 stream going right now and I'll drop the link in the chat just so we have it as a note there's also a chat on the YouTube live stream so I'll keep an eye on there to see if there's any questions there excellent yeah so we're live so feel free to go ahead if you want to kick it off Robin and she would okay hello everybody this is the hyperlature climate action accountings a general meeting I'm happy to welcome all of you today we have Kerry George as a guest she's the vice president head of sustainability and impact from Everledger and she will give us she will report about and greenhouse gas reporting across supply chains and moving cloud energy used to renewable resources and yeah Kerry I'm happy to welcome you and feel free to start and looking forward to your presentation absolutely thank you so much for your time everyone I'm really excited to meet this group I didn't know about you but now I hope to be more and more engaged I'll give a little profess that I am not a technologist my expertise is in supply chains and then sourcing of materials so you'll see that I have a heavy emphasis there but I'm happy to bring in one of our technologists if you want to really get into the details of sort of how we're looking at this but what my other area that I'm known for particularly when I was at apple brilliant earth and then the US State Department is influencing supply chains or practices in different types of sustainability issues so I'm going to talk about some of the strategies I'd love to work with this group on particularly as it relates to cloud energy and then some of the interoperability goals that I would have for a GHG product so starting off I'm just going to go through just some recent legislation and some activities that show that there's clear demand for reporting of GHG we all know that but there it might be helpful just to break it down into what is being asked for and why then looking at some of the ever ledger just general sustainability and more on the environmental side if you're interested I'm more than happy to get you some more are more social and labor and workforce practices the third point will just be some of the work that I've been doing with the cloud energy providers and so not the energy providers themselves the service cloud service providers and some of the bumps and and challenges that I'm still facing and I think some of the technologies opportunities both in developing products but then also what our core responsibility is is and that would be with our cloud providers and their energy sources so just talking at a high level and this is a really ugly chart but it's just to break down what regulations across the world are really asking for and again we can mince you know the details and and fine points but at a high level we're looking at regulations that are asking for annual reporting on GHG and different types of climate related metrics then verification and certification and or certification regarding those measurements in that reporting using specific technical technical methods of precalculation and or emissions factors that are preferred then thresholds or targets are sometimes established and then you start getting into issues such as sorry I'm just gonna close this and the offset guidelines and so if there are targets then are there also offset guidelines the house and the who's are responsible and what would be considered acceptable I'm mostly interested in these last two points is where we're looking at real targets and then taking action the mitigation and the adaptation is really critical and especially a lot of the work that Everledger's doing is in mineral markets or mineral related goods so you're looking at luxury brands with precious metals diamonds and gemstones looking at the battery market and so you're looking at critical minerals like cobalt lithium nickel etc and so the climate change reporting to me is only as interesting as you're actually taking action and mitigating those issues that are identified and the eutaxonomy really drills this home and their their goals we're looking especially at scope three this is nothing new for all of you so I'm not going to belabor this point but we know that when you're looking upstream and emissions go well beyond the scope one and scope two into you know 5.5 times higher and really getting that information is the more problematic issue and if any of you have ever talked to me you've probably heard some of my my horror stories or my glory days talking about you know going to you know hundreds of sites and oftentimes signing individual NDAs myself so I'm going to let's say 10 20 30 minds in a year at one point and then in that signing NDAs as myself not even as my employer because of the sensitivity of sharing certain data that's necessary for reporting of critical minerals and source and origin but isn't not the entire document or in the entire disclosure is necessary for something as simple as as origin or related to scope three reporting I think what may not always be appreciated when we talk about these offerings is just the cost one of the reasons that I came from apple to a brilliant earth the joy coming and then brilliant earth to ever ledger was explicitly to test out technologies that maybe in a big company that would be a you know too much to try to do across a huge supply chain but in smaller companies and more niche activities and with startup you know pilots you could really test this out and what's not appreciated is the motivation for that was not just a cool tech but because of how much time and cost it took just to do this reporting let alone actually get to the impact so that these are numbers that ever ledger tested just with hiring a researcher to say from scratch go look up gg reporting on a few mines just a few refiners a few manufacturers and in the battery market and this could end up being a total of you know 40 hours plus $6,000 or more of reports that are privately held that you can't get certain information in the public realm and there's you know no direct data feeds then for these primary data sources and it's that's really just not a very scalable thing which is one of the many reasons that we're not seeing this scale as quickly and a lot of the issues around sustainability not take shape there are plenty of companies and plenty of actors within those companies that push back on sustainability and maybe have nefarious or less you know I would say altruistic goals in terms of sustainability but a lot of times it comes down to the money and the resources to just even get the data needed to take action so getting that faster and more efficiently is really a critical activity and when we did this this was just for one material set this wasn't even across all the materials necessary to take that to take into account for battery tracking let alone across the different types of data and this is one area and I'll summarize at the very end just saying that one of the many goals that I would have would also be how we're reporting data so that we can come into alignment and I know and some of the work you guys are doing on GHG product of sort by blockchain that you have some of this work but one thing that I didn't see but maybe I missed is how are we differentiating between data and I say this a lot and a lot of practitioners would really praise this it's a little bit more sensitive when you start talking to you know the auditing community but from a practitioner's point of view we always have to work with different types of robustness of data you never have perfect data and so when we're talking about mind level data a lot of big mining companies will have pretty robust data sets when you get into for example the refining particularly when this happens in different parts of the world such as China or India or you know different areas in Indonesia etc maybe that data is not readily available or it's not they're pretty audited or they're using a different type of data modeling and so on this is just one example of how do we then say give a level of robustness of the data so it's not that we don't use the data if it is available but we communicate apples and oranges in terms of quality availability third-party verification etc this is really critical so we don't get stuck on perfect and can still act on good or good enough and this is an area that I'd love to really dig into with this group in that regard and this is just an example just a visual that I use with our clients to say you you're going to have lots of different sets of data your supply chain actors are going to have lots of different sets of data and we can mix and match all those as long as we're clear on what is apples and what are oranges and then utilize that going forward and in the model of you know most of this legislation as well as particularly OECD you and guiding principles the idea is to show continuous improvement and that's both on how you're reporting the quality of the data but then also showing continuous improvement on your actions according to that data and so I would really love to have further conversations about how to enable that further but you know in a simple simple simple figment here just to show you you know a clean version of what that could look like across one battery across one supply chain with one source and then you know obviously reporting annually and different forms for clients this is just going further into you know an example of how you could display that you know you could be displaying it just a very literal you know this is exactly where this source of data could come from it could include the source of like the actual company and and or the emission factor used for that calculation which in some cases as I noted in the legislation certain emissions factors are preferred for certain reporting entities but then you know this is another area that I'm particularly passionate about and I'll give you a little anecdotal story you know when I was working with you know Apple and Brilliant Earth and you know even the apparel sector a lot of the challenges are more than just one company can solve or take on and that's for a number of reasons one that company could change sourcing at any time you don't want actions on the ground to be dependent on one downstream company you know they can change their fashion their season their type their technology and so on and so and any action on the ground should not be dependent on one actor but it could be dependent on or reliant on many groups of actors that are dependent on that material source and so one thing that I think would be is very critical is that we enable technology and environments that allow many actors in a supply chain and a material stream to be contributing easily and effectively to the mitigations that have to happen on the ground this I'm showing for offsets and offsets maybe renewable energy credit purchasing but also how do we tie it into then the reporting out of GHG for a product and vice versa so simple kind of idea here but I I know that you know with a quick glance at some of the things you're working on some of the hyperledger community I think we could do a lot more to create this interoperability to create open source code for certain actors and be able to utilize our networks just much more effectively for these end goals so quickly just talking about whatever ledger does corporation and what our goals are we split up sustainability and impact across our products some of which I just talked to people which I won't go through today but happy to talk about later and then plan it and I'm just going to give you some high-level examples of some of the work we're doing you know if we're looking at our responsible travel and work you know we've been you know doing some of the obvious things that you can do but we continue to do more and this was pre-covid that we'll start picking this up you know as we get back into a world with COVID but understanding how to operate in that world more effectively we've been doing a lot with you know offsetting directly with our flight purchases and looking at how we can enable fewer flights you know proper offsetting as well as just community impact you know when we look at things like our purchasing practices we do have sustainable purchasing goals and focus on different values of those corporations the product life cycle etc one example is just here I was just excited to talk about our business cards and you know I use very few business cards especially these days but you know now trying just do more digital engagement overall but our business cards were made from you know offcuts from t-shirts and ensuring that we're using waste streams and then also enabling that they are recyclable then other things just looking at green office measures and this is something we did even during the pandemic early times you know and fortunately our Australia offices are relatively open for everyone else just talking about energy efficiencies and remote travel remote work in addition to reducing community travel costs and other things and enabling that but let's get into our cloud energy goals and this is a little bit wordy please forgive me but we can go into some of the details one of the things we're looking at is how do we favor blockchain services that source and buy and or buy 100% renewable energy you know and so I'll show you a few examples from public information from Google but there's other examples out there but right now you know Google's the only one that has that 100% either buy or direct source renewable energy so the other thing that we're linking at is for non blockchain services you know how do we favor service providers that also do the same you know in terms of either buying renewable energy credits and or sourcing renewable energy the other thing that we are looking at but doing now is how do we speak to our service providers about the need to transition our services or ask them to pay for offsets you know in the cloud energy world or the cloud storage world and and cloud providers we see a lot of credits being given you know so you get a cheaper you know data load on this or that service but we're not seeing those being put to offsets and we're curious as to why and we've been having conversations about measurement and I'll talk a little bit about that for two years now and you know only recently we're seeing some action by certain cloud providers to take action so that they could report but it's still really clumsy and it's still the the targets are so well beyond well behind a lot of the leaders in this field so we really need to see that improved and then you know for our 2025 goals we want to be 100% renewable for all of our cloud uses and providers and that can still include renewable energy credits but we are wanting to see that investment and change and that's also where we want to influence our cloud providers to get really more renewable sources and key regions and for us because we are founder and many of our team are based in Australia and New Zealand it's really critical that we see improvements there and I'll show you some differentiation between Australia and other countries in a moment that these are some of our now projects and goals but we are also looking at the future and that's really where we need to be engaging more with the hyperledger community on how we really make some of these improvements you know we know GHG targets are being established across tech and particularly recently you're seeing a lot more influence especially as with the BlackRock announcement and other legislation and regulations being pushed I think one of the things is you're seeing you know and have seen you know organizations like Google taking a real aggressive approach to this and even announcing carbon-free energy by 2030 and if you get a chance you know check out their website and some of the work they're doing on how they're defining carbon-free for energy efficiency and other measures and it's it's really impressive and I'm really excited to you know continue to push their goals and also push others to you know further that sort of leadership this is just you know a breakdown of how they're talking about it and you know looking at carbon-free electricity and then ultimately moving towards you know moving the you know carbon-based electricity away from it and this is where you can see some key differences where they're buying a lot of renewable energy credits you really neutralize this so you still see in Taiwan, Singapore, Sydney and some other regions being still heavily carbon-based and they are you know doing those renewable energy credits to counter that but then you also see you know fully carbon-free energy here and these are the things that we should be paying attention to as a community how like how and why we ask for certain goals and really unite on these fronts this is where we have the power and you know as working for the other companies we were able to really change the sourcing of many material streams and material markets and we as a community definitely can do so as well. If we're looking at the cloud energy goals as well you can see you know Oracle having 100% renewable use at 94 data centers across 10 countries really a lot of them we can see more and more of that coming to fruition and that we're looking at you know this it's keywords of certified as renewable in 2018 and that they have 62% and how do we continue to grow those targets. So some of the things that we've seen that we believe in terms of just even being able to measure and to show the difference between many companies is that how do we report on this and we're getting our investors as well as clients asking well how do I know that my carbon impacts aren't affected by your work and on blockchain and not to belabor that and I I don't have any issues with any blockchain provider whether you're running proof of stake or proof of work you know sometimes we have to get into the fine-tune points with our clients on that but I would prefer us as a community regardless of how we're using energy and of our services to really focus in on overall making sure that our sources get as clean as possible. So right now what we do is we can report by our you know dollar spend by type of entering sorry cloud provider service the service provider and then the region and the region is really critical because as I noted with that image from Google there's different sources and so for a lot of companies they're not actually or at least several companies are not buying the renewable energy credits to completely neutralize their their energy sources and instead are sharing excuse me I'm not sharing but their energy sources that are still having heavy carbon-based energy but without buying the renewable energy credits to counter that. In the next phase what we would like to see is that they're really able to report our service providers are able to report report by total energy used per client and that we would actually enable that and that later we would love to be able to see real energy you know uses you know data loads instances types of blockchains running and other services you know so that we can really start getting into the fine-tuned points and also look at our own cloud computing practices and energy efficiencies. I've tried to read several reports on academic reports on it and where I think we're still in the very immature phase but I think a lot of you here can you know provide a lot of insight on that and this is when we can start really looking at our overall platform and architecture and then tying that together. So if I look at you know for example this is where I think about this is the energy source and this is just from the World Bank table a couple years ago but you know when you look at a comparison of Australia versus United Kingdom and United States the percentage of coal is pretty pretty significantly different and so it's not just non-renewable it's coal based entirely and how do we start moving you know key regions towards renewable energy and renewable energy practices as soon as possible. You know and so this is just an idea you know taking out the kind of information specific and just making a little bit simpler on the top we could be requesting as a group types of reporting practices consistent with our reporting needs and then also how we actually operate and this is something that I think the hyper allergic community could definitely enable. So just the opportunities to summarize I'll you know point you know in terms of like a GHG product you know I think as a team here and community we could really talk about data taxonomy different types of key areas that we would want open source code on whether that be for integrations as I mentioned the differentiation of data sources I think would be really critical and then you know different types of alignment on what could be offset purchasing practices and plugins for that type enablement. On the cloud energy side again data taxonomy for reporting but also common time timelines and targets for service providers there's you know a number of targets and unless you read into the details you don't you may not realize how different they really are and how far behind some of the service providers really are in their responsibilities as well. Clear reporting across different offerings and services and so that's where we can differentiate between our own our own responsibility and how we're using that cloud energy and and then joint goals on you know problematic regions and energy sources and I gave you that example of Australia, Singapore, Taiwan being heavily carbon-based that we can be doing a lot more in other regions as well across the world. So I'd love to you know continue the conversation and we'll just pause there and and get some feedback and hopefully open for a pretty good dialogue. Thanks Gary for the first part of the presentation. Is there anyone the group who has a question? I can start. Gary I'm curious when you're working with different manufacturers you kind of alluded to the the challenge of getting them to to provide data. What are you know what are some of the key incentives that you think are going to be needed to really kind of open that that up? Like what what needs to happen for that to really become a reality? Well and this is a few areas that we could be working a lot closer together because this and I joke but the technology space sometimes and again I haven't worked in this this area but there often is a goal to be one one ring to rule them all you know it's like the Instagram of everything the this of everything the reality is that never happens there there's very few things in the supply chain space that it's one group that actually does everything you don't see that in audits you don't see in certifications you don't see in reporting mechanisms etc and so what I would say is that we should be any of actors that are working on this type of work should be working together to create the one template or one reporting taxonomy that they would use because that's one of the biggest issues is that your clients my clients they don't even know necessarily how to get the data or report it well so if we're teaching them a uniform that we say we are all using hyper ledger dot dot dot and that's really critical and I can tell you this and this is a long-winded answer but we did not make progress when I was at Apple until we got three of the key audit companies not audit companies but auditing standard bodies to agree that they would become mutually recognizable right and so then once we did that then we could ask everyone for one two or three pick your door go through it we don't care and then as competitors so Apple Intel HP we would all go to our favorite companies you know this is my baby don't touch him this is my baby don't touch him but we were asking for the same things so even if they were sourcing from an Apple and their buyers were Apple and Intel but maybe Apple had bigger buying share so they wanted to listen to Apple but they really had to do enough to also accommodate everyone else we were asking for the same things so I say that because we don't have that consistency in upstream GHG reporting and so one of their big points is they're like I don't want to fill this out 12 times how do I know that this will count for everyone else and so we can do a lot to enable that the second thing is part of what the reason I'm interested in blockchain is some of the other things that they don't want to share I would sign an NBA and that man and my old CEO used to tease me he's like oh you're going to go out and have some more tea with them I'm like yes I am actually because that's the only way I can get them to like give me this data and so there was so much trust building but that's where blockchain should be the enabler like that should be the enabler there's I spent seven years of my life literally on a plane like there's no reason that that is sustainable like reasonable or something so we need to get more consistency of how their data is actually going to be used how it can be protected because as much as we think blockchains understood no one really understands it practically and so when I talk to companies I'm sitting there now telling them and these are companies that I worked with them they shared stuff with me they'll say wait so if I give you a utility bill they're not going to see the utility bill how do I know they're not going to see it like and I literally will just circle what they're like no we're only taking this these three things I need this state I need this but I need you to put it here and then I'll do this and this is what it looks like we need 40 tutorials on that and we all need to be in agreement so no one of our community accidentally screwed up because that's the that's the other thing is they don't trust the technology well enough to know that oh it's not just Kerry George because I know I'm known you for 10 years you know we've had meals you know my family it's you and all your people are consistently implementing this strategy in this way so how I did it was literally meals tea all that now I have a reputation with a lot of these actors so they're more likely to engage with me but I still don't have the reputation of my community and the topics we're talking about them for fully onboarding and mass so we can do a lot with this community to really start communicating that to bring together you know our own you know basic understanding of this is how we do this this is how we report this is you know consistent privacy measures on that and particularly for things like ghc I mean that should be a no-brainer like we're all in this together this only helps everyone if we do it right yep thank you hopefully I didn't scare you on off and my answers will be can I ask a question please yeah hi it's like can I ask a question can I answer the one that's in the chat just there are questions in the chat are you going to write your answers oh for me I can Elizabeth you can just place your question that you posted to the chat if you want to okay how about I start at the top here um feel free to ask your questions okay how do you certify Qantas paid as your recovery improvement who is certified forced to achieve on fertile land which contains this like oh this is a really specific one um we can go through Qantas United and everything um I am for what we have purchased I did not verify also so I'm reporting exactly what they've reported but that is something that we can go through each one of those but several of the carriers have different offset partners um but I'd be happy to go through and see if there are third party verified offset partners um you know but most of which we do the we do land planting trees but we don't call it certification or offset we do it just because we want to do it for communities in which we're engaging with and plantaries um if it's a certified offset partner the double counting has to be part of it so that's part of certified offsets is that it can only be done once so um I I assume you know that so there might be a nuance you're looking for Elizabeth um but yeah I'm talking staying you would be able to actually tag that tree GPS tag it and okay that's our tree and look how big it is you can tell from the Google Earth picture how big it is that it contains a certain amount of carbon and so your customer who said I paid for that tree can see that tree and they know where it is and they know nobody else is using right now the person who planted it has a zero carbon footprint and isn't isn't using you know huge amounts of gas to get the tree there I mean and those are all amazing applications I mean I I don't know if you've worked with any of the the third party offset providers um then their certification is really drawn out it's really manual it's really like 1972 I really respect what they're doing because it's it had to be done we needed someone to do it because otherwise there was double counting everywhere I would love for you know if that's a service you're wanting to provide that you partner with them so that they can do it five times as far and five times as efficiently and grow the offering set as well because part of the reason the offsets right now are so clumsy we buy stuff in North America and the easy places to offset because they're cheaper to offset as opposed to the places we're destroying like you know the amazon rainforest central africa you know indonesian forests you know these are the areas that we actually need to make sure are being offset mangroves in certain regions um and so what you're saying if we can actually enable that faster more effectively more consistently and in the regions that are getting destroyed so we're offsetting the real things that we destroyed that would be amazing but yeah I mean you're exactly right um I could if helpful I I don't know if you work with any of those but I have you know my list of my like top 10 that I've bought over the years through my you know corporate kind of social responsibility and activities as well as personally um but it would be really cool to continue that because I think they find you or us a threat but really we should be complimentary um there's there's less um I tell auditors this all the time I'm like I'm actually going to make your job easier better faster and more like prolific if I do like you should be auditing my thing to find the anomalies instead of doing a crappy one day audit that you might find two things and then get yelled at so um there's there's a lot of opportunities I think between what you're saying thank you yeah no it's great and feel free you I think you'll have my email after this we can chat about that um see uh okay could you explain how the auditors in this case with apple worked um I don't remember I so if you're talking about yeah what you were saying about the apple yeah different auditor groups to work could you explain that a little bit more so um and this is on any topic topic du jour and supply chain management so you know I'm I'm just a kind of a you know not like a real techie data person not data analytics person I'm a researcher so I just look and figure out anomalies and supply chains areas where there could be positive impact etc so it could be force labor child labor conflict zones you know environmental issues that sort of thing what the auditors did and I don't let me see if I can just pull up something just to it's a little bit easier to show visual um but what we did with the auditors is um we there's all these audits that already exist you you don't need to find new audits right there's so many that are out there um but what we did with um these actors is we look at um what they're covering and did it meet the topic of the day so did it cover child labor if that's what we're needing to do did it cover force labor does it cover let's say a certain water energy issue and then we utilize those um and so what what happened in the case that I mentioned is that these mineral actors so let me show just a couple of things here um and I'm just gonna share my screen so um like a miner here could be feeding multiple actors so they were being asked to go through many types of audits right um or could have been a refiner and similarly you know sprawled out into a web and they were being asked to do many types of audits and so what I did when I was at apple is instead of saying hey you have to go through my favorite audit my preferred audit I said I'll accept any of these audits because when I go through it I found that they're relatively similar and so here's an example this is um I think it's this apple's 2018 but in their recent report they have they're 2020 and so these are the standards in audits and then how they align across different issuaries now this is just a simplified version of what's in the public realm but what we're showing here is that there could be a number of you know you know alignment areas and what this did was actually press these actors to become more consistent and make sure they covered the topics that were important um so hopefully that helps just a little bit of context but again happy to go through in more detail with you does that does that make sense thank you yes thank you okay um what groups do you think are doing the best jobs to allow audits works to work together instead of data and process governance standards I don't know Tom I need to know tell me tell me who to work with um I like I sat on and this is no offense to these groups but you know responsible business alliance blockchain group um the west blockchain group we see these blockchain group etc I don't see it driving towards mutual goals for the governance of standards and so I become a little bit less interested when it just starts getting a little wonky and more talking head ish um I I check out because I'm I'm not a technologist for technology sake and I don't and there's no offense meant for anyone who just loves it it's just not my baby I don't I don't get up in the morning and think about tech I think about you know the people I've met in Congo and how to enable them to have less air pollution and you know people drowning in mud and Indonesia and so this is I I'm totally trying to utilize it for very specific impacts um but yeah I don't know and and that's where I got kind of excited our our marketing person said would you speak at this event I was like oh my gosh they look action-oriented and techie I'd love to talk to him like how do I get involved why didn't I know about this before so yeah Tom I I don't know I I think there's a lot you know a potential but I'm still kind of a novice even though I've been around for two years and I'm still learning about these communities in this realm. Kind of where I am on this is and if you had said hey here's the categorical answer I would have been super surprised it's always good to get perspective right on it and I mean I feel like you that there's a lot of talking around and yes this group is action and I head up the supply chain uh say or the co-chair of that okay so we work we're trying to work together here better within the hyper ledger community um with it but going back to this whole I'm big on standards but your point about data you know if it's good enough let's work with it in the continuous improvement that comes along with that uh so maybe just leave it at that for right now and there's an opportunity to go forward. I mean and maybe that's a little bit of what we do because the standards and the reporting guidelines that I'm seeing from you technology ecosystems still don't say how do I just differentiate apples and oranges and if we as a community could say we'll just always show the differentiation that's a game changer because that's a lot of like that's why auditors don't buy technology that's why like NGOs and activists don't buy technology because they believe we're trying to sell a panacea that's not actually in touch with reality and if we can just show that small little bit um we could climb a lot further you know go a lot further with it so yeah I'll share one last thought here and then we can move on I'm trying to pull together a thread that says what what could even be a template just to do the work right they're rather than everything's bespoke or custom or whatever you want to call it right now yeah if you're an SME out there and a lot of these places are I mean you're just going to give up and say forget it I don't want to go there exactly and I you know you know and this is maybe I'm just lazy I I'll use a lot of the templates that are out there and just I'm trying to say you want to use RBAs low the light you want to use this critical minerals this you want to fine I'll just ingest all of them that's cool you just use your favorite baby um whatever you want to do but ps these two don't include this data or this one asks for this unit measurement and it's different than this one and so that's a lot of the other areas because um again I I and this might be my like my Oklahoma roots and like I just kind of go with it kind of chill out whatever you know I I just try to take it as it comes a little bit and so that's um you know I it's the it's the opposite of trying to guide it and just try to like pull it in and and keep pushing it forward but I think we have to do both to be honest um and we can you know we can do a lot more with it so yeah I I should be part of the supply chain group apparently we can talk afterwards thank you very much for our sharing thanks thanks Tom um Leanne to what extent the UN and their global material flows database trying to um I haven't worked with the UNEP school data flows I don't know if that's the same as the UN com trade um data I have worked with that Leanne Kemp Leanne Leanne Leanne Kemp my CEO she has been speaking um and working with the UNEP's apparel group quite a bit and I know they have a couple of pilots I don't know if that's related to the specific material data flow database you're talking about I I heard some big notion of it but um I didn't I didn't follow it are are you engaging with it I'm just wondering um I'm I know the CSIRO in Australia is contributing to um creating that database and they're doing these big CGE models and they're looking at global carbon and all this stuff but I'm I'm sort of trying to connect um you know what is the I guess there's top-down approaches and there's bottom-up approaches and you're mostly talking about kind of self-regulation and and private um organizing is that right well it's more it's it's self-reporting but not self-reporting it's what I'm trying to do is enable it for regulatory reporting um and so that if you have your own measurement like let's say you have in-house measurement that you're doing that you haven't yet gone through the the full-fledged audit of XYZ audit set um I still want to enable someone to do that reporting because on the private sector side you still you you'll ask a company I want this report on energy or your chemical use or something it doesn't mean that it's always audited right um so I'm trying to enable it at whatever stage of maturity these companies are at for the overall reporting but for um for the you know the goal of uh like in this case I gave GHG reporting but for material flows um we we do you know private data so taking an invoice like so B2B partnerships so that you're actually establishing the chain of custody I believe the UNEP's uh material flows as as the UN com trade data is general flows but it's not specific flow so yeah it's it's different from what I from what I understand and is the reason that companies like Apple are doing this a mainly for their consumers to make choices is it that the it's product level claims so so certain products so in the jewelry space you know someone wants to actually know that that diamond is not only conflict free that they want to know it it helps like or you know this in the case of some of the work we do in Tanzania like I want to know that that specific color gemstone helped that that woman that female minor I want that story and so that verification has to be related to that specific product so the chain of custody needs to be established and all the layering of the the data and justifications and evidence are necessary in the case of Apple on conflict minerals that was a regulated requirement the U.S. Dodd-Frank financial reform act in in section 1502 actually required this type of reporting and so they had to do a certain amount of chain of custody and then you know through a number of different other things pull in data and say whether or not they did or did not have products that were associated with conflict or those benefiting from conflict so that that was a very specific claim there's more like a we want to be able to say we don't have or that we are appropriately addressing the issues and so what what Apple said which I stand behind and think is very much the right thing instead of saying I have zero of this because most supply chains have zero of anything they say we were taking the necessary actions to do so and they could justify that through the connections and leading of the supply chain so even when they found specific issues of conflict or other things that could be associated with their supply chain that it was traced to their supply chain but maybe not trace the specific product because there wasn't that level of traceability they could show that they had done appropriate steps to mitigate it and to follow up and to address those issues so and that's I think the UNEP's material flow database is trying to create that high level to inform companies so that then they do take action in their specific supply chains but I'd have to go back to it because I only have like this big notion of that it was going on and I haven't worked with the specific data thanks man. Okay Erin you suggested a standardization program of auditing how is it essentially system established? Erin can you give me a little bit more context I'm not sure I totally follow oh maybe Erin had to leave. Sorry I was just trying to press sorry about that yeah we're in a project right now that we're doing that we're the our protocol that we're using is just standardized to the industry within real estate construction that emission credits and so forth but we're starting to have additional industries come into this project to participate because it's it's really going to it's a group exchange of a currency and so with that the standardization there's got to be a group or frontline as we start reporting data because you know one of the things that you just brought up that I thought was remarkable you like the story of the diamond most people aren't going to know the story of the diamond when the diamond is cut they're not going to know this long time together but all of a sudden that story all of a sudden comes down and says oh no I remember when this and then all of a sudden they build a link that information to another part in the blockchain that all of a sudden lots of story to be told it's like how are we you know at what point in this supply chain is there a straight standard of this if I mean I see your charts I see those example and and I understand that I understand that well especially being in construction but how do you get so many people under the same umbrella when they don't understand really a lot within their own industry what's what's going on with them well I will say their supply chains aren't necessarily the nicest thing as you can appreciate in the construction industry so I wouldn't say we were gentle with getting people on board there is very strict timelines and very aggressive you know goals set and those aggressive goals trickle down I'll give you an example one of my suppliers when I first came from the state department I was you know I'd worked in consulting I'd worked in auditing industry and and different things but I would say it's a little bit of a much more mild mouse at that time and I had a supplier I'd sent out an email and the supplier called me and it was really gracious and he just said Carrie I just want you to let you know that when when Apple gets a little sniffle just a little pre-cold everyone else gets the worst flu imaginable and that's a little bit hard to say today with the pandemic but it was a really good lesson but when you're at the top of the food chain you can you can be a little bit of a gorilla without having to do too much and it trickles down pretty well it's not enough and so at that time because it was legislated all the companies had to either you know swim on their own or agree on timelines so we agreed on general timelines of what we were going to go for and certain audits that we would groups of audits that we would account for because the materials that were in the legislation weren't just in one industry so they already had their preferred audits and preferred practices and we just said okay XYZ audit company or audit organization or standards body you don't cover this topic well we in order for us to mutually recognize you across these others we need you to reconsider this or up that and that sort of thing and so that was kind of I was brought a three-year long process and then once that happened it went through the roof you know in terms of agreement so it wasn't necessarily really centralized it was just more collaborative and you know in techie speak interoperable well that makes a lot of sense to thank you very very much for that explanation but it really one of the things that you just really pointed out is that since we're in control of the project and we're in control of what we're doing we just got to play that role with the gorilla it says here's the standard you're gonna follow you're gonna be a part of this this is it follow yeah and if you if you if you had to be honest with yourself if you're big enough to be the gorilla and if you are go for it um if you're not big enough you you get a few other gorillas or you know smaller smaller orangutans or something I don't know how to continue that but yeah just get enough of of the parties on board um obviously because of certain antitrust issues you can't talk about price you can't talk about like actually firing a specific actor or anything like that but you can absolutely say timelines goals strategies mutual recognition of standards etc okay hey thank you very much yeah no problem we're we're getting close to the end here okay following town's correction which standards are most common that leading companies use specifically on GHG I can um Paul if you just want to shoot me a note I can just send you a list that we're looking at but we're we're not comprehensive and I'm not an energy expert I'm just a sustainability person in data so I just look at regulations and how they are but I can um I'd be happy to share with this group uh you know that information especially if we can continue the conversation it would be excellent great thank you yeah my pleasure okay three minutes to spare everyone gets two minutes if they like that get a coffee thanks for that Carrie and I just put a link in the chat you know this is not the uh end of the opportunity to talk you know we do have open forums where people can talk with each other and continue the conversation there the group has a mailing list the supply chain SIG also has a mailing list so feel free to use either of those resources there's you know this group also meets regularly we'll meet again in a couple weeks so you know if any questions ideas suggestions that have come up in this call that you want to continue talking with people about please use those forums yes thanks Carrie this was amazing and you did create trouble in Q&A um some people ask and wanted to maybe want to reach out to you do you want to leave an email address or is it better to reach out to you where I linked in or no no please don't link reach out to me on linkedin I I never check my messages so here um should I send it here or can you just send a group email to the people or what would be best yeah we can do it in the group email just send a group email with my email and that's fine okay thank you very much yeah thanks everyone hey Carrie can I get you on one last question mm-hmm okay this is Aaron again okay well we're gonna look at uh we're establishing our regulations and guidelines here for the US how hard or um which challenges should we plan on looking for as as we're being invited to go into other countries oh just in construction in general or just in the standardization of this program uh the the standards are fairly the same but when it comes to data reporting uh we what what we're doing here to be able to be duplicatable over there and this meaning the the work that this specific group is doing or that your company is doing that there are companies doing and as well as the other companies that are that are working with us on this yeah I mean it it depends on the the region and and the the reporting format and your clients and things but yeah there's there's probably a handful of things but I can I can just I can copy and paste you know some of the stuff that we've pulled together on you know reporting protocols and that sort of thing but in terms of just going out to other companies like to gather GHG data or other things there's going to be emissions factors and how the calculations should be rolled out you know the level of data and understanding the lack of data that's there so there's going to be a lot of like if you're trying to really develop the ecosystem there's going to be a lot of placeholders so we as a community could even be creating common data sets that just that we all can reference or that um you know data you know databases because I never want to create new databases but how to reference existing data sources there's a handful of things like that that I think we could probably you know have a longer conversation on. Okay well if there's a way to get a hold of you to get just the contact yeah absolutely yeah feel free everyone. This kind of expanded and now we've just got some people that got some really high angles and so we're trying to keep everybody under control but as they point everybody's just so excited you know because it's the money one of the biggest factors is money and funding and when there's money and funding available they like to move it around and that's okay we don't mind it because of the U.S yeah but we want to make sure the data's right yeah exactly so no that's that's right that's accurate. All right thank you. Excellent okay. So see you in two weeks and Carrie thanks so much again and I will send you my address to the crew and looking forward to keeping in touch with you. Absolutely thank you all take care.