On this episode of The BIS, Cindy Moehring chats with Ed Huber, Chief Sustainability Officer at Clorox. The two discuss environmental, social and governance (ESG) topics as well as the efforts Clorox is making to improve and solve global environmental issues. Stay tuned to hear Ed's recommendations for content you can use to further your knowledge about ESG and climate change!
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Episode Transcript
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0:00:15.4 Cindy Moehring: Hi, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of The BIS and this week, we have a very special guest with us, Ed Huber from The Clorox Company. Hi, Ed.
0:00:24.5 Ed Huber: Good morning... Good afternoon, I guess, in Arkansas. Cindy, nice to see you.
0:00:28.6 Cindy Moehring: Nice to see you too. Before we jump into the topic, I'm gonna tell you all a little bit about Ed and also about The Clorox Company and then we will jump right into all things ESG and what Clorox is doing in that space. So Ed is a 30-year veteran to the CPG industry and has done an amazing amount of work there, and I'm fortunate now to be able to share with you that Ed is also a member of my external advisory board for the Integrity Leadership Initiative at Walton College, so he truly is a very special guest for us today.
0:01:03.0 Cindy Moehring: In his role at Clorox now, what Ed is responsible for is driving sustainable growth through innovation. And as we move from thinking about just disinfecting products in our homes, like the Clorox wipes, like these that I always have... I have a story about those, I'll share it in a minute. But as we come out of this COVID pandemic and think about extending the disinfectants from our homes to public health, generally, Ed is now leading a brand new team that's thinking about how to extend Clorox's disinfecting expertise into that area of public health, and we'll hear a little bit about that too.
0:01:39.4 Cindy Moehring: In his role as Chief Sustainability Officer, he really is working on integrating Clorox's ESG strategy across the portfolio of brands, not just the disinfecting wipes that I just showed you, but really so that Clorox can grow its business in the right way, which I believe you call it Clorox Good Growth, which I like that. Yeah, that's great. So Ed has had, like I said, a very storied career in the CPG world and he's done a number of different types of collaboration in the past and some sales and general management roles that you can tell us a little bit more about. But there are some real highlights to his career that show what a collaborative person he is, and that would include things like reinventing the entire grilling category with Kingsford and Walmart and pairing Stephen Curry with Brita to promote healthy drinking habits. You might notice right behind that is a Stephen Curry jersey there.
0:02:34.5 Cindy Moehring: And most recently, helping businesses welcome back customers safely and confidently during COVID, 'cause we are still in it a bit, and then safely into the future when hopefully it's behind us. So it is really a pleasure to have you here today, Ed. And you have such an interesting story to share with the audience about a trip you made that I think you would call it a tipping point in your career and opened your eyes, if you will, to plastics and waste. And I'm hoping you might be able to share that story with our audience.
0:03:10.8 Ed Huber: Yeah, right. Well, thank you for the opportunity, Cindy, and I'm humbled by your introduction. I wish I'd actually done all of those things that you just said. But I was in the right place at the right time for many of those, very fortunate to have an opportunity to work with Clorox and certainly look forward to have an opportunity to work with you and your talented board, and kudos to you and your team for driving ethics firmly into business. And it's a little bit like my story of how I got into sustainability because I was a business person that had a brand that was very centered on the environment. I was running the Brita business, as you'd mentioned. Stephen Curry was our spokesperson. It brought a lot of notoriety to water, but one of the things that was really interesting about Brita, a single Brita filter can provide the same amount of water as 700 single use plastic water bottles.
0:04:09.7 Cindy Moehring: Wow!
0:04:11.2 Ed Huber: So we had an environmental angle in the way that we marketed and presented the Brita brand. And as a result of that, there was a group that was very interested in coming up with end to end solutions for plastic waste, and they created what they referred to as an ocean plastic summit. And I was lucky enough to be invited. And so I show up on a ship that was actually that left Bermuda and went to the Atlantic gyre. And if you're not familiar with gyres, think about them as massive whirlpools in the center of oceans that are far away from land, but they create a little bit of a collecting pot for plastic. And so here we are in this beautiful setting, clear blue water, no land as far as the eye can see, and all of a sudden, an announcement came over the ship and they said, "Alright, we're gonna stop here, we've got a massive patch of sargassum," which is basically floating seaweed out in the middle of nowhere. "We're gonna go explore it."
0:05:19.0 Ed Huber: And so we all got our scuba gear on, we jumped in, and in the middle of nowhere, buried in this seaweed was everything from toothbrushes to toilet seats, to bottled water, pens, caps, and it basically brought full circle the magnitude of the plastic problem that we had in this area, in the middle of nowhere, plastic was completely interfacing. And oh, by the way, we had scientists on board, they caught fish and shrimp from that area, and when they dissected them, there was plastic in all of them.
0:05:57.4 Cindy Moehring: Oh my god.
0:06:00.4 Ed Huber: And you could see firsthand the impact. So anyway, long story short, a humbling experience, eyes wide open, I came back and was a little fired up and I told our CEO that, boy, I am so proud that Clorox is stepping up and making a stand here, but you know what, we are not doing nearly enough. And about two months later, he approached me and said, "Well, Ed, we're actually ready to have our first Chief Sustainability Officer in the company and we want a business person to lead it. What do you think?" And of course, you don't say no to the CEO.
0:06:33.3 Cindy Moehring: Right, right. [laughter]
0:06:34.2 Ed Huber: So fast forward, here I am today and we're two years into our journey and it's been a great learning experience and something that I'm proud to be part of.
0:06:47.1 Cindy Moehring: Well, that's... Yeah, that truly was probably a life-changing trip for you, in terms of seeing it firsthand. And sometimes it is those kind of moments that can pivot a person's career in a way that really causes them to go more forcefully in a certain direction. I think it's great though your business background that you had previously, I think probably adds a tremendous amount of weight to what you're able to do in the ESG space because you understand both sides essentially, and you're able to integrate it more specifically directly into the business strategy. Would you say that's right?
0:07:25.0 Ed Huber: Oh, yeah, 100%. I think at the end of the day, when you get an opportunity to be a business leader, be a general manager of a business, you get a little bit of a PhD in problem-solving. So the thing that was super interesting about my experience on the boat is that there was such a wide range of individuals, you had chemical producers like Dow that make plastic and then obviously, you had people that use plastic in their packaging like Clorox, but in between you had NGOs, you had environmental scientists, you had manufacturers, you had waste management providers.
0:08:08.3 Cindy Moehring: Wow.
0:08:09.2 Ed Huber: And so when you got a chance to see end to end, I think the business background in me kicked in and said, "Okay, we need to fix this and how do we break it down and how do we compartmentalize it so that we can take action?" Because you and I have talked this, Cindy, sustainability is one of those things where it's not about the best ideas, it's about speed. And it's not about, "Wow, let me do something for my company or my brand," it's like, "We need to do something for society." So the collaborative-ness, the solution focus is what I think I was able to bring, and I'm still trying to do that today.
0:08:46.7 Cindy Moehring: Yeah, yeah. I think that's awesome. And in fact, Clorox just made some news recently, the announcement just came out, that you were an activator for the US Plastics Pact, which is kind of a US strategy for how do we get to a circular plastics environment by 2025 and that's only three years away? And so that's big news, I think it's really important for Clorox, given that there's a lot of plastics in the CPG products, but can you tell us a little bit about that? 'Cause I'm sure there's a ton of collaboration going on for that national pact.
0:09:27.2 Ed Huber: The word collaboration can't be emphasized enough. And I think that the essence of the plastic problem, which I think everyone understands how acute it is and as evidenced by what I experienced on the boat, that plastic and when you actually got to see the products, even though I was in the Atlantic gyre, they were originating from the United States. So the plastic was traveling and it was getting into rivers, which then eventually got into the ocean. So the seriousness of the plastic and the fact that plastic just simply will not degrade on its own. You make plastic with some... Some crazy stat I heard, 90% of all the plastic ever produced is still on the planet somewhere. So the US Plastics Pact and the collaboration is there's not a silver bullet. So we know that, as manufacturers, particularly consumer goods manufacturers, by our very nature, we make stuff that's disposable, we've got to reduce the packaging that we use, we have to encourage recyclability.
0:10:34.1 Ed Huber: But at the end of the day, if it's all about recycling, then that's gonna be insufficient 'cause the infrastructure could not handle it. In fact, going back to my plastic... The reason I got so fired up about single-use plastic bottles is that depending on the number you see, only 8%-10% of the bottles actually make it all the way through the recycling system. So recycling's a great, great thing and we need to do more of it, but we also need to reduce our usage of the product. So US Plastics Pact brings people together, looks at it more end-to-end, and then we can activate against the total system solution, which to my earlier comment, we just need to go faster in everything we're doing in this space.
0:11:15.0 Cindy Moehring: Yeah. And I think compostable too, was one of the aspects of the Plastics Pact. So recyclable, use less of it, but also make it so that it does degrade, right?
0:11:26.2 Ed Huber: Well, do not underestimate the power that innovation can play in there because I think that as we get creative about innovative new solutions that either don't use plastic at all or that if you're using it, you use it in such a way that it can be easily composted or where it can disintegrate. So the whole reduce, reuse, recycle moniker is very much at the core of what we're trying to do.
0:11:55.0 Cindy Moehring: Yeah, that's really interesting. So let's talk about at the core of what you're trying to do, and let's talk about Clorox's, I think you call it the IGNITE Strategy, which when I read about it a little bit online, I really loved the way it was framed up, which is it's the integration again of you as a human being, but in the Clorox strategy as well, 'cause it's integrating the business metrics for Clorox strategy with the ESG metrics, and making it one comprehensive IGNITE Strategy overall. That it's got four main prongs to it, it's like people, plastics, products and governance, that we'll talk about a little bit later, with plastics fitting right into the planet part of it, I would guess, right? The planet part of that strategy?
0:12:44.6 Ed Huber: Right, right, right.
0:12:48.4 Cindy Moehring: Okay. So there's gotta be a tremendous amount of action behind the scenes to bring that strategy to life and a lot of collaboration. Could you give us maybe some specific examples of how does that actually work? How do you do that at Clorox? What does a collaboration behind the scenes look like so you can achieve those goals?
0:13:10.7 Ed Huber: One of the things that you're gonna hear a consistent theme and you've said it, if it's not collaboration, it's embedding into our business practices. And so one of the things that we try to do and one of the reasons why they wanted a business person in the sustainability role is that we want to make sustainability not something that we do, but part of who we are. And part of who we are is that we develop, we manufacture, we ship, we use products. And so as a marketer, as a manufacturer, it needs to be embedded into all the different aspects that we do.
0:13:53.1 Ed Huber: A big part of our IGNITE Strategy is centered on innovation and as you start innovating forward, I think consumers, you and I were talking about this at the beginning, I think the consumers of tomorrow are not gonna give you a pass that if you create a great product experience but it has a negative impact on the environment, it's not gonna be acceptable. So your ability to take those insights and fully integrate them into businesses. At Clorox, we've got a very broad portfolio, everybody knows our wipes, which I appreciate you being a user. Thank you very much. But we have a very disparate portfolio that not everyone would think about. We have everything from Burt's Bees, which our iconic lip balms from Burt's Bees. You mentioned that I'd worked on Kingsford Charcoal, we have Glad trash bags, Fresh Step cat litter, Hidden Valley Ranch, and obviously all the Clorox products. We think that every single one of those businesses, some of which don't feel very environmentally friendly, things like Glad, I mean, they're plastic bags.
0:15:03.4 Cindy Moehring: Right.
0:15:03.6 Ed Huber: We have to improve every single brand, we have to move the needle. We can't just say, "Well, we're doing some great things with Brita and Burt's Bees," which makes sense. We have to take charge of every single part of our portfolio. And again, that's where the business integration comes in because you can read tons of stories. Sustainability is good business and in theory, you're going to use less raw materials, so you could save cost and then you could leverage that savings to invest it back in things like innovation and create a virtuous cycle. So a long winded way of saying, integrate innovation with sustainability at the core of what we do.
0:15:49.5 Cindy Moehring: And I would imagine packaging is also a big part of that and that might be a good place where you could highlight. How does the packaging process all come together? Who are the different players in that process? And so part of activating your IGNITE Strategy, I imagine is influencing others further upstream, who helped put all the... So how does that work? What does that look like? How do you help them... How do they help you reach your IGNITE Strategy goals?
0:16:23.4 Ed Huber: Yeah, that's a great example to run water through the pipes, Cindy. I think one of our stated goals in IGNITE is that we're going to reduce our virgin packaging material, both fiber and plastic by 50% by 2030. And to do that, you have to take it end to end, we have to work with our suppliers that give us the raw materials, we have to work with our product developers actually to say, "Do I really need that packaging? Is it that important? Can I communicate the benefit in some other way other than like a big billboard?" Have to work with retail partners down the road from you, like at Walmart and say, "How can we transfer those learnings all the way to the shelf?"
0:17:08.6 Cindy Moehring: Yeah.
0:17:09.3 Ed Huber: We spent a lot of time collaborating with Walmart on things like, what if you transform an entire category, you might be able to get rid of the packaging, not just for one of my brands, but for an entire category. So use that as example, that's an end-to-end type process, that it would be great just to do one aspect of it. But think about the power and the impact that you brought the experience of the consumer using the product at home, to when they buy it at a Walmart store, to when they make it in our factories, to when we get the raw materials from our suppliers. You really have to think that broad to find opportunities to save and be more efficient with valuable raw materials.
0:17:51.9 Cindy Moehring: Yeah. And then it doesn't even end with the retailer because you guys are consumer good products companies, it goes all the way to the end user and then what do they do with it afterwards? So that probably gets into, I would imagine like life cycle assessments in some way, like life cycle of a product and what happens. How does that help inform your strategy, life cycle assessments? And how do those fit in truly end-to-end?
0:18:21.9 Ed Huber: Yeah. So two thoughts, one, you brought up a good point, you wanna finish it with the consumer. Ultimately, as a marketer of consumer products, we're trying to serve you, we're trying to make your life better with the products that we give. And you'll hear a lot of terms in the environmental space around circularity. So what circularity means is, you basically can close the loop from the time that you make the product till its end of life, and if you can make it circular so that it doesn't end up having a footprint in the environment. So you'll see things show up like for example, we worked with a company called Loop, so that you basically would have a refillable canister of wipes that never has a need for external packaging, and then there's just a process whereby you just would buy the refill.
0:19:10.5 Ed Huber: So there's lots of activity like that. But where those ideas come from? And this is the second part of your question and you mentioned life cycle analysis, and I've found it fascinating. So what we do is we use an external party so that they can be appropriately critical and they basically track. It's kinda like if you could staple yourself to a trash bag, and you look at the process for the entire life cycle, you find where the greatest impact of your particular product actually live.
0:19:44.8 Ed Huber: I'll use trash bags as an example because I was working on the Glad business at the time, and I think everybody found that the biggest impact of trash bags is these plastic bags in the landfill. And yes, that is part of our life cycle. But actually, on the stuff that you can't recycle today, having a good quality product that once it does go to the landfill, it stays there, there's a benefit. But what we found when we looked at the total life cycle is that almost half of the impact that goes into the making of a trash bag goes on in the conversion of oil into resin, which happens at our suppliers. So we have to reach deeper into our suppliers and say, "Hey, what can you do before we even take possession of the raw material to lower the footprint?"
0:20:39.6 Ed Huber: So it's those kinds of ideas that come from life cycle analysis that as a business owner, I can say, okay, do I have a consumer problem because I'm gonna have to change it dramatically and the consumer's gonna have to get used to it? Do I have a form problem? Is there a way to do that where the form or the product is much easier to use? Or is it a raw material which is like, you know what, I just need to change the chemistry of what I'm doing on the front end. It gives me some guidance as to where I put resources to come up with unique solutions.
0:21:14.3 Cindy Moehring: Oh, yeah. And it really changes the view of life cycle of the product. You may think life cycle is following it all the way through to its very end, but it also is very important as to where you begin, as you just pointed out and going all the way back to thinking about where do the raw materials actually come from and how can you reduce that? Let's talk about the goals and then the question that everybody always comes back to, which is super important is, how do you actually measure it? And how do you make sure that the measurement is accurate and transparent, and reliable so the end consumer and anybody else who wants to know, the business managers who are trying to manage, anybody can really assess, are we hitting the mark? It's fine to do things, but if it's not hitting the mark, then you have to rejigger as we all know.
0:22:03.8 Cindy Moehring: So there are a number of different rating agencies out there now, you've got SASB, the Sustainable Accounting Standards Board; you've got the Task Force for Climate-Related Financial Disclosures, just to name a few. And it's clear that Clorox has been applying many of those standards to be able to report on what the progress is. But what kind of insights have you all gotten on your strategy from applying all of those standards? And how have you, if at all, rejiggered your strategy in light of that?
0:22:41.3 Ed Huber: Yeah, it's interesting, since we rejiggered our strategy. In fact, our sustainability aspirations I think were forever influenced by a lot of this work. And I think a lot of the agencies that you talked about, the word that I think is important, or the words that are important are consistency and transparency.
0:23:03.6 Cindy Moehring: Yeah.
0:23:04.2 Ed Huber: 'Cause everything I think you've heard me say is that it's end to end. We're in a race against time here, so if I just do my part and I clean up my operations, but I don't impact the broader problem, then what good have we done? It's better than doing nothing, don't get me wrong. But I think this foundational element, we actually embedded it into our company purpose. Our company purpose is, we champion people to be well and thrive every single day. And so to do that, for people to thrive, you have to have healthy lives, a clean world, and thriving communities. You cannot do that without an overt focus on these areas. And I think that all the governing bodies, even when I made the comments about climate change, it's good to know what game you're playing.
0:24:02.5 Ed Huber: Business people are motivated by metrics and are motivated by results. So if we baseline our current carbon footprint with a detailed amount of data all the way down to the raw material component, and then you can start tracking it over time, you can show the progress. And lots of companies, Clorox among them, then makes external commitments. That not only holds us accountable to our commitments, which is certainly a part of it, but I think the big part of this, Cindy, that becomes interesting with this kind of energy is it showcases the industry level of collaboration, so that if there is something that one of my competitors in Europe uses, that transparency, I should be able to apply that to my business. Or If I crack the code on something that I've unlocked and I'm the biggest player in most of my categories in the US, I should be able to share that for the greater good. So I think it just creates this transparency that enables collaboration and focus on the goals that matter most.
0:25:10.0 Cindy Moehring: Yeah, yeah, there seemed to be so many different standard measurement bodies out there though, and some of them are consistent in some ways, but different in other ways, and the scales they use to measure are somewhat different. I wonder what your thoughts are on bringing a regulatory body like the SEC for US-based public companies into the picture, whether or not you think that would be helpful or hurtful. What are your thoughts on some type of consistent and transparent standard that all public companies essentially would be held to?
0:25:56.5 Ed Huber: Yeah, I think we'd always be in favor of what I'd refer to as very clear disclosure. Don't leave that up to the individual so that they could be implemented consistently across industries...
0:26:12.6 Cindy Moehring: There you go, right.
0:26:14.4 Ed Huber: Because we're all part of the same solution. And I think that if industry A has a different disclosure guidance than industry B, that's where it gets a little complicated and it gets confusing...
0:26:28.7 Cindy Moehring: It does.
0:26:31.4 Ed Huber: But if we do our jobs right, I would tell you that we... We use the external agencies as a guidance tool, but if we're gonna be leaders, we also have to be pushing the envelope about creative new solutions, regardless of what an external agency would want us to do. Clorox has a founding thing in our values around Do the Right Thing. It's probably why you couldn't find disinfecting wipes, Cindy, during the pandemic, like so many people, because one of our Do the Right Thing principles is that we're gonna prioritize healthcare.
0:27:06.1 Cindy Moehring: But I do think that there are so many different standard setting bodies out there that while they are good guidance tools, sustainability reports have, in many respects, I think sometimes been seen by the investors or the public reading them as sort of marketing tools or it's the corporate affairs angle, but I sense a real shift in that into what you described as, it's part of the purpose of The Clorox Company. It's not just what you do, it's who you are and how you do it. And so bringing some kind of consistency and transparency to the reporting process might be something that's really welcome, I think for everyone to make sure that people can be more sure that they're not reading green washing, to use that term loosely. But that there are actually some teeth behind it in terms of regulatory oversight, so that might bring some needed transparency to it, I would say.
0:28:06.8 Ed Huber: I couldn't agree more.
0:28:08.7 Cindy Moehring: So I have to just ask you, let's just stop, step back. We've been talking about Clorox's role in this whole ESG space, and if you step back and think about it over time, Ed, it really does feel to me like ESG has moved from a sideline topic over here to something that is very front and center, the same way I'd say that we now think about the purpose of a corporation a little differently, it isn't just to serve the shareholders, it's to serve all of the stakeholders, and that to me, fits right in with this idea of ESG being front and center. But I wanna ask you, do you think it is here to stay? Or do you think this is just a moment?
0:28:58.6 Ed Huber: It's absolutely here to stay, and I think the single biggest reason I think you were alluding to it is there is pull from every aspect of business, so there is certainly pull from consumers, and I think particularly younger consumers who care a lot about their impact on society. So you've seen that that demand increase, you brought up investors. So there's things every single day where public companies like Clorox and others, the investment community is demanding transparency and standards to continue to treat you favorably from an investment standpoint. I think from an attraction of talent, from a recruiting and a retention standpoint, I think having a strong set of values is gonna be a beacon to get someone to choose to work for company A versus company B. So the pull, I think is so universal that this is absolutely here to stay.
0:30:02.1 Cindy Moehring: Yeah, do you think there was a particular tipping point? Or do you think this is just sort of we've arrived here on the journey? Does it feel like there was a catalyst moment sort of like your trip when you went and saw all the plastics in the ocean?
0:30:15.6 Ed Huber: Yeah, that was my personal tipping point, but here is what I think is interesting or troubling about the challenge that we have is that unlike so many other things that rally... Like the pandemic as an example, when it comes to climate change and environmental, there's no tipping point. We've seen a very slow, gradual impact, and it didn't happen overnight. And in fact, when I talk to people in the scientific community, they're measuring global warming in the fractions of degrees. But when you do that over time, so it's kinda like... You even saw it a little bit during the pandemic. Things would shift and then go right back to normal. So the challenge I think that we have is that there's not a tipping point. Now I say that while we're taping this, the West is having record heat that they've never seen before. I've got friends in Seattle that have never seen triple digits, and they've had it now for three days straight.
0:31:23.4 Ed Huber: So there's definitely things on the climate side that are capturing people's attention. But the root cause of that was not a single event, it was just a series of activities over many, many, many, many years. I love the point and I'd love to have a good answer for the tipping point, but I think the answer is there's not one, which creates a very unique challenge to make sure that this gets elevated. I'll give you one other anecdote that I thought was fascinating. So the same group on the ocean plastics boat that I went on, they kept track of that, and obviously, we were very aware of trying to lower the amount of plastic that was getting into the environment. Pandemic hits, we all know about the impact that that had on healthcare workers and PPE, and within a matter of months, despite all of the efforts to lower it, there were enough face masks put into the environment after I think it was two or three months that you could cover the entire country of Switzerland...
0:32:35.2 Cindy Moehring: Oh, wow.
0:32:35.5 Ed Huber: With the masks that have been used, discarded and made their way into the environment. So it's a cautionary tale that we have to keep this front and center, which to your first question, that's why I think it's here to stay, 'cause I think now you've got pull from so many different areas that if one area gets deprioritized a bit, the other areas will keep it relevant.
0:33:00.1 Cindy Moehring: Well, Ed, this has been a fabulous conversation and thanks for all the work that you are doing there at Clorox to help in the area of plastics and beyond. And thank you for being a member of the advisory board for the Integrity Leadership Initiative. But I always like to end these podcasts and videos with just a quick question in case someone wants to go deeper. I'd love to know, do you have any good recommendations on books or, I don't know, other podcasts or a documentary perhaps or a short movie? Something that would be helpful to the audience if they wanted to learn a little bit more about this area.
0:33:36.1 Ed Huber: Yeah, there's no shortage of material. I think that one that's easy to remember, there was a Netflix documentary called the Plastic Ocean. I think that was one that kicked off a lot of the awareness and it captured visually for a lot of folks the impact. We all remember the turtle with the plastic straw, and it was amazing how quickly plastic straws got banned in the US.
0:34:00.7 Cindy Moehring: It is, I know.
0:34:01.1 Ed Huber: Right, so if you haven't seen the Plastic Ocean, that's an oldie but a goodie. A group that we've been working with called Futerra, their founder, Solitaire Townsend is her name. She wrote a book called The Happy Hero, and it's a quick read, cheap to download so you can be sensitive to the environment. And what Solly did in that book is it basically used climate change as a... If you think the biggest, baddest, hardest challenge to overcome and can an individual really make a difference? She actually gives you a little guide to like, "Yes, you can." So The Happy Hero, I would encourage that. And for those of you that just want the quick click and read and wanna just go onto YouTube, there is an artist that we used at Clorox, his name's Prince Ea. So if you go onto YouTube and you search Prince Ea, there's a piece he did called Three Seconds, and basically he dimensionalizes the impact that we have had on the environment in such a short amount of time, so it creates a very compelling case for change.
0:35:07.7 Ed Huber: But I think that the thing in all of these is that you have to balance the fact that, wow, this is an urgent situation. But we can undo it, we can turn the tide on climate change. We're gonna have to do things different, we're gonna have to make some different trade-off choices, but it's not like this is completely out of our control. So it's daunting, it's troubling, but do any one of those three, so whether you're Netflix, YouTube, or you just like to read, I think those are a couple of my...
0:35:36.9 Cindy Moehring: Yeah, and that YouTube one, that's awesome. I have to recommend that one as well. It's only three minutes long. We'll drop the link to it in the show notes...
0:35:44.5 Ed Huber: Oh good, good.
0:35:46.4 Cindy Moehring: So everyone can find it and make that easy. But wow, yeah, it's quite compelling. But I do think the challenge, like you just mentioned, is taking this massive issue and personalizing it so that individuals actually do feel like they can do something about it. So The Happy Hero book sounds like that's exactly what she's doing in that book, so that sounds like a great one too. Well, thank you, Ed, this has been fabulous. Thank you so, so much for being a guest today and look forward to seeing you again soon.
0:36:15.9 Ed Huber: And I hope the next time I see you it's on campus and not via Zoom. But thank you so much for the time today, Cindy.
0:36:21.9 Cindy Moehring: I do, too. Thanks, Ed. Bye bye.
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Cindy Moehring is the founder and executive chair of the Business Integrity Leadership Initiative
at the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas. She recently
retired from Walmart after 20 years, where she served as senior vice president, Global
Chief Ethics Officer, and senior vice president, U.S. Chief Ethics and Compliance
Officer.
