah, certainly. And we’ve done um a pretty good amount of work on trying to understand and assess our water risksboth at kind of the farm and and raw material origin perspective as well asthrough the entirety of the wet processing that’s really required to transform a fiber into you knowsomething that that you’re wearing. There’s actually a lot of um water intensive processing that happens um toyour clothing. So we’ve done a lot of work already to to measure and understand where those impacts are andwe’re taking action both on the manufacturing side as well as on um on kind of the raw material origin andsourcing side as well. But I think what this question is really bringing up for me is um just the interconnectedum nature of of this type of work which is a little bit different from I think the way that not necessarily everyonebut a lot of climate work has been viewed which is almost with a little bit of of tunnel vision um on thespecificity of greenhouse gas reduction whereas this nature-based approachreally allows you to bring in and think about the complexity of a system level of like an entire landscape or gegeographical level and um you know something that that you know many peoplewho have worked in this space for a long time understand the concept of a watershed um it’s it’s essentially theexact same thing like it is that that kind of simple especially whenever we’re thinking about um like the sourcingcomponent or the sourcing uh perspective. So um yeah water plays areally big point for us. It’s another it’s a big area of risk again an opportunity that we’ve analyzed and thatwe’re bringing forward uh with the next step that we’re going to take on nature and biodiversity but it’s sointerconnected with with everything else as we all know we all need water to survive. Um so this is it’s a it’s areally big point of of our strategy um existing and also future.Thank you. I’m so excited you all had uh you’re all working on nature and water, not just one or the other. Um and lovethat it’s actually sounds quite integrated for all of you. Um so I think this one might be a quick one, but do doany of you have sight specific biodiversity actions in the United States?Um, I will say not not yet, but we’re going to need some because uh corn from the US turned out to be one of thosethings we identified. We use a lot of, you know, alcohol in our fragrances. So, that is work ahead of us that we need tolook at. So, um, please ping me on the side. If there’s any great projects going on to help with regenerative corn,let me know. Um, we would love to learn a little bit more about that. Same.Great. Let’s same. Here you go. This is how the landscape approach really beginspartner. I love that. Exciting. Yeah, we’re we’re supporting some workum actually in uh regenerative grazing with a partner called Native. Um we’vebeen supporting this project for a couple of years. It’s sort of related back to some of our leather consumptionand our leather use. Um, and yeah, we’re we are supporting a uh Montanaregenerative grazing project that’s really meant to try to restore um thelandscape in Montana using uh grazing practices, responsible and regenerative grazing practices um of cattle and steerthat that end up eventually in the meat industry primarily, but um also has ayou know kind of side um side impacts into the leather industry. It’s fairly small. Leather is a is a pretty smallcommodity for us that we are uh purchasing and sourcing. But um it is important because it does have anoutsized impact to again going back to our climate impacts and where this all kind of originated from. Um for us uhthat is that’s been what we’ve we’ve been working on in the US.Alex, yeah. Oh, sorry. I just thought I might add to that. Um in the resource list we havethe case study from Toyota which has a good example. Um it’s the Toyota NorthAmerica group and so they are working on pollinator restoration projects thatequate their operational footprint across North America. So there’s some good example um there’s a good examplethere uh about some of of what’s happening very locally as well. We’vegot other other clients too who are who are doing that. But I think it’s just really important to note that this isone of this is why doing this work in nature is so critical because of risks to supply chains aroundthe world. And just you think about the the miles where things have to traveland how far how can you build that resilience into your your backyard. Um,but I also wanted to note with Toyota, one of the things that we’ve looked at is their ports and the impact onshipping and um marine impacts to wildlife and and such. Just when youthink about the the movement of all these supplies and materials around the world to get them from point A to pointB, it’s why looking across your entire value chain is is so important. So, it’s it’s a great question. Thanks forraising that one. Yeah, thank you. So, um, I’m going totry to wrap us up quickly with just one more question. Um, so I’m going to pullfrom, uh, Caroline’s question up top here. How do your teams go about gettinginternal buyin on sustainability initiatives, but I’m going to frame it so we can be be concise here. If youcould give one tip to another company looking to get buy in for natureinitiatives, what piece of advice would you give them? I’ll start with you Sophia.Yeah. Um I believe sustainability is woven best throughout the whole companyand that people have the solutions and that was the approach I came with. So I just I love nature. I have a backgroundin food system. So just talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk and just like get people love to talk about nature.Awesome. Keep talking about it. Uh okay. How about you?Similar similar vein to that. It’s talk about it and also learn to speak the internal language of your teams becausethey are not all the same. So how you talk to your marketing team is very different than how you talk to your technical experts. give you a very quickstory from our executive director who’s fabulous but wanted to talk to some you know highlevel leaders in theorganization was doing a very complicated climate for us in the middle of the jungle this is not not a jokethis really happened and there was I think a lot of um not confusion but youknow it’s sometimes really scary and difficult and complicated to talk about these topics she realized after the factwhat they really needed to hear was this is our jar it’s made with virgin and plastic that comes from petroleum whichis driving climate change. So we need some recycled content. Like they needed really clear ties back to the product.So speak the language, fail, get up, dust yourself off, try it again. Umbecause once you unlock how to talk to people in a way that inspires them and resonates with them individually, thenthose nature conversations get really, really good. And you’re right, Sophia, people have the solutions and they wantto talk about it. So find your language. Get up. If it doesn’t work the first time, try it again.Did you say they were doing like a workshop in the middle of the jungle? In the middle of the jung in Brazil. Like they took the leadership team, youknow, in it’s great to get in nature, but let them experience nature. Maybe, you know, climate frisk on the clim, youknow, jungle floor is not it’s always the it’s fun, but maybeI love that. I That’s something I would come up with. Um, totally totally amazing. I love that practical advice.Uh, Kina, how about you? Yeah, I I love both of those contributions so much andI don’t even know what I can sensitively add at this point, but um I think one ofthe things that I’ve actually been very sort of surprised but also, you know, pleasantly surprised internally ispeople can grasp on to nature based impacts a lot more easily and simplythan they can for example climate impacts. We see this within our internal teams. We see this within our leadershipand our board. Um, we also see this with customers and we’ve done some some interesting testing of just what what isresonating with people and where climate can feel very nebulous. We’re talkingabout measurements on a kg per CO2e basis or metric tons. Sometimes I thinkour brains are not necessarily wired to to understand what that impact means umand what we we need to do about it. So there’s been a lot more educating and engaging and to Kay’s point, sort ofcode switching that we have to do across different teams to be able to communicate and and get buy in. Whereason the nature side, you know, anybody who’s ever enjoyed a park or a walk outside or anything more advanced thanthat has an inherent understanding of of why this work is important. Um, and it’sa lot easier to connect that to the specific materials that you’re sourcing, the products that you’re creating, orjust the work that you’re doing in general and the impacts uh, socially um, on the ground that that those, you know,contribute to. So, um, just keep doing it. um as both Sophia and Kay havealready mentioned um but but I think you’ll find that you’ll find a lot moreuh participation and partnership internally around nature because it is just so much better understood by us,you know, we humans. Thank you all so much. Um I’m going toask if uh I could get the slides back up on the screen to wrap us up. So that that’s all the time that we have fortoday. It was so lovely to speak with all of you and thank you to our audience for joining. Um, and thank you to mycolleague behind the scenes, Ambry and Julia, who are making everything run so smoothly. If you’d like to rewatch thiswebinar or share it, the recording will be archived on trellis.net and our team will email you the link once it’savailable later today. You can also check out these resources that have been shared in the chat throughout this wholepresentation. Um, is there one more slide? Let’s see.All right. Lastly, if you want to watch more Trellis webinars, you can visit trellis.net/webinars.So, on behalf of my colleagues at Trellis and our speakers, thank you so much for joining us. I’m Alex Navaro,and it’s been a pleasure chatting with you all. Thank you.