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Podcast With Commons: Decoding the Carbon Footprint of Your Shopping
51 Plays9 months ago
Ever wondered how much impact your shopping has on the planet? Commons is here to demystify that for you. This app tracks the carbon emissions from your purchases using advanced carbon algorithms. It's like having a smart, eco-conscious buddy in your pocket!
As you use Commons, you'll see not just where your money goes, but also how your choices affect the environment. The app helps you track your journey towards a smaller carbon footprint, showing you the progress you make over time.
👉 Interview with Sanchali: https://www.npws.net/podcast/shopping-carbon-footprint
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- Commons Website: https://www.thecommons.earth/
- Commons Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the.commons.earth
- Get the app: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/commons-spend-sustainably/id1438446236
🌍 SUSTAINABILITY PODCAST CREATED BY NEW PERSPECTIVE
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This podcast is proudly sponsored by New Perspective Marketing, a dynamic growth marketing agency in Boston, MA, celebrating 20 years in business. We help sustainably focused B2B organizations grow their brands and scale up revenue. If you or your organization is looking to grow, visit npws.com for more info.
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Transcript
Season 2 Introduction and Sustainable Shopping
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello, you are watching a brand new episode of the Green New Perspective Podcast. We are at our second season, so if you missed our previous one, feel free to browse through our channel and click on any of the 24 episodes we recorded with more than 30 amazing individuals from the clean tech space.
00:00:16
Speaker
If you're new to the clean tech industry, you'll discover some of the amazing technologies being developed there. And if you're a clean tech veteran, we have made some of the episodes just for you to help your business grow focused on advanced clean tech marketing strategies or how to attract investors and join clean tech communities. The theme of this episode reflects on the holiday season, a time often associated with overconsumption. And that's why we're asking a couple of questions like,
00:00:44
Speaker
Can tech help us to make our own shopping habits more sustainable? And can we actually reduce our own carbon footprints while doing it? So if you ever wondered how much impact your shopping has on the planet, my next guest is here to demystify that
Guest Introduction: Sancha Lipal and Commas App
00:01:00
Speaker
for you. Her name is Sancha Lipal, she's the founder and CEO of Commas.
00:01:04
Speaker
an app that tracks the carbon emissions from your purchases using advanced carbon algorithms. So it's like having a smart, eco-conscious buddy in your pocket. So as you use Commons, you'll see not just where your money goes, but also how your choices affect the environment. Join me in the conversation with Sanchali to explore the influence we as consumers have on the planet, find out how the app works, and discover some of the fresh eco-friendly shopping trends that Sanchali notice amongst the app's users.
00:01:33
Speaker
and for me personally it's pretty amazing to see how even our small shopping tweaks can make a big eco difference. So let's get into it!
00:01:49
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Green New Perspective podcast. How do you feel being here? It's wonderful to be here. Thank you for having me. Can you tell us a bit more about who you are? And give me a brief overview of comments, when it was founded, what problem it aimed to solve and how the app works. Sure.
00:02:07
Speaker
Thank you so much for having me. I'm Sanchali. I'm the founder and CEO of Commons. I started the company about four years ago. We launched the app in early 2020 to help people make more sustainable spending choices and to make it easier to spend your money in a way that's more sustainable. The app allows you to connect your credit and debit cards and you can automatically see the emissions behind everything you buy. You can get recommendations for sustainable brands or alternatives you might be interested in. You can see your footprint lower over time.
00:02:37
Speaker
And if you choose, you can offset your footprint as well through the app. So when we talk about the personal carbon offsetting, some of the reactions tend to be negative because companies are actually the biggest polluters. So why should we care about what we do as individuals in that space?
00:02:52
Speaker
I think the reality is that most people actually care a lot. Research shows that 69% of Americans want to shop more sustainably. They're looking for sustainable brands and sustainable products to buy from for their own health, for their children, just because they want to align with their value. I think thinking about the concept of carbon footprint put that aside, but thinking more about how do people want to live their lives. People do want to shop more sustainably. People are always looking for sustainable brands and trying to understand what's greenwashing and what's not.
00:03:21
Speaker
And Commons really helps people make those decisions of which of my choices are actually more sustainable? Where are my supporting companies that are actually doing the right thing versus supporting companies that are grainwashing or not making their operations sustainable enough?
Consumer Impact on Emissions and Sustainable Brands
00:03:34
Speaker
And how can I use my dollars to support the companies I really believe in? That's really the core user problem we find among people who are downloading the app is they're already trying to shop more sustainably, but they want to do it in a way that's more rigorous or that they feel more confident in.
00:03:49
Speaker
And it can be anything from, you know, I'm buying new clothes to I'm thinking about what to shop for at the grocery store. I'm planning a trip. How do I make sure that I'm doing that in a way that's better for me and better for the planet? But I think to your question, you know, whose responsibility is it? Is it the consumer's responsibility? Is the company's responsibility?
00:04:07
Speaker
It's everyone's responsibility in the end. Of course, companies have a huge role to play in lowering emissions, and governments also have to pass meaningful policy. But in the end, consumers also influence 65% of global emissions, so we don't have to sit around and wait for other people to take action. If we do that, we might not hit our climate targets. We have just seven years to make it to our 2030 climate targets.
00:04:32
Speaker
Just sit around and wait. We might not make it in time. And consumers are not content to just wait for other people to take action. You know, we want to be able to move things more quickly in the direction that we want them to be in. And how does the app help the consumers to see what's greenwashing and what's wrong?
00:04:48
Speaker
So if you download the app, you can start to see, for instance, a directory of brands that have been vetted by Commons as more sustainable. This includes companies that are just actually lower emissions. So thrift stores or public transport. If you're charging an e-vehicle, if you're using composting services, these are all the types of services that we need to move towards a greener economy. And they're measurably lower emissions than alternatives. So you can start to see the list of what are those companies I could buy from if I'm looking for something.
00:05:17
Speaker
You can also see companies that have been climate neutral certified by the nonprofit Climate Neutral, so have an independent third party certification that they've measured, reduced, and offset all of their emissions. And we're continuing to add to that database. We now have over 50,000 brands that people can buy from and recognize lower emissions across the United States and Canada, and we're always adding to that.
00:05:38
Speaker
So you're basically providing a transparent description of the companies so that consumers can decide if they want to shop there or not. Exactly. Right now we're only featuring companies that have met those criteria. So you can search for a company and if it's not in that database then once it has a met those criteria.
00:05:55
Speaker
That's great, stick with it here. So can you tell me about the early days of commerce? So what were some of the biggest challenges in getting the company
Building Commas: Challenges and Visions
00:06:03
Speaker
off the ground? Getting started, I'm a solo founder. I have also never started a company before. I've never even really worked in tech before. I did work in Tesla briefly. Yeah, there's a lot of learning curves, building a consumer tech product for the first time. My background is in economics and in international development.
00:06:20
Speaker
I was living and working in Ethiopia and in India before starting the company where I was working on agriculture and energy issues on the ground. And that was part of what made me so passionate about addressing the climate crisis. So I came back to the US and I went to business school thinking about how could I scale up solutions to the climate crisis.
00:06:41
Speaker
One of the ideas that just wouldn't go away was carbon tracking because it was something I had been doing in my own life for several years. For the previous six years, I had been tracking my own carbon footprint in an Excel spreadsheet. And I used that to lower my emissions by about 30% and save about $300 a month. So I had this
00:07:00
Speaker
Already I had built this carbon intuition myself that I was applying in my life, starting to include carbon in my decision making. And I realized there's no tool for this yet, for people to do this easily. It's so difficult. I have to do it manually. I have to do all the research myself. It takes a lot of time. What if it could be as easy as managing your finances or logging your workout? It should be just as easy as that to manage the sustainability of your lifestyle. But in the early days, originally I had started on this as a research project when I was in grad school with some other grad students.
00:07:29
Speaker
but ended up founding the company officially by myself. There was definitely a period of, I don't know, about eight or ten months where it was just me working on it. I was also working a side job to pay for my rent and my groceries and trying to build a prototype and test with users and pitch to investors.
00:07:49
Speaker
very difficult in those early days. What was the vision you have for the company? My vision has, I think, been pretty consistent throughout from when we started to now, which is to make it easy for people to make sustainable spending choices or choices that are better for them and better for the earth. I really, through this process myself, I found that I was buying fewer things I didn't need. The things I was buying, I was buying higher quality things that were better for my health or better for my lifestyle. And
00:08:16
Speaker
it should be easy to start to build that carbon intuition into our lives just to be able to think about, if I'm buying clothes, how do I buy clothes that are better for me and for the earth? But it is so hard because consumers don't have access to that information in an easy way. It's not easy for us to see and understand the carbon economy that we're transacting in every day. It's invisible. It's sort of lying underneath the spending choices that we're making. But the reality is if you're spending money, you're making a climate choice and most people are spending money two to three times a day.
00:08:45
Speaker
And how did you go about building awareness and getting the initial users? So what marketing strategy did you find to work well? In the early days, it was very much word of mouth. It was early users telling other users about the product. We also got some
00:08:59
Speaker
boosts from some editorial features and press that we got. The App Store featured us after the first year or so, which was really helpful in terms of getting recognition and broader access to the app. But now that we're a little bit bigger and we're starting to think more explicitly about growth and marketing, organic social has become a really important channel.
00:09:18
Speaker
Instagram in particular is a place where people are really talking about climate and sustainability every day. People are looking for tips on how to live more sustainably or information and data on what companies are doing when it comes to sustainability. So Instagram has been a place where we've gotten to share a lot of great content and connect with folks.
00:09:37
Speaker
And how do you differentiate from another similar app? Maybe not the same, but the one that comes to my mind is good for you, for clothing as well. You mentioned sustainability in fashion. They're, I believe, doing a rating of fashion brands and then suggesting the ones that are sustainable to the consumers as well. So how do you differentiate from apps like the one that I mentioned?
00:10:02
Speaker
I think there's lots of great apps out there for helping people with very specific sustainability goals they have. So for instance, Good On You is a great tool that I use too for if you're looking for sustainability ethical and animal ratings for clothing in particular, but it's very focused on clothing and it doesn't also get connected to your own.
00:10:19
Speaker
spending patterns, but it can be a great resource. And wherever possible, we're trying to include publicly available ratings within hours so that we don't include good on you today. We do include other publicly available ratings, which are just very helpful for consumers to be able to see. There are other apps that help you offset your footprint as well, but often they don't help you understand how to lower your emissions or how to live more sustainably in addition to how to offset
00:10:41
Speaker
So I think what's really unique about Commons is it's your one place to go if you want to spend your money more sustainably. You get the real-time personal feedback on how you're doing, you get recommendations, you can discover brands, and now you can also earn rewards when you shop more sustainably, which is exciting. So we just rolled out rewards a few months ago. We're actually for the sustainable purchases you make on a connected card. You can actually earn cash back or you can use those rewards for offsets.
Fundraising and Strategic Partnerships
00:11:06
Speaker
And you mentioned getting investors. And as far as I know, you brought some of the high-profile investors. So can you talk more about that? Yeah, I mean, I think fundraising has been one of the things that I've learned the most about in this journey. We've now raised our pre-seed, our seed, and our Series A. In our pre-seed, we were lucky to get into Sequoia's accelerator and joined that. We also raised a little bit of capital from angel investors. In our seed round, Sequoia let our seed. And we also brought in
00:11:34
Speaker
some investors who are more sort of like cultural icons or who have built companies similar to ours in the past. So we tried to bring on people that we'd really want to learn from for building a consumer company. So we brought on one of the founders of Headspace, Rich Pearson, the founder of Fitbit, James Park, as well as Maisie Williams, who's an actress and is very passionate about
00:11:55
Speaker
climate. And then in our Series A, we were able to also bring on some climate investors, including Norscan, as well as Jay-Z's fund arrive. And I think what's really powerful about investors is that they all come in with different experiences and having built different kinds of companies. And what we've tried to do is build a coalition of investors who together has experience in technology and climate and social impact.
00:12:19
Speaker
and also in just changing culture and building new cultural trends. And what are some of the latest trends you're seeing in carbon tracking and offsetting space? And how do you think commerce is going to position itself to make some progress and development out of
Trends in Sustainable Consumer Behavior
00:12:34
Speaker
them?
00:12:34
Speaker
Well, one of the types of trends we keep an eye on very closely is consumer spending and how consumer spending is changing, especially because we have spending data so we can look at aggregate to see how are people spending differently. And very exciting to see that last year in 2022, our users were reducing their emissions by about 20% on average with the app and saving about $200 a month. So really significant improvements.
00:12:57
Speaker
Most of that was coming from some really key shifts in behavior that are happening. People are starting to buy more secondhand. It's a really big trend. That's one of the biggest trends in shopping we're seeing, not only in clothing, also in furniture. It's a really big trend. Also, people are shifting more towards electric vehicles and towards public transport.
00:13:15
Speaker
in a way that we haven't seen since COVID. Since the year before, we saw significantly more users taking public transit and taking it more frequently, many more users charging electric vehicles and much fewer gasoline purchases. Even though the price of gasoline has gone up, the overall spending on gasoline has gone down in the last couple of years among our users, which is pretty exciting.
00:13:34
Speaker
Renewable energy at home. I think this is a big one, not necessarily installation of solar, which can be a big expense in the current economy, but more uptick in community solar and in renewable energy programs through utility providers, which is also showing that homes are starting to move on that electrification process.
00:13:51
Speaker
We are going to publish an episode with a company that is actually providing homeowners with more sustainable solutions, like you mentioned, because there is a market that is developing really fast. What future product development are you most excited about right now for, let's say, 2024?
00:14:10
Speaker
One of the things I'm most excited about is to build on our very early rewards program. This has been just a promotion we've been running since September of 2023, but we've seen lots of interest in these rewards people enrolling and actually shifting their behavior as a result of them. So we're excited to be able to expand on those and we're starting to think about how can we make them more fun and engaging and actually help people go beyond maybe even what they're buying, but actually into greening their lifestyle at home as well.
00:14:39
Speaker
So that's something I'm really excited about on our roadmap and hopefully also providing more guidance to folks as they're thinking about upcoming spending choices. What we do super well is help you analyze your past spending choices and then use that to inform your future. But if you're thinking about, you know, I need to buy a pair of jeans or I need to buy a vacuum cleaner or something, you know, we all need to replace things in our lives or sometimes upgrade things in our lives. And we're trying our best to start to get into how do we give people the right content so that they can
00:15:09
Speaker
make those choices in the easiest way possible. Do you
Advice for Aspiring Founders
00:15:13
Speaker
plan to include something about the repairs? Yeah, repairs are such an important one because when you're thinking about buying something, actually there's other options. You can repair something you have, you can borrow from someone, you can
00:15:26
Speaker
shop secondhand before you buy something new. So we're definitely trying to include that sort of in the decision making. We have a lot of content right now on mending, especially for clothing, but also for fixing other things in your home, which can be a great cost saver as well. Well, to people who want to start their own startups or companies, not just from, from, from carbon tracking space, but all over clean tech, can you share some of the lessons you've learned and some of the pitfalls to avoid? Definitely. I mean, one of the lessons that I've learned is
00:15:57
Speaker
I think from an investor perspective, when you're going out to find the right investors for you, it's really important to be pitching investors who already believe in the problem you're solving so that all you have to convince them on is that your solution is the right one. It's very, very hard to convince an investor that your problem matters if they don't already know enough about it to believe it exists. I think I found that with my first funding round that I
00:16:21
Speaker
I actually spoke to a partner at Sequoia. I emailed him cold because I saw something he had written that said that he believed that consumers needed more information about climate and there was going to be a new wave of climate companies. And this was back in 2019 that he had written this. So it was before clean tech was really a big thing again.
00:16:40
Speaker
When I saw that, I was like, here's someone who I don't even know if, you know, I didn't know at the time of Sequoia invested even at the angel stage. But I was like, I should go talk to this person because he clearly already believes in my problem. And I should I could at least learn something from how he's thinking about the problem space. And I think that's a really
00:16:57
Speaker
that has always been a really successful way of connecting with investors is knowing that they already care about the problem you're solving, whether that's something in health and fitness or in consumer or B2B. Finding those people who are already thinking about your problem is a really big step up to being able to build a successful investor relationship.
00:17:17
Speaker
I think also that from a founder perspective, especially being a solo founder, it can be really hard. Having people around you in your life to support you is super important, whether that's your friends or family or partner. Also having other founders who are just one or two steps ahead of you, who can tell you the path that they went on, that's helped me so much. You know, just saying, someone's saying, I've been through this before and it's okay, you'll get through it.
00:17:40
Speaker
Here's how I did is really, really beneficial. And then just perseverance is like the only predictor of success. I feel like it's the people who are continuing to work on it and continuing to learn and adjust their approach or the ones who are still working on their companies. Have you maybe been a part of some communities in sustainability or clean tech that have helped you on your way? Some of our previous guests have shared some Slack channels, Discord channels, LinkedIn channels, some platforms.
00:18:09
Speaker
hubs for connecting people and clean tech. Yeah, I definitely think, I mean, the climate tech community has grown so much in the last four years that I've been working on the company, which has been amazing.
Climate Tech Communities and Future Opportunities
00:18:17
Speaker
I've definitely found a lot of support from the different networks that have popped up on their recruiting front. We use climate base and Terra.do's job boards to post and to connect with potential candidates. Also, I'm still on MCJ and it's a great place to meet people and to learn and to see the sort of what conversations people are having on Slack and also to learn from their newsletter.
00:18:38
Speaker
And I find the Climate Tech BC newsletter super helpful as well as I'm trying to getting a pulse on what's going on in the space. But I've also been able to benefit a lot from founder groups. So I have a really wonderful founder coaching group, peer coaching group of other climate founders here in the Bay Area. And we meet every few weeks and we have a facilitator and coach. And we actually connected through MCJ, through the MCJ community, which has been incredibly helpful having other founders who are in a similar space and a smaller stage.
00:19:06
Speaker
We can share all the links below in the description of the video so that people can join or at least check out the groups that you mentioned. So where do you see innovation and growth opportunities in the sustainable deck since you're following the community pretty closely? And sustainability more broadly? Let's do sustainability more broadly since you're communicating with consumers mostly.
00:19:27
Speaker
I mean, I think that there's so much opportunity in consumer goods for new next-gen materials and next-gen business models. Circular business models are really promising and also really appealing, especially to Gen Z and millennials. So like re-wear lines, repurpose lines from brands where they're reselling their same products as like in their third time. It's also great for the brand because they get to keep that revenue in-house multiple times, which I think is really exciting.
00:19:56
Speaker
new materials and new ways of producing, whether that's producing from natural materials or producing in new, more local and more bespoke ways rather than mass production, moving away from sort of like the fast fashion approaches to more local and bespoke models.
00:20:12
Speaker
I'm really excited to see that happening. And then also lots of great innovation on the plant-based side. I think a lot of folks are starting to become a flexitarian of some kind, whether that means not eating red meat or not eating meat at lunch or eating meat only when they go out of the house. There's all these different models of plant-forward diets that I think are really exciting. And I think there's going to be a lot more
00:20:38
Speaker
emphasis on plant-forward cooking for people at home. So you've mentioned that you're active on social media. Where can people find Commons? Can they introduce to what you're doing? Download the app and all the rest? Well, where do they think they form? You can find us on the iOS or Android app store or play store. Search for Commons. You can also find us on our website, thecommons.earth or on Instagram at thecommons.earth.
00:21:03
Speaker
And do you have any parting words of wisdom on leading a purpose during startup? The most important thing is that you're passionate about it. If you care about it and you're trying to solve this problem for people you care about and can identify, I think
00:21:18
Speaker
you're on the right path. For me, whenever I'm feeling disheartened or confused, I book some user interviews and I talk to users and that really helps me ground in why I'm doing what I'm doing. So I think for purpose-driven founders, that's sort of a secret weapon for us is that you can always go, and honestly for any kind of founder, but especially if you feel really passionate about the problem you're solving, if you feel like you can always go to someone who's facing this problem and it'll renew your motivation, your sense of purpose, that can be a
00:21:46
Speaker
very renewable resource for your own energy. Well, thank you, Sonchella. This has been a wonderful conversation and I wish you all the best in your future. Thank you so much. It's been really fun to chat with you. So this is the end of another episode of the Green Perspective podcast. If you want to learn more about how your shopping habits can become more sustainable or how you can reduce your carbon footprint while doing it,
00:22:17
Speaker
You can download the Commons app in the description of this video and also you'll find there the info about our sponsor, new perspective, a Boston-based marketing agency working with cleantech clients only. So discover how our sponsor is actually helping cleantech clients to become more visible and more successful. And if you want to help us,
00:22:38
Speaker
Don't forget to subscribe to our channel on your favorite streaming platform. And of course, leave us comments, reviews, give us feedback. We love that. So until next time, bye.