Saskia van Gendt - Head of Sustainability, Rothy's

An environmental scientist with over a decade of experience in sustainable manufacturing and design, Saskia is head of sustainability at Rothy’s, a global lifestyle brand best known for creating stylish, comfortable shoes from recycled plastic water bottles. At Rothy’s, Saskia develops strategies to minimize the environmental impact that Rothy’s supply chain has on the environment, advancing Rothy’s sustainable innovations in materials, production and fulfillment and more. Prior to joining Rothy’s, Saskia worked as senior director of sustainability at Method, a brand renowned for their clean, sustainable, and effective cleaning products. At Method, Saskia implemented sustainability initiatives on the ground for the European business and at Method’s LEED-Platinum soap factory in Chicago.

Saskia joins Sustainable Nation to discuss:

- Circularity and ocean plastic sourcing 

- How to communicate sustainability value of products

- Importance of industry collaboration

- Mission driven company culture and employee retainment 

- Advice and recommendations for sustainability leaders

Saskia's final five question responses:

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

I think that this would depend on where in their journey they are. For students, I would recommend taking some hard science classes and by hard science, I mean, kind of chemistry, and that will really serve you well in this emerging world of sustainability. I think that within corporations, within a lot of the emerging opportunities for sustainability, the science driven aspects of sustainability will be the most enduring. The reason for that is it's important to be grounded in facts in data. And that will allow sustainability kind of clear out a lot of the trendiness and the noise. So I think it's important to be kind of rooted in science. And then another thing that I found to be just true and I think will continue to be true in this landscape of sustainability careers is there are going to be so many different opportunities. Everything from local government, private companies, product companies, nonprofits. And for me, at least it was a process of elimination. I worked in some small nonprofits and learned a ton when I was there, but didn't necessarily feel that it was exactly the best fit for my talents and what was needed from that organization. So it was a kind of winnowing into what I really, really feel passionate and comfortable with today. So I would say like, don't assume that within sustainability, that you're going to land at the company, that's going to be your forever company. There is this kind of understanding that your own skills will kind of be refined and that each of the opportunities that you have, even if it's nonprofit going to government will still serve you in this larger landscape of sustainability.

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

I touched on it a bit before, but I think that I'm seeing a lot of momentum around this collision among these different, what were considered separate movements and the idea that we could just be looking at environmental justice and biodiversity and that those would be separate somehow. I think intersectionality and this awareness that all of these different pieces have to be happening at the same time and that they overlap and they're benefiting each other in a really clear way. We're starting to see a lot more awareness of that, even just like the awareness from COVID that the spread of disease is likely from some of the biodiversity loss and that climate change will continue to exacerbate that is all kind of coming out right now. So this will only serve us to all be aligned and to hopefully move quicker in the same direction.

What is one book you would recommend sustainability leaders read?

That's a tough one. And it's mostly because this is a hard book to read, but one of my favorite books came out pretty recently is an Uninhabitable Earth. Have you read it?

I have not read that one yet. I've heard the recommendation though. Haven't gotten to it yet.

It's by David Wallace Wells. And I say it's a hard one because it's about the effects of climate change that we can anticipate over the next few decades. And it's a very real view of what that will be like. It doesn't kind of sugarcoat it. And I think some people have critiqued it for not being a solutions oriented as it can be, but I think it's important for sustainability professionals to read it because it really grounds us in the challenge that we have ahead. And for me, it was motivating because knowing what this potential future could be, how can I double down on my efforts in order to mitigate it?

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

Well, a few kind of different organizations that I look to a lot of Project Drawdown is a great organization that has pretty creatively looked at all the different options that we have around mitigating climate change and quantify them both in, in terms of how, you know, how much gigatons they can pull out of greenhouse gases, but also what are the financial benefits of that? And it doesn't just look at the electricity grid it also looks at kind of these social mitigation that we can do so I love them as a resource and I think the model that they've created is really creative. I also have worked quite a bit with a think tank called Forum for the Future, and they are really futurists. They think about what these possible futures could be and how businesses can better be equipped to adapt and respond to those features. So I think that they work in the world of sustainability, but they do it in a really creative way and I just love working in partnering with them. And then, because I am a scientist, I read a lot of different journals. I read nature science journal of industrial ecology and think being rooted in the latest sciences is really important too.

And finally Saskia, where can our listeners go to learn more about you and the work being done at Rothy's?

Check out the Rothy's blog and our website. So we do quite a bit of new information, either product launches and talking about some of the materials we're using, I'll be writing on our blog and sharing some of our new initiatives around sustainability. So would encourage people to bookmark that and keep returning to that and sign up for our email list to get updates.

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.