Transcript 0:00 [gentle piano music] Because I think we don't do enough when it comes to actually putting, let's say, our money where our mouth is, and this is really a great opportunity to do just that. 0:12 So knowing our history can help us make more informed decisions and invest in our future and our next generation. 0:21 [upbeat music] Welcome to The Peggy Smedley Show, the podcasting voice of IoT and digital transformation, with your host, Peggy Smedley. 0:43 Hello, listeners, and welcome to today's edition of The Peggy Smedley Show. As always, I'm your host, Peggy Smedley. This month on the show, I'm gonna be talking all about sustainability. 0:53 I'm going to share with you the five things you need to know about sustainability in the year 2021. 1:00 I'm gonna take a deep dive into sustainability and all the things you need to be checking out in my new book, Sustainable in a Circular World. If you haven't gotten my book yet, please check it out on Amazon. 1:12 I hope you'll pick it up. Uh, and or you can check it out on sustainablecircularworld.com. That's our new website that we've got all kinds of information on there, and, uh, I think you'll love it. 1:23 But before I get on going on about that, let's talk about who are gonna be some of our guests today. 1:28 Today on the show, I'm gonna be interviewing Craig Apatow, who's the managing partner at Ascension Growth and Innovation Strategies. We've got some really good things we're gonna talk about there. 1:39 And then I'm gonna wrap up the show with Mark Pesce, who is the author of his own new book called Augmented Reality. So we've got a couple really awesome guests today, so I hope you'll stick around. So let's get started. 1:51 I have five things I wanna dive into today that you need to know about sustainability in 2021. So I thought I would count down from 5 to 1. I thought we'd look at... I'm gonna start with number five. 2:05 Let's think about, I predict in this year, 2021, we're going to be seeing the rise of sustainability and the circular economy, because I think that's so important for all of us to be thinking about. 2:17 So if you don't know the basic definitions, you need to start there. I think that's really important. 2:23 Sustainability is environmentally sound living without compromising, as I like to say, the needs of the future generations, all of the next generations that have to come, whilst the circular economy is based on the principles of designing out waste and pollution. 2:41 Now, that's very important to understand that because circular also aims at keeping products and materials in use and regenerating our natural ecosystems, and that's so important because quite simply, I think this year, I believe we're going to be doing more restorative by design. 3:00 I think that's important for us to think about. And this is going to have a really important impact on our business, our economics, and all of our governments. So keep all of that in mind. 3:11 Now, number four, which I think is important. The fourth thing you need to know about sustainability in 2021 is our history. 3:20 So many times in our history, we know our history, but how many times are we doomed to repeat it if we don't remember it? 3:28 And I [laughs] want you to remember that because let's talk about the Paris Agreement, because this is so very important too. 3:35 But I wanna just touch on it just for a minute because I talk a lot about it in the book, because this is meant to strengthen the resolve of, I guess, countries across the world to reduce the g- global temperature that's on the rise. 3:50 We talk about this all the time. But in 2015, there was this huge support for the Paris Agreement. 3:57 And today, however, I think some nations are discovering that's actually kind of the targets are extremely ambitious, and a lot of countries are struggling to get there. 4:09 And that same year, China had successfully argued that it was still kind of a developing, uh, economy, and it should not have to share the same burden as, let's say, some of... 4:21 or curbing its emissions, as let's say, some of the developed nations like the United States, who had been pollus- polluting and had gone unchecked for years. 4:31 So when we think about this, China was granted this kind of a, a pass, so to speak, and they were thinking they didn't have to do quite as much. 4:41 But back in November of 2020, it reversed its thinking, and it's thinking it needs to do more now. It needs to be thinking about being more green, more environmentally conscious, which I think is wonderful. 4:54 Meanwhile, the United States officially movu- removed itself at the same time. So we had a lot going on, a lot of moving pieces on the chessboard, as I like to say. 5:04 So in my book, I go into much more detail about all what's going on. 5:08 But regardless, many global countries and companies have continued to support the accord, which is really important if we want to become more green, more globally aware of all of the things that are happening. 5:22 And that kinda has led right now, I think, to where we are today and the many opportunities that I think exist for us to be more aware of our natural ecosystem. 5:34 So for example, we have what, uh, uh, kind of grew out of all of this is the Network for Greening the Financial System was created to help make the financial system more sustainable. 5:46 Part of the goals here are to share and to monitor the financial industry's role in actually m- managing climate risks and exploring the v- the available options of mobile and mobilizing capital for green and low carbon investments. 6:04 And there are a lot of, uh, kinds of things I like to hear like this because I think we don't do enough-When it comes to actually putting, let's say, our money where our mouth is, and this is really a great opportunity to do just that. 6:19 So knowing our history can help us make more informed decisions and invest in our future and our next generation. 6:27 So ultimately, this will lead to global resolve, and we'll all work together to be more green, I like to think more s- sustainable, and more circular. 6:37 So the third thing you need to know about sustainability in 2021 is quite simply, consumers are all demanding it, and I love to say that because we all know younger generations, like we, we always talk about Millennials, they might not like to say that. 6:52 They like to say they're socially engaged, or either their younger counterparts, which I think is important, or I like to call them screeners, as I talk about in my book, can't live without instant access to technology. 7:05 But I like to make the argument, again in my book, that today's technology is not shaping a generation, but a generation that... of consumers that are shaping technology. Now, did you hear that? 7:17 Did you follow that point? Let that sink in for just a minute, because it's really very important to understand that consumers are actually shaping technology, and it's not the other way around. 7:30 And brands really need to understand that it's our children and our children's children that are going to change the way we interact with pretty much everything in our lives. 7:41 And if we aren't listening to them, our companies are going to fail, and our companies are going to fail fast and hard and p- probably very painfully. 7:50 So these young consumers are making decisions about brands, and they are driving sustainability initiatives across the board, and they're the ones that are thinking about the circular economy. 8:04 They are changing the modern world, and what's really great about it, and the future of generations to come, and that's pretty impressive when you think about these young minds that are so innovative today. 8:16 We need to be listening to them. We need to hear what they have to say, and that's truly very important. 8:23 I could talk about that all day, but let's move on to the number two thing on the list and that we all need to know about in sustainability. 8:33 Companies are taking positive steps forward, and what are they doing to do this? They're driving sustainability. But let's talk about the companies that are doing it and exactly what are they doing. 8:44 There are a lot of trends out there, but naturally, the companies that are most successful are the ones that are being proactive. 8:51 And there's a lot of companies out there, but there's only a few that are being very aggressive. One of them I wanna talk about is Microsoft. Let me tell you what Microsoft's doing. 9:00 One of the things I like about what Microsoft's doing, and I talk about this in my book, is how it wants to be carbon neutral and has set a target date by 2025, and it plans to shift 100% of its supply of renewable energy. 9:16 And at CES earlier this month, Microsoft was making quite a bit of noise in the area of sustainability as well, and this is impressive because it's committed to a number of initiatives to achieve that goal, and that's how you are successful when you do this. 9:32 It was announcing that it wants to also be water positive by the year 2030. Think about that a goal. That is not easy to do, and it also recognizes it can't do it alone. It has to have the right partners. 9:47 In anything we do in order to achieve great things in this world, we have to have the best partners, and Microsoft has always gotten that in its partnering with non-governmental organizations to ensure that more than 1.5 million people have access to clean drinking water, I love that, and sanitation. 10:06 Those are critical things, and when we're helping other people across the world, we all see the power of that. 10:12 So what it's doing for their zero carbon targets, it's working with companies like Shell for its expertise to achieve these great energy efficiency goals. 10:22 So I think all of this by using its AI, cloud, and Internet of Things, companies like Microsoft are making great things happen. But that's just one example, and I talk about so much more in the book. 10:33 Companies all across the globe are creating great goals and making commitments to contribute to sustainability. 10:41 So if you aren't taking these steps now, you're going to be going in the wrong direction, and the direction you need to be going is to be building and moving forward and to doing that with, and it's just that simple. 10:52 All right. The number one thing you need to be thinking about when we think about sustainability this year into 2030, into 2050, is to think about innovation and technology. Our advances are here. 11:03 You need to be thinking about data and design. 11:06 If you were here a- and you listened to my show last week, you know that we talked about different products to solve the global food waste crisis, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. 11:16 There's so many things we need to be thinking about. There's so much more that are going on in design techniques that are sustainable in a circular economy. 11:24 We need data that designs in the crucial role to help as we regenerate our natural resources, our natural ecosystem. I talk about this all the time. We need to rejuvenate. 11:37 We need to spark new life in the ecosystem that we've destroyed, so we need new, innovative ways to rejuvenate that. 11:45 Historical data analysis must keep pace with the trends and continue to provide what we call necessary contextualized insights. I believe we will see that in this year and beyond, and I think that's what's so important. 11:59 So as we're wrapping this up, I know I'm kinda going through a whole lot of things, but we get into some really deep detail in the book. So I'm just gonna leave you with some tips for today. 12:10 I want you to acknowledge that we all need to do better.than to waste. We are all about waste, you know, make, take, waste, but we need to give back. 12:23 We need to understand that we could be, instead of wanting so much, that we need to be, instead of demanding more and taking more, we need to be innovative more. 12:33 We need to be more setting goals for how we could do things better globally, to be a more global society. 12:40 And if we think about that, we could think more about greater innovation, what we could do as a society in our businesses, in our personal life, and in our communities. But even more, how do we 12:54 put more forward to our natural ecosystems? How do we invite ourselves to do that? How do we encourage our society to do that? So what can we do better? 13:06 That's my, my guess, my opinion for today is we can all do better at that. What technologies? How can we advance? And I encourage all of you by starting to do that. I encourage you to read my book. 13:17 I would love your opinion on it because the, uh, your advice together, if we all work together, we can solve so many problems, but we can only do it if we work together. 13:28 All right, I'm out of time, so here's what I want you to do. I would love for you to tell me what you think. 13:33 I would love for you to share your thought on social with me at connectedwmag, or my new handle, @peggy_smedley, where I'm putting so much more about the book up there, so we want you to do that. 13:44 Or, and you can visit us at, normally at connectedwmag, which is our website, and you can also put things up on our new website, which is sustainablecircularworld.com, and get that book. We want to know what you think. 13:59 But I'm out of time for this segment, so I've got to wrap it up pretty quickly here, and check out our website at connectedworld.com, our show website at thepeggysmedleyshow.com. 14:07 All right, we're going to take a quick commercial break, but as always, as you know, this is The Peggy Smedley Show, the podcasting voice of IoT and digital transformation, and as always, with great technology comes great responsibility. 14:19 We'll be right back after this quick commercial break. [upbeat music]
