Sustainability pioneer Gil Friend joins the Plutopia podcast this time. He has been called one of the 10 most influential sustainability voices in America.
Gil is the founder, chair, and CEO of Natural Logic Inc. and Critical Path Capital. He advises leading companies, communities, and investors on value-driving sustainability strategies. He has been a noted sustainability pioneer for more than 50 years and is widely considered one of the founders of the sustainable business movement.
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We currently mostly have a system where if I make something and sell it to you, I’m done. It’s out of my hands, it’s in your hands. There’s a system called Extended Producer Responsibility that’s in place in a number of places around the world that says the producer is responsible for the safe, disposal of the stuff they make at the end of its life. So as a producer, I have responsibility throughout the value chain, so therefore I need to think about the implications and the costs of recovery at the end of life and I start to design things differently. We saw an early version of that in the United States with bottle pills, with deposits on soda bottles. It’s much more sophisticated in other countries. So that notion of responsibility, connecting actions and consequences, reducing and eliminating the subsidies, both the actual payments to companies, but also the pervasive subsidy of giving folks a free ride for their bad effects.
Gil discusses the importance of extended producer responsibility, a system in which producers are accountable for the safe disposal of their products at the end of their life cycle. He explains how this principle encourages companies to design more sustainable products, drawing on historical examples like bottle bills in the U.S. and more advanced systems in other countries. He discusses his background in systems ecology, highlighting the need to consider complex, interrelated factors in sustainability efforts. The conversation touches on challenges in addressing climate change, the evolving nature of renewable energy, and how businesses, governments, and individuals can collaborate to create a more sustainable future. Gil also explores the benefits of employee ownership, alternative business models, and ways to shift cultural norms toward more environmentally responsible practices.