Meet Alyssa Rade, chief sustainability officer at Sustain.life, a leading carbon accounting platform, where she leads the company’s strategy for product content, guiding retailers across North America on their decarbonization and ESG journeys. Alyssa unpacks the complexities of carbon accounting for all of us, providing a uniform model for retailers, brands and vendors in tracking, reporting and understanding their decarbonization work.
Meet Alyssa Rade, chief sustainability officer at Sustain.life, a leading carbon accounting platform, where she leads the company’s strategy for product content, guiding retailers across North America on their decarbonization and ESG journeys. Alyssa unpacks the complexities of carbon accounting for all of us, providing a uniform model for retailers, brands and vendors in tracking, reporting and understanding their decarbonization work.
Links: https://www.sustain.life https://www.sustain.life/blog https://www.sustain.life/resources/esg-regulations-frameworks
About Alyssa
Alyssa Rade is the chief sustainability officer at Sustain.Life where she leads the company’s strategy for product content, guiding users on their decarbonization and ESG journeys. Her 10+ years of corporate sustainability experience guides the program recommendations, carbon management and ESG disclosures featured in Sustain.Life’s software. Prior to joining Sustain.Life, Alyssa directed the ESG program at Vornado Realty Trust, where she managed sustainable operations and development for over 30 million sf of class A commercial space. Alyssa is accredited as a LEED and WELL AP and holds a MPA in Environmental Science and Policy from Columbia University and a BA in Environmental Studies from Washington University in St. Louis. Links: https://www.sustain.life https://www.sustain.life/blog https://www.sustain.life/resources/esg-regulations-frameworks
Michael LeBlanc 00:04
Welcome to The Voice of Retail podcast. My name is Michael LeBlanc and I am your host. This podcast is produced in conjunction with Retail Council of Canada.
Meet Alyssa Rade, Chief Sustainability Officer at Sustain.Life, a leading carbon accounting platform, where she leads the company’s strategy for product content, guiding retailers across North America on their decarbonization and ESG journeys. Alyssa unpacks the complexities of carbon accounting for all of us, providing a uniform model for retailers, brands and vendors in tracking, reporting and understanding their decarbonization work. Let's listen in now.
Alyssa, welcome to The Voice of Retail podcast. How are you doing this afternoon?
Alyssa Rade 00:41
I'm good. How are you doing?
Michael LeBlanc 00:43
I am fantastic and where am I finding you today?
Alyssa Rade 00:46
You found me today in Brooklyn, New York.
Michael LeBlanc 00:49
Yeah, now we're getting a bit of snow for the first time this year in Toronto. You're getting any snow, you guys had some snow, right, like this week, you had some weather?
Alyssa Rade 00:56
We did, the-, you know, New York City actually didn't get too much, but I was actually in northern New Jersey, and we got like a solid 10 inches it was-, snow-, school snow days, snowman building, sledding, the real winter dream.
Alyssa Rade 01:09
Absolutely. It's a pleasure. I-, likewise really, I feel like I was so lucky I got to sit next to you at that dinner and I really enjoyed myself and happy to continue the conversation here.
Michael LeBlanc 01:09
I was gonna say that's a lot for you guys. So, well, you-, it sounds like you survived okay. You and I met-, speaking of New York, I was in New York for the big NRF show and we were at a dinner with a bunch of fellow retail types from Australia and you and I got to talk, and it was just great and I thought hey, let's, let's get on the mic and share some of your insights. So, thanks for taking the time to join me on the podcast.
Michael LeBlanc 01:43
Well, let's jump right in. Tell-, tell people a little bit about your background and what you do for a living?
Alyssa Rade 01:49
Sure. So, I'm Alyssa Rade, the Chief Sustainability Officer at Sustain.Life our decarbonization SaaS platform specifically focused on supply chain decarbonization. As CSO, my role, I have the privilege of leading our company's sustainability team and so that's really the domain experts that are responsible for conceptualizing all of the innovative tools and strategies within our SaaS platform to advance decarbonization. So that's things like carbon accounting, setting science-based targets, decarbonization plans, ESG reporting, kind of the whole the whole gamut of everything you need around climate, carbon and sustainability.
Michael LeBlanc 02:30
You know, I do a lot of interviews in this space. Actually, I just did an interview we just published on Remarkable Retail, my other podcast with Steve, we also met, we interviewed the SVP of sustainability from Walmart and, you know, my observation was, in interviewing people, they kind of fall into three, three buckets, so to speak. There's a group of people who are strategists and get into the sustainability file and one way shape or another because they just find it just a fascinating all-encompassing touches every element of the business. There's another group of people who are kind of operators who love the challenge that the multifaceted challenge of you know, again, a business that touches everything and then there's a third group of people who are grew up in the sustainability world, they're practitioners, they may have a science background, which one do you fall in?
Alyssa Rade 03:14
Yes, I'm in your third category. So, I'm truly a, you know, a pretty historic pureplay sustainability, I quite literally went into college, an Environmental Sciences declared major and did not really waver and pursued graduate degrees and have had roles throughout the field, both on the consulting and inhouse side, throughout-, throughout my full career.
Michael LeBlanc 03:34
Did you always want to be in the sustainability feels like at what point were you when you were, you know, going in high school, or maybe even elementary school, who knows, maybe in the crib, in the crib, you were like, I gotta help-, I'm gonna help the world, but where did it start for you?
Alyssa Rade 03:48
Yeah. You know, I just always-, my logic was, if I was going to spend so much of my time working, which I knew I was, I always was, you know, quite professionally minded. I wanted it to be for something that really mattered, that I really cared about that I really wanted to see change and progress in and so it was a pretty clear, clear path for me honestly,
Michael LeBlanc 04:12
Where did you get that from? Like, your parents, your peers, like, what-, what was that spark that you want to both, the accountability and, I mean, some of us are born with more work ethic than others. So, but, but where did you-, how did you get pointed in that direction?
Alyssa Rade 04:24
It's a great question. I really love your digging into my childhood roots. You know, I spent a lot of time with my father who was a-, in his youth, a commune living outdoorsman, botany graduate degree and so there was just a huge appreciation for nature and being outside in my childhood, probably my fondest memories, you know, the garden hiking, birdwatching and so I just think it was very much woven into my, my sense and perspective of how to most appreciate the world.
Michael LeBlanc 04:58
Nice. Let's talk about Sustain.Life. So, you're-, you're the, I don't know if I call it the science space, but I also know that you have other counterparts, your-, your fellow C level executives, they come from a retail and a technology background. So A: you've talked about decarbonization, and for-, for those of us not steeped in the language of sustainability, A: tell us a little bit about what exactly you do in-, in helping retailers and retail context and then, and / or start with your other counterparts in the organization and who they are and why they came to this and what skills they bring.
Alyssa Rade 05:35
Yeah, so let me start with the founding story of Sustain.Life because I do think it's one that will really resonate with your retail listening base. So, we're actually founded by one of the co-founders of jet.com. For those who don't know, the eCommerce platform that was acquired by Walmart and a very large eCommerce deal and so our core team of product and software engineers, has worked together for a very long time building enterprise grade software with that ecommerce, you know, kind of focus. And when the founding team was at-, when they, you know, went into Walmart from the jet acquisition, they were exposed to Project Gigaton, which is Walmart, kind of climate action plan to remove a gigaton of carbon from the atmosphere by 2030 and so during that time, they saw firsthand the resources that were really required to take climate action and now Walmart, of course, has those resources.
Alyssa Rade 06:33
So they have, you know, Project Gigaton, and what they're asking throughout their supply chain is they're asking suppliers to furnish information to them, you know, there's a lot of thing that Walmart does within their own operations, they can, you know, have energy efficient strategies and their stores, they can put solar on the rooftop, but a lot of Walmart, just like every corporate and every retailers footprint is really from their supply chain, right, the goods that they are selling and moving through those stores, and the upstream and downstream impacts of those goods and so what the founders saw is that suppliers were responding to Walmart's request for emissions and sustainability data, but they lacked the more holistic and integrated strategy of sustainability and so they were losing out on some of the auxiliary benefits of sustainability beyond just the environmental performance, things like reduced operating costs, talent, retention, lower cost of capital, etc.
Michael LeBlanc 07:25
And who-, and who is the 'they' in that sentence, is that Walmart are the vendors?
Alyssa Rade 07:29
That was the vendors, or suppliers, so Walmart was getting all of those benefits because they have a dedicated sustainability team and practice and this is, you know, a very mature part of their business strategy, but their suppliers who, you know, it's a pretty steep curve, when you're a supplier, and you're asked by your most important customer, I need you to allocate your emissions to me of what I'm responsible for, for buying your goods and services. There's a whole lot in there to unpack around carbon accounting and so the suppliers, we're really losing out on that more holistic perspective and strategy of okay, how do we connect these numbers and data and outputs to something that's more meaningful to our actual business operation?
Michael LeBlanc 08:12
So, would you say as an organization is retail a vertical for you? Do you operate in other verticals, is retail a big vertical for you, just give me a scope of business?
Alyssa Rade 08:23
We do, you know, we like to kind of say we're industry agnostic, which we are, when you're carbon accounting, there's a whole system and hierarchy about how you do these things and a lot of it is just a corporate standard and so our SaaS platform, our tool can handle any company and serve any company that, you know, is a corporation that follows just standard carbon accounting practice, which is most industries for the record.
Michael LeBlanc 08:47
Tell me a little bit more. Yeah. Tell me a little bit more about that, because I know, you know, of course, accounting has standardized practices that-
Alyssa Rade 08:53
Yeah.
Michael LeBlanc 08:53
You know, does-, is that the case in your industry, like we count, does everybody count everything in the same way, or is that part of what you bring is a kind of harmonized structure to accounting of carbonization decarbonization?
Alyssa Rade 09:07
Yeah, it's a great question. So, the answer is a yes and a no. So there's a protocol called the greenhouse gas protocol and that's essentially the accounting guidebook. That's the standard guidebook for how you move through carbon accounting and there's a couple of different books and a couple different standards and so you have to collate all of them and what's, what's important to know about the greenhouse gas protocol, which is how you do carbon accounting, is that is a guideline, but it's not prescriptive. So, there's essentially always a hierarchy of methodologies of how one might do things.
Alyssa Rade 09:42
So like a brief example, if you're trying to account for the emissions from vehicles, you can either do so by calculating the total fuel consumed in those vehicles and you know, emission factors for burning diesel or natural gas or you know, whatever kind of gas you're using, or, or you could do it by the distance that you've traveled and mileage or kilometers, whatever your unit of measure, or you could do it by the amount of money that you've spent on fuel and those have different kinds of outputs in terms of the precision of what those emissions represent and the whole point with carbon accounting is that you're not always going to have in fact, you will almost never have perfect data for what you're trying to account for and so what we do is really help companies understand where they can use-, you know, where our platform can serve them with the best methodology, depending on what data you reasonably have access to.
Michael LeBlanc 10:39
Just to unpack that last part a little bit, you know, as you describe the different ways to measure, you know, when you think about, let's say, I was reading, big grocer in Canada that just got some big electric delivery trucks. So, I'm a big fan of I mean, you can really start to make an impact in the supply chain. Now, when you count or account for that, do you account for the-, the energy going into creating the energy itself, the electricity is not free, something has to generate it now, where I am in Ontario, something like 60 to 80% is generated by nuclear, which is very clean. Is that-, is that factored in because there's, you know, other places, maybe more solar, wind or water, you know, I don't know, maybe even some coal. So how do you-, how does that factor in backwards looking?
Alyssa Rade 11:22
Yep, so in this example, you're talking about Scope 2 emissions, which are emissions from any energy that you purchase. So, you're purchasing electricity to charge your vehicles, right and the way that you calculate the emissions is by an emission factor. So, if you're consuming, we'll use an even number of 100 kilowatt hours of electricity. You multiply it by a certain factor that represents, well, what was that electricity made of. Was it made from renewable sources, was it made from coal or fossil fuels and those factors are in data sources and datasets in Canada, the Canadian National inventory actually breaks up the grid into you know, the different regions of the country because grids have different emissions intensity behind them in terms of where they're sourcing their power. In the US, we have what's called e-grid, which is a bit more granular and so each e-grid zone actually has a different emissions factor that reflects the composition of where that electricity or what sources that electricity was generated from.
Michael LeBlanc 12:18
You know, your-, your, your solution starts to sound a bit to me like something a little more anodyne, which is kind of tax software, like, you know that there's a million different types of sources of tax, but I'm going to find a solution that helps me pull it all into one place. Is that-, Is that not a terrible way to think about it, like, like, I would suspect in your solution, you would be able to capture what you just described, automatically, and not have to go looking for it as a retailer, yeah?
Alyssa Rade 12:44
Exactly and absolutely, we often actually use analogies to financial accounting when you're talking about carbon accounting. So, this is the same idea of, you know, automating, we call it activity data in carbon accounting. So, the activity data are those kilowatt hours of consumption, right, and understanding what you automatically should be applying to that activity data from, you know, in this calculation with, with the emissions factors, and you're also absolutely spot on that that is so much the power of a technology solution to do that, in that you don't want to do this manually. I mean, the way that companies have historically done that, because of course, you know, large enterprises have been reporting on their emissions for decades, you know, for especially the leaders in this space, if it was manual there in spreadsheets, you have to update your emissions factors. There's all different, there's not just one factor, then there's three factors that go into that one factor. I mean, there's a lot of, you know, upstream [inaudible] involved.
Michael LeBlanc 13:42
There's a lot out. Now, one of the things you and I were talking about back in New York is I was interested in what you're doing, and I said, you know, I got-, I have this little pod in Canada. Do you have any business in Canada, you-, so you do work on both sides of the border in North America? Do you do, also global, talk about that scope there? I think we skipped over that. I'm curious about your-, your-, how far you engage your business in?
Alyssa Rade 14:05
Yep. Yep. We're pretty global. I think we're on five continents, and plenty of business, certainly in North America. I'll say, you know, maybe it's helpful to do a couple of examples in the retail sector of-, kind of who we work with and what that looks like.
Michael LeBlanc 14:20
Yeah, that'd be great if you can.
Alyssa Rade 14:21
Yeah, sure. So, I'll start with a couple of brand names that are perhaps recognizable to some of the listeners. So, we do work with a lot of outdoor adventure apparel brands, which kind of makes sense right, their products are a little bit more directly connected with nature. You can go skiing and wear winter coats if you don't have a lot of snow. So, we started working with Moose Knuckles some time ago. Outdoor apparel brand and-, and then several brands across the US as well and a lot of these retailers are really looking to measure their emissions sometimes, for the first time, other times, they have done their first inventory and they've used that manual process, or perhaps they used a consultant, which they are quite expensive and so they're looking to really own this process and this ability themselves, we're also seeing a fair amount of those companies wanting to report according to the voluntary frameworks, so things like GRI, of which we're also an accredited software provider.
Alyssa Rade 15:25
And I guess I'll mention specifically about voluntary frameworks is-, there's a lot of regulation going on in the climate disclosure space right now. Europe is an absolute leader with their CSR D reporting requirements, but we have, you know, over here in the US a proposed SEC Rule, while that kind of delay, the delays by the SEC, we've had California come out with state level legislation.
Michael LeBlanc 15:48
Of course.
Alyssa Rade 15:49
And this legislation, it doesn't come out of thin air, all of this legislation is based on existing voluntary frameworks and so I think what we're seeing is a lot of retailers preparing for that legislation, by getting their ducks in a row and getting all of the data and kind of processes in place to report to these frameworks for now, so that they are ready for their legislation when it comes.
Michael LeBlanc 16:11
Let's switch gears a little bit. So, when I think of, you know, my listeners, and of course, when you think about the retail environment across North America, there's the big, you know, the Walmarts of the world with very sophisticated systems and resources and-, and people and-, and, you know, they could dedicate people to sustainability and the climate action and all that. For the retailers that, you know, maybe it falls on the desk of the CFO, or it falls to someone else, when you have conversations with them. How does-, how does that go? Do you have a common language? Do you spend some time, you know, scope one, scope two? I mean, you do start at that kind of basics and workup. Talk about the conversations you have when you're-, when you're talking to a client? You know, I'm not sure Moose Knuckles would have a dedicated Senior Vice President of Sustainability, for example. They may, but may not, right? So how does that go?
Alyssa Rade 16:58
Absolutely and so we do really work with companies across the spectrum of both size and sophistication and those things are not always, you know, linearly related, but they often are. So a lot of times you see with the smaller companies, they are less mature, they're newer to this space and they do need a fair bit of contextualization and knowledge building, as you said, and so we've built all of that into the platform integrated in that as you're moving through the application, frankly, you are seeing scope one and two, but you're also seeing buildings, vehicles, transportation and distribution logistics, you're seeing the business language that you're familiar with, you know, from your primary role and in that capacity, you know, we're often working at those type companies, with procurement teams, supply chain managers, and more of those operational folks.
Michael LeBlanc 17:48
Right, right. Yeah, that's right, that-, you know, the-, the-, the-, the people who are kind of charged to make this happen, and they gotta think I don't even know where to start. As I go through your site, it's really great, because-
Alyssa Rade 17:58
Yeah, thank you. Thank you.
Michael LeBlanc 18:01
Let's, let's shift gears again, and step back and try to understand how-, I mean, you've been doing this a long time. So, this is a great opportunity to talk to you about-, get your perspective, kind of inside out. You know, the consumers kind of, I don't know if I could say ebb and flow. I mean, we-, whether they're concerned, or does it ebb and flow on the economy, I mean, sometimes consumers say one thing and do another, you know, they talk about sustainability, but they buy, you know, fast fashion stuff straight from China, that is really, you know, it's fast to the, to the landfill, right. It's direct to landfill, as I like to call it.
Michael LeBlanc 18:33
So, you know, it's not unusual for consumers to change their minds or, you know, say one thing and do another, how are you feeling about the commitment, I mean, I talked to retailers that are like, listen, man, like, I'm finding it hard to compete on these sustainability measures because the consumers seem to care less than I thought they did. What's your experience?
Alyssa Rade 18:52
Yeah, I think with this one, it's a yes and no, I think, I think most retailers, especially your big box retailers, I mean, your bigger brands, they see the writing on the wall, right, they get it, they know the regulation is coming. They need to comply, many of them have actually already been doing this, you know, frankly, and-, and for the smaller ones as well. It doesn't mean that a rough performance quarter isn't going to push off the plan, right, this was a Q1 plan. We had a tough quarter, we're going to reevaluate, we're going to push this to Q2, but those kind of intermittent delays, are not really delaying the longer term strategy and kind of conclusion that this is happening and this is a business imperative. We're seeing this in especially if you look at like the smaller retailers. It's coming in RFPs they literally can get the business of the big buyers; you can't get Walmart's business is you don't hornish them with this information. It is a requirement of doing business.
Michael LeBlanc 19:50
Interesting, you know, you do frame it in the kind of regulatory perspective rather than a consumer perspective. What-, how are you feeling about-, are you disappointed In some days about consumers, your fellow travelers and how they think about this issue or you just, you know, listen, they'll all come around and do you lead with regulation or do lead with consumer intent and passion. How do you-, how do you think about that?
Alyssa Rade 20:15
Yeah, well, you know, there's actually a third bucket or a stakeholder group that I would introduce here, which is investors in capital markets and so I agree with you, I think consumers oftentimes vote with their wallet, right, they make purchasing decisions based on their wallet, but I do think that investors take a slightly different approach when they are assessing opportunities and you know, risks and opportunities for how they're going to be spending their capital dollars and so I do think that that's, that's worth noting there as well.
Michael LeBlanc 20:45
Okay, that's-, that's cool. Let's, let's kind of start wrapping up with advice time. So a wide variety of retailers, listening and brands, and-, give us some big picture advice and let's frame it in two starts and one stop. Two things they should start doing one thing that, you know, maybe that you see, you come into a client engagement, and you say, hey, we're doing this, and we're excited about it, you know, like, and it's not gonna work so well, or that doesn't work in our experience. Give us-, give us your advice.
Alyssa Rade 21:11
Yeah. All right. The first start is period, just start. Right, don't be intimidated, don't let perfect be the enemy of good, because you're not expected to do this at 100% precision on day one and that's why so many of these, you know, sure, on the regulation side, they have phase in periods, you know, in different Safe Harbor clauses for what you're not, you know, going to be legally penalized for, you're not expected to do it all perfectly on day one, but you are expected to do it. So, get your house in order, start the process, because there is a lot to learn and to get comfortable and there are, you know, a fair amount of judgment calls to make and so get started so that you feel comfortable making those judgment calls. My second start is to utilize tools and technology, and this is not a shameless plug for Sustain.Life, choose your preferred vendor, but you know, in-, this is an earnest reminder that there are solutions out there that are specifically dedicated to addressing this very challenge.
Michael LeBlanc 22:15
Don't use a spreadsheet.
Alyssa Rade 22:16
Don't use a spreadsheet, or, you know, I mean, when I think of it a specific example, with supplier engagement, because that's so much of where we focus, if you do this manually, it's painful, it's onerous, your suppliers don't want to have to answer 500 different surveys from their 500 different customers about who's asking this question, leverage technology that can scale and access and scrape all of the information that's already available, you know, really, like-, let-, let technology help you help yourself.
Michael LeBlanc 22:47
Cool. All right and-, and what do you find that people are doing, I guess, you know, in some ways, you know, using a spreadsheet is something you don't recommend anymore, but what, what, like, is there a common mistake or the way they approach thinking about these things that you say, hey, listen, that's not going to work out so well and here's a better way to think of something?
Alyssa Rade 23:05
Yeah, my stop for this is stop thinking about sustainability as a cost center, right, and stop focusing on just the capital expenditure, and start considering the payback period, the operational savings, because sustainability is just that. It's sustainable, and that includes financially sustainable. So, as an example, think about the energy market, volatility in your retail stores, and how you might want to insulate against price fluctuations of electricity through onsite generation or fixed PPAs. These strategies are all about providing financial sustainability to these very real and very expensive climate related risks. So, stop looking at only one half of the picture and start thinking holistically.
Michael LeBlanc 23:47
All right, if folks want to learn more, maybe get in touch. Are you a LinkedIn person, where can they go to learn more about you and the business and the topic in general?
Alyssa Rade 23:56
Sure, well, you can always find me on LinkedIn, but I think your best bet is probably to visit our website Sustain.Life and if you're interested or if you want to see our tool, book a demo with our team.
Michael LeBlanc 24:06
Fantastic. Well, listen, thanks so much for joining me on the mic. I mean, it's-, it's a big subject to get your arms around. I think you guys do a great-, a great work of trying to explain it at all levels and I really enjoyed meeting you and-, and I wish you continued success to you and your organization and once again, thanks for joining me on the pod.
Alyssa Rade 24:25
Thanks, Michael. My pleasure.
Michael LeBlanc 24:28
Thanks for tuning into this episode of The Voice of Retail. If you haven't already, follow us on your favorite podcast platform so new episodes will end automatically each week and be sure to check out my other retail industry media properties, the Remarkable Retail podcast with Steve Dennis, and the Global eCommerce Leaders podcast.
I'm your host Michael LeBlanc, senior retail advisor, keynote speaker and ReThink Retail: 2023 Global Top Retail Influencer. If you want more information, content or to chat, follow me on LinkedIn.
Safe travels everyone!
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
sustainability, retailers, retail, emissions, Walmart, accounting, work, carbon, business, suppliers, consumers, decarbonization, strategy, factor, electricity, data, podcast, talk, platform, ecommerce