#09 - Sustainability That Works: Luis Jenkins on Supply Chain ESG

Primarily in the Beyond the Bottom Line podcast, what we do is we bring SMEs, we bring leaders, as well as anyone who is you know, peers even in the industry to share the experience of what they are doing in a respective vertical. And today we are talking about ESG and sustainability where, you know, Luis has invested a lot of time and effort in, you know, solving problems around supply chain and what can we do better.

Well, here we are to learn from him and listen to what he has done through his journey. Welcome to our show.

Thank you so much. And it’s an honor to be on here. So I really appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you, Luis. Just to start off with, maybe you can share your thoughts about, how you got into this field, what drove you to this field.

And now today that you’re, managing 58 power plants, you have the solar battery storage facility, there is four nuclear plants that Vistra Corp kind of works through. So I’m sure your role as a key leader, trying to bring sustainability into all of this space and this vast diverse energy resources must be a brilliant journey.

So I’d love to hear more from you from that perspective.

Thank you so much. So, when I was still in the Marine Corps as an active duty Marine, 22 years I knew that I wanted to transition out. So I started exploring different fields, you know, I wanted to make sure that not only. I transitioned out smoothly, but I wanted to make sure that I got into an industry that was, you know have a lot of changes, was going to still be exciting, and I could continue to grow and explore new things.

So I ended up submitting for the Skill Bridge. The Skill Bridge is a program that the Department of Defense has where you can, as an active duty member, can serve for six months right before you get out. With a company that also does a program. So Vistra corp at the time, they were exploring Skillbridge and I got to be one of the first ones.

So, I got to work with Heather, which is my director. I was on for six months doing some analytics, doing different things within the diversity team, but she had already seen the vision and understanding that we needed to bring in a supply chain sustainability person. Now why that was so important to us was understanding that usually the trend is about 80 percent of your scope three emissions or your emissions.

Are in your scope three, I said that backwards, right? So normally your emissions, your scope three is going to be bigger than your scope one and two. So we knew that even though we’re in the energy industry, where our scope one and two is larger because we have the smokestacks, obviously we’re making energy, but we knew that if we wanted to make a true impact, we had to address our, supply chain.

So we built out the business. In this case, and during this time, because I was still on the skill bridge, I was still exploring different areas within the company. What area did I want to work in? But something about sustainability and then the director that I worked for really interested me. And I saw the opportunity to build out a business case and then to be able to build this program from the ground up, which was very exciting, you know, so for me coming from the Marine Corps leadership was obviously something that we take, that we’re very proud of.

So coming into this and building something new from scratch, I saw an opportunity to again lead and be able to influence up, you know, as a sustainability person, we don’t make any purchases. So what we have to do is have that influential leadership. Be able to educate people and show them why it’s the right thing to do.

Not only because it’s the right thing to do for the environment, but it makes business sense as well. So we were able to get the business case approved. And then that’s how I was able to transition right into the senior manager role at Vistro.

Wonderful. I think it’s a beautiful journey. You know, a couple of things that I took away was, what can you do when you’re coming back to mainstream work from after serving the nation?

And I think you spoke about the program. I’m sure that’s a lot of good insight for people who are probably in your role and who would like to come back into the mainstream as well, but also your strategy of how you kind of, you know, plan this and the steps that you took and especially moving into the energy sector.

And the sustainability, I’m sure the challenges are very unique. Because everybody, looks at the current ways of producing energy as one of the main causes of, you know, what we talk about in the carbon emission and how, it’s kind of playing a huge role in the climate change.

So given that your role as a leader, as well as from a unique challenge perspective, I’m sure it’s been very diverse for you. So how did you tackle those? And you spoke about, convincing your leaders on the business proposal, because I think that’s a very hard win because everybody doesn’t see the ROI initially, correct?

So I think that’s very interesting. So could you please speak about that?

Definitely. So everything kind of lined up perfectly. So we saw the need, Obviously, we were bought into it because we were seeing a lot of the data, but at the leadership, we had to educate them, right? So first off we had to educate as to what sustainability was and that’s individually, you know If you ask 10 different people you’re going to get 10 different answers me coming out of the marine corps.

I thought sustainability was just hey are we able to continue the fight going forward, you know bringing up all the supplies and then so as I got different answers, we started to educate around and then aligned up perfect with the SEC’s proposal, right? So the SEC was going to come out and we anticipated them mandating corporations to 3 emissions and report on them.

So that was one of the driving cases, just knowing we’re going to be asked at some point. So it’s better to get ahead of it. You know, and be able to influence and educate our supply chain so that when we did get mandated to report, we were already doing business the right way and our suppliers were already on board and they understood and they knew how to capture emissions.

And, ESG goes so much more beyond emissions. Emissions is just the easy, you know everybody sees carbon. You hear about the ozone layer. We see the weather changing. I mean, it’s October. It’s about to be Halloween and it’s still in the 80s and 90s over here.

Thank you so much so much for bringing it up yeah.

So it’s easy to know something’s different. Right. So as the SEC came out and they didn’t mandate us to capture our scope threes, we still had to do our research. Okay. So is there going to be a need to continue this? And we knew that there was, but we had to bring out the data like why, well you still have two bills in California that are being proposed.

Well, I think they’ve already been proposed, but they’re being fought up in the legal system, but because one, we have suppliers, but two, we have actions or operations that are going in California, so we still have to report. So that really provided the business case. This is important.

We see what’s happening in Europe. Obviously, Europe is way ahead of us. California is still continuing to ask us. We have a lot of power plants in Illinois. You know, so we were working a lot with Illinois and Chicago, the city of Chicago. And we see that, you know, there’s a lot of need. There’s a lot of questions around diversity.

There’s a lot of questions around carbon emissions, you know, human rights and all those things. So the actions that we started two years ago, well, I mean, are proven to be needed regardless of the SEC’s coming out and them saying that we didn’t need to report on our scope three. So we really focused in on that and that kind of got the base, the business case justified and approved.

And then now it’s just the continuation of education, right. So internally continuing to educate our folks, whether it’s people at the executive level, or it’s the people that are making the purchases. And it’s very easy to do that. Just as long as we educate them, they understand the importance of this role.

They understand the importance of sustainability. And then even with Vistra as vast as we are, like you brought up, you know, our plants and our nuclear and our battery, we’re trying to diversify ourselves to where we are, setting ourselves up, for success. Right now, we see a lot of the blackouts, the rolling blackouts out in California and in different places.

So, I mean, in reality we can’t do away with every plant. And this is just me speaking just understanding we can’t just continue to shut down plants. But what we’re doing is we’re incorporating, we just incorporated the three nuclear plants from Energy Harbor. So, you know, that helped build our portfolio a little bit better to where now we have more clean energy.

So, we’re really showing what is important to us.

And I think it’s very important, correct? But I think you brought up a couple of points. One is data driven analysis and helping educate your peers up the chain, your management teams, your leadership teams. But at the same time, I’m thinking you’re using the data as well as to educate your supplier chain and the vendors below, because I don’t think they have that insight yet, because You know, they don’t have the tools, the platforms, but I think you have done a very phenomenal job.

Just knowing the program that you’ve kind of rolled out for the vendors, I think it gives them that perspective as well. So the data can be used to, you know, broaden your audiences as such, you know, cater to what they need to know. So to help them educate and advocate. So I think I’m hearing that very clearly, but also.

That you’re thinking from a strategy perspective, a role of, yes, we can’t shut down what we have today, but what can we do moving forward? Correct. So I think you’re already planning. Well, I heard clean energy, clean sources of energy coming through. So you’re already thinking broad, and now that everyone talks about the EV vehicles, the grids have to support it at some point in time.

There’s only so much of power to go around. So again, you know, you’re thinking for ahead in that sense. So given. All that you’re doing, I’m sure it has been tough for you, especially you spoke about building the program ground up and in the supply chain scope three, where not many people really want to deal with it.

I think you spoke to that as well. One, because of the complexity that it has we don’t have a framework to go against right now as we speak, and there’s nothing that’s common or neutral against every industry. So you’re coming from the energy sector as such. So maybe if you can speak a little bit about what you’re doing with your supply chain, I know you have some very good programs that you have kind of rolled out for them, it’s a lot of investment as a company and positive investments that y’all are doing to help your suppliers as well as vendors come along the way. It’s not just enough that I will, be ESG and sustainability leader , but you’re bringing everybody along the way, which is kudos to you and your management to do that. So can you speak a little bit about that?

Yeah, definitely.

And you know, it’s all about the supply chain. Honestly, you can’t really, because we can make changes to our operations and how we do business. But when you affect the supply chain, you’re also affecting other industries, other corporations, because now they’re doing business in a way that’s greener, right? So for us, we’ve obviously my role is a supply chain sustainability.

So that’s where I really focus. So we’ve implemented things like a quarterly column, I get on the call with suppliers and I educate them on new trends, what’s going on now. So, you know, a couple months ago, we had a huge human rights incident that happened, not within Vistra, I want to make sure I make that clear not within Vistra, but we were reading different trends and people were asking questions on human rights.

So we really focused in on that. And we wanted to educate our suppliers. Hey, this is something that we’re getting questions on. These are things that we see. So little things like providing templates, providing, the business cases for certain policies and procedures in certain cases. That really helped out in the suppliers.

We got a lot of good feedback from that. We also, became part of an alliance. It’s called the Sustainable Supply Chain Alliance. That alliance consists of 30 utility companies, and then it has about 80 SAMs. Those are Supplier Affiliate Members. So those are suppliers. And what we did through there was.

We built out one platform that we were able to use that we were able to share throughout all 30 of us. So what that does is that puts less of a strain on the suppliers, right so now they could if they do business with 10 utilities and those 10 are part of the Alliance. They answer the questions once and all 10 of them get it and it’s free So those were some of the things that were very important to us.

We’re asking suppliers to assess themselves We’re asking them to allocate resources whether it’s human being Whether it’s time, whether it’s bringing some other people on. If we’re asking them to do this We wanted to make sure that we’re also not asking them to pay right, and we wanted to make sure that we did it in a way where we were making ourselves available so, we also did a lot of training sessions. You know, capturing carbon that’s hard.

You have to understand okay, what are we talking about when we say scope one, scope two, scope three. When you walk into a room and you bring those up, and to people that don’t know sustainability, they look at you, they’re confused, they don’t know what it is so we have to educate them on that we have to educate them on how to capture it.

And then we had to educate them on, okay, now that you know what your footprint is now we need to set targets and then how do we reach those targets? And then it’s not even just targets. It’s, you know, realistic targets because you have a lot of companies that set targets, they want to lead the way, but they don’t have the resources allocated and they don’t have the plan going forward to truly reach that target.

So that’s part of what we’re doing is educating them. And it’s not just on carbon, right? So we’re talking about water waste, what they’re doing with the land, if they’re cutting trees down, are they replanting them? So really getting engaged with our suppliers and having those one on one conversations, bringing them to different learning sessions, making them understand that, hey, we understand this is not a role of yours, because there’s not many suppliers that have a dedicated full time employee.

But then coming back and saying, Hey, we know that let us help you out as much as we can. We’ll walk along with you because we’re all on this journey together right. One of the first things that I got was, how does this affect us in our contract? Right?

We’re not in that place right now. Right now we’re trying to educate suppliers. We’re trying to get them to a point where now they can start, you know, creating sustainable actions or putting things in place that are going to help them so that one day when it does become a competitive advantage, they’re set up and they’re using it to their advantage whenever they place bids.

And now they can, kind of brag about themselves or tell their story as to how they are being more sustainable. Because one thing that i’ve learned in the short time that i’ve been with the company, there’s a lot of companies are doing the right thing, they are doing big things that are affecting the planet They just don’t know to tell that story to them.

They’re just doing business the right way. You know, you cut down a tree, you plant two trees and to them that’s just how we do business. But in reality, those are things that people want to hear. External and internal stakeholders want to hear that because that lets you feel better about the company, whether you work for that company or using them as a supplier.

You know, you want to hear those things. So, that’s really what we’ve done is we’ve taken an approach where we’re working hand in hand with all of our suppliers, you know, we’re trying to help them build their programs as well and we want them on the journey along with us. At Vistra we have a lot of employees, it’s easier and I say that very lightly because we know the economic, you know how the economy is and everything now.

So, but it was easier for us to dedicate this role and get it approved than it is for a smaller supplier. Of three people, they’re not going to bring on a fourth person just for sustainability. So, really making ourselves available and providing them with the tools and the resources to help themselves and get to a point where it becomes an advantage to them.

I think your strategy there is just not ourselves, but everybody along with us. I think you spoke very well to that, to the fact that we all have just one planet and each of us have a responsibility to do towards it. And what can I do? And I think you’re doing it very well in bringing the suppliers, the vendors, the small businesses along.

and not penalizing them. That’s the other thing that I heard from your thing is not penalizing for what they don’t know. Everyone has an intent to do it right and you’re showing the way and leading the way and you have provided some solutions as well, you know, by having a common platform that you spoke to and how it can be applied to not just one utility company, but many, but I think you can extend it to further down because if the supplier has another supplier, I’m sure they’re going to pass that, you know, the learning that they have to somebody else and maybe they bring them along as well. So I think it’s a beautiful chain that you’ve set up to do the things right.

And storytelling. Yes. I think that’s a huge thing in today’s world for us to say everything that we’ve done right. And it goes beyond, as you said, In sustainability that it’s not just the carbon. It’s the waste management, it’s the water, it’s about can we recycle, reuse, repurpose the goods that we have, so kind of the resources that we have, so we can extend it and be cautious about how we use it.

So I think you touched all of it in a very beautiful manner, but are there any unique examples that you can kind of give here to say. Hey, these are things that we’ve done and we’ve seen the ROI. I think that’ll be very motivating for people who are listening to the podcast.

Yeah. So let me throw this in real quick because I forgot to mention it.

After two years of building this program, we did win the engagement award from the Alliance, so that meant a lot. Congratulation Thank you. So we just won it a couple of weeks ago and that means a lot to us because it was voted on by the members of the board, so those are the other utility companies who we were voted on by our peers.

So that says a lot to us. It made us feel good because we know we’re making an impact to our supply chain. So that was a big win for us, especially after two years, we felt like, okay, we’re doing business the right way. Now there’s some wins. So Vistra, we are doing a lot of things all throughout.

So we’re nationwide, we have all the plans so wherever there’s a plan, we’re doing certain things to affect the economy, right. We just got done with our economic impact report. So some of the things that we’re doing are just really focusing on the local areas and those are wins.

We can see the economic impact that we’re making in those areas, right? And as we continue to bring in smaller suppliers or other suppliers, whether it’s for the water treatments or certain things, you know, that helps stimulate the local economy as well. You know, when it comes to diversity, we just came back because a lot of people don’t understand that diversity is part of sustainability.

Right. So it’s part of the yes. So we just got back from a diversity conference, you know, and we really go out there and we make it a very intentional effort to bring in diverse suppliers, to hear them out. What are they doing? Because a lot of them have very innovative ways to do business, they’re trying to compete with bigger companies.

So a lot of those, so we just brought some in. We see that, I mean, there were huge wins, you know, being able to bring a supplier, that’s not only going to help Vistra become a better company, you know, we had one come in for us accessibility, you know, looking at our apps, because we also have the retail side of the business.

So we not only generate the electricity, but we also have millions of customers that we sell electricity to so being able to make things more accessible, you know, so may ensuring that the app isn’t good just for me, you, or I’m a hundred percent disabled from the military, there are things that are a little bit harder for me.

So just making sure that everybody has the same experience or close to the same experience from our app. So to me, that was a huge win, we can tell that story. And now we’ve been able to talk to other utility companies that have come and asked us, Hey, what are you guys doing in the space? And then we can share suppliers.

We can share how we kind of went about that. I saw that as a huge win. And then, you know, we’re doing a lot of things. When it comes to the land reclamation. We’re doing a lot when it comes to biodiversity and circularity, you know, obviously right now with solar panels and batteries.

We’re doing a lot of our homework as to, you know, how do we make those things to where they don’t just all end up in landfills? What are we doing to be able to maybe take them apart? So those are things that we’re maybe not seeing the wind right now because right now it’s not the need, but we’re setting ourselves up for success.

And I think that’s huge because a lot of companies that we have talked to because they’re just starting to get their programs off the ground. They haven’t been able to focus on that yet. So at Vistra, we have teams constantly looking at what are we going to do? You know, whether it’s a solar panel room, whether it’s, you know, our vehicles, tires, all those things. So I see those as wins, big wins, not specific wins, but those are big wins because it’s the mentality and, and how the operations that we conduct and the things that we’re thinking about constantly. So those are huge. And then the support that we have, I mean, I honestly, like we couldn’t have gotten to where we are so far when it comes to our suppliers and the engagement, if we didn’t have the support from the top down, you know, whether it’s.

Whether it’s our CEO being the first one to go out and pledge the 1 percent initiative with NMSDC or DFW MSDC or it’s you know, we just planted so many trees, or I mean, there’s just constantly one we’re proud of those things, but to the support that we get from them, you know, so I mean, those are wins that at other companies, I’m seeing that they’re not getting those wins.

You know, that’s, and you know, back to your first question, when I transitioned out, one of the things that made me want to work for a company like this is I came from the Marine Corps where it was structured, you know, a brotherhood, sisterhood. And then I came over here and I saw the way my director, how interested invested she was in this program.

And then my CPO, and then talking to the CEO, you know, how interested he was in this and how he knew it was something very important. I mean, you don’t get that support from all companies so that was a huge win in the beginning. It continues to be a win as they continue to show that it’s not only sustainability but diversity.

It’s very important to our company.

I think you touched on so many good things. Lucas, it’s one, you spoke about circularity and that your strategy for sustainability is aligned with circularity. You know, it’s not an afterthought, but it’s going side by side and that you’re kind of looking at it holistically.

You spoke about biodiversity. You spoke about already, you know, how can we, because we are innovating does not mean we have to again go back and fill the landfills, correct? What are we doing there? How can we avoid that? But I’m also hearing, you know, a lot of right things from your leadership and from top down is because we all know that right now, Scope 3 is not in any reporting scope for SEC, but you all are still focusing on the right goals, saying, hey, this is important.

And you’ll have very invested in taking that part because that’s one of the most complex areas and the most difficult area, and you’ll have slowly started addressing it. So I think that’s a great win and good to hear and congratulations on your awards as well from the Alliance. So I know it brings, and it speaks for itself, and I hear that you’re very happy with your organization and hearing that, you know, there is top down leadership, especially in a state of Texas where everybody looks at it like hey, we don’t have support for ESG and sustainability, I think this is a great win story from that aspect, and good to know there are corporates who are very invested and are doing the right thing, and I think encouraging us to come and speak, and I’m glad we’re talking about it on this panel, podcast, because I think it’ll help others to tell the story.

And that’s one of the goal of this podcast as well to let people tell those stories as we go along here, the positive things, what are their challenges, how do they tackle it? And I think you’re speaking to a lot of it through this podcast today. So it’s really awesome to hear that. So from balancing operational efficiency. Because all of this change takes time, it takes money, it takes effort and you have to do your day to day operations, correct? So how is that, how is that being managed? How, how are you driving that efficiency? Are you working with other verticals within your organization that are probably supporting you?

Because it’s good to know who are the other stakeholders in the ESG and sustainability space, because you are coming specifically from the supplier chain, but there is, you know, I’m sure there is corporate reporting, there is policymaking, you know, people who are doing the audits for you who are kind of supporting there, looking for evidences going and asking that from your suppliers.

So there’s a lot that goes on in your operational cycle as well. So maybe you can address a little bit of that there.

Yeah, definitely. So yeah, it definitely takes a lot of teams. If you want to be successful, right? So, and then again that goes back to the top down management, right? If it’s important to the people at the top, it’s going to be, it’s going to trickle down.

So I’ve been blessed with that. So we do work a lot with the other teams within Vistra, you know, obviously I work with our corporate sustainability a lot. So I feed them a lot of data as we do other reports. I work with investor relations. I work with the other vice presidents or executives that are in charge of all the other areas with investor because we need to understand what’s important to them right. And if it’s important to them and they know that it’s also important to me, then that gets the buy in as well.

Right now, it’s. This just program, we all own it. This is important to our area here as well. So I get a lot of that ownership. So working with them the good thing is, again, we are in the supply chain. So people understand how important it is for them to engage with us and make sure that they’re picking the right suppliers.

But I’ve been getting a lot of support. I mean, all throughout, whether sitting down with somebody asking them what’s important to them as far as risk, you know, right now, are they seeing a lot of issues with either human rights or cyber security, things like that, and then understanding that those concerns, they tie into the assessments that we do, right?

So whenever I’m asking suppliers to assess themselves, and then that goes back to the data right. Suppliers in the beginning, they wanted to make sure, if we’re doing all of this, are you going to do something with the data? Right. They didn’t want to do it just to do it. So bringing the data, linking that up with what different executives, different internal stakeholders saw as risk, and then being able to pinpoint certain companies that might potentially have a higher risk, because let’s say human rights was the most important thing today right. If we have companies that don’t have supplier or human rights policies, then now we need to work with them. So it helped me to kind of pinpoint companies that I need to work with me to ensure that they have things in place right. So in this case, it would be, they need to put human rights policies and they need to make sure that their supplier code of conduct also references things like that, because that’s going to hold their suppliers accountable for those are, those are some of the things that we did.

Internally, you know, working with legal, working with our marketing people, making sure that we’re saying the right things, so it takes an effort across everybody. And then even whenever I came out and did the assessment. So when I say the assessment is, you know, we send out a questionnaire to all of our suppliers, asking them measure your scope one, measure your scope two, scope three, is it publicly?

Reported all different types of questions, right? Your water waste, how much water do you waste and landfills, all those things. So you know the social aspect as well. I’m thinking social and governance aspect. Okay. Yes, definitely. So we’re asking, do you have a supplier code of conduct? Have you gotten any notices of violations?

If you have, what are they and what were your responses? What have you done to mitigate those things? You know, what’s your board makeup, so yeah we definitely cover all of it. But working internally, I’m able to really see what’s important to Vistra and getting all that support. And then I’m able to relay that to our suppliers.

Because if it’s important to us, I guarantee it’s important to them, right? They want to continue with the contracts and doing business with us, just like we want to continue to do business with them. So it’s been a collaborative effort. I’ve gotten a lot of support, which again, the top down mentality, which I really appreciate.

And then just understanding that, we are reaching out to suppliers, even from the category managers or the sidebars or people down at the level where they’re actually signing contracts and buying things. You know, bringing them on board as well. So it’s not just the leadership.

It’s all of us. All of us understanding that we’re looking for certain things that and like I said, sometimes it’s just the story, the suppliers might already be doing it, but if they don’t know that we want to hear the story so that we can tell the story for them. To them they’re just doing business the right way, so it takes everybody across the board to really run a sustainable program.

Thank you for that. As we head towards, the last question for the podcast, what advice would you give the smaller businesses? Because I know you’ve got your hands completely dirty with a lot of these small business vendors and helping them along. So what would you say? Because I heard you repeat the essence of storytelling and how important it is, because I’m thinking that It’s not a win win just for us higher up in the chain, but it’s also a win for them because if they have the right story to tell, they may be able to get maybe access to grants, or they may be having green funds that can take them even further, correct?

So maybe in your experience, you probably have heard that. And if that’s something you would like to advise the smaller businesses, how to get started, what is their benefits? That’ll be great.

Yeah, the biggest advice I can give suppliers now is get started. So because it’s not mandated, right?

And even for us, you know, we’ve worked hard. We have a sustainability policy letter, you know, I’ve been getting it, it went through legal and we’re getting approved, you know, and then we want to put some contract language in our RFP’s, but we’re not mandating anybody.

We’re not forcing anybody because we’re not there yet right. And we don’t want to be there yet. Right now, everybody is starting out, you know, so, and we want to make it even for everybody. But when it comes to smaller suppliers, yes, they might not have the resources for it. So it might be easier for them not to tackle something that’s not being mandated right now.

I mean that makes sense But if you get started now It’s going to be easier once it is mandated and if we are being asked and we’re being mandated as corporations we are going to ask our suppliers to assess themselves and report to us. Right. What you don’t want to do is put it off. Let your competitors or your peers get a program, become more sustainable, already make actions or change processes within the organization to where now they are doing sustainable actions that they can tell stories about.

And two, three, four, five years from now, you both are putting in a bid. You guys are both about the same price doing about the same work, work history, and you can show that you can do the job. But one has a lot more sustainable solutions, whether it’s less gas for driving, less emissions, you know, they have a better control or a better view into their supply chain.

So now we feel better about who their tier three, four, five, six is. Right where they’re getting their minerals or certain products from those are things that take time and then from what I’ve seen it’s about three years to get the data to be able to look at things and really make changes, right? So if we wait, you’re going to fall behind and we don’t know what the SEC is going to come out with.

We don’t know exactly what we’re going to be mandated to do in the future. But we know that right now, there are things that are important to corporations, you’re getting asked these assessments take those in, not just to answer them, you know, but look at those assess yourself and start figuring out what you can do to set yourself up for success.

Some of the things are as simple as a policy letter, tied to suppliers, they don’t have supplier code of conduct. Hey, here is a template, you know, make it fit your company, send it up through your legal team if you have one. And then from there, you know, just modify it to where it fits your company and what you’re doing. And then now you have a supplier code of conduct, you know, so something as simple as that, those are wins, but if the company’s not willing to change or grow, they’re not willing to listen right now because it’s not mandated. You’re just gonna fall farther behind. So, that’s my biggest advice is just get started.

It’s coming, correct. It’s not that it’s not, it’s only a matter of time because I’m hearing other states within us is also trying to Illinois, as you spoke about. I’m sure New Jersey is the next one. I’m thinking Massachusetts is coming along as well. I’m hearing those through the grapevines.

There are a couple of, States within US, as well as coming but I think since we are doing global business, especially when we are now in a world where global transactions happen, it’s going to be mandated somewhere because Europe is typing their thing, and there’s no more greenwashing, you know, you have to show actionable items that we are working on.

So I think as you, you know, perfectly said that, you know, it is important. It doesn’t matter how small or big we are. We have to take that step forward and work together to kind of do that. As we leave the podcast you know, is there any last minute thoughts that we probably have not touched and you’d like to share for the audience?

Yeah. You know, just for suppliers, please remember that you have people at these corporations like myself that are excited to work with you. You know, we want to get the suppliers on board. We want them as far as sustainability. It’s a win, you know, when I get a supplier and I, and I get an hour with them, 30 minutes with them and we’re able to implement, you know, help them point out different things and implement certain things that’s exciting to me because we’re mentoring them, you know, and that’s coming from my background.

You know, as a Marine, we take pride as in being leaders and anytime you can implement. Or you can sit there and mentor somebody. I mean, to me, that’s exciting. So don’t shy away from it, you know, reach out to people, reach out to the corporations. There are people that that’s what they do is they want to sit down with you and they want to help you out.

So that’s my biggest advice, you know, reach out to us. We are also at the beginning. So it’s not that we know everything, but we’re willing to walk that journey with, you know, and help each other out. I want to learn from them as well.

Thank you. I think that’s brilliant advice. I think the topic today was excellent because it’s one of the topics we have not touched yet on our podcast about supply chain and where sustainability falls in, how integration of these are happening and I think you spoke very well about the process, the leadership buy in, you know, what we can do are small wins, how to tell the story. I think you had some very key messaging. Thanks for your advice. Thanks for those insight. Thanks for joining us. Thank you so much.