Transcriber: Reina Hutton Reviewer: Tanya Cushman
Do you know where what you buy or wear or eat comes from?
Do you know whose hands what you've bought has passed through?
Do you think about it?
Do you care?
Now, I'm a consumer, just like everyone else.
I buy things; I wear things; I eat things.
But these are questions that have plagued me for a really long time.
Why?
Well, I work in very large and very complex organizations,
the ones that are generally held to task over everything they do or don't do.
And it's my role
to work across these organizations and their supply chains
to reduce their impact on the environment and the communities in which they operate.
So basically, I am a professional sustainability person.
The good news is that so many of us want to buy sustainable goods.
We want to know that the people who made our clothes were paid fairly
and that the environment wasn't harmed in producing the food we ate.
In fact, 66% of us even say we're willing to pay more for sustainable goods.
And, of course, you and I want to know
that what we've bought was sourced sustainably.
But how do we know this?
Well, we need to ask a whole bunch of very important and valid questions.
There's just one teeny-tiny problem.
The supply chains of everything we buy are really, really complex.
I know this because it's my job to collect the data
and look at it from all the way through the process.
It's incredibly important work.
But I've got to tell you, it's not easy.
Let me give you an example.
Okay, so here, this is a cake.
So for you, this might look like celebratory goodness.
For me, this is a source of potentially unsustainable palm oil.
Now, palm oil, as I'm sure many of you know,
has been linked to pretty horrible farming practices
and the destruction of the orangutan habitat -
were not produced sustainably.
So this cake is a minefield
when it comes to thinking about whether or not it's sustainable.
So let's start with the cake.
Is there oil in it? Is it palm oil?
If it's 8% by weight, how much oil got in the cake?
The cream layers - has that got palm oil in it as well
or did that fall below the reportable threshold?
The icing.
So our manufacturer, they get that from another manufacturer.
Oh, and they just changed their manufacturer.
So did the new manufacturer get the briefing from us on the palm oil?
For the palm oil that we know about, is it sustainable?
Is it certified? And to what method?
And do we have the certificates on file?
Are there chocolate sprinkles on the cake?
Are you kidding me?
Did the supplier include the data from the sprinkles in what they gave us?
I'm going to have to go and ring them.
And so it goes on.
In this example alone, just in whether or not the palm oil is sustainable,
there's about 30 data points.
Oh, you want to know, like, the conditions of the factory
or whether it's vegan, GMO-free, organic, free range?
Well, you're going to need a whole lot more data points.
All this from one really valid question.
So why is it that this is a question we should be asking?
Well, we have a reported 40.3 million people
in some form of modern slavery
in the supply chains of the products we buy.
It's estimated that 71% of them are women.
And we are in the midst of the sixth great extinction -
the Anthropocene, or age of humans -
because it's us that's having the impact.
This is not okay.
The data that I collect, it's a person, it's a habitat.
I've got to tell you, sometimes you can't see that through the spreadsheets.
But I, really, I can't lose sight of this,
because it's my analysis of this data
that enables a company to make a more sustainable decision.
But sometimes, companies don't have the visibility that they need,
so whether it's through limitations of information or ignorance
or sometimes deliberate avoidance.
And this lack of transparency is a huge problem for everyone.
In fact, in a study done last year, which was a global study,
54% of the manufacturers surveyed said they had no visibility
into their supply chain and sustainability related risks.
So we've got a bit of a problem.
A really big gap.
But what if there was a better way?
What if there was a way we could get faster and more accurate data
to help us solve these supply chain issues.
What if I could open up my cupboard and scan everything in there
and get a full suite of information about what was there?
From who made it, where it was from, the country of origin,
the greenhouse gas emissions along the supply chain,
the conditions of the factory.
What if technology could help us solve and crack the sustainability code?
Well, industry is actually beginning to deploy this type of technology.
So it enables people like me
to more readily act on the information I've received.
So blockchain, combined with mobile and smart tags,
has been used to trace tuna provided to restaurants in Japan.
Blockchain has also been used to verify fair paid workers for 1,000 coconuts.
What if we could actually train our supply chains to self-check?
Or to identify whether there was a gap or an anomaly in the sustainability data?
What if we could order continuously, rather than just at a point in time?
What if we could combine machine learning
as an application of artificial intelligence
and blockchain
to not just identify and trace
but to validate and assure that the right thing,
from raw material to finished product,
was done correctly all the way through the process?
I believe, and it's my firm belief,
that it's going to be this type of data
and accelerated process
through blockchain, digital technology, and signatures,
and artificial intelligence is going to be crucial
in enabling us to collect the data
to eradicate the issues I mentioned earlier.
And we shouldn't be shying away from this;
we should embrace it because sustainability affects us all.
And so we all need to fight.
It's your fight as consumers
to ask where what you've bought
has come from
and challenge the answers that you're given.
It's the corporate fight to work with like-minded suppliers
who are galvanized towards making these changes.
And it's my fight
to continue to pore through those wretched spreadsheets today
and analyzing and grinding the data
with a firm eye on the technology of tomorrow.
And this should give you a resounding sense of hope
that there are solutions,
that by challenging the status quo,
thinking creatively,
and changing our mindset about how things have always been done
that we can adopt new and exciting ways
to change the game
on how we conduct ourselves as corporates and consumers
across an increasingly smaller world.
Thank you.
[Applause]