Interview with Natalie Lowe, Co-Founder , The Sustainable Event Forum, Canada

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INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS:

• What can you do today to have the most significant impact on the environment?
• What is the primary concern for environmentalists, and why?
• What to consider if planning an event, owning a restaurant, running a business, or hosting a dinner party to reduce emissions
• How to take an issue you care about and bake it into your business
• How not to overwhelm stakeholders while promoting a social initiative
• How to influence executing more sustainable events
• How to create a ripple effect one small step at a time

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Interview with Natalie Lowe, Co-Founder , The Sustainable Event Forum; Canada

Natalie is an entrepreneur, owning her event company for 17 years. She worked in gaming, hotels and events in operations, sales, and marketing. She is a certified meeting manager through Meeting Professionals International and a Climate Reality Leader through the Climate Reality Project. She co-founded The Sustainable Event Forum with a mandate to "Educate, Inspire, Collaborate and Act" and hosts "Earth Day for Event People" every April. Her online school, "Sustainable Events for Busy People," has had over 300 students complete the course since 2019. She and Candice Tulsieram, DES also have a podcast, Planners for the Planet. Natalie is often featured in industry publications as a thought leader on sustainable events and has received numerous awards and recognition for her work on sustainable events. Known for her creativity, leadership skills, and love of learning, Natalie helps businesses and people create low-carbon events with evidence-based, effective, and practical solutions. Natalie is the recipient of many awards including 2021 Meetings Net Changemaker of the Year, 2021 Joy Fox Award for Excellence in Innovation, 2020 CanSPEP Presidents' Award, 2019 BizBash 250 Most Influential Meeting Professionals in Canada.

United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal(s) addressed:
#3. Good Health and Well-being, #6. Clean Water and Sanitation, #7. Affordable and Clean Energy, #9. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure, #11. Sustainable Cities and Communities, #13. Climate Action

Social impact:
The Sustainable Events Forum is all about the environment. Since 2018 they have spoken to thousands of people, created an annual event, Earth Day for Event People, and developed tools and resources for event planners to reduce their carbon emissions. We help people reduce the carbon emissions which cause global warming and the climate crisis.

Website: http://www.tsef.ca

Resources:  https://tsef.ca/resources

Emissions calculator: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10ki2NXLkZIgCUFw4NGOCIPZ-j_MApjVp/edit#gid=1995263545

Project Drawdown: https://drawdown.org/

Interview with Natalie Lowe, Co-Founder, The Sustainable Event Forum; Canada

Note: This interview is transcribed using AI software, which means, the transcription is not perfect. Watch the video or listen to the podcast to hear our guest’s wisdom in her own words. If you want to see more interviews like this, please comment below!

[00:00:00] YouMeWe: Welcome to the YouMeWe we amplified podcast interviews with women leading social impact, hosted by Suzanne F Stevens, international speaker, author, and multi-award-winning social entrepreneur and founder of the YouMeWe we social impact. Enjoy the wisdom that will be a compass on how to make your contribution count for you, your organization and your community.

[00:00:22] Suzanne F. Stevens: Welcome to you. Me, we amplified podcast. I’m Suzanne F. Stevens’ your host. And welcome to those who are joining us live or watching the recording. This episode is sponsored by the book, make your contribution count for you, me, we. The book is a compass to live your most meaningful life while having a social, economic, and environmental impact, and it’s authored by me.

If you’re interested, visit store dot YouMeWe .ca and I’m so excited to welcome our guest today. Natalie Lowe, founder of Celebrate Niagara and co-founder of the Sustainable Event Forum. Planners for the Planet Podcast and host of earth day for advent people. And it’s coming again this April haaaa. Natalie is a certified Meeting manager through Meeting Professionals International and a climate reality leader through the Climate Reality Project.

Natalie’s often featured in industry publications as a thought leader on sustainable events and has received numerous awards and recognition for her work on sustainable events. Natalie helps businesses and people create low carbon events, with evidence-based, oh, that is so refreshing, and practical solutions coming into you all the way from St. Catherine’s Ontario, Canada. Welcome, Natalie.

[00:01:47] Natalie Lowe: Thank you. Pleasure to be here, Suzanne. Thank you.

[00:01:50] Suzanne F. Stevens: It’s so nice to connect again. Because I enjoyed meeting you for the first time when I was moderating a panel on sustainability, you were one of the panelists and added a huge amount of value to that audience.

So, it’s fabulous now to interview you and dive even deeper into your impact.

[00:02:09] Natalie Lowe: Thank you.

[00:02:10] Suzanne F. Stevens: So, let’s dive right in. Now being a media planner. What was the catalyst for you to broaden your scope and be an advocate for producing events that are sustainable.?

[00:02:22] Natalie Lowe: I’m originally from Alberta. I was born and raised in a small town Slave Lake Alberta, and in 2011, that small town sitting on the edge of a lake actually burnt to the ground.

And it was 30 degrees in May in that small Northern town. And it was obviously one of the first climate disasters. And I came away from that a two-fold one, it sparked in me activism. There were some other issues outside of environmental issues that needed to be addressed, but once the Ash sort of settled on that it became clear to me that I was a part of the problem and not part of the solution.

Like so many of our listeners, I would prefer to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. And so that really spurred me to find out more about how the things that I was doing every day in my job or in my business were affecting the planet. And from there, the journey took off.

I’d like to say that I started immediately in 2012, but the truth was, it took me a while to, to wrap my head around how to do this. And here we are.

[00:03:35] Suzanne F. Stevens: And I love what you’re saying is most of the listeners and people want to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. And yet, so few take the steps to be part of the solution.

So I want to focus on that. Because it did take you some time. Tell us about why it took you time. And I know you started with that process, but I want to get a little deeper into that. And then what steps did you take to start to move your business and educate others on heightening their environmental concerns?

[00:04:06] Natalie Lowe: Part of the problem was that I couldn’t find anybody who could relate to my business activities. So, the first thing I did was reached out to every environmental organization that I’d ever donated to, or paid attention to asking them how I could make my everyday activities a little bit less harmful to the planet.

I, I love to say anybody got back to me. But despite writing checks, nobody ever responded to me. I couldn’t even get a call back. And there’s a famous physicist Richard Fineman, and he said the best way to learn something is to teach it. And so I created a course on sustainable events.

And through creating that course, I taught myself and then pushed it out to the wider industry to learn. And according to the climate narrative initiative, we have 25% of Canadians are engaged in activities on the environment. 45% are what we call the middling middle, who are interested, but unaware of what steps to take. And 30% are simply not in a place to take action or not in a mind space to take action.

And I found myself in that 45%. So I took Fineman’s advice and I started teaching and I had to learn in order to teach it. That’s really what got me into it. And I’ve found for every industry, nobody can go into a dentist’s office, outside of dentistry and tell them how to become more sustainable.

It really needs to be pushed through. And that’s certainly what I found for events. People just didn’t know how to make events or if they were, I felt that they weren’t following the science or, at least to being as practical as I felt as a businessperson, we needed to be.

[00:06:00] Suzanne F. Stevens: Yeah, you’ve said a lot there. I just want to pluck a couple of things.

One, if you have donors, when they’re asking for help pay attention it’s important. The other piece is that if you want to do something, learn how to teach it. And I, subscribed to that methodology myself, particularly when it comes to social impact. So I appreciate that, comment.

And that the other key piece that I want to highlight is that. Not evidence-based so people are trying to do things and you call it evidence-based which, is obviously a common term. And I use consciousness have you done the due diligence to really assess if this is the way forward? So let’s plug into that. What, sort of consciousness or evidence-based that you do and you prescribe to people. How do you ensure everything that you prescribe is evidence-based?

[00:07:00] Natalie Lowe: My tagline’s not as fancy as yours. It’s a little bit more homegrown and we talk about right action, not nice action. And it uses a lot of analogies to underline that. And it started when I dug into things at the time that I started, everybody was having a real moment over plastic straws.

But when you look at the actual impact of plastic straws on the environment, it’s far less than things like food waste. And one of the things that I keep telling people is that real advocacy work is far less Instagram and way more spreadsheets. And that’s certainly the fact for environmental activism. As a business person, I live in breathe my numbers. As a sustainability person and environmental advocate that’s absolutely the same. there’s the old adage “you can’t manage it, if you don’t measure it.” Now, measuring isn’t always fun. Nobody gets overjoyed sitting down to do their accounting, but you have to measure what you’re doing and look at the facts.

I rely on the, sort of cumulative intelligence of draw down.org to look at what is having an impact on our environment and what isn’t. And we follow their guidance. It’s just about 300 scientists who sit in a room every so often and they say, this is what is most impactful.

And if you can get 300 scientists to agree on something like that, then I think it’s worth listening to.

[00:08:33] Suzanne F. Stevens: Yeah. And we’re going to dive a little bit more into the measurement piece. Cause I think that would benefit everybody that is listening to this interview.

In your intro, you are the co-founders, as I mentioned, of the Sustainable Event Form, Planners for the Planet Podcast and host of Earth Day for the event people; how receptive is the meeting industry to adapt to the recommendations that you’ve been learning and sharing over the course of the last, how many years?

[00:09:02] Natalie Lowe: It’s been about four years since we really been active.

I wouldn’t say that they are exceptionally interested. Planners as a group are people people. And so we’ve had to learn over time that two things were happening. One, we had to draw it back to how does it impact you and the people around you? And the other thing that we really had to come back to is that people were getting overwhelmed.

There’s so much information out there. And so it goes back to that, action, not nice action. We were expending a lot of energy on things or trying to give them too much information. Really we needed to pull back and focus on a few key actions that people could take. And so if you’re only going to do one thing, it needs to be high-impact.

[00:09:55] Suzanne F. Stevens: So, let’s talk about that one thing. So if, or give us a couple of examples of things that, that people should be considering in their events so that they are making them more sustainable?

[00:10:11] Natalie Lowe: You should certainly be looking at your protein sources. Beef by virtue of how cows digest are extremely high emitters of methane, one of the largest in the world.

And so something that you can do immediately is to reduce your beef consumption. The interesting thing that we found is meatless, Mondays have been around for a long time, but we all got this idea that we had to go from a steak to tofu, but that’s not the case at all. You can simply go from steak to lamb or pork or chicken or fish.

And usually about this time, I make a crack about how the cows are paying me to tell you to eat more chicken. But the reality is, simply drawing back on our beef consumption now as an Alberta girl that was hard for me. There are sustainable options out there, they’re just not always advertised or put forward to us.

So absolutely protein source is one. The other one is certainly food waste. From. Second Harvest is a charity here in Canada that looks at food waste as well as food insecurity. 58% of our food in Canada goes into the garbage. And food that goes into the garbage creates methane, which we know from the cows is really, bad for the environment.

It’s 36 times the warming capacity of carbon. So we talk a lot about carbon but methane is really the primary concern for environmentalists right now. So those are two simple things that you can do to peel back on your food waste. If you do have food waste, make sure that it’s going into the compost, not into the garbage, and particularly for us as event planners’ companies have to pay to have that compost processed.

Whereas for us the municipality comes and takes it away. So, it’s certainly something that we ask planners to ask about in their RFP and to encourage. And the trend that we’re seeing in events overall is that we’re having about a 40% no-show rate. So you order dinner for a hundred people and 60 show up.

And so given that we’re having those trends, we need to put processes into a place where people are actually showing up and eating that food, or we’re peeling back on our guarantees and ensuring that it’s not being wasted.

[00:12:39] Suzanne F. Stevens: Yeah. And I think to add to what you’re saying is there’s also the social impact of that because then the food can be given in a timely fashion to people that can actually eat it and need it.

But I did not know that methane was produced at a higher rate in the garbage. I did not know that. So, thank you for that.

You consult with meeting planners and that’s where you’ve made your business and that has been successful. People that provide weddings, people that are doing home events or anything could benefit from this. So thank you for sharing that.

Now, something else that you, mentioned that I thought is really important is one of the sorts of barriers to gaining buy-in from planners and, I think to society in general is too much information, not knowing what to do. All of us advocates, right? Come on, just do something. Because we put out this assortment of ideas for them. So what other barriers besides that, are you finding in the meetings industry that people are not necessarily completely buying into all the recommendations?

[00:13:58] Natalie Lowe: I would say that the planner is completely bought into the recommendations, but the immediate objection that they come up with is my client won’t go for it. And so, I call it the unicorn client. And so my response to them finds me the client that you’ve proposed these low carbon or low GHD emission options to that says, no, I’d like to meet them.

I’d like to even just hear about them. And what we find is it’s our own bias that we’re scared to ask, or even in some cases tell our clients. And I’ll use plastic water bottles as an example. There are many options, primarily aluminum cans are the best if you need portable water, safer golf, or a trip or, transportation.

And we’re defaulting to what we think the client wants. Instead of simply telling the client, you need hydration. Here are our solutions for hydration. And so it’s, it follows a similar to, any sales or any good sales questioning, is that find out what they actually need and then provide them with options that are effective.

What we found is that planners aren’t asking, and suppliers aren’t offering. And so there you have the conundrum. And so, one of our main goals at TSEF is to simply start the conversation.

[00:15:19] Suzanne F. Stevens: Yeah. As someone who’s trained sales for 20 years, you’re dead on. It’s our own blocks.

[00:15:25] Natalie Lowe: Yeah.

[00:15:25] Suzanne F. Stevens: Yeah. And in getting that buy-in that to something bigger than themselves to why they should be doing this and the critical issue. I love that. So, kudos. Is there a certification process that you have for event planners or organizers that go through your training?

[00:15:46] Natalie Lowe: We have an online course that people can take. It’s very short. It’s an hour-long because we know one of the issues that planners have is we’re considered one of the most stressed occupations in the world, and we’re right up there with military and police officers.

And, when you think about that, it seems a little crazy, but the reality is its time stress. We have so many things flying at us. So, we made the course super short. It is not comprehensive. You won’t come away with a degree in environmental science, but it will start you on the right path and it will teach you how to use effective science to make your decisions.

And it will give you the comfort of saying, yeah, we’re not going to worry about the plastic straws. We’re going to worry about other things that are higher priority. So, we offer that. As well, we do a lot of speaking and a lot of active engagement with planner associations. I’m on the fence.

There’s certainly a ton of certification. And as planners, we sometimes chase that certification. But I think as long as you are dedicated to learning, there are so many sources of information. So, if you’re so inclined to take the certification, you can be ISO certified. You can take them through all of our industry associations, MPI. NPI, I believe PCNA insider working.

Certainly, the events industry council offers some courses on it. But I would encourage people simply to start educating themselves. In the realm of problems confronting us. There is no diversity and inclusion problem on a dead planet. There is no economic problem on a dead planet.

And so we really have to prioritize the fact that we’ve been told that we have eight years to reduce our consumption by over 50%. We really need people to get started. So, if you want it on the hurry up, as I say, then certainly the one-hour courses is a starting point for you to start amending your behaviours and your business activities.

[00:17:50] Suzanne F. Stevens: I love that you said that on a dead planet, there are all the other issues no longer exist. As you knew, I focused on social impact. To me, climate does impact society. As matter of fact, in outside our luxury of Canadian living for many of us and not even necessarily all of us. The Indigenous people are hugely affected in Northern communities by climate change.

Not to mention, in developing countries are hugely affected by that. So, I do see them as directly impacting. So, I’m glad you highlighted that. Because I think it’s really important because no matter what you care about, the environment will affect that.

[00:18:34] Natalie Lowe: Yeah, absolutely. And not just from a strict environment perspective starting about 10 years ago, the military brains of the world get together for a security conference once a year in Halifax. They identified 10 years ago that climate change would be the greatest security threat to the planet.

And you think about that, right? We’ve got droughts, we’ve got floods, we’ve got forest fires. Not just in Canada, but around the world. We have whole island nations that are under threat. Just recently we’ve had some really big disasters and certainly, those weather disasters are starting to show us that because of the conflict in Ukraine, they probably will not, or will not be able to plant a crop.

Twenty-five percent of the world’s wheat comes from Ukraine and the parts of Russia that are near that. So, we’re looking at food shortages because of conflict, which goes back to fossil fuel exploration, right? Russia obviously is very heavily invested and not to get too political, but that’s the world that we’re living in right now.

And we need to be eyes wide open to, the threats that are coming at us.

[00:19:50] Suzanne F. Stevens: And politics is always welcome on this show. No problem. Just don’t let me start.

So last year I had the honor of speaking at CanSPEP, The Society of Professional Event Planners and sharing insight on how to have a social impact. But at that event, one of their objectives, which no doubt you have a lot to do with, was to have zero emissions. Can you share what the process was to assess the emissions and here comes the measurement, and that event.

And, I want our audience to start thinking about how you can employ that in your businesses to get zero missions, be it for events or how you operate your business.

[00:20:38] Natalie Lowe: Yes, indeed. And sure chaired that, and I approached Betty Ann and asked her now we went net zero, which basically means we reduced our emissions as much as possible.

And then we offset what we couldn’t reduce it. It’s, almost impossible right now in Canada to have a completely net-zero. But with the use of offsets, you can achieve that goal. What we did first was, we did education and so I went on committee calls and I educated the committee.

We came up with some terms of reference and what that involved was allowing them to understand what the leavers were that they could push and pull in order to reduce their emissions. So, things like there was no beef served. We actually had a completely vegan menu and Sue Mercer who oversaw the food and beverage side. She was absolutely one of my star students I’m on that journey.

She did a vegan lunch that was Indian food and surprising to all of us. We were all holding our breath, waiting for the complaints. It was one of the highest-rated meal periods. People really enjoyed that. And so it opened our eyes. One of the surprising things that came is that Canada has about an 80 to 83% clean energy grid.

So while we focused a lot on energy consumption and tracked our A/V and you saw in the audiovisual setup, it was quite extensive. But in fact, the scarves that we were given at the gala had four times the emission impact that the energy use for the A/V for all five days did. And so when you look at that, it tells you, where do we need to concentrate?

You need to concentrate on materials. And we need to concentrate on food.  How we track that was we had each individual area, so if you were in charge of the gala, you were overseeing reducing based on evidence and the education that we were given. And then it was my job to go back through and do all of the calculations.

And we use a free template that’s available, UNFCC offers a template for businesses to use. It’s free, as long as you don’t sell the services. And you plug it in and it tells you. One of the interesting things that we found, although very few people flew to the conference out of the 116 people there only 13 people flew, but it was still our single highest source of emissions.

 We all asked everyone to carpool to take public transportation, but we travelled collectively as a group 21,000 kilometres. And it will always be a challenge in Canada because we are a big nation with a sparse population that distance travelled. So 21,000 kilometres to put that into perspective is enough to travel back and forth across Canada three times.

So you could go there back and back again. So, we were surprised at some of the items that came through. And I was shocked at how low the audio-visual emissions were. In fact, the emission for hotel stays for the AAV techs was higher than their energy. So, when you’re thinking about politics and you look at energy generation and how we generate our energy, I know the rumor is that Ontario is going to go back to some fossil fuels.

That’s really where we need to focus our advocacy on and, pull back from.

[00:24:14] Suzanne F. Stevens: I’m thinking, so you being very passionate about this and an advocate for it, and also create a business around it. You’re motivated. And a lot of organizations that may have a, social impact or don’t have an impact, or really even thought about it, maybe listening to you and saying, oh my goodness, I wouldn’t know where to start.

You gave us a link and I’m hoping I’ll grab that link from you on how to, measure it, but do they tell you also where to measure it?

[00:24:53] Natalie Lowe: Yeah. It’s basically a checklist, right? You, go through and by just reading it’s a simple spreadsheet. I would say it’s a, not so simple spreadsheet, but through their links you, start to realize where your higher impacts are.

It goes back again to just like your financial viability. You look at it and see. Now I think you’re going to ask me about, does this make business sense?

Sure. Why don’t you answer that?

I have three sort of separate points to make on that. And first one is going sustainable doesn’t cost you more. If anything, it should save you. And I’ll give you a simple example that restaurants and hotels can look at. Right now, food revenue that comes into the facility, 5% flows to the bottom line is profit, but 7% goes to food waste. So if you could move that 7% to that 5%, you’re increasing your profitability as a business.

So certainly, if you have an opportunity to reduce waste in your business they always say a dollar saved is worth two earned, right? Because you’re not taxed on those savings. I would also point out some very successful companies. Schneider Electric is actually considered one of them the most sustainable company in the world.

And they’ve had a very successful business model, but one that probably a lot of people don’t know about. More popular is the billion-dollar company that is panicking. And they have absolutely stuck to their values on the environment and it has been nothing but successful for them. And you ask, how can that be if it’s costing them more, which in Patagonia’s case, they do increase their costs by, by making the choices that they do.

And I’ll go back to something that the climate narrative initiative discovered, and that is the 25 45 30. So, 25% of Canadians are very invested in the environment. 45% are gravely concerned and want to take action. That’s 70% of the population. So simply by putting yourself in a position to help that 70% take action.

I figure if you can do something that will appeal to 70% of your audience it’s certainly a salable opportunity.

[00:27:14] Suzanne F. Stevens: This goes back to what you said at the beginning. As people want to have an impact. And I’m betting my entire career on that, but they don’t know how to do it, which is why this, podcast actually exists to help people think, Hey, I may not care about children or women in Africa, but I may not, but I may not care about whoever social initiatives helping, but I may care about the environment. But it’s finding out what you care about and what you can commit to being an advocate, which is why I’m so happy we’re interviewing you because it brings another perspective to it.

Something I did love that I think is so powerful. How this happened, I’m not sure, but at that CanSPEP event, I recall the company. And if you remember the name of the company, please say it.

[00:28:10] Natalie Lowe: There were two, but the primary one in the room that you were in was AB Canada.

[00:28:14] Suzanne F. Stevens: Yes. Okay.

AV Canada at that event committed to net zero emissions moving forward for their events. For me, that was huge.

That was a huge spillover of your advocacy, whether you directly or indirectly, it doesn’t really matter. But your advocacy by doing that is spilling over to other organizations. Have you seen that happen? Because CANSPEP, particularly from my perspective has been very proactive and you have been very proactive to zero emissions.

Has that spilled over to your suppliers?

[00:28:56] Natalie Lowe: Big shout out to Robert Thompson at AV Canada TSEF wouldn’t exist if he hadn’t, I guess challenged it. Put it out that somebody needs to do an environmental event. And I thought, I guess I should do it and, dragged Candice, who is my partner in TSEF along with it.

I do The Climate Action Plan for AV Canada and work with their owners. They were a sponsor of TSEF (The Sustainable Event Forum) and they came through. Certainly, it’s a great opportunity for them to market to that 70%. And yet after CANSPEP the conference, we had a lot of planners come out to us, in particular, to ask for the data that we provided and the RFP tools that we provided.

But we’re certainly seeing that we’re starting to have those conversations. I had a conversation earlier this morning with Memorial University in Newfoundland. And it came through from Paul at a Destination St. John’s. And talking to these people and talking to them about how the university can make their events net zero.

So, we’re starting to see that what we want to do at TSEF is not. Be the guru, but create a series of gurus, right? If we can get a lot more people doing what we’re doing talking to people, advocating, encouraging others, there is the law of diminishing returns is that if we can get someone who is taking no climate action to take a small step, the return on that action is far greater than you or I going zero waste tomorrow.

So we really need those numbers. And so one of the things that we really want to see is not big promises, but small actions, right? Put your money where your mouth is. Take action. So don’t talk about it. Just go and do it.

We need systemic change. The 50, 50, 50. Numbers that are being thrown around, say that we have a 50% chance of surviving the coming climate emergency or the climate emergencies here, but the coming climate changes, we have a 50% chance of surviving if we reduce emissions by 50% by 2030, which is in eight years and a further 50% by 2050.

And so that’s an 82% reduction in our current emissions, which means drastic changes. And there are two ways that we’re going to make those, changes either we’re going to exert discipline now, and make as many changes as we possibly can as soon as possible. Or we are going to have a very painful transition.

And right now it’s looking more and more like a painful transition. If we don’t have the discipline to change our ways.

Suzanne F. Stevens: Thank you for that. I am going to dive right into the sustainable development goals, but we’re first going to have a little announcement from our sponsor.

[00:32:01] YouMeWe: This episode is sponsored by Make Your Contribution Count for you, me, we. A book was written by Suzanne F Stevens. It’s time to act. Let this book be your compass to having a sustainable social impact while living your most meaningful life. Visit Yumi wi.ca/book. For more information. Thanks for listening now, back to the.

[00:32:24] Suzanne F. Stevens: Every time I hear that voice. I get shivers. My husband.

[00:32:30] Natalie Lowe: He’s got a great voice.

[00:32:32] Suzanne F. Stevens: And a great voice right? Now you know why I married him.

So, let’s dive into The Sustainable Event Forum and, how it addresses many sustainable development goals. And I just want to list those now, I’m going to ask you a very tough question.

So, I’m going to prep you for it. The question is going to be, what do you see as the most pressing issue out of all of these sustainable development goals that you address? So, you address number three, which is good health and wellbeing, clean water and sanitation, and number seven, affordable and clean energy.

Number nine, industry innovation and infrastructure, number 11, sustainable cities and communities, and 13 of course, climate action. Okay. Which of those do you think is the most pressing now? And the next question to that is whatever that is. What is one thing that we can do as an individual to impact it?

[00:33:33] Natalie Lowe: Absolutely. It’s climate action. Without a doubt the, rest fall into line. But there that’s your, primary goal is to reduce the effects of emissions on the climate.

What’s one action? I’m known in some circles as the teepee queen. So I would say start buying recycled toilet paper.

It sounds so silly, but 27,000 trees every single day are cut down in Canada to make premium toilet paper. And we talk about all of these offsets and we’re planting trees, but the reality is cutting down a 20-year-old. That absorbs carbon at a high rate and replacing it with a little tiny sapling is, like firing your CFO and hiring someone that has a high school accounting course behind them.

The numbers don’t match up. Even if we are planting trees, we can’t catch up. So we need to stop solving the problems that we’re creating. And a big problem that we’re creating right now is the destruction of the Canadian boreal forest. It is now considered one of the top three most threatened forests.

[00:34:53] Suzanne F. Stevens: All I can think about is all the traveling I’ve done to developing countries and their toilet paper is not great. And all I craved was toilet paper at home and, now you’re reminding me that we need to go back. So thank you.

[00:35:14] Natalie Lowe: And I want to I want to be clear on that is that we use recycled toilet paper herein, in the home. I actually give it away at our conferences. So, you wouldn’t have been in the first planner day, but I gave everyone a roll of recycled toilet paper. It’s soft. It’s lovely. It’s not toilet paper that’s been recycled it’s paper from your office that has been turned into toilet paper. I would challenge anyone to know the difference between recycled and non-recycled. I’ve heard some not great things about bamboo toilet paper. I’ve heard some good things about bamboo toilet paper.

The interesting thing is our forests are actually the ones being put at risk, but we don’t make it. You actually have to buy recycled toilet paper from the United States, but I order it off Amazon. I know it’s not the most environmentally friendly, but we order it in bulk and you would never know the difference.

I could hand you two and you can’t tell the difference.

[00:36:12] Suzanne F. Stevens: So there seems to be an opportunity there is getting our stores to actually carry recycled paper. So that to me is something we easily can do. Easily can ask for. And create. So, I like that. That’s fabulous. Now I suspect collaboration plays such a vital role in executing events.

I suspect, I also do them, so I know, it’s key. So, what due diligence do you do before partnering with suppliers in hopes that they fall in line with the environmental mandates that you have?

[00:36:50] Natalie Lowe: Our position on that is a little bit different than a strict planner. Because what we hope to do it again, is take people that are doing nothing and move them towards some action.

So, we try not to weed out suppliers who aren’t doing anything. We try to bring them on board and, pull them along really is, what we’re trying to do. But for the typical person, whether a businessperson or a dedicated event planner we asked the RFP questions, they’re a free download on our website.

And I’ll give you that links. We share it freely. We often update that, and it’s gone through sustainability as experts as, well as professional meeting planners. So, you ask the questions, you encourage them and not everybody’s going to feel comfortable doing this, but certainly, I’m at that point where now I have to challenge them on some of their claims.

It’s great that you have bees on your roof. How exactly is that helping the environment? It’s great that you don’t serve plastic straws, but you’re still putting all of your food scraps into the garbage. So, talk to me about that. And what we find is that it’s not through malice, that companies are doing these missteps it’s because they don’t know.

And so we try to give them resources and help educate them. So when we collaborate, we try to look at it really from a partnership perspective, I’m going to learn from you. You’re going to learn from me. We’ll fumble forward together. And there’s so much climate shame in the world.  Shame is not a useful emotion. I so get over the fear that you’re not doing enough and just take the next step. We don’t have the time. We do not have the luxury of time for people to sit in shame over what they’re not doing. We just need them to act.

[00:38:44] Suzanne F. Stevens: Yeah. I, love that strategy because through that process, you’re actually educating them, and they may become more aware and then their actions will change for the future.

Financially, do you benefit from advocacy for the environment?

[00:39:03] Natalie Lowe: Not always. No.

But I don’t benefit from eating healthy financially either, but my body sure does. So the question is what’s your priority living on the planet or having a big bank account when the planet goes, bye-bye. Make your choice.

[00:39:24] Suzanne F. Stevens: When you give courses though, do people not pay for those?

[00:39:28] Natalie Lowe: The course that we offer, the one-hour course is $30.

It pays for the bare upkeep. I still make the bulk of my money doing events and hopefully propagating sustainable events through those events. But for us, and again, we’re in a bit of a different position. This is my contribution to all of you, right? This isn’t, this is not even my contribution to you.

This is my contribution to your children, your grandchildren, your nieces, and your nephews. The people planet profit model is really what we look at. If I wanted to be a millionaire or billionaire, I’d have probably gone into financial services not doing event planning. If you’re looking at this as a way to commoditize a service that’s fine.

There are lots of people that do that. And certainly, people who will pay more for it. On the other hand, if you don’t do it, there’s there are no successful businesses on that dead planet. So, I see it as something that we need to invest in now, in order to have longevity in our businesses.

It’s one of the issues when people make healthy choices, as well as some business choices, is that you won’t have an immediate there’s no the weather’s better tomorrow because you used recycled toilet paper today. This is a long term.

[00:40:58] Suzanne F. Stevens: Yeah. And the reason I ask you that is, I don’t think there’s anything wrong profiting on doing good, It’s okay. And often people think they have to be separate and they don’t matter of fact, it makes it sustainable. But you’re, baking your philosophies into the business that makes you money.

[00:41:15] Natalie Lowe: Yes. And I go back to Patagonia and that was one of the reasons why I used it as an example, very successful financially, but it’s baked into their ethos as a company.

And you’ll see more and more of that. Interestingly enough, the SCC, this week put out a climate disclosure policy. So, if that hasn’t caught your news. So publicly traded companies now have to report on their emissions and their climate action. And so that affects your stock prices.

Absolutely being baked in. The financial community is actually way ahead of the event community. Globe series actually concentrates on that, and they’ve got some, great stuff if you’ve ever attended any of their conferences.

[00:41:59] Suzanne F. Stevens: How has your sustainable message been impacted during the pandemic. Do you find people are more receptive or what are your thoughts??

[00:42:09] Natalie Lowe: Yeah, we’ve had fantastic growth. First of all, hybrid and virtual events are fantastic for the environment. A virtual event has about a 10th the impact that a live event does. Now, that’s not to say that live events should go away or that they will go away. We have a need as humans to connect in person.

 We now have another option, so I don’t have to drive into Toronto for that meeting. I can do it on a virtual platform. So, I can use live events as, needed, but I’ve now got that other options that is much, much easier on the environment and not it’s interesting pharmaceutical meeting planners are telling us that doctors are so busy they don’t want to go back to live events. Because of the travel time and the time away from the office when they can log on and get the education and the interaction that they need on a virtual platform. So, for us, we found it has been great. The other thing that it’s given me is that now when people say but, I’m invested in fossil fuels, it’s been my livelihood for 30 years.

I can say I was invested in live events. It was my livelihood for 30 years. Adapt or die. It came from Andy Grove, who is the CEO of Intel talking about the tech industry. And he said in the tech industry, you adapt or die. And that’s what we’re experiencing across industries right now.

[00:43:41] Suzanne F. Stevens: It will be interesting to see what happens in the meeting space because you said it so diplomatically and politically, correct. Is yes, it is saving the environment, but at the same time, human connection, we need it. And we know mental health issues have arisen because there is less human connection.

We do need it and there are even conversations, which we won’t get too deep right now. A lot of clients that I’ve been speaking to are that a lot of them don’t like the hybrid. They want to do one or the other and do it well. And so, it’ll be interesting to see how this all shakes out, but what could be interesting and an opportunity is reminding people of yes, the mental health issue, but also the environmental impact when you’re making your decision.

 Having things to think about when you’re doing your event, is a great checklist of the social impact, but also the environmental impact. So, thinking about both of those things would be interesting.

[00:44:46] Natalie Lowe: Yeah. There actually are companies and the pioneering of this has been really large tech companies like Salesforce and Microsoft and Google.

Amazon has been a little slower to, do it in their main business, but in their ancillary businesses, Amazon web services, they’ve certainly taken some strides. So now when you get an RFP from these companies and the hotel industry is telling us that’s what they’re seeing, is you have to fill out their 30-page environmental questionnaire in order to be an option for them going forward, but a hotel GM told me the other day that booking.com gave them the statistic that 83% of travelers are looking for the sustainable option. I think the pathway has been set that if we’re going to do it in person, we need to do it much differently.

[00:45:42] Suzanne F. Stevens: Yeah. So, what would you say are the two most challenging hurdles to sustaining an event that is very conscientious in regards to trying to achieve net-zero emissions?

[00:45:54] Natalie Lowe: It’s transportation. Although Canada was built on a railway, we haven’t kept that legacy up.

We need high-speed rail in Canada. We need people to embrace public transportation. And I say this as someone who I started driving when I was 14. At that time, that was when you got your learner’s license. It was your passport to freedom. I got my first vehicle when I was 16. I gave up my personal vehicle when I, for my 50th birthday.

And it was a big adjustment. But it wasn’t the negative adjustment that I thought it would be. And we have this bias against public transportation. There’s some great work being done in Kingston, a guy that I presented with really teaching high school students how to embrace public transportation, and how to properly use it.

And we’re starting to see this across our nation. We’re seeing prime Greenbelt, land, and agricultural land that is being paved over. Joni Mitchell was prophetic when she said “Paved paradise put up a parking lot.” Instead, we’re putting up super highways and there’s a lot of work that happens at a municipal level, but also at a provincial level.

I think we overestimate what the federal government can do and we underestimate what our town or city council and our provincial legislatures can do. But certainly protecting that is is a big thing.

[00:47:33] Suzanne F. Stevens: Do you have any leadership advice for people who want to take the lead in their organization or events for that matter to be more environmentally conscious?

[00:47:43] Natalie Lowe: Yeah, I would. Absolutely. If, you feel so inclined, absolutely take the course. When we first put it out, it was at a hundred-dollar price point. We wanted to make it available to everybody. It’s simply on a cost-recovery basis. It’s $30 Canadian plus HST. Take you an hour, the resources there that you get really help you work through how to take your event.

CanSPEP recently did an event where we talked about our lessons learned so you could reach out to CanSPEP and ask them for the resources from, that. And talk to your suppliers and your venues simply by telling them that you want to move in this direction. They probably have resources that can help you.

A few that come to mind are, for example, Hilton has the light stay program. Marriott’s got some incredible environmental initiatives. Fairmont has been leading in this area for a long time. So, when you’re asking them to respond to you, to your request for space or availability, ask them to include their environmental policies.

So where can I look at that? And just starting that conversation. The salesperson has to prove that you’re asking for it in order for them to continue making capital improvements. So, talk about it, have the conversation.

[00:49:03] Suzanne F. Stevens: Excellent. That’s good information. And what we’ll do is for our audience, I’m going to get some of the links that we’ve been talking about, and it will be in the bio area, in Natalie’s interview.

That’s where you can connect to some of those resources.

 What ripple effect have you observed, if any, with your contribution?

[00:49:22] Natalie Lowe: I see a lot more people taking leadership on their own. After the CanSPEP conference planners were reaching out to me saying, can you send me that graph? AV Canada choosing to go on a carbon-neutral pathway just the engagement level.

It was funny when I was presenting last week, Kate Kelly, who’s the past president of CanSPEP said we’re here in Florida, and the question we keep asking is when they present us with something, what would Natalie say? And I don’t want to be their climate cop, but that tells me that it starting to, spread and Sue Mercer is certainly working with the Canadian Federation of chefs. This is something she’s been working on. She talked about the impact that it had when I made them weigh all their luggage. And how we could reduce if we have to fly how we can reduce our impact by keeping our weight lower in our luggage. And I think we’re starting to see those ripple effects.

People reaching out to us, asking for information. Certainly, at a much higher rate than ever before. I used to speak once every two or three months, I now speak two or three times a week. Now I’m seeing small groups start to pop up. Liz Achy from the society of incentive travel executives. I mentored her a little bit last year and now they’ve created a vegetarian cookbook.

They’re participating in Earth Day for event people. And that’s what we’re starting to see. And it is so gratifying. If someone reaches out to me and says Natalie, you inspired me and I want to go get my certification. Great, because they’ll inspire a whole bunch of people that won’t resonate with me.

And that’s what sort of key. When I first started on this journey, I was pretty excited and maybe overly optimistic. I don’t know, what’s the option what’s the alternative to being overly optimistic. And I said to my sister, who’s a hotel general manager, Greta Thunberg is doing amazing things in the world and she’s affecting so many people.

And I feel this young girl is teaching me so much or this young lady. And she had a very practical perspective. She said, Natalie, it will take a million Greta Thunbergs. So that became my mantra. I’m like, great. I only need to find 999,999 more Gretta’s. So, every time someone says I’m getting certified, I’m like, it’s another Gretta.

There we go.

[00:51:57] Suzanne F. Stevens: That gives me shivers. I love that. And that’s, truly what it’s all about. We don’t have to do this stuff alone. We just need to empower others to do it. I do have two quick questions before I get to the rapid-fire questions. What do you see as the biggest opportunity now?

[00:52:16] Natalie Lowe: It’s food. It’s absolutely food. Yeah. The 20 top items identified by drawdown.org. Eight of them are food-related. So, food consumption, food waste, food production. It is absolutely food. It’s the lever we can press.

[00:52:33] Suzanne F. Stevens: And what’s next for You?

[00:52:37] Natalie Lowe: I’m working on certification through the University of Toronto.

I’m taking one of their climate ones. And for me, it’s pulling away a little bit from just being on the event side and working more with companies to ensure that events are one of your highest opportunities from a marketing perspective. And I’d like to work with them more outside of just the event space. Although I really enjoy that space and it’s my go-to. But I’m really enjoying the tracking the measurement, the validation, I’m a bit of a numbers geek at heart. A bit of a nerd at heart anyways, but I’m really enjoying that.

[00:53:15] Suzanne F. Stevens: Okay, great. These are rapid-fire, emphasize the rapid and fire.

How has your company provided meaning in your life?

[00:53:31] Natalie Lowe: That’s the reason I get up in the morning.

[00:53:34] Suzanne F. Stevens: What is one thing you wish you knew prior to engaging down the path of climate change?

[00:53:42] Natalie Lowe: I wish I knew how overwhelmed people really were and how much it stresses them out.

[00:53:49] Suzanne F. Stevens: What have you done that has made you uncomfortable? But if you didn’t do it, you would not have had the impact on the climate issue?

[00:54:00] Natalie Lowe: Standing up in front of a lot more people and talking about this. And I’m coming out much more strongly when companies are doing things that are very harmful to the environment. I used to worry about not being polite enough. It’s, too dire now.

[00:54:20] Suzanne F. Stevens: The worst piece of advice you ever received?

[00:54:24] Natalie Lowe: Oh, Natalie. Don’t bother doing this, people aren’t that interested. And do you really think that you’ll be able to affect that much?

[00:54:31] Suzanne F. Stevens: Now we’re talking about the environment.

[00:54:34] Natalie Lowe: Yeah, absolutely. The best way to get me to do something is to just tell me I can’t do it.

[00:54:38] Suzanne F. Stevens: A lot of us are that way.

 Best piece of advice you’ve ever received?

[00:54:56] Natalie Lowe: Geez. That’s a tough one. I would say it’s probably just keep doing what you’re doing and fail forward. No, it definitely fail forward. Is that every time we stumbled and fell, we used it as a learning experience rather than a reason to beat ourselves up. And it’s okay if Edison can say one more reason that the light bulb doesn’t work, we can say one more way that our audience doesn’t resonate.

Let’s go forward.

[00:55:22] Suzanne F. Stevens: That’s hard though. Isn’t it?

[00:55:26] Natalie Lowe: It gets easier, right? I’m pretty thick skin, to begin with. I’ve known shrinking Daisy, but it helped me to understand how sensitive other people could be really increased my empathy, a lot.

[00:55:40] Suzanne F. Stevens: Which of your strengths do you rely on most to have the impact you have had?

[00:55:46] Natalie Lowe: I’m courageous sometimes to the point of being foolish. I’ll just do it. Let’s see what happens. So maybe it’s my sense of adventure. Not my courage.

[00:55:57] Suzanne F. Stevens: Besides yours, which beneficiary do you think needs the most investment of time research and money. So, besides the environment?

[00:56:07] Natalie Lowe: I think mental health.

Yeah.

[00:56:12] Suzanne F. Stevens: What leadership advice do you have for people who want to have an impact?

[00:56:17] Natalie Lowe: Don’t worry about leading, worry about your impact. The leadership will come. But stay very true to your values. And that means that you have to sit down and really think about what your value is.

 Is your value being accepted and liked by people, or do you have a stronger value? And once you put those into place, you’ll find it easy to take the next step.

[00:56:41] Suzanne F Stevens: Great, advice. Now, I don’t know if you have any children, but it doesn’t matter, but if you did have a daughter and if she was 10 years old today, knowing what you know today, what advice would you give her?

[00:56:57] Natalie Lowe: That’s interesting. I have a 20-year-old son, so I need to back up a little bit. I do have many, nieces. I’d be like be you. Just be you. It doesn’t matter what Instagram or tick talk or anybody else says, the more they laugh at you just gird your loins and go forward and just be exactly who you need to be.

If you’re a goof, be a goof. If you’re overly serious, be overly serious. We need all of that in, in the big mix. But I would say ignore everything mostly, but your guiding light and the things that your mom tells you to do.

[00:57:39] Suzanne F. Stevens: What advice do you wish you received?

[00:57:44] Natalie Lowe: I wish that more people had told me to risk more sooner. And encouraged me to take big leaps.

[00:57:55] Suzanne F. Stevens: Who’s the greatest female influence in your life.

[00:58:00] Natalie Lowe: This is going to be a weird one. I admitted, but from the time that I was a little, I always had a fascination with Joan of Arc. She was fearless in the face of overwhelming odds. She was an incredible leader. Sometimes I can’t even believe she was a real person and she did it all without a thought of gender bias, she was leading men into battle. It’s a very male-dominated area, but right from the time that I was little, I have always just thought she was an incredible example to follow.

I never had that answer and I love getting diverse answers. So thank you for sharing something quite unique.

[00:58:38] Suzanne F. Stevens: Thank you all for joining us. You can subscribe to YouMeWe we amplified podcasts. So you receive each new interview notification in your inbox. Please share this interview by going to the share button located on our guest’s page. The interview is available in podcast, transcript, and video, so you can watch listen, and read. And if you want to grow you and your organization and your social impact, you also can visit the YouMeWe community women leading social impact. https://youmewe.ca/women-social-impact-community/

Visit us at YouMeWe.ca for this exclusive group of phenomenal women, transforming organizations and communities through conscious leadership and social impact. Now

I’m coming back to you, Natalie, do you have any final words of wisdom for our audience regarding making a conscious contribution to society?

[00:59:28] Natalie Lowe: Yeah, I do. And it was actually something that resonated with me from the director of sustainability from IBM, Canada. And that is when it comes to being bold and making a change we have to remember the technological advances in the candle never led to the development of the lightbulb. Sometimes we need to break out of those boxes that we’ve put ourselves into and really think outside of the box and create new paradigms for us to play in.

So if you think that the situation isn’t, what is ideal for you, I think we’ve really got to create a new context, create new situations, so go out there and absolutely create what you need to be successful and make your impact.

[01:00:14] Suzanne F. Stevens: Fabulous. Thank you, Natalie. And until next time, make your contribution count for you me, we.

To read about changemaker international, check out Suzanne’s book Make Your Contribution Count for you, me, we. 

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