I haven’t always been a risk taker. Growing up, I was the kid that always reached for his helmet, showed up early for practice or rehearsal (yeah, rehearsal), and I ALWAYS waited a full 30 minutes after eating to swim. So, you’d think that dropping everything and working on a start-up would scare the crap out of me.

It did and it does.

Rather than a life of predictable goals and milestones, I work at an evolving, early-stage start-up. I’m the ‘Marketing Guy’- formal title, Director of Marketing.  I switch from Illustrator to Excel to Photoshop to WordPress to Word… all before grabbing lunch. My existence is defined by unique and fluid challenges that, quite frankly, blow my parent’s minds.

As fun and challenging as my job is, not a day goes by where I don’t think about the opportunity costs associated with how I spend my time. Am I sacrificing future career opportunities by not becoming a ‘specialist’? Am I setting myself up to be un-hirable with a track record of making my own hours (usually 50+) and getting things done by just ‘figuring it out’?

Yes.

But, in the long run, that’s exactly what the world needs. A friend recently forwarded an article to me on “Full Stack” Marketing. Borrowing from a coding/web development term for someone that can execute every stage of development, a ‘full stack’ marketer is someone that can handle the whole marketing component – design, coding, media planning, copywriting, strategy, etc.

The post points out that “1,214 job for developers and 144 for Marketing at startups.” The reason why startups don’t look for marketers? Because we have pigeonholed ourselves in our early twenties. There are account folks that are afraid of the Creative Suite, media planners that have never worked on a commercial shoot, and web developers that can’t interface with a client. Marketing folks, more often than not, only add short-term value to a start up or small company, yet these are the jobs that have the most potential, long-term growth.

The solution? Let’s add more tools to our toolbox. Pick up a side project for extra cash and learn a skill. Take the time to attend some workshops that your programming team gives over lunch. Quit your day job and ‘figure it out’ while doing something you love. Whatever your tolerance of risk, find ways to learn.

For the sake of our field, we need to be better. Let’s be the versatile, smart, valuable people we know we are.

I enjoy a challenge, I’m confident in Thread’s future success, and, most importantly, we have a company mission that I’m passionate about. Pretty awesome combo, if you ask me. It makes risk-taking a bit easier.

We have a global garbage epidemic and our oceans are full of plastic crap. About 100 million tons of plastic trash circulates in the Pacific Ocean gyres between California and Japan. Today there is no commercially viable way to clean up the mess.

The trailblazers at eco consumer brand Method soap embarked on a three-way partnership to collect, recycle and market some of the ocean plastic garbage that’s currently contaminating Hawaii’s pristine beaches.

Method is working with grassroots environmental group Sustainable Coastlines, recycler Envision Plastics and retailer Whole Foods to transform plastic trash collected from beaches into new packaging material for their products.

Prominent blue product tags read “bottle made from ocean plastic” and unfold to reveal info on the recycled origins of the bottle. The logo is a sea creature shaped from a kaleidoscopic array of plastic detritus – a telling symbol of what really happens to much of the plastic we use.

For prospective buyers, soap is just soap, until it’s not. Method’s soap bottle and label create a connection between consumers and what would otherwise be an anonymous raw material. The brand’s supply chain transparency augments the value of the core product by telling an environmental story.

By embedding the packaging material with positive environmental attributes, Method increases its appeal to a growing majority of eco-conscious consumers. A recent study confirmed that 71% of us consider the environment when making purchasing decisions. This is up from 62% a few years ago.

While the majority of consumers are hungry for increasingly detailed information on a product’s social and environmental benefits, major eco hypocrisy emerges at the end of a product’s useful life. Only 42% of consumers “dispose of products in a way that fulfills the intended environmental benefit.”

Pulling plastic off beaches in Hawaii to make bottles is interesting. It helps raise basic public awareness of a major problem. However, the realities of consumer behavior and the cycle of plastic pollution mean that it’s really just an example of using trash to make more trash.

Half a hemisphere away in Haiti, Thread is taking a different approach. Thread wants to change the way we think about plastic forever.

What if Method’s recycled bottle could tell both an environmental and a human story? Not just where did the plastic come from, but who did it help and how? Thread recycles would-be ocean plastic in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. It’s one of the poorest and most polluted places in the world.  The environmental and social benefits attached to Thread’s product position the company to make some serious waves in the consumer products world.

For the past few months, I have been working alongside the Thread team as a sustainability advisor. I apply lifecycle impact assessment techniques to help measure and market Thread’s environmental attributes. It takes a disciplined, scientifically-grounded approach to draw accurate conclusions about a material’s environmental benefits – even one that appears squeaky clean. Then there’s the marketing side. Measuring and reporting is meaningless unless we can create value for Thread and for the brands that use the material.

On a recent trip to Port-au-Prince with Thread’s founder, I met with some of Thread’s staff and partners to begin documenting the company’s processes. My initial goal was to lend a hand with carbon-related calculations. Right away, I learned that environmental impact is just one piece of an inspiring story.

The Thread team believes that the intrinsic value of their product is the power to reshape the human experience for people living in extreme poverty. For leading consumer products brands like Method, there is an incredible story just waiting to be told.

From a lifecycle perspective, Thread offers four key sustainability advantages compared with other sources of recycled plastic:

1. Thread intercepts vast amounts of plastic trash before it ever reaches the ocean. Along with partners Ramase Lajan, and Haiti Recycling, plastic is collected and processed in Port-au-Prince, cleaning up the streets and canals, and keeping plastic waste from ever reaching the ocean.

2.  Thread “upcycles” garbage into higher grade consumer products, not just more trash.

3.  Thread’s Haitian plastic is right in our backyard, ready to support the resurgence of “Made In The USA”, and creating a much smaller carbon footprint than the traditional supply chain.

4. Thread sells socioeconomic impact, in addition to environmental benefits.

A question I love asking is, “Do you know where your garbage goes?”

Most people have no idea.

I don’t completely know the answer myself. I know that every Sunday night, my roommate and I are responsible for putting our trash into the outside bins provided by our landlord, but I don’t know where it goes after the City comes and collects it.

I don’t know, because I don’t have to.

Start asking this question in the developing world however, and nearly everyone you talk to knows the answer.  In Haiti, people know where their trash goes, because they have to deal with it. They know because they carry it every week to throw down a ravine, or they burn it in their front yard, or take it to their neighbors’ pigs.  They see the trash lying in their streets, clogging their canals, and becoming an inescapable part of their landscape.

Last year, citizens across India protested against improper waste management, which was a first for the country. The public finally reached a breaking point and brought the crises of waste to the attention of their government. Improper waste management is unsightly of course, but also quite dangerous: increasing rates of infectious disease, supporting vermin, and adding to the slum mentality of areas that quickly come to resemble landfills more than neighborhoods.

What I find interesting about the protests in India is that it poses the question - should waste management be a human right?

We at Thread argue yes, it should be. We also believe that not only should people including the very poor have proper waste management systems, but that waste is actually the renewable resource that will be the key to these communities’ transformation.

When we look around and see the waste on the streets and bottles in the canals, we see jobs and exportable goods, and potential in places that are too often written off as too unstable for real potential.

So even more than waste management, I think Thread would make the argument that a real human right is the ability to see and pursue the potential of individuals and their communities, no matter how corrupt or broken those environments might be. We just use waste as the conduit to tap into that talent, and to allow people to realize that they do have resources.

These 15 jobs are a reflection of Thread’s commitment to investing in the future of recycling in Haiti and the immediate need for jobs.  It is the outcome of global partners working together for a common goal.  Ramase Lajan  recently collected the 20 millionth bottle from the streets, canals, and homes of Haiti over the past 2 years; and we are dedicated to improving the quality and volume of our products made from those bottles.  These 15  jobs, in addition to 50 individuals running and employed at collection centers, and 25 people already hired at the recycling campus in 2012 to expand plastics processing – brings total employment to 90 new Haitian jobs in 15 months.

These new jobs will help prepare the recycled plastic Thread exports each month to make into stuff people love. Someday, this material will travel locally to an elegant manufacturing facility in Port-au-Prince, made by Thread, made by Haitians, made in country.  Minimizing our environmental footprint and maximizing social and economic impact.

Next week, I’m going to Haiti (with Threadheads Kelsey and Frank) to meet our 15 new employees.  I will spend much of my time at our recycling facility working with our engineer and team on quality assurance and increased production, while Kelsey & Frank travel to every one of Ramase Lajan’s 24 collection centers to check in and survey the landscape for opportunities to improve and strengthen.

We will meet 15 members of 15 families that quite possibly didn’t have a sustainable income in March, and we’ll come back to Pittsburgh determined to work that much harder and that much smarter to support this growing family that deserves our absolute best.

10 million people live in Haiti.  80% of Haitians live below the poverty line. 15 is less than .00001% of the unemployed population. We didn’t change Haiti. We didn’t change Port-au-Prince. We haven’t even changed the health and sustainability of one neighborhood.

We did clean up the streets and establish a thriving economic engine in a place deemed impossible – and we’re just getting started.

In the US, if you lose your job, you apply for unemployment.  Not in Haiti.  If you’re injured, you file for worker’s compensation, short-term, or long-term disability.  Not in Haiti.  Older than 65 or below our poverty line?  Medicare, Medicaid, and social security.  Not in Haiti.  If you’re willing to work hard, study, and earn an education, loans and financial aid, difficult as they may be at times, exist.   Not in Haiti.  We rely on our friends and family.  If one person falls on hard times, possibly someone within your family or friends has not.  This is not true in Haiti.   

Even though support systems are hard to experience and frequently not enough to maintain what we’re used to, these possibilities of relief are simply not accessible to the average citizen in Haiti.  Strange how this is true in a country globally known as ‘the republic of NGOs’  (that’s an entirely different blog post).

In Haiti, a family averages five people.  If one member is employed, those five people eat.  Children go to school.  Mandatory school uniforms are purchased. Doctor appointments happen. Medicine becomes an option. Debt stops accumulating. Bills are paid. Homes are repaired. Dignity and stability is restored. That family begins to sustain on its own, not need a handout, and position itself to help others – because in Haiti ‘family’ is not at all limited to blood relation and ‘community’ is just as strong a word.  If you have in Haiti, you give.  Nothing has taught me this more directly than witnessing the work of Team Tassy, also founded by Ian, operating in Haiti. The picture at the top of this post is an aerial view of Port-au-Prince. I look at it knowing how many families live down there, full of potential, without an opportunity to realize it. It motivates me.

From the perspective of 10 million, 15 jobs is quite inconsequential. But, from the perspective of those 15, a new job is a new day.  And that’s why we’re here. That’s worth whatever it takes to make it happen. Again. And again. And again.

Going down one of these rabbit holes can result in the slow, meme-filled death of an afternoon’s productivity. Yet, sometimes you emerge with some awesome, useful info. Recently, I hopped out with a rare, happy find: The 7 Sins of Greenwashing*.

At Thread, we’re laying the foundation to do a lot of positive things, but we know that inaccurate or misleading reporting could negate our do-goodery.

The 7 Sins of Greenwashing published by the UL and posted on the Federal Trade Commission website, add some research and validity to what we’ve known all along – Green marketing can be a tricky, scary business.

According to the report studying 5,296 home and family products, over 95% of all “Green” positioned products studied committed one of the following sins:

1. Sin of the hidden trade-off
2. Sin of no proof
3. Sin of vagueness
4. Sin of irrelevance
5. Sin of lesser of two evils
6. Sin of fibbing
7. Sin of worshiping false labels (falsely implying a third-party endorsement)

*These are pretty much exactly what they sound like, for more detail please refer to the full report.

95-freakin’-percent! And most of those sin categories are blatant. The good news? Retailers are dedicating more space to green products than ever before, ‘Big Box’ retailers are actually leading the way in product offerings, and, perhaps most encouraging of all, the data is improving over time.

Since Day 1, our policy at Thread has been to be transparent to a fault in everything we do. It’s important to talk about our products and operations – good and bad. It’s pretty rad that we will soon be sharing our positive social and environmental impact story, but we want to be genuine in our reporting, not use it as convenient PR spin.

What started off as an unrelated Google search ended with a pretty clear definition of the pitfalls we know exist. The guesswork is gone. Now it’s our turn to take this information and lead by example.  We can’t wait to make you proud.

F
* All of the following stats and figures, unless noted otherwise, are from this report. I did my best to paraphrase and cite appropriately, but I ain’t no professional writer. Read the full report for the authoritative look at greenwashing.

Identity Issues

Not everyone agrees on what being a social/responsible/green company means.  World renowned expert Muhammad Yunus who popularized the term “Social Business” doesn’t believe investors should make profits (profits are only re-invested back into the company/cause); large companies suffice to have CSR departments and reduce their impact as a side project, which is not central to their business; other companies make a strong localized impact but don’t necessarily make impressive returns by adopting the “buy this because it helps, not because you actually like the product” model; other companies like TOMS, or Method have a social mission that is central to their business model and consumer appeal (incidentally, that’s where Thread self-identifies).

When we started Thread, after years of hearing about triple bottom line companies in the business media, I assumed we would join a large crowd of accepted businesses and business models…that we would have to elbow out space and prove we were different from other do-good companies.  But what we’ve found- especially in Pittsburgh where we are headquartered- is that while people have heard of and abstractly like the idea social enterprise, many are not quite ready to get on the bandwagon – whether that means investing or simply believing this growing class of companies can be just as profitable and successful as a company that didn’t make their impact a priority.

Surprisingly, as a new company we have found ourselves in a position to evangelize and educate just about anyone who will listen…investors, bankers, service providers, unsuspecting elevator passengers, students, press… and don’t plan on stopping until the general public believes what we do: That adhering to a standard of a triple bottom line shouldn’t be novel, it should be common practice.

Today over lunch we watched the Patagonia inspired documentary 180 South. And when it was over all I could think was, did you know we could do that? Watching people pursue beautiful and terrifying adventures while having such respect for nature was breathtaking.

At one point, a talented surfer is getting ready to summit one of the most remote mountains in the world, because she’s happened to join up with the group traveling there in the documentary.

“Wait a minute.” I interrupted, “she’s never rock climbed before in her life. And she’s going to scale this?!?”

“It’s amazing,” Ian answered, “thinking we can do something and pursuing it.”

She did it. They didn’t make it all the way to the top, but she wasn’t injured, and kept up with the group. She scaled rock and ice just fine. Humans are capable of incredible things.

Did you know we could do that?

When starting a business, there’s a lot of throwing yourself into new experiences, industries, and roles you’ve never been in before. Experience is important and carries a lot of weight with it, but there is so much learned through trial by fire, by taking a great idea and running with it, and by not being afraid to constantly ask smarter people for help so that you can keep going. The surfer-turned-mountain-climber is a metaphor that’s not that far off from what we’ve experienced these first couple years at Thread. Ok, surfing to mountain climbing is a lot more badass.

There have been times since we started this project, when I’ve watched our back of the napkin ideas, and grandiose brainstorming statements form their way into real international exports, recycling strategies, and good sustainable jobs in Haiti, that I want to shout to my teammates, did you know we could do that?!

Thread believes we can transform trash from a problem, into a renewable resource capable of strengthening economies and changing lives. Getting to watch that shift unfold is a powerful experience. There is so much we can do.

Although driving through the Haitian countryside with a stranger riding shotgun sounds like the beginning of a Joseph Conrad novel, it’s far from metaphor.  Viv (who is Team Tassy’s Executive Director and often my counterpart) and I were lost again and looking for a meeting at an NGO which shall remain nameless.  As is per usual, we weren’t close and several minutes behind schedule, so I asked a guy.  He changed his shoes and jumped in the truck and spent the day with us because he didn’t have anything else to do. He took us where we needed to go (I was WAY off on directions) and after a lengthy meeting about projects and beneficiaries and the usual, the NGO official told me (rather unhappily) they had recently cut several hundred jobs because relief in Haiti was ending.

To borrow a phrase from a literary hero…and so it goes.

This is the way that it is.

If the 2000s gave us anything, they gave us, for the first time in history, a global understanding of just how poor and sick our poorest and sickest are. The Millennium Development Goals outlined the breadth of the problem and our accountability to it, and NGOs and governments have in large part responded.  We are making real progress on maternal & child mortality and education.  We have halved extreme poverty ahead of schedule.  Access to the internet has made amazing things possible.  The outcry to end HIV, Polio, and Malaria, and in Haiti’s case, the tireless uphill battle to contain and end cholera by organizations like Partners in Health, is so very encouraging.  The 2000′s, led in this development world by giants like Bill Gates and Bill Clinton, gave us the the tools to treat the symptoms, and it’s working.

However, in Haiti, you’ll read article after article about slow economic growth, out of control unemployment, and an unstable informal economy, which undercuts any possibility at a decent tax base.  Traditional wages are too low and conditions are often cruel.  The best and largest employers in struggling nations are often the NGOs who are there to help; but, when projects end, thousands lose their jobs and with it, an enormous measure of their dignity.  Their unemployment creates a dependence on the limited resources of the organizations that once employed them, their destiny is tied up in the budgets of donors, and they stay charity cases.  While NGOs can adequately prepare the poor for jobs, I fear that, like a TB patient that doesn’t receive the full course of drugs, without a real commitment to business creation, we are increasing the virility of poverty and its chances of relapse in areas where we have made so much progress.

We must channel more significant investment dollars into small businesses in developing countries.  Projects like Caracol in Haiti, while admirable in theory as a step towards a real manufacturing sector, do not do enough or pay enough, and they balance success on the precarious needle of non-diversified investment.  I was born in a steel town in Western Pennsylvania.  Any one of the old men who come to eat and talk about the old days at The Maple Restaurant just off Merchant Street in Ambridge, PA will tell you that when mills close, towns die.  They’ll tell you they’d rather have 200 local businesses with 100 employees a piece, than one business with 20,000 — because people in Ambridge, named after the company that came and left, know a thing or two about the heartbreak that comes when big companies go away.  They know a thing or two about (relative) tough times.  They also know a thing or two about rebirth.

It’s time we apply the lessons we learn in places like Pittsburgh to the people we serve in the poorest geographies.  It’s time we start taking more and bigger chances on viable small businesses in ANY sector of developing economies, as long as they can create and sustain profit driven by dignified employment, with a deliberate nod to social and environmental metrics.  It’s time for the aid community to double down and move from funding short-term projects to partnering with for-profit entities.  The scope of international non-profits in the 2010s  and 2020s must expand to facilitate significant business relationships between every respectable TBL (triple bottom line) business owner and the communities and governments they work with — because responsible profit allows the poor to buy their own drugs, pay their own tuitions, and save their own lives.  And it’s time for traditional VCs (venture capitalists) to remember websites aren’t the only way to make money.  The largest business opportunities in history sit in the dust of Port-au-Prince and Freetown and Khartoum, and anything less than their full attention is not enough.

You’ll hear from the traditionalists that “we’re getting there,” and it’s true.  We have a wonderful example of an NGO/for-profit partnership in Kiva (started by another Pittsburgher).  Samasource is proving the digital services industry stands to benefit from investment in the poor.  And, we hope soon, our work at Thread and Team Tassy will prove that modern manufacturing can close the loop on waste while creating high quality jobs through for-proftit/non-profit partnerships with partners like Executives Without Borders.  The rise of Impact VC is young, but we’re learning that taken over the long term, investment in responsible companies offers healthy return.  We’re getting there, but getting there is not enough.  Dipping a toe in won’t do it.  We need to be there, and we need to do it now.

Until we are, I fear Viv and I won’t be the only ones a little lost in the countryside.

To get things started, here’s a nifty little graphic to get you up to speed with how far we’ve come in the last year or two.

Here’s to the future!

The Threadheads

*Note: We have to mess with color and resolution a little to get the file size down to something our CMS could handle.

Learn how Thread is transforming recyclable waste in Haiti into products people love.