Joey Zwillinger (CEO, Allbirds): Should Companies Pay for Their Pollution?

Joey Zwillinger is the CEO and co-founder of Allbirds, a San Francisco-based material innovation company that specializes in making the world’s most comfortable shoes (and now, apparel!) More importantly, they’re a company on a mission to tackle what Joey calls the biggest problem of our lifetime: climate change. In this episode, Joey and Lance talk about sustainability, activism, and whether companies should pay for their pollution.

Key Highlights

[3:29] Allbirds was created to make better things in a better way.

[6:53] What does it mean to create "apparel with purpose"? For Joey and his team at Allbirds, it's about creating something that can help consumers tackle climate change.

[9:35] How do you maintain and protect your values as you grow into a billion-dollar company? It actually gets easier, in Joey's experience.

[12:03] T-shirts made out of crustaceans and shoes made from sugarcane? Where do you even begin to look if you want to be innovative with your materials?

[13:30] Why make the technology behind your innovation open-source? It's about collaborating and collective action if you truly want progress.

[16:09] How important is perfection to progress?

[18:46] Why is it so hard to define sustainability? If we can't define it, how are we to tackle it?

[23:02] As a company, the key to tackling social issues is to maintain authenticity.

[25:50] Enacting change means more than putting the onus on consumers. It means engaging with legislators to keep businesses accountable.