Finch, the Digital plug-in tool that provides Sustainability ratings on all your favorite products with CEO Lizzie Horvitz.

0:03 More than anything, we're catching this. Massive, massive group of people. It doesn't really that's, it's not a race gender age thing, it's more, you know, there are these hyper green people who are going to be vegan and not fly and do anything to reduce our carbon footprint. I've to seven percent of the population. And then you have, let's say 20 to 30 percent of the population, who either don't even believe in. Climate change or are never going to do something. Everybody else is really in that middle ground, who wants to do something about sustainability? Feels guilty about climate change, but doesn't really know where to start. And again, doesn't have those more than seven minutes to research any of it online.

0:47 And so that's a huge, you know, 60% of the popular, okay? Say it's about 70%. We really when you think about it cuz you throw in the green guys, and the other, you know, that 70% of the population is guys care about it. Welcome to the environmental transformation podcast where we talk with industry leaders, climate Champions and sustainability professionals, who are making an impact in their businesses. Today, each leader solving complex challenges and provide Solutions within the respective areas of expertise. And here's our host, Sean Grady.

1:31 Hello ET Nation. It's time to spread the word about this podcast. If you're just Tuning In For the First Time, welcome, we are honored to have you here with us. Please take a moment and subscribe to the podcast and leave a review about this episode. We really need to increase our listener participation to increase our podcast ratings, and we can do that by leaving reviews on Apple podcast, if you are a longtime listener. Well, thank you. If you haven't gone to my website lately, Please sign up for our newsletter blog, post and e-mail announcements and do it. Now go to www.shawnacoronado.com, that's www.shawnacoronado.com and become a member of the TT Nation today.

2:16 We look forward to having you join us. Welcome to the environmental transformation podcast. I'm your host, Sean Grady and today's guest is Lizzy. Orbitz, she is the CEO and founder of Finch and bench is a digital sustainability tool that rates environmental and social impacts on consumer products to better understand their environmental footprint and the potential purchase of the at the point-of-sale Lizzie. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me, Sean? Yeah, no, this is good. Hey, you know, you we connected a little while ago and they get to learn a little bit about fench and what you guys are doing.

3:00 Tell us us a little bit about, you know, how you got started and little history on bench and what the product really does. So I've been in the sustainability space, for my whole career, passionate really about climate mitigation in the private sector and after graduate school in this space and working at a massive company, I was at Unilever for three years something interesting. So that happening in my personal life where I began to get a ton of questions from family and friends about what they could do to reduce their own footprint, they were feeling pretty powerless and I did not have the Answers people would ask me, you know what diapers were best for their new baby or but you know deodorant wasn't going to give them breast cancer Etc. And I had no idea where to direct them because I found that the content had either, you know, these academic studies that are kind of tough for the average human to digest and then on the other side we have this rise of blogs which are well-intentioned but not really based in data or science.

3:57 And so what I was really looking for was the nerd. Wallet for sustainability. So if you're familiar with NerdWallet, it's your One Stop Shop for anything, personal finance related, and nothing like that existed in sustainability. And that was really how Finch started or a little bit, maybe like Yelp, right, looking for that restaurant and crowdsourcing, you know, the good products or the good restaurants and, you know, understanding like, what's a good one and what's not and Grading these things. And so, so, you know, this all revolves around a commercial product, it's out in the market. And getting a better idea of its carbon impact and social impact to the consumer as they they potentially purchase.

4:40 It sounds like right. Exactly. Yeah. So essentially, the way that consumers you can use it now is through Amazon, you download a extension onto your browser and if you're not familiar with extensions, there are some great ones out there. Honey grammarly or two good examples that I always use. You download it once and then every single time you shop on Jean, you click on a product Finch will tell you what the score of that product is and then a couple of Alternatives in case you're interested in making a better purchasing decision. So unlike an app on mobile that you have to sort of open every time you want to use it, this will just naturally pop up whenever you are on Amazon. Okay. Yeah, I'd add a little question about that down the road.

5:21 So, we'll get into that again because I think you're touching on some interesting things for the consumer. Let's talk about, you know, How is the house finch helping the the, you know, the consumer itself? You know how does it really evaluate these products and make them aware of? You know what the benefits are or the negative effects of some of the products I think in a couple of ways, the main way we do it is we're just really teaching a new language around sustainability. I think right now greenwashing is a massive problem where we all collectively are throwing around words like Cosmetics or all-natural deodorant. And the reality of those words is that they don't mean much right, unless it's a regulated word like USDA certified organic, right?

6:10 Or or other certifications. A lot of these words are simply a way for companies to sound like they're doing more than they actually are. One of my favorites is chemical free, right? Our entire planet is made of chemicals. We all mean for you, that's funny. Hey, so so to say that the midsummer Go free, you know, there are chemicals that are more toxic than And others, but that's a different story. And so what finch tries to do is just teach a new language to Consumers around. These are the types of things that you should be looking for in XY, & Z products, and these other, you know, words or attributes, Etc, don't mean as much and so you can ignore them. So that's I think the first way the second though, is what we've learned for customer discovery, which has been really interesting is that some users really want these nitty-gritty details.

6:57 They want to know exactly why and What goes into their products and why it might be good or bad, which were happy to do. We love getting deep into the science with people. There are also a lot of consumers who are like I just want to feel better about my decisions and give myself a pat on the back. I don't really want to know why it's better or worse, I trust what finch does. And so for them it's a really simple just by this, not that, and it's really sort of I keep saying digestible but it's really simple information. That kind of anybody can understand. So they don't need to really like, do the research themselves. The reality is that people don't really have more than seven minutes to research this online, unless it's really, you know, their full-time job and right.

7:44 Yeah, exactly. And so we're providing that solution so that it saves you time. It saves you energy, and you can feel good about your purchasing, right? Everybody has to buy toilet paper. So let's just try to make it as easy as possible. Well, okay so like what type of Is French a is the application evaluating now we have 85 products rated or product categories rated, excuse me, and it's mostly consumer packaged Goods outside of the food space that you buy, you know, on a monthly basis. So a lot of shampoo, conditioner, body wash Cosmetics, toilet paper products, we have some textiles, we do sheets mattresses and so it kind of runs the gamut and, you know, the sheets. Matches is, hopefully, you're not buying on a monthly basis. So those are kind of outliers, but everything else are things that, you know, if you try a new toilet paper, the worst cases, you're not going to like it.

8:41 You have to buy it again in a couple of in a couple of months. And so it's kind of this, you know, risk-free product-based that we're starting with. And then our goal is that once our consumers, trust us, more than we can build up to the sort of Staples like clothing, Electronics, Furniture things that you You know, that are really big decisions to purchase and I got imagine like all the products you're trying to evaluate. I mean that's just a portion of what's out there to right? Yes. We you know we do a machine learning model which has been fantastic and so it's much more scalable than you might imagine.

9:22 We're definitely not going to, you know, a Pantene Pro-V bottle and seeing what the ingredients are one by one. That would obviously never work. So we Have around 300 thousand products rated. At this point, we just unlocked an exciting sort of technical advancement where we're able to rate products outside of the Amazon ecosystem. And so we definitely, you know, by the end of the month, will have millions of products rated. But, you know, Sean, you're right. There are so many more products and obviously product categories that we haven't touched yet. Sure, sure. Well I mean that's got to be a lot of a lot of work, you know, just to like figure out what you need to do it. Bring those in and, you know, get a good assessment of it. I mean, so how does the product evaluation really work? So I would say it's a two-step process. The first is generally looking at a product category and saying, okay, what are the factors that go into this category?

10:21 Is it? So for shampoo, for example, it would be the packaging versus the shipment weight versus the ingredients used all these different factors and we read a lot of academic studies, life cycle analysis, if they're available Etc to show. Okay, 80% Of the footprint is going to come from packaging. 20% is coming from these chemicals. That are that are potentially toxic, right? I'm making this up. Those aren't the exact numbers but will have sort of a quantitative quantitative answer and then what we do is we scrape, the public domain for anything, we can find out about specific products, right? So something as simple as an Amazon Details page which shares country of manufacturing and ingredients list, we can take a lot of information from just that but Also look at you know, sustainability reports SEC filings Etc to figure out what's going into these brands in the products. And then through our machine learning model and neural network.

11:24 We can just spit out scores because the algorithm is already there. The beauty of that is, as I mentioned earlier, it's scalable. So we're not really doing things one by one. But the other thing that's great is that, as we get new information, which is happening on a much, Monthly if not weekly basis, you know, an ingredient whose profile has changed or anything like that. We can just automatically updated into the backend and our scores will change automatically rice. So, huge data, analytics. Program on the back end of this thing, it is and I'm not a data analytics person. And so I have I've built a team of people who know this, a lot more than I do, which is been fun for me to lurk. You gotta leave the data science to the data. As people that died 05 to the guys for everybody. Yeah I'm in this space to in software space. It's so you know when I get out of my depth I just let those experts you know, take over today's episode is sponsored by Cascade environmental.

12:32 Cascades Compass corporate sustainability program has been helping Consultants balanced economic social and environmental impacts of remediation on Projects 2014, achieve your sustainable remediation goals by drawing on Cascades leading National capacity technical expertise and their performance focused approach to support any stage of your Project Life Cycle when looking for a firm that can help you meet your sustainable remediation goals, then look no further they and Cascade environmental to learn more. Go to www.sceeto.com v.com that's www.hs, K Dash EnV Dot-com. Well, let's talk about the three impact axises of your rating system.

13:19 You kind of talked about it. I saw on your website and I was like, okay, let's dive into that. Let's double-click on that. Sure. So we start with, where does the impact come from? And there we take a real life cycle analysis, approach. So we have broken it down into five different factors. It's making it moving it. Buying it, ditching it. I'm sorry using it and ditching it. And so that's basically just sort of a fun way of explaining like, does the does the footprint come from the manufacturing? Does it come from the use phase? Like charging an iPad washing, a pair of jeans or does it come from? You know, disposal is a circular aspects etcetera. The second is, what are the impacts? And for those, we look at six different categories, it's climate Inch water, use human health ecological quality, natural resource, depletion and waste production, and then sort of overlaying that is some qualitative factors around social well-being.

14:25 And then, finally, it's sort of who's responsible for these impacts is that the company or the brand, is it the product or is it the user? And so we sort of do all of those, not really in any particular order, but, you know, Some of the research is coming, as I mentioned from just the category overall and some of it were uncovering from the from the individual product, okay? So these this type of information you're getting from public sources, I'm assuming all publicly available. Yeah. And that's been really interesting. We do that for two reasons. The first is, we're a small team of six. There's no way we'd be able to vet this information, if we were, just asking companies for it. And with You know, companies aren't going to share this information if they don't know about us it's really hard to get that but secondly it's been an interesting lever for us to encourage transparency.

15:20 We don't really find a reason why companies wouldn't want to share information if they were proud of their practices. Sure. And so and you know not a lot of companies are using organic ingredients or buying carbon offsets if and then not talking about it, right? And so it's been a good sort of incentive. For these companies. And to say, okay well I guess if we want, if we want to be included in this rating or if we want this specific asset to be included, we need to post it publicly. So the scoring system is a, as I understand, you've got like a rating from 1 to 10. Is that correct? And so you got a one to 10 if you're in the 12 it's like three, three and a half.

16:05 You're not recommended No, you're not exactly. It's actually I was just speaking about this because we hired a new scientists and sort of training him on on all the stuff, a lot of it is honestly sort of philosophical questions. We ask ourselves on a regular basis, the one to ten is basically all normalized, it's not absolute. And that's because certain categories are worse than others. You know, environmentally, social environmental impacts Of detergent are going to be far worse than the environmental impacts of what's another example like a towel. And so if we were to sort of do it in an absolute manner, all of the detergents would get a 3 and all of the sheets would get nine or ten right here.

16:56 Kind of give a little grade waiting here. A little, you know, nor was he like you said, right? It's like, well, like, like I was reading that one about shaving cream. Uh-huh. Like okay. Well, shaving creams really? Just not that sustainable, really? When you think about it, I mean, you got to use it, you know, it's chemicals. You you you talked about, you got to use water and you're using water every time you use it just to shave. So you're using, you know, water in that part of the product. And I was like, huh, okay. I started thinking through this was like and then your, you did put some wise tips up there, which I thought was interesting on some of the products, which Give some insights on maybe Alternatives recommendations. What makes the most sense?

17:42 I mean, I thought that was really good product review. Tips that helped consumer, make a decision. Yeah. And that's why it's sort of this philosophical question because if we were doing this, strictly from a scientific standpoint to your point, there would be no, shaving creams. I would get a 9.5, right. They're all pretty pretty bad but but as a user from the customer experience, they have to feel empowered. It and excited about what's out there, right? And we cannot just sit like people have to buy shaving cream or not. In the market of saying, you know, make your own at home. People are going to buy it from Amazon and so the best for or you know, just let it grow, don't worry about it, let it go. You're going to buy it.

18:29 Here is the best that exist and then what's really fun, which, you know, we're far away from. But it's sort of a dream of mine in the future is that we will, Of all this research on, what what what categories are sort of write for discussed disruption and which ones have actually evolved quite a bit? Right. I think of shampoo bars. That's such an exciting Innovation that I think has really promising future, but on the other hand, there are probably things like aerosol shaving cream. Diapers that really need to be improved and so we'll have all these scores and B will be Able to go to, I don't know, Venture Capital firms or whoever and say if you want to start a company or invest in a company, these are the ones to bet on interesting you bring this up but it just dawned on me as we're talking about all these. These personal care products about a year ago. I interviewed the CEO of last object. Do you know why?

19:27 I've last object? I have their their swabs. Yeah. Their swabs love them. Yeah. Yes, I interviewed. Oh man. Her name is escaping. But I'll remember here in a minute but it was a great interview, lots of great things that they're doing with, you know, last tissue last swab. Last, you know, lots of you know, compact circles. I don't know what they call those things but yeah I mean that's pretty cool. Sustainable product line there as well. I'm sure you guys are writing them and put them in your or if you're not you probably will soon on your on your system because They they've been selling like hotcakes over there. It's because it's such a sustainable, reusable product that not only is it reusable, but they're, they're making the product that are usable materials, you know, exactly. Now there's such a fantastic company and I think for us we're seeing in terms of user Trends, there's like Behavior change light where you know, you might not buy. You were thinking of buying Pantene, Pro-V but instead you're going to by Garnier Fructis because it's made out of ocean plastic, but that experience is exactly the same. Once you buy the product, it's really like you. Do the exact same thing with the product. Last object is a really interesting. Same with the shampoo bars, like that is full on Behavior change, right?

20:53 Where you are not, you're washing something you're not throwing it away after every use and the learning curve is definitely there and so we're excited. No, it's too soon right now, but we're excited to see sort of what products people are willing to really like, change their behaviors on and which ones are just a little bit too much, but I've loved the last object and I feel like after a couple of uses you're like I didn't I don't even remember cotton swabs. Like they were right? Yeah. Now that's the way I kind of took it too. And we, you know, we gave away quite a few of those things when we were did when we did the interview and so it was quite a few people that really like love That stuff and it was really good. I think it's a great, it's a great product. And I hope that, you know, you guys can get some some traction with them because I'll connect you if I can with a the CEO there, that's pretty pretty cool. This episode is sponsored by piece. People have been seeing science to protect our environment and improve our health.

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22:42 That's www.petland.com. So back to the other reading stuff we were talking about, we got the kind of grass there. So the sources of these, the evaluation, I mean I guess it's not completely subjective, your are definitely a reviewing public sources but and then the algorithms that you're putting together in the back end or are kind of, you know, have some metrics behind, you know, where certain things fall for information, you're Gathering and do you, do you still give a final review of some of the The products before, you know, the E pushed out the rating based on the algorithm work, or is it just out of mac? And it goes someone dep.

23:28 There's definitely human eyes on these reviews. It's always me. Personally, although I've done that quite a bit in the past two and a half years, but we definitely do some gut checks. You know, we're not seeing two hundred thousand products and going through every single one, but we have a pretty good idea as a team just because of our backgrounds on what products should be. And so we check that but what I'm really excited for is right now, the algorithm is not I don't think Advanced enough to sort of teach us things were still very much controlling the inputs but I'm excited to get to a point and this will be sort of a sign of true success for us where we're actually learning from the algorithm. We trusted so much that were saying wow, I cannot believe you know this, this product got an eight point five because I would have expected it to be higher or lower or whatever. That's that's Well, okay, that's really cool. I'm glad that you know because I mean I guess you got to put a little Q IQ C on the whole process right solutely. Yeah, I think people would want to know that. Just so you know.

24:31 Well let's talk about the product reviews in the connection with the Amazon that you guys are, you know, putting together house that, you know, relationship work. You know, the lucky thing is we have no formal relationship with them. We are just an overlay on Amazon. On where we can work with with their interface without getting their sign off. We have a fantastic relationship with Amazon. We hope that we will have a formal relationship at some point, okay? But the beauty now, is that anybody who downloads the extension and happens to shop on Amazon, it will work for and then we can, you know, we can continue that on to hopefully Target.

25:12 Walmart any sort of retailer site? Yeah, but I haven't got a big online. I get As Target does too, right? Yeah, absolutely, yeah. So I think I'm really excited about that, but I also think there's potential to have these Partnerships more formal. We just signed signed a contract with Microsoft, where we will be selling our data to them. And then when someone is shopping on Microsoft Bing, our scores will pop up. So there are absolutely sort of Revenue generating opportunities that we are looking forward to a long with just the overlay on the Amazons of the world. So is there Any, I guess product sustainability rating system out there.

25:56 A real rating system out there because are we going to get to the point where you could? If you're buying, if you're a consumer, you could, you could, you know, see a rating. And there's going to be also, a score of the carbon impact of the product that's going to be on the product label itself. So when you buy it something you're like, oh my CO2 emission impacts going to be, you know. 1.3 metric tons per, you know, unit or something or whatever, I don't know. Right. But, you know, is we going to get to that level? You think? I hope so. I think one of the problems is that what we're seeing in the market is that there's no sort of universal understanding across the board right of what these ratings are. And so when you try to buy something, you'll go to, you know, Amazon that's climate pledge friendly, and then it's Walmart.

26:44 And that's the green seal etc, etc. It's really difficult to To have across the board. What what is the impact of this product? Not to mention these? Like, these lifecycle analysis companies are fantastic. But each company will spit out a different score or like, kind of result, depending on what assumptions they were using Etc. And so I am excited and hopeful that Finch will be this entity for there to be sort of one universal. Here is the score across the Forward and what this like, one source of Truth is. Yeah, I mean, you guys could be like the Angie's List of all these products. Yes.

27:29 Exactly. Right. Is that what you're saying? Is that what we're thinking? This is going with that? What we're really excited about is user-generated scores on the function and quality because we feel really strongly that, you know, it's great, if some things made out of bamboo. But if it feels like sandpaper, No One's Gonna want to buy it. Right? No one wants to blow their nose into a sand paper tissue, right? And so the function and quality is actually really important because the worst thing you can do from an environmental standpoint is by something and then not use it to its fullest extent. And so, the Angie's List in the Yelp part, is this community of people were excited about to give us their thoughts on Alex. Is right?

28:13 Right? You know it's like hey we rated at this. We said it's user environmental friendly. Oh, by the way, here's Consumer feedback on the product which feeds into your engine of other information. That maybe you're selling the Microsoft and others, because it'll help you know, rate these products even better. I guess, right? Yes exactly yeah, yeah. Well, you know, I just came to me, so Isabel a guard is she's the CEO and founder of last object and so, you know, her reusable swabs and reusable rounds and the last round, the last tissue, all those those are great products. Matter of fact, I don't know, but I'm I'm a, yes, I do. I've got one sitting up on my counter and they're not going to grab it, but yeah, yeah.

28:55 So yeah, the she's got a great product to line and she's adding other things to that, that concept to. So Yeah, I'll connect you guys with Isabel and shout out to Isabel, she's a great you know, environmental product Steward to. So I think you guys would hit it off just well swimmingly here. So I'd like this Amazon connection piece which is really good because it makes it like pretty simple and easy for consumers. Once they start getting familiar with the product and how it works and then you're scoring systems. And now when you're it'll only show up, On products that you have rated for, right? So, like if you didn't, if you pick the product, you weren't rating on Amazon.

29:41 It wouldn't pop up or something, it would not know. And we, you know, there are sort of different cases if it's a product within our category that we haven't rated something that we should rate, right? And so we haven't an option to say, like, please check this box and we'll let you know, we'll e-mail you when it's rated and that gives us the message of people are looking at. The man's looking at this one, you may want some reading on it, right? He's likely. And then in a different category, you know, if someone were to Google shop for nail polish or bicycles, it would just it either wouldn't show up or we would say this categories and rated yet, but I think you know, if we should have something that says, if you want this category rated let us know. You know, I really that's really cool because you get that feedback instantly essentially from the consumers and get you. In the right direction.

30:38 I think that's great. I just, I really like this idea. What's your sense of the industry? I mean, well, should I say the consumer part of the industry mean who's really interested in this application? I mean, are you look at this like across the board? Gee, you know, geographically, are we talking is our choice? A demographically is what I meant to say. Are we talking? This is the Ginn Z grub the gym. You know, the Millennials are, you know what? Yeah, the the Baby Boomers, the Gen X's, which groups really like, oh, I love this. This is why I want to use this to make buying decisions. We've had really interesting findings. So, gen Z is an obvious one, right? They care more about environment than almost any other issue. Facing this planet Lonnie's are short shortly behind them. The most surprising one for me has been Baby Boomers. It's a lot of people who are newly, grandparents. Both want to leave their kids and grandchildren in a better place than when they found this planet. And then also, I think they might have more time on their hands.

31:47 A lot of them are retired, they're researching more, they just are not working full-time. A lot of them and so that's been a really interesting demographic, but more than anything we're catching this, massive massive group of people. It doesn't really that's it's not a race gender age thing. It's more. You know, there are these hyper green people who are going to be vegan and not fly and do anything to reduce our carbon footprint. I've been seven percent of the population and then you have, let's say, 20 to 30 percent of the population, who either don't even believe in climate change or are never going to do something. Everybody else is really in that middle ground, who wants to do something about sustainability?

32:31 Feels guilty about climate change, but doesn't really know where to start. Again, doesn't have those more than seven minutes to research any of it online. And so that's a huge, you know, 60% of the population is gonna say it's about 70%. We really, when you think about it cuz you throw in the green, guys, and the other, you know, that 70% of the population is as care about it. Yes, exactly. And so you know what was interesting is when we did a lot of our research early on, we were getting numbers. It said not enough. People care about this because there aren't competitors and they're not researching this. But it turns out that they're just If people didn't know, they had the information at their hands. Right. Exactly. So you know, people would be apathetic and give up. It's kind of like this is a horrible analogy, but it's the only one that has worked so far.

33:17 So, if you think of a better one, let me know. But when Steve Jobs came out with the iPad, everybody was like, why would you ever need an iPad? You have computers and then you have your phone. Nobody needs anything in between? And I was one of those who was like, this is so dumb. And now, however, many years later, everybody has an iPad because people just I know that they needed it like, Steve Jobs and by no means am, I wanted it or they wanted it. But like, Steve Jobs was able to see this desire before anybody else saw it and those are Visionaries and strategic, you know, thinkers and you know that to just lead the, the, the industry and and he was one of those guys, right? Definitely, and so that's sort of what we are aiming towards.

33:59 I'm well, you're on The Cutting Edge. This is fantastic jobs but I think that's Sting like we built something. I think before we got the real feedback of, okay, I actually would use something like this. Did you know e-tank is the only environmental Rental Equipment company in the industry that offers a 100% certified clean guarantee and no additional cost. Well this gives customers the Peace of Mind knowing that container contents from the previous renter, isn't going to cross contaminate the contents of the current customer and potentially cause liability concerns. You know. E-tank also provides a one-of-a-kind complete maintenance program for all its rental items including liquid, tight, roll off containers fluid, transfer pump, And filtration system components to learn more about the types of containers, of pumps, e-tank supplies. Check out their website at www.esa.int. So, the next time you are faced with an environmentally challenging project, give e-tank a call to help solve your problem.

35:02 It's just that easy. What other applications could discipline I too? I mean, this is just consumer products, right? I mean, I mean this could scale the other things, right? Lizzie? Plenty of other things. I mean, plenty of other products, right? But yeah, I mean we've gotten interesting like inquiries from people who are Architects or who are contractors, who want to know what types of materials they should be using or food is that that's still a consumer product but Another one that's been of demand safety about PPE and safety. I mean, Cove is such a big issue. I mean, you got the in 1995 mask. You got gloves and Shields and you know, we I work in the environmental industry and we have to wear PPE for everything. Yeah, great.

35:56 If I could just say what's the best product? I mean, we know Tyvek isn't the best, right? Exactly. It's got pfos all over it. Uh-huh, that's a I mean I actually I Ed, your tooth are your floss user guide. Yeah. And I was like, okay I'm going to see if they got pfos listed on their place because it's on the, you know, some of that Glide stuff at everything. And sure enough, you guys did, I was like, Kudos. Yes. Your William to pfos or I mean really not into them but right, but you're into like identifying where it is and what chemical words? What it's in and stay away, right? Exactly like if it's thin, There is that like a, that's their dq'd.

36:39 They're not even, you know, they get the boys on the red and I'm actually, you know, admittedly, I'm a little bit late to the game. I am buying a whole new set of cooking like pots and pans. And, you know, nonstick and everything. And it's been really interesting to look into pans without pfos. Because that's such a nonstick angry is, I was at Costco recently. And one of the brands that were selling not steak and on the label, it said, 9p fast, you know, steak product, I was like, hmm, I'm okay. I mean, I still probably want to know a little more assist you know does it have more into it?

37:21 But yeah. Pfos is such a big issue in the industry right now and and because it hasn't been a regulated chemical by the EPA, it's flown under the radar for so long and it's had such an impact on society. I mean, you probably I don't know if you have it, if you've seen the dark Waters movie, I'm nervous. Oh, my gosh. You have to watch the dark movie or the dark Waters movie. It will change your life about consumer products and it'll probably a up your whole evaluation of products that potentially contain pfos, chemicals p foa's, and he focuses.

38:03 And just as an FYI and for you in the listeners, I interviewed the Attorney Robert ballot on this show, oh my goodness. Yes. And I highly recommend the episode. He is been a Warrior against pfos and Dupont and then the whole chemicals, you know, basically disposal of this material that's have an effect on communities and, I mean, birth rates, and disease, and Cancers, and all kinds of stuff. So, it's a real thing, it's a true story, which is the sad thing about the story. It's a great movie though. But I highly recommend the movie, and then also highly recommend the the interview. Because if you watch the video part, you'll see him in person and he's just amazing. It is probably our best, its highest, listen to episode. We have on that on the podcast, so highly recommend that one. But yeah, that's so great.

38:54 I'm glad you guys are doing that. I mean, because people need to know like what's in these products and what to stay away from. One thing I saw on your website I really like do you really kind of talked about your core values? Talk a little bit about your core values at fetch. Sure. I think, you know, one of them. So all of them together is basically every decision that we make, whether it's small or large really has to come back to is this reflected in our core values and one that sticks out. As one of the most important I think is science. Comes first, we will Never advocate for something, unless it's backed by actual data, which means that right now transparently there's a lot missing from our algorithm because either the science hasn't caught up yet, or there aren't enough. Peer-reviewed studies for us to really feel confident about the impact of whatever that attribute is. And so that is really important to us as a company. And I think we'll continue to to be the other one that I really like is around accessibility, which is Actually, I think are the environmental movement has been so based around. Well, it's actually.

40:08 I was environmental history major in college. And so this is so fascinating to me to think about how it's changed over the decades, and it started, with sort of, you know, just government intervention. And then it, and then it was, well, you're really only an environmentalist. If you're camping and you're exploring the outdoors, and visiting national parks, and then it was this sort of all the way to the other side. You're part of Gwyneth Paltrow's crowd and you're drinking. green smoothies of the metal straw that are extremely expensive and, you know, the Sierra club's, right Clifton and so I think that it's left a lot of people out and made people feel like they're not a part of that, whether they are people who, you know, still drive pickup trucks and don't associate with the environmental movement, whether they're of a by population, and they feel like it's sort of only for like white wealthier, women really more than anything and So we're trying to sort of debunk, the fact that you have to have a Tesla and use it. Yeah, I use a metal star on your juice, have some status in society, you can still make good decisions of environmental decisions.

41:15 I mean, it doesn't mean anything, right? It's like not, it doesn't mean that you have to pay more, right? Let some products. Yes, have a premium but some of those products last longer and other products that we recommend are exactly the same price as the leading brand or even less. So, we're sort of Constantly seeking to debunk that idea that this is just for wealthier populations. Well, I think, and I've seen this trend to, and I'm sure you can attest this. But, you know, most young consumers, nowadays, they are more concerned about the impact of the environment of these / of their purchases. And they're willing to pay a little more for something that, you know, might have a little bit better environmental, you know, impact that Then then that I'm product that, you know, maybe the normal you know, the go-to product in the industry. I mean they would rather pay a little more most like hey I'm doing really good and it helps them to be more fulfilled to write and they're willing to pay more so like, hey, this is great.

42:20 Let them do it. let him do it exactly and they're making good decisions and I think two older older you know, generations of people that you know maybe the Gen xers on the top end or some of the Baby Boomers you know a lot of them not saying everybody I don't want to generalize it but they're maybe not as environmentally minded as some of the Millennials and gen Z's and and I think that but there are there are huge population out there that are and you know they don't own Tesla's and things like that, but they do want to make a good decision and They're doing their part as best they can, and it takes a little bit like, it's a domino effect. If everyone does a little bit, it just makes it, you know, exactly.

43:01 And that's our, that's our other value as progress, not Perfection, right? We don't need everybody to be hyper green. We just need everybody to. We need a large population of people to just be more thoughtful about what they're buying and what their impact is and making a difference where they can, you know, if your, if you love cheeseburgers and you don't want to be vegan, that's okay. But then, maybe you can Make changes in other areas of your life. Yeah, right. I mean yeah, because I don't think that you know, people you don't want to shame somebody in a sense, right? So that like you're not green enough it because you're not, you're eating me and you're causing so much greenhouse gas from the meat treat making you feel bad? It's like geez.

43:42 I don't go out to eat because I'm feeling bad about myself, you know. That's, that's that kind of shaming. I think we need to kind of be careful of in a society, right? Yep, exactly. Yeah, no kidding. I love it. But now I think this is good. I love what you guys are doing well. I mean, tell us a little bit about where you see the industry going in the next five. To ten years around consumers wanting to know more about their carbon footprint and potential purchases. I think consumers will continue to ask the right questions and to be equipped with the knowledge that really makes sense. So the consumers are religious continuing, what they've always been doing.

44:24 I think I see the biggest change honestly and companies where, you know, two things are going to happen. Right now companies are scrambling to under to know really what the impact of their products actually are. And we're helping them with that. But in the future, they will not only know the impact better and be able to To speak the language, but also make better decisions around changing, you know, the formulations of their products or their packaging or what have you to make better products. So, you know, my dream long term is the finch won't need to exist, because any product that's created is created in the best way possible, Right? But I think yeah until then greenwashing will get worse before it gets better. I think we will continue to see words from Around that really don't mean anything.

45:13 What scary to me is this culture of sort of influencers where there's just a lot of waste. A lot of recommending brands that that maybe don't deserve that recognition and I think or hope that that will reach a breaking point. Where companies will start to be more real about what they're actually doing. Because consumers will be asking the right questions. Well, wouldn't it be nice if you had a better like life cycle? the analysis of the products and have a standardized, you know, a process where most companies have to, you know, break it down, you know, like, how, where does my raw materials come from and the carbon impact to that, and that was my manufacturing process and the carbon and pick did that and, and what's my packaging impact and you know, how what's my transportation to the consumer look like and then before, you know it, you know, based on all of these inputs, they could come up with a rating that kind of says, Hey per Here's what you call Star. Here's your impact.

46:14 It's such a good point. And I think Finch is sitting at this interesting space where we will never claim to be as detailed as detailed as a life cycle analysis, right? We're not spending nine months on the manufacturing floor of this product company of this company's product. But we are also better than just throwing around some words. Right? And so what we found is that we're sort of like, Good enough to get to what people really want to know. But we're not you know in the weeds and I think the way that lcas are done. Now as Geniuses they are is pretty Antiquated in terms of give us three hundred thousand dollars and nine months later.

46:56 We'll get you a report on this one. SKU not even like your whole company but like this one product that you're asking us to rate or not to rate but to to research. Yeah, and I think you're absolutely right. Where there has to be some sort of standardized simpler Universal way of Doing this so that everybody can be can have these consistency. You need, you need product consistency, or consumer buying consistency. They know, hey, the rating means this and this is it. That's guy would be great. Well, what advice would you have for the audience listening today? What advice would I mean? Definitely I would recommend not being afraid to make small decisions and don't feel guilty that you're not doing enough.

47:41 I think there's there's plenty that we can do as individuals but we don't have to do all of it at the same time. So just take small little little actions and talk about it a lot. I think the most powerful thing is to share with friends and family the, you know, last object. Object that you bought or how you're driving in a more sustainable way, Etc. And we don't talk about that enough because we're, I think collectively embarrassed that we're not doing enough. So I would say just normalize making these small changes. Yeah, the price of gas is making me want to ride my bicycle. More one. Perk of increase gas prices. Everybody in the Netherlands are like, no, do big deal. We ride bicycles all day long, you know? But that's great.

48:29 That's great. Well, hey Lizzy, thanks for coming on the show today. She's all the success for Fetch and your application. How do consumers right now? Get ahold of it? I mean, what's the best way to get it downloaded on your app or go down the I mean what? How do they get it? Yeah, I would go to choose Finch.com. So chosse choose Finch if I NCH.com and you can download it right from there and I would also recommend following us on Instagram at use Finch and signing up for a newsletter because each week you'll get really helpful tips and information. Excellent, that's great. I love it. And well, we're going to send this podcast out to the the cloud here pretty soon. And, and You guys can generate the episode and give us reviews and connect with Lizzie.

49:19 We're going to get it out next week and it'll be great to get the consumers out here that listen on ET Nation. More information about the products. They they purchased and work with you guys. That would be great. Thank you so much John. Yeah, we love having you. Come on and best of luck again with your application. Looks great. Thank you. Hi. I want to thank our guests to Lizzie horvitz for coming out of the show today. If you want to learn more about Finch in the services, they provide you can go to www.hsn.com that's www.sfactor.com.

50:00 If you want to follow Lizzie of you her social media sites. I put a link to a contact information on my website to listen to Future environmental transformation podcast. You can check us out on. Podcast Spotify, Google podcast and other podcast networks or better yet. Go to my website at www.ge.com K, great e.com. That's www.shawnacoronado.com. And you can also follow me on Instagram over the environmental transformation podcast, Facebook page. If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe and tell your friends. We'd also love to hear feedback from the ET Nation about this episode and any future podcast you'd like me to cover. Well, thanks for listening. Until next time, make a positive impact in someone's life today.