 Good morning, everybody. Can you hear me okay? I'm a loud talker anyway, so I'm never really that worried about it So thank you so much for joining us early on a Friday morning my name is Allison cook and I work with an organization called the story of stuff project and We talk a lot about how our stuff is made How what happens to it when we're done with it? Which makes me particularly excited to have this conversation this morning with these fine gentlemen here So we're going to talk about kind of moving from disposable to durable goods And so I have on the panel here with me Andy from Yardle and Thaddeus from Herman Miller and Sean from Fairfax and so we're going to talk about this from the production angle from the consumption angle and kind of from the cultural perspective and we're going to Talk a little bit amongst ourselves and then because we have the opportunity to talk with you We're going to kind of open it up to a broader conversation. Does that work with everybody? Okay, excellent So in kind of getting us warmed up this morning. I thought that we could talk about Just starting off with kind of in your personal lives What is something? We'll start with you Andy over there Um What's something what it what is something that you have had for the longest or that has history? Yeah, I've got a good morning. Hello, Andy Rubin from Yardle You know one of one of the items that I've had a long time is actually a Patagonia It's a Patagonia made Piece of it's it's it's like a piece of long underwear a Patagonia top And it was something that actually got when I was in high school. I used to run quite a bit and Had this in high school took it to college. It's kind of the item that is always Every time I moved throughout college, which happens every year in college It was always the item that was surely packed in my bag and would always make it to the next place And I was recently I feel like in the last few weeks I was I was running where I live now in San Francisco and still wearing the same top and it's been You know, I mean it's been 30 some years. I've had this same It's a piece of Kathleen long underwear and it is just as good as it was 30 some years ago And it's one of those, you know, I mean, it's nothing that you would think long underwear would ever be that special But what's just what's amazing about it is how darn well it was made and the fact that I'm still using it 30 plus years later And it's been through. I don't know how many summits on mountains. How many runs how many apartments? Houses cities and it's still going strong So I think it's just an amazing testament to well-made items and the ability to Have a few really awesome well-made items and allow them to kind of go with you through your journey And where it takes you all right So I'd love to say that it's my phone because you know the day when you can say look at this cool iPhone 2 and I still have it and it's 10 years old and that's a cool thing to do and it still works would be Awesome, we're not quite there yet So for me I have a Cannondale road bike that I bought when I was 23 and I'm just about 40 now And that has moved with me through many many different states And the only thing I've ever had to do to that bike was put on a new chain So you know other than keeping the chain lubricated it moves with me everywhere. I've gone I ride it all the time and it for years and years and years. It was my daily commuter bike, so Again a testament to those durable goods that are easy to maintain Upgrade and keep going just stay with us and they just keep going and going going and I will probably have that bike forever Thing I've had the longest is actually my boo-boo bear There's a first gift I ever received. I think I was a month old and Continues today. There's there's no eyes left on it nor nose nor mouth But it's really interesting because under its armpits the material is almost the same as it was Many many years ago where the rest of it's been faded or knotted up and so forth I guess the other piece is also an apparel piece of apparel. I bought 20 years ago I used to live near Hates Street here in San Francisco and I was a college student And I really struggled with the purchase because I needed a warm jacket for the the summers of San Francisco And it was quite expensive, but I remember my mom said little but good by good quality You don't need a bunch of stuff and I did and it's still there today And I I enjoy it so much that I've replaced the zipper Still wear it and it's a great conversation piece because it's basically says analog spelled backwards Which always brings up a number of conversations, so it also connects people so it's a very dear thing to me So one of the kind of consistent threads that I'm hearing and each of your stories actually has to do with the way that things are made and designing things to last And so I was wondering Thaddeus if you could talk a little bit about what you guys are doing at Herman Miller In terms of moving us closer to things that are around for a while sure, so You know if you don't know who Herman Miller is you can certainly feel free to Google Herman Miller But in general we make long-lasting iconic products for places where people work live heal predominantly furniture products and So we've done a couple of things so we have products that we Designed and created and sold in the 1950s that people still use today So those products from way back when are still today in use and still being handed down again and again And are still coveted in iconic products So one of the thing is really good design if you can design a product really well Like I was talking about the iPhone 2 or you know, whatever other item you might have what I what I think is the coolest thing is If it's cool today, it'd be awesome if in 20 years it's still cool and people still want that item so once in a while we see You have a whole office floor of air on chairs and while those are still iconic today Somebody might say we don't like this design anymore or this aesthetic We want to get rid of all these chairs which are perfectly functional and will be for years and replace them with something more updated So that is a piece that we're trying to look at and and with the iconic design design around but in addition You know end of life is always a big deal for for any product and especially for a durable good and especially in the furniture industry It's been extremely difficult to solve end of life And so how do we take a product when it's either at its end of life or ready to be? Upgraded to something else and get it to be either recycled and rebuilt into a new product or have a second life by being refurbished or reused So we're looking at how we address that by closing that loop at the end of life So a we try to design all of our products to be recyclable so you can disassemble You know if you think about a high-end task chair They might have 300 different components and you have to be if you can't easily disassemble that that piece of furniture You're just gonna throw the whole thing in the trash and be done with it So you have to easily disassemble it very quickly into parts that are easily identifiable so you can get them recycled into new products so we've done that as well as trying to increase the amount of recycled content we use in our products and Try to close the loop for people that want to upgrade when they still have perfectly good products So we're working with Goodwill Industries, which is in every major city And we're trying to find a way to partner with Goodwill to take product back So that Goodwill can then redistribute that to people that need it and resell some of it And then the stuff that nobody wants or is broken they can recycle that so it can be used in a new product as Well, we're working with our suppliers To have them take back pieces of furniture and reincorporate it back into our own product again So there's a lot of different avenues. We're working We don't know what the final answer is and there's not an ideal end-of-life story today for furniture goods And that's something we're still looking for everyone out there today to help us solve Great. Thank you. I One of the things that you're that you're bringing up that I actually want to pass over to you Sean and then over to your way Andy is this question of end-of-life And that it's in an inherently complicated Terrain in terms of what we do with the stuff when it's no longer either aesthetically pleasing to us or it no longer serves It's kind of technological functions I'm currently at a moment where my phone is is is a hindrance to communicating with other people because I've dropped it so many times And so kind of Sean. I'm curious kind of in the work that you do around Fairphone Thinking about products that are no that Require upgrades that you know, there's no such thing presently as a classic phone So kind of how do you address that from a cultural angle and then also how do you address the end-of-life issue? Thanks a lot. So a couple things just a couple of statistics 65% of mobile phones are not recycled or repurposed There are more mobile phones on the planet than there are people so obviously there's a lot of extra Mobile phones How many of you have one or two sitting in your dresser drawer closet somewhere? I think we all can admit that Some of us might think they may end up in a museum one day So we're holding on to them or just can't you know get away from that old Nokia that you could throw against a wall And it wouldn't break Only 1% of phones are going to take back programs from our research And it's a complicated piece of equipment. There are you know anywhere between the 700 and 1,000 parts in a phone over 20 minerals in a phone So at end of life a couple things we're looking at we're young companies. So we've only been around since late 2012 so fortunately none of our phones are coming back except for some of the that the You know common technical issues that you may deal with and if you haven't heard of Fairphone We're only selling in Europe at this time and you can check out our our website So we're doing our couple things One is as a part of the the pricing of our phone and the price all all the pricing our phone is fully disclosed on our website Portion of that goes to a program in Ghana where a lot of e-waste is is ending up So basically unfortunately today what we're having to do is remove phones out of out of Acre in Ghana and Ship them to Belgium for proper reprocessing and recycling or repurposing of the phones simply because after the sort of the precious materials have been taken out of phones from In the e-waste dump. They're often incinerated or burned. So While you're still have a co2 issue of having to ship this back into Europe if you look at the footprint It's it's much more minimal and also Health and safety toxicity issues with communities that either pickers on the site or working in the area But eventually like to build a value added operation in Ghana where things are repurposed and recycling So those funds are then being shipped back to build a program locally. So that's one thing we're doing the other thing is When our phones do need do reach their end of life or Have issues we're now selling spare parts on our on our website. So You can repair your own phone if you choose to do so and we're encouraging that And we've developed a collaboration with iFixit some of you may be familiar with them So they put together a repair ability manual on our phone Deconstructed our our phone to make it easier and engage people around Repairability issues. So in the past we've held urban mining workshops, right? So how do you mine things out of existing phones? But what we're moving into is repair ability workshops and what we're finding already in Europe is people are doing meetups in cafes in Madrid meetups in London And talking through these issues and it's really important to our business model because We use the phone as an artifact to tell a story We want people to engage with their products and the whole value chain of that product And this is a way for people to connect very deeply with their products through repair ability That's exciting And I think one of the things that's particularly exciting to me about that is the way in which kind of durable goods fixable Goods allow not only for a story to kind of build around it, but also a community And I was wondering Any of you could speak a little bit to kind of the work that Yurtle is doing to take stuff that we no longer need and build community Yeah, absolutely. So Yurtle Yurtle is a store where people give and get items everyday items for free So the idea is that the world's largest warehouse bigger than Walmart's warehouses and Amazon's warehouses combined are our collective closets and That when items are well made as opposed to buying a new item that comes with an incredibly long supply chain With technology and mobile communication with information we can get that item from down the block or next door And so what we see in terms of items We joke about a scale that we've made up and we call it the Lego to personal printer scale And on one side you've got Legos where when you're done with a set of Legos They're still perfectly good, right? So at this point there are 62 Legos for every man woman and child on the planet Think about how many Legos that is and the ability to to inspire more children with a single set of Legos is a massive Opportunity and Legos when you pass on a Lego set even if the set is not complete There's still a lot of value in that set of Legos on the opposite end of this scale We talked about the personal printer because we see these items move from hand You know person to person on yurtle and the personal printer for us is is one of those items that never goes well Everyone's got extra personal printers because oftentimes they come when you buy a new computer They sit in a closet or garage and you say wow, that's a great item I should pass on the printer you get the new printer and you can't get a driver for Mavericks or you can't get a driver for you know for Windows 8 and It almost is I mean it's you know called planned obsolescence But it's it's troublesome for us because people are excited to pass on something of value and get something of value And yet they can't use it and it's only a year and a half after it was produced And so we've got that scale and one of the things that we see is we see a future where companies that make things That have a utility after the initial sale in a world with more technology will be more successful This world we're moving into with more information more transparency and more ability to get value out of things that are well made Will benefit those who make better items? that's great and and Exciting to me in terms of thinking about a world where in which durability is a brand value And I guess I'm curious then to ask Kind of any of you who would like to field this question kind of where are you seeing? Kind of a raise of hope in the field in terms of the kind of broader shift from the hyper-disposable 72 micro fashion seasons in a year You know printers that cost more to refill the cartridge than the printers worth itself Etc. Etc. Kind of I know a lot of bad things. That's kind of my job. I can ruin anything for you But what is where are you seeing kind of positive shifts in your own companies in the field generally? Kind of what's what's got you guys excited? One of one of the things that is blowing me away, and it has been for the past several years It's been the sharing economy And if you think about the sharing economy whether we're talking about Airbnb in a place to stay or we're talking about relay rides or Lyft we're talking about the ability of of more utility for existing assets That is enabled by technology right by the computers and connectedness that we all carry with us as phones And so the the hope in that for me is when I look at a company like Airbnb I feel like in insustainability, so I'd started sustainability for Walmart back in 2004 and there's so much conversation about making things Oftentimes it's about making things a little bit less bad And so there was so much conversation when you think of hotel rooms about our hotel rooms are made with FSC certified wood, and we don't have any off-gassing of paints and Hang your towels up so we're not washing your towels again, and everyone's kind of Optimizing the existing world and these kind of little bits and pieces and then here comes a consumer-oriented Option Airbnb and says don't build the hotel at all look at all the excess rooms We have and in a course of four years Airbnb has become the largest hotel chain in the world passing IGH that's been around for 73 years and so my excitement in that is not only that we're not Just focused on FSC woods and FSC is great But no matter how much we focus on hey our hotel rooms are made with FSC wood We're still building them at an incredible rate And so as opposed to that a consumer-oriented or kind of driven change where people say wow Airbnb I can stay for a lot less money and have a great community experience Drives people away from needing to build them with any kind of wood no matter how sustainably harvested that wood was And I would agree that's actually what I was going to talk about that if you look at the durable goods industry There's there's some things that we could probably use like you know in the past when everyone had a desktop computer and a tower if you knew what you're doing and it was fairly simple to basically plug and play and build your own tower And so can you do that with a cell phone some day so that you can again? What Sean was talking about integrate different components change it up change the face easily So that you can always change your aesthetic or add the latest technology to it without completely throwing away That durable good and buying a new one And the I mean the other thing really is the sharing economy so Craigslist and Yurtle and eBay Just didn't exist years ago and for a durable good You know what most people will do is either store it somewhere and then you know when that person passed away You've got this house full of stuff that nobody wants and you'd pull up a dumpster and just get rid of it all And I've done that well now You know I pulled out some steps from my house and put in new steps because I had steps That were 40 years old and they had been covered with carpet the entire time and when the installer put them in in the 70s He stained half of them when he was staining the the trim on the walls and there was paint on them And they're a little bowed well So I wanted brand new steps that weren't gonna be covered with carpet yet I found a home for those old steps within five minutes on Craigslist and somebody paid to take those away from me and Put them in their house so that sharing economy and the ability to Showcase that I've got these goods and other people might want them and be able to do something with them other than the landfill I think to me is really big and you know, hopefully there are other innovations coming For instance, you know, we're looking at Plastics that take carbon dioxide out of the air to build the plastic So some of these new innovations that these smaller tech companies are coming up with can be really exciting if we just keep seeing them And they keep coming Just a quick comment on that. I think Actually the the crisis the economic crisis Has been a real reflection point for a large number of people and maybe it's the first time They've gone back to a tailor to have their clothes stitched up rather than tossing them out To have a sole replaced on their shoes rather than buying a new pair And you know while that may be small people Hopefully will be bringing that forward again that that's acceptable and Okay to do and I think another large trend that was mentioned earlier is the level of transparency the radical transparency that's Coming forward and really allowing us to see throughout the whole value chain into new communities and to the Challenges of those communities that will create awareness over time. I mean everyone this room is aware We're living off of two and a half planets today. We cannot continue to consume as we Have been since the industrial evolution We're reaching limits And I'm seeing more connectivity around that messaging It can be tricky But one thing I think we've done effectively and we'll see how long we can carry the interest is Enabling people to connect with a product in a different way not by dooming gloom sort of Broadbrush painting but actually engaging people in a light lively creative Manor and a sexy manner so they stay engaged with the issues But when you're you know talking about very difficult problems like conflict minerals and fueling wars Atrocious labor conditions and in factories or environmental degradation and in Ghana people easily switch off to that So how do you continue to keep people engaged in the conversation in a way that they want to share that with with others? So I think the transparency trends are very exciting and will connect people to different issues But also their their products in a very different way going forward So as we're looking at these kind of broader systems of production and consumption And you know, you guys are all feeling jazzed. I feel jazzed. Everyone feels jazzed. We're psyched We're moving from disposable to durable goods. I live in a shared housing community my entire wardrobe second hand I invest in my pat a Gucci. It's amazing That being said It I you know I live in the Bay Area and there are things about this conversation that feel very small to me very valuable very Restorative very nurturing but still happening at a relatively small scale And so I'm curious kind of where you see the obstacles In terms of making it so that kind of writ large We are shifting from disposable to durable goods and then also kind of where you see opportunities to Scale up going forward Yeah, I want to share I want to share just a personal example of something I live through that I'll date my sustainability experience back a bit when Walmart was pushing CFL bulbs So this is back in 2005 and my own experience I mean Walmart is a is a mass market retailer So it's generally a cross-section of the US economy and I'm talking about the US specifically I remember the effort to actually move people from Incandescent's to CFL's and it made so much sense on the surface in Terms of the ROI right the ability to save money with these bulbs So at first in a lighting aisle we tried just big signs right and explaining how much money it would you know This and that it almost felt like the packages look like a PhD of why you should buy this bulb and what we'd watch customers do is come down the aisle with a Child in a cart and say and in general have four seconds to make a decision about which light bulb to buy and They would push all the signs out of the way so they could get the light bulb It looked like the one they'd bought before so they could get the darn light to work because lives are too busy And so again and again, you know with sustainability and Walmart and then later running private brands for Walmart That was the experience that I had which is that no matter how much we are more transparent about the supply chain there is a very limited amount of Patience that people have for something that isn't going to very directly benefit them and So I just believe that the changes, you know all the transparency and those things are great When we think about moving a mass market We have to realize that it's gonna have to somehow address something very close to home or personal for people Be it better design be at the Herman Miller chair that we just got for our office from the 1960s and paid Almost as much as the new chairs that we were buying because it is such a darn cool chair That we could buy it on eBay for nearly as much as we pay for a new one And it looks beautiful and there's something beautiful about having different looking chairs So I think that it's got to have some for mass movement. It's got to either save people money very directly Be a better product for somebody save people time. It's got to have a personal benefit and to echo on that I think that's The the upfront initial cost is is a big deterrent from disposable to durable So, you know if you think about buying, you know an incandescent light bulb for a nickel versus an LED light bulb for $29 maybe $10 or $11 now. It's a huge difference, you know when you just need to run to the store and grab a light bulb Here's one a whole pack for a dollar of five light bulbs or one for $11 or $29 depending on which brand you're buying That's a big deal And if that LED light bulb then fails within the first year, you're out the same, you know, this great amount of money So it's not only does the quality of what you're buying have to be very Apparent and there has to be some sort of fallback of like hey if that LED light bulb fails in the next five years You're we're gonna replace it so there's some sort of safety net there to encourage people to spend that much extra money On a durable good but also the education so it's almost a cultural shift and the educational piece that Can't necessarily be there in the store aisle because that's not when you have the time to make the decision and Shifting enough that people understand that value proposition of why am I gonna buy this durable good? because I can sell it for almost the same amount that I bought it for 10 years from now if I buy whatever it is a Rolex watch or something not that anyone's gonna buy watches anymore, although I hear they're popular again, so suddenly all the tech guys have watches again instead of a phone, but If you know you can get the same amount of money you paid for it anytime in the future Then it makes sense to spend that much more money on a good that's gonna be durable and coveted years from now It would be I think the point you bring up about price is a really important one that oftentimes these goods are premiumly priced because of the quality built into them and one of the Rays of hope I have in the mass sense at least from observations on Yurtle We worked with Patagonia last Black Friday and while Patagonia garments can be I mean they are in general premium price Based on the quality and the way they're made as people You know free these jackets to put them back in play from closets, right? Many of us have extra Jackets like this and closets They ended up going to people who hadn't Who hadn't been able to access Patagonia before? So we followed up with many people who got Patagonia's for the first time and actually as a brand that makes quality items You know from it allowed a brand to Start at a premium price point and then continue to get better with time as it got passed on from person to person And our belief is what we'll see over time is that we have created, you know more people who will Opt into Patagonia while there's a need for fewer jackets And so I believe with the sharing economy and the ability to move these goods around even though they're premium priced initially Brands that make benefit brands that benefit from these items changing hands Will ultimately have a pathway to get them in someone's hands and then have them use 10 or 20 times not just once just a quick comment on obstacles so You know fear phone started as a campaign around conflict minerals really a campaign platform And then we decided a couple years later make a phone And really that was about you know if you want to understand the system You need to be a part of that system and open it up and we're you know Our mantra is if you can't open it you don't own it and we mean it so but we're now part of a very large complex system and we're tiny we're a tiny player in that system, right? We're going to suppliers initially. We're only three people None of us had ever made a phone before we told them we were going to crowdfund the campaign through pre-sales We had no street credibility whatsoever, and you know went to many meetings different provinces The the management didn't even show up on several occasions. So That is a huge barrier that we have We were able to sort of patch together a Value chain that that made sense for we were where we were at at the time But it's also electronics industry is a very secretive industry, right? So IP and fortunately found suppliers that want to play with us right so Commitment to transparency where we you know we report on factory conditions on our lifecycle assessment and so forth But there are great barriers still in that industry and as we look at our next generation of phone which actually In design brief. It's very much focused on durability and repair ability, and that's what we'll go and our first phone We couldn't do much for the design We worked with OEMs because we were a small player now that we've proven there's a market We can basically do the whole design brief which really starts opening the system up And we can be more selective of our of our suppliers But ultimately we have this conundrum We don't want to create more consumption of phones yet in order for us to Maintain our business and also create more impact ultimately do need to sell more phones And we've sold 25,000 we're in the process of selling another 35,000 But that is tiny in this marketplace and how can you scale change being such a small player in that marketplace? And that's something we're we're Faced with one quick example We didn't want to create a protective cover for the phone again You know more stuff out there, and you could buy one but Customers for demanding it. They wanted something that would protect the phone and and so forth We'd like to do away with that and in the next generation of phone And we actually turned some good income from producing, you know that cover that first cover And now we've gone to we worked with 3d hubs So you could download your design and have it printed, you know your cover printed nearby and Most of those most of that income now goes to 3d hubs But we had to make a tough decision because there's a nice revenue stream for our business and and to grow our business But this was much more aligned with our model and we're constantly faced with those types of dilemmas around consumption and and the like So I'm just gonna ask kind of one more question, and then we'll turn it over to all of you guys out there And so I guess my question is this then the distributed nature of the work That one of the things that you know, I think about in the work that I do at the story of stuff is you know 70% of a product's environmental impact is locked in at the design stage and so how Whether you're designing a phone or a chair or a jacket How what do you see happening or kind of what is it? Where do you see opportunities for innovation in terms of rethinking the way that we design products the way that we make them You know that there's I think also incredible energy impacts in terms of like the way in which we produce things and then Distribute them so that the 3d hubs is particularly exciting because then you're not shipping things all over the place and kind of building a network So in that regards kind of where do you see things happening in terms of shifting the way that we produce things and the way that we design things Yeah, and that's so that's a really good point that a Lot of people think about the distribution channel and the distribution chain the transportation chain of shipping something from Asia to the US and then distributing it or Central manufacturing distributing it distributing out from a central manufacturing facility If you look at it from a life cycle impact standpoint that distribution is Not even in the environmental impact now that doesn't mean that it's Unimportant and in my mind, you know the way I would I would see you know There are transportation system is aging and we need to fix it and depending on the cost of fuel that can really radically change The environmental impact might be low, but the fuel cost might be extremely high in the future or variable and so People like Herman Miller where we do really good design Potentially, you know, we could be creating a design and creating that IP and then what we do is we Authorize sites around the world and around the country to produce that design for their local market We have no plans to do that right now But that would be sort of like the next wave of innovation of local manufacturing creating local jobs Where we still do what we do best, which is design develop that product from from inception It's a great point you make about Transportation and the overall I think that transportation can be one of those things It's easy to see and point a finger at but when you look at the scope of it It's not actually nearly as relevant as the way that the cotton was originally planted watered Any of the true as story of stuff right any of the true Supply chain implications and it's I think it's a cautionary note about Measurement in general I think it's very easy to get fixated on the things that are easy to measure Such as the elements that go into a product as opposed to the harder things to measure That might be the overall not just how a pair of shoes are made But how much they're worn and where they go after and so that is much more complicated to To actually keep a perspective on and so often it it gets ignored in favor of the things that are easy to measure and potentially less meaningful and the The shift, you know that the idea of consumption although the the economic Slowdown right had this massive dip in consumption. It's come back to the same level as if that as if that never happened and so I think that it's you know as we think about design being design being a I Guess a Mindset right to think about the bigger picture of the system the good design thinks about that. There's some products that I've become more of a fan of even you know, Ikea often will get We'll take we'll take hits from being inexpensive furniture But one thing that's done very well the Billy bookcase has had the same dimensions since the late 70s And so if you have a Billy bookcase and you move into a new room and you need to make it 12 inches taller you go to the Ikea and get the exact same topper for a Billy bookcase And it's still a functional piece of furniture Whereas if you end up getting a piece of what's referred to in the industry as knockdown furniture, right? Very inexpensive furniture The manufacturer might be a one-year manufacturer and there is no ability to repair that add on to it Anything right it is that's it And so I think in this in this trade-off between things that you it's always easy to sell in this consumption mindset One more unit of the of the item that is four dollars less But ultimately that business as we have mobile technology and you can get anything on Amazon That business is not a business. I would want to be in because the margins keep getting lower The businesses that I would choose to be in going forward of the businesses that can make use of a Well-designed Billy bookcase, but as you can always sell something to a good design You can always be in a relationship with a customer as opposed to a one-time in and out transaction Yeah, I think I sort of covered that off and some other comments around distributive manufacturing and Really in the design brief focusing on durability and Repairability I think the you know really important aspect of this it's sort of like AOL right when AOL started People didn't know how to use the internet. They made it easy for people to use it Microsoft as well with with software And really this is taking the fear factor away out of playing with your stuff If you're not I'm the only non-engineer on our panel. So I had a fear factor myself Noodling with with electronics, but once someone shows you and and you understand it It takes that fear factor away, and you're more likely to open it up and and repair yourself Thank you gentlemen So now I'm gonna turn it out over here and see kind of what kind of conversations or questions are percolating out out there One thing I'm curious about is 3d printing and the role that 3d printing will pray both positively and negatively in the future I would say it's gonna play a larger and larger role. Absolutely Herman Miller We don't have 3d printers in our manufacturing operations today However, a number of our competitors do and are investing very heavily in those so when you think about You know we as a manufacturer are more of a an assembler of furniture So we have other people that are injection molding creating the parts we get all those parts We put them together if you think about you know, we design those parts We send them to a manufacturer They then make that part send it back to us. That's what they do better than we do With 3d printing we can maybe keep those designs in-house and print those parts right away whether that's for models that we want to test or Just to actually produce those parts right in-house. So I think as the 3d printing technology Starts to gain some more maturity. You're gonna see that really take off in addition to you know Can you build a chair from the ground up? From a 3d printer based on a really good design that's gonna last a long time And I definitely see that occurring as well some of that local and regional Manufacturing from these 3d print shops. So I haven't had much experience with that But I can absolutely see that that's the direction that we're moving in and I would add that 3d printing I believe is a tool in a massive shift since the industrial revolution that was very much about interchangeability and economies of scale and production From that economy over to an economy of intellectual property and design and the 3d printing will be a tool to continue to enable that shift Where more money we made in intellectual property with a tool like 3d printing to be able to on this spot Create a new part to repair something or the the design behind it And I'll just weigh in slightly and just say that especially as we're thinking about the durability of goods and 3d printing is of Course a very new field, but one of the things that we need to keep in mind is the toxicity of the materials that we're using And that most 3d printing is exclusively plastic And there are complications with lead not to mention plastic as a problematic material for a number of reasons But just as we're thinking about you know the durability of goods One of the most important things for me if you're gonna be passing something on for generations is to make sure that It's healthy and safe for the people who are using it and making it Yeah, we didn't really touch on that too much But certainly a big issue if you think about right now the state of California changed their flame retardancy law So the toxic flame retardants that have been in all of your couches and chairs and anything with a cushion on it And we think about those as durable goods and now they've got these toxic chemicals in them that are carcinogenic And we don't want to expose our children to them. How do you deal with these disposable goods? That everybody now has and nobody wants to pass on to anyone because of what's included in them So the upfront thinking of what we put into those durable goods makes a big difference Great. It looked like there's a question over there and then a question over there Just jumping on that same general topic What are kind of the scientific innovations that you guys might have had exposure to in your fields that would be able to replace some of that Default plastic toxic manufacturing what what's happening in terms of science that's beyond the 3d printer But connected to that type of new thinking that's healthier for the environment, whether it's because it's compostable biodegradable or other kind of new innovations around science and technology in terms of life cycle great there there's definitely innovation going on Specifically around chemicals of concern and how to get those out of the product the problem is if you think about the BPA issue so busy phenol a in these plastic water bottles Was a big deal and so they switched to non BPA plastic, which was actually BPS plastic So probably the same issue but not safety tested like BPA was So sometimes there's a trade-off issue that you may not be trading off to the right thing for a number of reasons So there are more and more bio-based solutions coming online You know in my opinion if you're gonna take this fossil fuel out of the ground Probably putting it into a durable good that's gonna get used over and over as a good use of it rather than a disposable Good or burning it in a second for fuel But taking you know there are tons of biobased plastics coming out of the market and It's my opinion and I wouldn't say it's necessarily my company's opinion But it's my opinion that if you take biomass from the earth and lock it up into a plastic That's gonna last for millions of years You've now lost that Plant material that would become food for the next crop of plant and now you have to create Synthetic fertilizers to replace that biomass that you took away I'm not a fan of taking biomaterial and lock it up in plastics unless it's biodegradable within one year So that it gets re reused as plant food again So there's there's lots of innovations. I'm not sure how we'll take advantage of some of those innovations But there's certainly things around replacing toxic flame retardants replacing Firmeldehyde Resins in wood furniture and all the products that we use in buildings. There's lots of innovation around that The scale is the big part so the my advice to everyone is if there's something that you're interested in that you want You have to ask the manufacturer and let them know what it is you want and are demanding Then they have a business case to go out and do it So right now if I wanted to create all my products without urea firmeldehyde it would be very expensive And that's because there's very few Mills around the world that are creating the product and there's not enough product for me to pull To use because there's not enough demand and the price therefore is very high The more people that are asking for these things the easier it is to make the business case and go out and get those materials Just to comment really quickly on that is point so works taking place at the supplier level With chemicals like N hexane you've probably followed some of the story and manufacturing environments which are directly linked to production and productivity right so You know late-stage ramp-up stages wiping glass and a very fast manner quick dry But awful health impacts for for workers. So You know, we're clear with our production partners that you know, we we embrace slow production And that's a reality. Maybe we can say that because we are so small right now But we believe in that and we have to make other tough decisions when There's holidays and New Year's that we don't want people working Over those over those time periods for example, and you know, luckily Our followers as well as our consumers are willing to wait You know a few extra days for that product. So There is some work on recycled plastics. We do have recycled plastic in this and the first phone Would like to do more but Because of the technological nature of the product itself Some things are very difficult to change But I know there's a strong movement out there. It's been growing a lot of different questions are being asked of the industry So hopefully we'll see more innovations on the market and as you say As as people make more requests for this type and in larger companies make more requests for these types of products They'll be available for use, but it's going to take, you know development time and so forth to do so Great, did you have a question over there? Hi, I love the panel. Thank you for contributing I've got a background in LCA and software analytics for for supply chain for manufacturers and In 2007 there was lots and lots of talk about carbon footprinting and everybody was sort of on that bandwagon And then I actually really haven't heard I don't think anybody talk about carbon footprinting and Do do in today are any of your customers asking about that and is it part of your messaging? Are you it seems like it's gotten to be a bad word since we know there's not going to be a carbon tax Anytime in the next couple decades. So where is carbon footprinting and that sort of Environmental spin come up in your messaging and your business models and how you think about things I know it's quite different between the three of you, but I'm interested So you're absolutely correct. I started with the company in 2007 And my first job was to figure out how to do the carbon footprint of all of our products So we have we were getting requests all over the place 2007 2008 And then that went away with the government legislation that was pending that got killed during the downturn of the economy We and the majority of our close competitors continue to do life cycle assessment and and calculate carbon footprint for all of our products and use that in our design so we certainly have rebuilt our Environmental design process to include a carbon footprint component as well as a eutrophication component if you're familiar with LCA Which is has to do with water quality and we've now built that in so we have a criteria within our design process That is a stage gate go-no-go and part of that looks at the carbon footprint of the product We use that in terms of The carbon footprint is a really good proxy for how much energy is used in the manufacturer of the product and a number of other Environmental impacts so the lower the carbon footprint the less energy the less environmental impact of the total product and We've we've selected in furniture We don't use energy during the life cycle of that furniture and so material selection is is key So we've used that in helping our designers and engineers select lower carbon footprint materials To the question of are our customers asking anymore? I would say no Some of them are still asking for life cycle assessments. Do they know what to do with that data? No The shift has really changed the chemicals of concern Tell me if you have these chemicals of concern in your product or here are the five chemicals of concern that are important to us And we will not buy product with those chemicals. That's the big shift that I've seen since 2007 It is well compliance, but chemicals of concern So urea from aldehyde and these toxic flame retardants PVC don't necessarily have Regulations behind them, but they're concerning to our customers for various reasons From you know, I mean I've I've I've had experience in very different roles over that period of time But I would say in the mid-2000s just in my experience There was a massive corporate move with Walmart with eco imagination with many and there was kind of a there was a large I Think there was a shift where sustainability was seen not just as As compliance oriented, but actually a strategic Commerce or business move where people many more people a massive business to be it moved into the boardroom It became something that was a minimum to have in the boardroom and a strategic conversation I believe that right now has that's still going on, but it is not new news anymore I don't think that there's been news on top of that and I would argue that the next shift that will happen over the next several years Isn't just the footprint or the adhesives in a durable like or even a pair of shoes It's it's going to take it to the next level, which is where models like the sharing economy and other models Will actually be I think the next interesting step for corporations and leadership We're gonna go ahead and wrap up, but thank you guys so much for joining us this morning And I hope you all have wonderful Fridays