Scott Paul - Director of Natural Resource Sustainability at Taylor Guitars

With more than 20 years experience, Scott Paul has held senior positions at many of the world's leading environmental organizations including Greenpeace. He is an experienced leader within the global sustainability community. His career has been devoted to forest protection and mitigating the effects of climate change. Paul has successfully impacted policy change on both local and international levels and has led some of the most innovative environmental campaigns of the two last decades.

Scott Paul joins Sustainable Nation to discuss:

•  Sustainability movement within the guitar industry
• Ebony project and vertical integration 
• Challenges of FSC certification in the music industry 
• Advice and recommendations for sustainability leaders

Scott's final five question responses: 

What is one piece of advice you would give other sustainability professionals that might help them in their careers?

It all depends on your company. What you're making, what resources you're using. Are you a retailer? Are you a manufacturer? You have to look at your footprint to understand to be able to answer this question, but there is a nonprofit organization. There are multiple nonprofit organizations that are working on issues that your company is involved with. And I'm not necessarily talking about former formal partnerships and eco labels necessarily. That's not a bad thing, but you know, get to know the advocacy community over coffee to understand the issues more profoundly that your company is stepping on. And then the other thing I would just say is be a mentor in terms of, you know, there's probably some 20 year old working for your company who came out of some environmental studies program and maybe they're not as well rounded and, you know, may say some foolish things sometimes, but their perspective is insanely important. And if you can't communicate with a 20 year old and understand, you know, convince them that what you're doing is the right thing and listen to them about what they think is important then you're not going to be able to communicate on behalf of your company, to the marketplace. If you're not able to connect with somebody of a different age, a different race, a different gender. So mentor somebody.

What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability?

I think transparency, the increased societal expectation that I have a right to know what took place to bring this product to market. And honestly, a lot of companies would like to deliver that information, but they've evolved over decades that they can't necessarily, but they need to start figuring it out. So I think the increased expectation of transparency is going to drive a lot of good stuff.

What one book you would recommend sustainability leaders read?

So I knew you were gonna ask this question and I'm going to cheat a little bit. There's two books that had a big influence on me I'm going to flag. And then I'll give the recommendation for me because I deal with wood. This guy, David Fairchild wrote an autobiography The World Was My Garden. He wrote it in 1930s, but this guy traveled the world finding plants on behalf of the U.S. Department of Agriculture to bring back to the U.S. and my understanding of natives and exotics, natural resources was turned upside down, reading that book. I also like it's another older book, I think from the eighties, the making of a conservative environmentalist. It was a Reagan appointee to the great lakes commission and Canada that made me think. But if you're doing policy there's a book by a guy named John McCormick Reclaiming Paradise: The Global Environmental Movement. It's a bit of a textbook, but it was written before the 1992 Earth Summit. So it's not almost anything you read is influenced by the Earth Summit and the UN institutions that were created as a result. This was an awesome book written before that, that if you're interested in policy and want to know why these institutions were formed and why people had positions that they took John McCormick's Reclaiming Paradise is pretty awesome.

What are some of your favorite resources or tools that really help you in your work?

Honestly, I'm just going to restate the other answer is, you know, the, the mentor find a 20 year old or in my case, I go home and talk to my kids who are not even 20 yet, but they are tuned in. I'm not taking everything they say as gospel, but I do need to understand what's driving them and where they're coming from. And my mind is constantly evolving when I'm getting inside the head of these impassioned recent graduates of environmental studies programs. It's like, if I can't communicate with them, if I can't use that resource, then I'm failing.

And finally where can our listeners go to learn more about you and the sustainability work being led at Taylor?

At the risk of plugging myself, the only place I can think of is my LinkedIn page. It has got a thing with all my blogs. I think it's called all the blogs that fit to print. You know, I bastardized the New York Times famous saying. That links all my blogs since I've been at Taylor and that pretty much covers the suite of initiatives that Taylor is looking into. Or just call me, people just call me. I'll always answer the phone.

About Sustridge

Sustridge is a sustainability consulting firm providing consulting in sustainability strategy development, sustainability reporting, GHG emissions calculating and management, zero waste planning and guidance in a TRUE Zero Waste, B Corp, LEED and Carbon Neutral certification.