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Carbon to Couture: LanzaTech's Carbon Recycling Revolution
122 Plays1 year ago
Did you know that we can turn pollution and carbon emissions from steel mills into the fabrics of dresses, sneakers, and even perfumes?
Today, we're diving into the groundbreaking world of LanzaTech, a company founded in 2005 when the idea of recycling carbon seemed like science fiction.
Join us as we explore how LanzaTech's mission of carbon recycling is shaping a more sustainable future, one stylish collaboration at a time.
🕑 KEY MOMENTS
==================
- ➜ [01:39] Sarah explains LanzaTech's mission and carbon recycling technology.
- ➜ [03:16] Discussion on LanzaTech's collaborations with big brands like Zara and Gucci.
- ➜ [05:25] Sarah shares the story of LanzaTech's inception and its early challenges.
- ➜ [08:02] Sarah talks about the communication challenges they faced in educating their consumer base.
- ➜ [11:47] Sarah discusses her role as ESG manager at LanzaTech and the progress they've made.
- ➜ [16:24] Sarah explains how they communicate their ESG results to stakeholders, investors, and consumers.
- ➜ [18:07] Discussion on fostering a company culture that aligns with ESG principles.
- ➜ [21:35] Sarah shares her views on the future of sustainability and where she sees LanzaTech fitting into that future.
📚 RESOURCES & LINKS
========================
- Website: https://lanzatech.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/lanzatech/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/lanzatech
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/LanzaTech/videos
👉 Interview with Sarah Ye: https://bit.ly/3Qj5CpA
🌍 SUSTAINABILITY PODCAST CREATED BY NEW PERSPECTIVE
========================
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
Podcast Introduction & Sponsor
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello, hello and welcome to another episode of Green Your Perspective, your go-to podcast to learn about clean tech, nature tech and agri-tech breakthrough solutions and the marketing strategies used to accelerate growth. We invite you to learn from and be inspired by the game changers, the disruptors and the pioneers who are redefining our future.
00:00:21
Speaker
This episode is proudly sponsored by New Perspective, a next-gen marketing agency hailing from Boston, Massachusetts, working with clean tech clients. So if you want to learn more about our sponsor, check out the description below this episode.
Guest Introduction: Sarah Yee
00:00:35
Speaker
So what are we going to talk about today?
00:00:38
Speaker
My guest is Sarah Yee, an ESG manager of Lanza Tech. Lanza Tech is a company that started back in 2005 when the idea of turning pollution and carbon emissions from steel mills into materials for clothing, shoes and fragrances sounded like something out of science fiction.
00:00:57
Speaker
But today it's a reality. So join us as we explore how Lazatec's mission to recycle carbon is not only making passion a little bit more sustainable, but also shaping a stylish and eco-friendly future. So tune in and enjoy.
00:01:21
Speaker
Hi, Sarah, and welcome to the Green New Perspective podcast.
Lanza Tech's Carbon Recycling
00:01:25
Speaker
Thank you so much. I'm very happy to be here. So Sarah, you're working as an ESG manager at Landsat X. So can you tell us a bit more about the company and what you guys do to combat climate change? And of course, what is your role as an ESG manager means within the company? Yeah, absolutely. I would love to.
00:01:41
Speaker
So LanceTech was founded in 2005 in New Zealand by Dr. Sean Simpson and Dr. Richard Forrester. And this was at a time when no one really believed it was possible to use waste carbon emissions as a feedstock, nor leverage any kind of nature-based solutions for sustainable fuels and chemicals production. So this was the time that the company was founded in. And so what we are is a carbon recycling company.
00:02:08
Speaker
And so we're able to capture pollution and carbon emissions, such as those from steel mills, and we can transform them into a raw material or into a chemical that's the building block for our material economy. Landsatex carbon recycling technology, from a concept that might be a bit easier to grasp,
00:02:28
Speaker
is like retrofitting a brewery onto an emission source, like a steel mill or a landfill site. But instead of using sugars and yeast to make beer, we are able to convert the pollution using a bacteria into a fuel or a chemical. And so from there, we work with numerous downstream conversion partners and we're able to then transform that raw material
Product Collaborations & Impact
00:02:49
Speaker
into products. And what type of products are you making? At all our commercial sites, we're producing ethanol. And that ethanol is being converted downstream into dresses for Zara. Athletic wear and tennis shoes for Adidas. We've made leggings with H&M Move, cleaning products with Mabel, perfume from Gucci. So so far, there have been actually a range of various products with big name brands.
00:03:16
Speaker
And what was your first collaboration, the one that put you on the map? Well, some of our earlier collaborations were with cleaning products and packaging with Mabel. But then also what was pretty amazing was we were able to make these really beautiful cocktail dresses with Zara.
00:03:32
Speaker
Yeah, we've had a couple capsule collections and they've all sold out and the dresses actually are quality. We bought a bunch and we have some here at the office. What's also really nice is they weren't, even though it was made from recycled carbon or recycled pollution,
00:03:50
Speaker
there really wasn't a huge markup either. So it was very accessible. Yeah, I know that a lot of fast fashion brands have had those sustainability initiatives in the past. Didn't know that Zara had carbon recycled dresses. I know that a lot of brands have had recycled a polyester made from plastic bottles that didn't turn out to be sustainable at all. But this sounds like a good idea, a good product. Have to explore it more. But can you tell me,
00:04:19
Speaker
if you have had any bigger collaboration that transformed the company that you were collaborating with, transformed their ways beyond capsule collections. Sure, but for this question, instead of focusing on a specific case or a specific company that has used our technology,
00:04:38
Speaker
I'd actually really like to talk about the impact that we're having and how we're really transforming the entire system of how we treat and value carbon. This is something we're actually very proud of is we are
00:04:54
Speaker
changing how people think about carbon. We're at the option to recycle a so-called liability that is carbon or is pollution and we can turn it into a valuable and sustainable product. We like to say that we see opportunity where others see waste and that transformation is one that we're hoping spreads to other companies and spreads really is a change in our overall culture.
Innovation & Challenges in Carbon Recycling
00:05:18
Speaker
Was that the company's vision from the beginning and what were the challenges that you faced along the way?
00:05:24
Speaker
As I mentioned, the company started in 2005 back in New Zealand by Dr. Simpson and Dr. Forrester. The two of them really came from a company that was focused on using biomass to make fuels, but they thought it was a better idea to use something that had
00:05:40
Speaker
little to no impact on land or food production instead. And so they wanted to find something that was low cost and in a large quantity. And so I think they came across this academic paper that showed it was possible for this bacteria to consume carbon monoxide to produce ethanol.
00:05:56
Speaker
So, light bulbs went off in their head and they said, is it possible to use this biology at a large scale to consume waste emissions? So, they were researching gas fermentation and they came across this rabbit gut bacteria, which is at the heart of what we do here at Lanza Tech. It's called Clostridium autoethangenum.
00:06:18
Speaker
And this bacteria descended from the Earth's oldest organisms that subsisted off deep sea vests. And so the reason I bring this up is Sean, one of the co-founders, he's been quoted saying how our climate future was created billions of years ago, which in this case is very true. The reason I bring this up is this was the creation of land's attack, right? This is like, how could we make fuels from something that had no impact on land and food production?
00:06:47
Speaker
So thinking sustainability from the very start. And while we started off focusing on fuels and sustainable aviation fuel, we realized that there are other applications for our technology.
00:06:58
Speaker
that the raw materials being produced from our commercial sites right now being ethanol really is the building block to most things we use in our everyday life. What you've basically been sharing with me and our audience is the history of the company and how you developed. Can you tell me a bit more about the challenges that you encountered on the way for the other people who are starting their own businesses in the clean tech space? Also, one more thing that I wanted to ask you is that
00:07:28
Speaker
When I talk with guests here in the podcast, who are all from the Clint X space, they're telling me that they have the problems or challenges with communication because the technology they're developing and selling, putting on the market is fairly new or totally new. So it's important for general public and other companies or partners to understand what they're doing and how they're helping solving climate change issues.
00:07:54
Speaker
So can you tell us if you maybe had similar issues within laser tech and how did you deal with them?
00:08:02
Speaker
a challenge that we face with our consumer base and even with partners and even people like myself. I've been working at Lands of Tech since 2015 and even I still find the concept of carbon abatement in terms of tons to
Role of ESG in Lanza Tech
00:08:16
Speaker
be rather amorphous and hard to grasp. By end of the year 2024, we're anticipating that we'll have an annual carbon abatement of 500 tons. That's from all our commercial units. What does that actually mean?
00:08:31
Speaker
It actually means it's comparable to removing about 110,000 cars from the road each year. But to make it relatable to our everyday consumer and the people who really do have an impact on helping to solve the climate crisis that we're all in is understanding
00:08:51
Speaker
what they can do and understanding that they actually have an impact and that they themselves can take action. In thinking about our consumer base, especially recently, what's been a key driver in our external communication and in collaboration with our partners has been our carbon smart products.
00:09:09
Speaker
You know, these are products made using the raw materials produced through our technology at the commercial facilities. And so these products are a tangible way that allows our consumers to interact with the company and our technology, right? To know that you're wearing a Zara dress made in part from sustainably produced ethanol, or you're, you know, spraying on a perfume made 100% for recycled carbon before a big night out. That is a truly tangible way and relatable way
00:09:38
Speaker
that you as a consumer are making an impact. And so I think from the education front, being able to have these products, being able to touch them and feel them and hold them and wear them makes a huge difference. And so today, because of our platform, you can literally walk into a store or go online and purchase these things, purchase clothing, purchase detergent and dresses, all made from recycled emissions.
00:10:03
Speaker
And this always brings me back to something that Jennifer Holmgren, our CEO, used to say, or still says, is she wants to create these carbon smart consumers. And she wants these consumers to be able to go into a store and just like you choose organic product or fair trade coffee, she wants consumers to be able to choose something made from recycled carbon.
00:10:27
Speaker
So if I understood correctly, most of the challenges are coming from explaining how your technology works towards the consumers, the general audiences. So are there any specific marketing strategies that you're using to convey those messages? Maybe simplify them and maybe using social media. Maybe social media platforms are good for that. To reach the audience first and then to explain what you're doing, which products you're making or have a part in making.
00:10:56
Speaker
We hired our communications director, a new communications director, who is in charge of all that and helping to revamp our overall communication strategy. But yeah, on our Instagram, you can see some of our partnerships and what we've been able to produce with the likes of H&M and Adidas and Gucci.
00:11:16
Speaker
Well, great. We're going to link all your social media in the description of this video so everyone can check that out. My next question for you is basically I'm repeating myself from the beginning of this conversation. So you are an ESG manager at Lazadec.
00:11:31
Speaker
What does it mean to be an ESG manager at all? Can you explain that to our audience who may be not introduced to the term? And what does it mean in your company, in LanzaTech? What your role entails? I've been at LanzaTech since 2015, and I've had a whole host of roles since I joined the company.
00:11:54
Speaker
I originally started in corporate development and then that morphed into leading our project management office and helping set up a lot of project management frameworks. Really, during that time, getting a very good, deep understanding of our projects, our technology, being able to get in the weeds and work with the project managers to help ensure the success of some of these projects. During the time while I was leading the PMO efforts,
00:12:25
Speaker
During that time, along with a few other coworkers, I started Blend, which is our diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility-focused ERG. And we hadn't had anything like this before. And we also, even though we are at our core, we're a sustainability company where everything we do, our mission, our vision, everything our team strives for on a daily basis is all sustainability-driven.
00:12:50
Speaker
We realized that we had never taken a deep dive and looked at our operations to see if we actually walk the talk. Here we are externally developing this
Sustainability Goals & Communication
00:13:01
Speaker
technology that will help bend the carbon curve and solve the climate crisis. What are we doing internally? What does our internal business look like? Just a group of five of us, we put together our first, and it was only internal,
00:13:16
Speaker
but our own internal sustainability report of sorts looking at our waste. How do we manage our waste? How much is incinerated? How we handle all of that? We looked at our travel, our business travel. We looked at a whole range of different things really just to get a good grasp and an understanding of where we stood. All of this was going to be done in our free time in the midst of doing a full-time job.
00:13:43
Speaker
But that actually, along with the earlier work that I was doing, kind of paved the way and helped to create the role that I'm currently in of ESG manager. So all the different facets of my past roles all came together nicely into this one position. And I've had it since about Q2 of last year. So it's a fairly new role.
00:14:04
Speaker
Can you tell me about the progress that you've been making in this time? If you compare your ESG report and how it looked like back then and how it looks like now, how do you feel? So especially now, you know, with us being a public company as of February of this year, you know, in mandatory CCESG disclosures, you know, just around the corner, this is a really important time for us.
00:14:31
Speaker
And so I'd say in the past, let's call it year and a half, the focus really has been on like developing some baselines, right? As I mentioned, because we are a sustainability company and we have a diverse company to begin with. I think when I joined, I'm not sure about now, but when I joined the company and we had people from 20 different countries,
00:14:51
Speaker
and you walk around the labs and you see just a mix of all different kinds of people, it's really wonderful. It was just a matter of quantifying it and being able to measure it. I think that has actually, in terms of a shift or an evolution of my role and what I've seen, it isn't necessarily a change in our mission or a change in our vision.
00:15:14
Speaker
But it's how we view what it is that we're doing and then being able to quantify it, being able to put data behind it and then make data-based decisions or data-driven decisions. And so a lot of it was, oh, well, we have a diverse employee body. Great. Well, what does that actually look like? Let's start tracking it. And so it didn't require a whole lot of new effort because we didn't have to develop new processes, but we did have to automate and we did have to
00:15:40
Speaker
set these numbers in place and be able to start tracking and reporting against them. So that was really the first step, is what are we already doing and what are we already doing well? And then from there, because we partner with a lot of big names, like Unilever is leading the charge in kind of doing well by doing good, is they have a lot of requirements for their partners. And so it's then being able to ensure that we are meeting the requirements of partners
00:16:09
Speaker
requirements that are attached to project funding from the government, from the Department of Energy, so just being able to meet those needs.
00:16:18
Speaker
And then from there, developing our own targets and our own metrics of where we'd like to be. So let's go back to the communications strategies. So how are you communicating your results, ESG results to the stakeholders, to the investors, to the consumers, since ESG reporting has to be transparent?
00:16:40
Speaker
Yeah, so a lot of it right now, and given that this role has only been around a year and a half, so far it's been in our annual reports with snippets on social. And then of course, as needed to various investors as well. And so it's just communicating, but mostly through the annual report, just communicating out what we're doing well,
Fostering Internal Sustainability
00:17:04
Speaker
But then in terms of the transparency, it's not just what we're excelling in, but also potentially where some of our shortcomings are, and then based on that to develop
00:17:14
Speaker
an action plan to help address those. One of the other transitions that you were mentioning, aside from developing ESG goals and developing some new strategies within the company to make it more sustainable, not just creating sustainable products or enabling other companies to create sustainable products,
00:17:36
Speaker
You are mentioning the transition to a boss pollution future, which of course involves not only technological innovation, but also a shift in mindset and culture. So how do you foster a company culture that aligns with ESG principles and encourage employees to contribute to a more sustainable world, which is practically an internal education. We talked about that a lot, but only in terms of educating the consumers.
00:18:06
Speaker
This is something I've actually been thinking about since we started our what we affectionately dubbed green group here at the company that we started to take that deep dive look into our operations. I have to say sometimes I find myself doing this as well is given that we spend hours of each day working at a company and developing a technology that is helping to
00:18:36
Speaker
or to find a solution to this existential crisis that is climate change, sometimes it's easy to be a bit complacent. It's like I'm already spending 10 hours of the day doing this. I don't need to necessarily worry so much about what I'm doing outside of work. I feel like that culture is something that we're trying to work on, even in small baby steps.
00:19:02
Speaker
For example, in this past year, COVID hasn't helped as well because COVID has led to a lot of increased use in, say, disposable utensils and plates and bowls and whatnot, just from a health perspective. Some of that was slightly challenging. How do you bring that back?
00:19:23
Speaker
And so some of the things that we introduced this year, just once again, really small steps, small incremental steps was minimizing the use of all those single use utensils, plates, bowls, cups around the office, developing a quarterly sustainability newsletter.
00:19:38
Speaker
where people can write in suggestions about how best, or suggestions they have about reducing things around the company, reducing, be it waste or our overall carbon footprint. We have something called our active commuter incentive program, which the company incentivizes employees to bike or walk or take the train to work instead of driving. So it's just little things like this.
00:20:02
Speaker
But we've had ideas come forward, you know, as a result of this from our employees about how to reduce lab waste, you know, how to reduce single use lab waste in the labs, which is a huge, which, you know, we produce a lot of it and so every little bit helps. And so it's really just how to engage
00:20:21
Speaker
the employee body, how do we make people think twice before getting in the car to drive to work when they could ride their bike?
Vision for Future Sustainability
00:20:31
Speaker
How do we enable these small changes? Well, that's interesting. So can you tell me how do you measure the progress or are you measuring it at all? So this is a new program within the company? We have measured a little bit, for example, with that active commuter incentive program. We track the number of miles that are biked, the number of participants, make it a competition of sorts.
00:20:50
Speaker
Because there is a financial incentive there as well. And so like, you know, who's earned the most amount of money in, you know, for the month or the quarter. And so that certainly has helped. Well, thank you, Sarah. I'm really hoping that the info that you just shared here is going to inspire other companies to include more sustainability or ESG programs within their workplaces, workforces.
00:21:12
Speaker
And we've come to an end of our conversation. So this is a time when I ask all of my guests here at the Green New Perspective podcast the same question. And that is, how do you personally feel about the future of sustainability? And another bonus question for you is, where do you see lands attack in the future? And how does lands attack fit into that future sustainability space? I think in thinking in terms of the future,
00:21:41
Speaker
LanzaTech is really all about scale and about scaling up. Earlier this year in February, we became the world's first public carbon capture and transformation company. And so we have three commercial units that are in operation and there's an anticipated three more coming online, you know, this year. But at the root of it, you know, where we have impact is we really need more commercial plants in operation, more commercial plants in operation.
00:22:07
Speaker
the more carbon or the pollution we can capture and transport the impact we have just all, you know, across the world. For me personally, I'd like to start with a quote that I very much resonate with. Our challenge is not to build a sustainable economy, but to develop a sustainable culture that has an economy. And that was said by Delkin Austin, who's an economist. And to me what that means, you know, and as I talked about above is
00:22:35
Speaker
Really, LandsATEC is helping to drive that paradigm shift. We're helping to enable this transformation of an entire system of how we treat and value carbon. This culture shift is what we're striving for and is what we want to help make happen and make reality all over the world.
00:22:53
Speaker
And a big piece of it is wanting to see more companies who are like us, right, who view sustainability in the context of revenue and profit and not as a nice to have or as an afterthought. And we by no means are we the only ones doing this, right? There are other larger companies who are leading the charge on this. But I think it's important that rather than focusing just on the financial bottom line,
00:23:21
Speaker
We need to look at a lot of the non-financial metrics as well. We need to look at the broader economic, social, environmental concerns that help measure an organization's impact or the effect on its employees or the communities in which they operate. That's equally as critical and that's ESG for you, right? It's environmental, social governance. It's looking at all three of these pillars in the context of one another and in the context of revenue and profit.
Conclusion & Call to Action
00:23:49
Speaker
They're intrinsically intertwined and really should not be viewed in isolation. And I feel like to some, you know, if you look in the news, you know, you have your naysayers, but there is a lot of evidence out there that shows that this approach of viewing all three in the context of one another and never separate has shown that it's possible to make money by doing good, right? Doing well by doing good.
00:24:19
Speaker
And I feel in a world where profit is oftentimes emphasized over purpose, this sometimes falls short. So I think my dream and my dream for the future is one where more companies and more individuals really adopt this notion of viewing it holistically.
00:24:49
Speaker
We've come to an end of another episode of the Green New Perspective podcast. I hope you learned a lot from my guest, Sarah Yin, ESG manager of Landsatek. I found her talk on carbon recycling really inspiring, and I really want to learn more about the role of the ESG manager within the plaintext space.
00:25:08
Speaker
So if you find this episode enlightening as I did, please share, like and subscribe to our channel on your favorite streaming platform. Leave us comments, leave us reviews. We really want your feedback so that we can upgrade our content and continue producing amazing episodes. Thank you for watching once again and see you next time.