Oct. 1, 2024
Navigating Climate Change with Lee Stewart
Join Curveball on this episode of Living the Dream as he delves into the world of sustainability and climate change with seasoned professional, Lee Stewart. With over 20 years of experience, Lee has worked across various countries and industries, bringing a wealth of knowledge to the table. He’s an author, climate change reality mentor, and speaker, trained by Al Gore himself.Lee shares his journey, from working with startups to billion-dollar multinationals, and now running his own consulting business, ESG Strategy. Discover what it means to be a sustainability professional, the diverse skills required, and the impact of sustainability on businesses. Lee also discusses his book, "How to Build Sustainability into Your Business Strategy," offering practical tips and insights for integrating sustainability into business operations.Learn about Lee’s work with major companies like Fujitsu, his role in reducing environmental impacts, and his innovative projects aimed at tackling climate change. He also touches on the importance of mandatory financial-related climate change disclosures and how they benefit investors and businesses alike.Lee’s dedication extends to pro bono work, helping the Kingdom of Tonga develop waste strategies and climate resilience plans. Tune in for an enlightening conversation filled with practical advice and inspiring stories from a true sustainability expert.00:00:00 " Welcome to the Living the Dream podcast with Curveball. Today we're talking about sustainability and climate change
www.leestewart.com.au
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> Curtis Jackson>Welcome, to the Living the Dream podcast with Curveball. if you believe you can achieve chi chi, welcome, to the Living the dream with Curveball podcast, a show where I interview guests that teach, motivate and inspire. Today we're going to be talking about sustainability and we're going to be talking about climate change as I am joined by seasoned sustainability professional Lee Stewart. Lee is also an author and a, climate change reality mentor and speaker who was trained by Al Gore. Lee has over 20 years of experience in the sustainability and he's worked across all kind of countries. So we're going to be talking to him about what a sustainability professional is and about climate change and his book and everything else. So, Lee, thank you so much for joining me today.
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> Lee Stewart>Great. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you.
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> Curtis Jackson>Why don't you start off by telling everybody a little bit about yourself?
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> Lee Stewart>Yeah, sure. Look, name's Lee Stewart.
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> Lee Stewart>I am now living in Sydney, Australia and I've, just spent probably over 23 years working in sustainability, everything from startups to billion dollar multinationals, to consulting. And now just recently setting up my own consulting business, ESG strategy. And as you just mentioned, I've just published my first book, which is called how to build sustainability into your business strategy.
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> Lee Stewart>So just launched that, just over a month ago and, enjoying finishing, that book and actually getting it out to the world. It feels very good.
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> Curtis Jackson>Well, start off by explaining to the listeners what a sustainability professional is and what you do.
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> Lee Stewart>Yeah, so, sustainability professionals have a very diverse range of skills and they can be pulled into any different direction depending on the organisation you work with. For me, over the 20 years, I found myself learning a lot around energy efficiency, the basics of climate change, waste, social, aspects such as even health and safety in organisations through to diversity, indigenous rights, as well come into play there. But also I've worked a lot on the sales and innovation side of things with companies as they look to develop and craft new products, new ideas, new concepts, new ways of doing business that have a positive impact on society and environment. So sustainability professional itself, is a growing field, but it cuts across all parts of businesses. That's what I really like. So in my roles, I'll be able to pick up the phone to the head of finance, head of marketing, head of sales, operations, manufacturing, and go from everywhere from the factory floor right up to the boardroom in between, and across supply chains around the world. So it's a fascinating role, that opens your mind up to a lot of different things. You see, you get to see the best and worst of humanity, almost in this one day at times, but it's exciting and it's a growing feel.
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> Curtis Jackson>Well, you've also worked for a global it company, as head of sustainability. So tell us about some of the companies that you've had the privilege to work with as much as you can and tell us about that global it company.
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> Lee Stewart>Yeah, so I was the regional head of sustainability for Fujitsu, which is a japanese company, been going for over 100 years.
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> Lee Stewart>had really good japanese values of long term thinking. So they had biodiversity targets that would last 100 years to the end of the century. When they built their first factory, they replanted a parkland the same size of the factory next door. So they had that early concept of sort of the biodiversity, banking so to speak, around that, my role at that organisation was really helping it have a less environmental impact to start with. So data centres were huge and still continue to be growing massively. So it was making sure that data centres themselves were first as energy efficient as possible, but also transitioning to renewable sources of energy. So traditionally in Australia, coal fired power is still predominant. So moving that to renewable energy sources was a key environmental, win, but also things around e waste and making of laptops and end of life, learning about life cycles of that through to working with our key customers and helping them reduce their emissions by innovative use of technology, artificial intelligence, energy, management solutions. So it was quite fascinating working with airlines such as Qantas, trying to help them reduce weight on the plane to save on aviation fuel, through to working with saving our species in New South Wales, here in Australia, using a commercial drone instead of a helicopter, saving a lot of jet fuel there, to help find endangered species in the outback, using AI and so forth. So helping environmental protection lifted up a lot of the level with technology.
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> Lee Stewart>So very exciting times. Working for an innovation company, that had a long term focus. So that was a really good period of my career. I really look back on that fondly.
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> Curtis Jackson>So tell us about how sustainability affects business.
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> Lee Stewart>Yeah, it affects businesses in multiple facets.
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> Lee Stewart>So initially there's a lot of regulation coming into play. So some companies around the world may be ah, mandated to report on their emissions.
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> Lee Stewart>So what they, whether that, you know, whether they use it. Scope one is what they use, say fuels and diesel, coal, gas, the energy they use through to scope three, which might be in their supply chain. So the emissions throughout their supply chain. So companies now have to start a report on that. jurisdictions here, Australia, New Zealand, UK and EU and parts of, I believe California is coming online where they have to, large companies have to disclose their climate risks and opportunities. if you want to access capital, there might be cheaper financing if you have a sustainable targets and goals, you might open up to more capital, access to that if you need to get funding in the future, but also if you need to, work with clients. And you might even be a smaller medium enterprise, but you might supply a big customer. So for instance, one client I'm working with supplies McDonald's and there are small provider, but McDonald's has asked their supply chain, what are you doing around climate change and sustainability?
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> Lee Stewart>So it's forcing that sort of down just downstream to the smaller providers are now needing to actually have a sustainability strategy and plan if they want to keep doing business with larger companies.
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> Lee Stewart>So it does impact it in many ways.
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> Lee Stewart>the other area too, which is a growing, issue, is attracting new talent. So a lot of younger people coming into organisations, it's almost the first or second question they ask in the recruiting process is what's your company purpose, what are you doing around sustainability and so forth? So the ability to actually attract new talent is becoming key as well.
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> Curtis Jackson>So speaking of climate change, you kind of touched on it.
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> Curtis Jackson>You are also a climate reality speaker and mentorous and you were trained by Al Gore. So tell us what that is and how did you come about to be trained by Al Gore and what you do?
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> Lee Stewart>Yeah, fascinating opportunity I got given in 2011. I was, selected to spend four days with Al Gore to become what's known as a climate reality speaker.
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> Lee Stewart>So on the back of, Al Gore's inconvenient truth video, and very successful documentary, he set up a grassroots foundation called Climate Reality, and was around training leaders all around the world to be able to deliver those types of presentations face to face to audiences. Very, successful. tens of thousands of people around the world have been trained and every day around the world there's some presentation on climate change facts and opportunities happening across the world.
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> Lee Stewart>Been able to be trained in 2011 and then later on in 2019 to actually be a mentor to other trainees in Brisbane was a hugely rewarding experience. And I've now mentored over 100 other climate reality leaders, supporting them m on how to deliver climate change facts and truth to larger populations and so forth, and helped me add another dimension to my career, really. delivered over 100 of these sort of presentations, all from schools, universities, businesses, boardrooms, community, groups and so forth. It's been hugely rewarding and helped me develop my presentation skills, of course, and being able to disseminate, the science of climate change into easily digestible bits, of information for the mass populations as a real skill that's taught. And it's been very rewarding and helped me open up new doors and meet a lot of great friends along the way as well.
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> Curtis Jackson>Well, you also talk about mandatory financial related climate change disclosures, so explain what that is and why that's important and the point of it.
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> Lee Stewart>Yeah, so the key point of this is so that the investor community is wanting to invest long term and they want to make sure that the businesses they invest in, how are they going to be impacted by climate change themselves?
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> Lee Stewart>And what are these companies if they are impacted, have they identified these impacts and have they looked at the mitigation of those impacts or there might be other opportunities as well. So what the climate related disclosures do is create the framework of how companies need to first go and identify their climate change impacts and also list their opportunities and weaknesses and so forth, but also over time look at how they're managing those. So it creates a kind of a level playing field for an investor to know, okay, this company x is going to probably perform longer term than this other company because they have more resilient plans. They've thought about it more, they're investing in these sort of areas, maybe like getting out of coal or reducing their emissions, looking at new innovative ways to actually develop new products in the market. So it's giving the investor community a clearer lens about the future viability of businesses as well.
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> Lee Stewart>So what you've seen that now is it's landing with the financial team. So finance is now getting a hold of this and it's starting to report on non financial areas such as climate change risks and mitigations. And different countries are putting their own sort of frameworks around it.
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> Lee Stewart>And regulatory, now surround it so that certain companies, a certain size need to report this year. But it might flow down as in Australia, you've got large companies reporting next financial year. It drops down to, in four years, down to anyone with say a 50 mil turnover. So that should flow right down through the business chain.
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> Curtis Jackson>So let's say I have a business and I'm looking for a sustainability consultant.
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> Curtis Jackson>Gifts, and best practise tips for businesses to be able to choose the best sustainability consultant.
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> Lee Stewart>Yeah. So really you want to understand what has that consultant done in the past? The normal things like have you worked in this industry or if you're industry specific, what experience does that person have? Have they actually been a sustainability manager, themselves inside an organisation and so forth?
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> Lee Stewart>you also want to ask them what other projects have they done? do they have any certifications and so forth. but also you want to hire the right person for the right role that you need to do. So, before you even go out to get a consultant, you want to actually do your homework first and define the scope of what you need. Ideally. So you might want to just identify, okay, we don't know our carbon emissions, for instance. Okay, so you might want to just hire a specific carbon consultant to actually do your first emission boundaries. But at the same time use that consultant to train your own people up internally.
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> Lee Stewart>So every year you don't have to hire that person again. You've built capability, you have the tools to maybe do 50% of it next year, 80% the year after. And by year three maybe you could do it all yourself in house.
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> Lee Stewart>so use the sustainability consultant to optimise your own engagement, internal capability, build as well.
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> Curtis Jackson>Well, talk about some of the challenges that businesses face in achieving sustainability.
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> Lee Stewart>Yeah, some of the challenges. the key challenges I'm seeing is lack of trained people. there's suddenly a very shift in a lot of organisations needed to do this and there's a lot of people out there that don't have the experience and qualifications to actually do the job. So hence why you m might need to look at a consultant do that. Some of the other key challenges is aligning your sustainably strategy to your business revenue and making it part of your business strategy as a bolt on. It's better if it becomes part of your strategy. So where you might want to say look at a supplier, you might understand your suppliers sustainability goals and how you can help them hit their goals.
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> Lee Stewart>That's how I really see the best sustainability strategies work, long term because it's aligned to the revenue of your business. and generally there's more opportunities there on that side.
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> Curtis Jackson>Well tell us about your book. Tell us where we can get it and what listeners can expect when they read it.
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> Lee Stewart>Yeah, sure. So books titled how to build sustainability into business strategy. It's on Amazon.
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> Lee Stewart>what you get out of this book is it's a how to manual.
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> Lee Stewart>It is exactly what it says. So I distilled 20 years of knowledge and information into what is a, you know, roughly a three hour read. throughout the stages, if you follow this with a little notepad, I'm very confident you'll have a good foundation for your own sustainability strategy. There are worksheets in here, there are how to tips, a lot of war stories about how not to do things as I've done in the past. And hopefully you have a smoother chance of getting through towards your strategy at the end. towards the end of the book theres a really cool one page table how to get your strategy on a page which looks at all the areas of the governance and targets and other things you need to consider.
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> Curtis Jackson>Tell us about any current or upcoming projects that you and your company are working on that people need to be aware of.
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> Lee Stewart>Yeah sure. Im doing a lot of work pro bono for the kingdom of Tonga. Theyre a small Pacific island, that is really struggling with the impacts of climate change, mainly sea level rise. A lot of cyclones are wiping out infrastructure and so forth.
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> Lee Stewart>I'm helping them work on a waste strategy to get rid of ocean plastic, but also a climate resilience plan so that if these cyclones and so forth happen, they've got a better chance of managing those really situations through more efficient water and resources and so forth. I'm helping them attract global funding to make their country more resilient and so forth. So that's a really exciting project where I feel that my experience is actually doing some real tangible good in the communities that need it the most.
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> Curtis Jackson>Okay. Throw out your contact information so people can keep up with everything that you're up to.
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> Lee Stewart>Yeah, sure. you can find me on LinkedIn and also my author website is Lee Stewart. It's leestewart.com dot au. people can actually subscribe and you can get regular newsletters and tips of how to do your own sustainability strategy. And you can get in touch with me from that website.
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> Curtis Jackson>Close us out with some final thoughts. Maybe if that was something I forgot to talk about that you would like to touch on or any final thoughts you have for the listeners.
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> Lee Stewart>Yeah, sure.
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> Lee Stewart>One key question I do ask, and it's in the book, is when you think about your business, ask yourself this question. If your business did not exist today, would the environment, the planet or society be better or worse off? And that involves a lot of inwardly thinking. But the answers to that question are probably both your opportunity and your weakness. When you look at sustainability and you try to think wider, so what is your impact going to be on the local communities? If you didn't exist, would it be better or worse off? These thinking about things of how many people you employ, the, charities you support, and things like that. on the environment side, are you a large polluter and another person come in and will pollute less, or is it the other way around? So these are sort of asking that key question actually helps formulate the structure of your sustainability strategy and purpose in general. It's really worth spending a few minutes just to ask yourself that question.
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> Curtis Jackson>All right. Ladies and gentlemen, Lee Stewart. There you have it. Go cheque out his book. Visit the website. Keep up with everything that he's up to. Please follow rate review share this episode to as many people as possible. Drop on your favourite podcast app. Leave us a review, follow us cheque out the show, share it to as many people as possible. If you have any guests or suggestion topics, Curtis Jackson, 1978 atT.net is the place to send them. Thank you for listening.
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> Curtis Jackson>And Lee, thank you for all that you do and thank you for joining us.
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> Lee Stewart>It's a pleasure. Thank you Kudis for more information on.
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> Curtis Jackson>The living the Dream podcast, visit www.djcurvefball.com.
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> Curtis Jackson>until next time, stay focused on living the dream.
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