Athlete Activism with Forrest Shearer

My guest today is Brad Pedersen, one of the Co-Founders of Pela. Pela is a B Corp, 1% for the planet, and Climate Neutral Certified Brand working to create a waste-free future by developing products from environmentally sensitive materials. 

Pela started with the observation that people upgrade their phones every 18-24 months on average, but phone cases last hundreds or thousands of years. Pela started with plant-based compostable phone covers and accessories and now has plant-based biodegradable sunglasses and their newest product Lomi which is tackling food waste and the messy problem of composting for people that don’t have access to compost themselves.

Along with the trifecta of third-party certifications Pela addresses problems that people have around waste, but most importantly they do it in a way that people want to talk about and share. 

We also talk about Pela’s previous goal of keeping 1 billion pounds of waste from ever being made, and how Pela has ten X’ed that to 10 billion. 

Brad has been involved in many businesses, some that worked and some that didn’t. He has done a lot of personal development and reflection in the process which we discuss in the second half of our conversation. I hope you enjoy our conversation and find it useful.

John Balkam is the author of the book '3 Win Sponsorship’ and the founder of Third Win Group (TWG). TWG is an agency serving impact athletes, artists, creators on a mission to serve others and pursue their passions. 

The traditional business model for agencies working with athletes or artists is to maximize the revenue of sponsorships or partnerships, similar to shareholder primacy. TWG is focused on maximizing revenue AND impact, a shift toward stakeholder capitalism. 

Matthew Campelli is the Founder of the Sustainability Report, the essential source of intelligence and insight for sports professionals committed to enhancing the environmental, social, and economic sustainability of their organizations. 

Matthew has thought extensively about the relationship between sport, society, and our environment. I’ve learned so much from Matthew’s articles and podcasts over the years and thoroughly enjoyed our conversation. 

We go deep on: 

• What is the value of sport to our society and environment?
• The opportunity pro sport has to compete on impact by incorporating purpose into the core of pro teams and leagues
• The role athletes can play advocating for the causes they care about
• Shifting fan behavior through game day experience and gamification
• The importance of storytelling and narrative 
• And making the business case for sustainability in sports sponsorship

My guest today is Bryan Pape, the CEO and Founder of MiiR, a food and drinkware company. Bryan founded MiiR in 2010 with his wife Rebecca with the dream of combining business and philanthropy. 

Design, generosity, and sustainability are at the core of MiiR. Every MiiR product sold has a giving code where you can see what social or environmental project your purchase helped support. In 2022 MiiR is approaching giving away 3 million dollars to nonprofit partners. 

MiiR is B Corp, 1% for the Planet, Climate Neutral and Evergreen certified. Through their growth, they’ve been able to scale their impact while never taking any venture capital investment.

In our conversation we go deep on how MiiR focuses on the next best step in taking responsibility for their impact and generosity, the importance of minimalist product design, the culture and investment MiiR is making in its employees to learn and grow, and creating partnerships with other brands, nonprofits, and creatives where everyone wins and there is tangible impact. 

Bryan has thought long and hard about what it means to be a founder, finding the balance of investing in his people and giving to nonprofits, and taking the long view for MiiR which is quite rare in business nowadays. 

At the very end, Bryan shares an insightful perspective on how things are not as black and white as they may seem, and how this applies to business and our society at large. I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation and hope you do too!

My conversation today is with the Co-Founders of Guayaki Yerba Matte, Alex Pryor, and David Karr. Since Guayaki was founded in 1996 they’ve had a different approach to business. Guayaki pioneered a new business model - Market Driven Regeneration. 

Most businesses don’t account for the true cost or externalities of doing business like the emissions from extraction of natural resources, manufacturing, and shipping. Business as usual maximizes profits.

Market Driven Regeneration acknowledges that there are costs to doing business. Guayaki works to internalize those costs. They do this by working

A few ways they do this are:

• Paying Fair Trade premiums to Indigenous and smallholder farmers across South America
• Growing their Yerba Matte without pesticides or clear-cutting forests, which increases biodiversity and draws down carbon
• Hire people who were formerly incarcerated

My guests today are Jake and Caroline Danehy, brother and sister Co-Founders of Fair Harbor. Fair Harbor is an innovative apparel company that makes its beachwear and clothes from upcycled plastic bottles. Fair Harbor is a public benefit corporation and currently going through the B Corp certification process. Jake and Caroline recently won the EY Entrepreneur of the year award and the Future Pioneer award from Reuters. In the 7 years since Fair Harbor was founded, they have upcycled 20 million plastic bottles. 

In our conversation, we talk about their founder's story, how they’ve been product and customer-focused from day one, insights as they work through the B Corp Certification process, and how Fair Harbor is staying true to their mission and purpose as they grow.

Drew Fitzgerald co-founded 501CTHREE with Jaden Smith. 501CTHREE is a non-profit dedicated to driving innovation around global water, energy, health, and shelter solutions. You’re likely familiar with their Water Box which started in Flint Michigan and has now scaled throughout the US providing safe and clean drinking water to hundreds of thousands of Americans from historically marginalized communities.

Drew also co-founded JUST water with Jaden and Will Smith. JUST Water is a certified B Corp that made one of the first plant-based water bottles, reducing single-use plastic and emissions associated with bottled water.

Before 501CTHREE and Just Water, Drew was the Creative Innovation Director at MIT’s School of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Creative Director of the Plasma Science and Fusion Center at MIT. 

In our conversation, we talk about how Drew has combined his background in design and innovation to bring technology out of the lab and into viable products. He has applied his skills to create real-world solutions to interconnected problems around climate, water, food, energy, and race.  

Shortly after this interview, I went to the Dominican Republic for a beach clean-up with the nonprofit Players for the Planet. Some of the best baseball players in the world and a number of athletes from other sports came together to raise awareness. I’ve been playing beach volleyball professionally for over a decade and have never seen a beach without plastic. The beaches we cleaned in the DR were the worst I’ve ever seen. It made it very clear to me that beach cleanups are just bandaids. In order to effect real systemic change, we need corporations to pay for the true cost of externalities of their products. That won’t happen without better materials, like the plant-based bottle Drew and the team at Just Water designed, and real policy change.

Claire Poole is at the center of the sports and sustainability movement. 

Claire is the CEO and Founder of Sport Positive, supporting the global sports industry to increase their action and ambition on climate change through direct support, community, communications, the annual Sport Positive Summit and Sport Positive Leagues. As a consultant to the UNFCCC Claire supported the inception of what is now UN Sports for Climate Action Framework. 

She is on the Advisory board for Eco Athletes and the Sport Ecology Group, as well as other organizations.

In our conversation, we dive into her work building the Sport Positive Summit into the leading global meeting place for sustainability, sport, and sports business, how she created the first Sustainability Table in the English Premier League, and the role of collaboration in her work. We also discuss how athletes can overcome common barriers to advocating for social and environmental issues they care about. 

As always, if you have any feedback please leave a review on Apple podcasts or Spotify, I’m always looking to improve. If you enjoy this conversation, please consider sharing it with a friend.

Amy Keller is the founder of Pure Plus and the climate candy FAVES. Amy has worked in politics, the nonprofit sector, startups, and she is also a 7x Ironman. Her family also owns the Spangler Candy Company known for nostalgic candy-like Dum-Dum lollipops.

In our conversation, we explore how Paul Hawken’s book Drawdown helped her connect her family’s background in candy, with her experience as an ironman athlete, and led to the novel idea of FAVES and making candy into a climate solution. FAVES is made from upcycled whole fruits and vegetables, which helps reduce food waste and greenhouse gas emissions, helps farmers sell more of their crops, and helps people live healthier lives with each pack delivering one whole serving of fruits and vegetables.

Aubrey McCormick is the regional manager of the West at the Forest Stewardship Council, she is the CEO and Co-Founder at Black Sheep Design (building and designing sustainable homes), and she is also a former professional golfer who wrote the first CSR report in golf helping to drive social and environmental impact in the sport. 

I’m excited to speak with Aubrey for a number of reasons. She did for golf what I am working to in beach volleyball and she has worked on many of the same ideas and questions that I am currently working on. 

• How can athletes learn about the issues they care about and use their platforms in sport to scale social and environmental impact?

• How can athletes gain experience, useful skill sets, and build their network to eventually transition into a purpose-driven career that aligns with their values?

If you have any feedback please leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, I’m always looking to improve. If you enjoy this conversation, please consider sharing it with a friend.