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How DuPont Gets Strategic About Its Carbon Footprint · C-Suite Perspectives

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  Steve Odland: Welcome to C-Suite Perspectives, a signature
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  series by The Conference Board.
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  I'm Steve Odland, the CEO of The Conference Board and the
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  host of this podcast series.
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  And in today's conversation, we're going to talk about carbon
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  fluency, or understanding carbon and sustainability metrics with the same
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  rigor and confidence that leaders apply to financial performance.
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  Joining me today is Scott Collick, chief sustainability officer
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  and VP of sustainability and regulatory compliance at DuPont.
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  DuPont is a huge, important company.
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  And, fun fact for us is that DuPont was the very first publicly traded company
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  to have a CSO, chief sustainability officer, and Scott is actually
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  the third sustainability officer.
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  Scott, welcome to the program.
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  Scott Collick: Well, thank you.
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  Steve Odland: Yeah, so Scott, you've said that CEOs need carbon fluency.
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  Tell us what you mean by that.
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  Scott Collick: Yeah.
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  So Steve, carbon fluency isn't about becoming a climate scientist.
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  It's about interpreting carbon the same way you do financial information.
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  A CEO looks at revenue, and they understand margin and trends
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  and benchmarks and trade-offs, and carbon fluency is the same.
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  You should ask, when you have a carbon number, is it improving?
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  Compared to what?
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  And what decision you make?
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  So Steve, let's just get into this.
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  So I have an iPhone 17 I'm holding up for Steve.
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  So if I ask Steve, "What does the iPhone 17 cost?"
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  Steve Odland: Well, I got it for a thousand bucks.
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  What'd you pay, Scott?
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  Scott Collick: Well, you probably have a little bit more memory than me.
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  It's $800 for my version, but that's financial fluency, right?
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  Yeah.
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  We kind of know how much things cost, right?
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  Steve Odland: Yeah.
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  Scott Collick: So now I'm going to kick it up a notch, Steve, and I'm going
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  to say, what's its carbon footprint?
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  This is a hard question.
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  Steve Odland: Yeah.
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  I think it's, like, three by five here.
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  Oh no, that's a different footprint.
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  Yeah, we don't know it, do we?
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  Scott Collick: No, we don't.
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  It's 55 kilograms, by the way.
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  And most people pause.
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  Steve Odland: Yeah, and what does that mean exactly?
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  Scott Collick: So that's its total carbon footprint from
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  its birth to its life cycle.
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  So 85% is what we call product carbon footprint.
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  That's the carbon footprint of all the raw materials that Apple
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  used to make it to get to my hand.
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  Another 15% of that 55 is actually you charging it at night for its use.
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  So that's its total life cycle carbon footprint.
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  So 55 kilograms.
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  And then, so that question's hard.
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  Very few people get that right.
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  But now I ask even harder question.
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  Is it good or bad?
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  Steve Odland: Yeah.
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  That's the important thing.
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  So it's 55 kilograms of carbon, Scott, that an iPhone uses in its construction—
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  Scott Collick: Emits during its—
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  Steve Odland: —in its life.
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  Scott Collick: Yeah.
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  Steve Odland: And so it's 55, that seems like a lot of carbon.
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  I mean, if you, if you dropped 55 kilograms on somebody,
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  I mean, it would hurt.
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  Scott Collick: It would.
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  Yes, it would.
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  Steve Odland: Yeah.
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  But that's your point.
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  That's your point.
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  Yeah.
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  This is the amount of carbon that's consumed by one little iPhone.
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  Scott Collick: Yeah, it's actually not that much.
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  It's about two months of your own breathing.
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  It's not actually that much when we're doing 55 gigatons or something like that.
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  But let me, so it's 55 kilograms, and most people pause, but
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  now I ask, is 55 good or bad?
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  You said you kind of thought it seemed like bad, but it really
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  has to come from context, right?
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  So the iPhone 16 was 61 kilograms, so it's improving.
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  So that's context, Apple is continuously making their carbon footprints better.
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  Now, in comparison to a Samsung model, Galaxy S25 is about
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  46, so there's a gap, right?
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  So that, it's not just a number.
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  It has to be, what's the trend in comparison?
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  So now I'm going to ask you another question.
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  Apple's revenue —what do you think Apple's revenue is?
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  Steve Odland: Trillion dollars.
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  Scott Collick: Actually, it's half a trillion.
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  No, it's about $416 billion, so it's pretty good.
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  And most financially fluent CEOs know, is it improving, what's
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  its margin, is it getting better?
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  What's its rate of growth?
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  Now if I ask you what Apple's total carbon footprint is, nobody gets it.
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  Steve Odland: Yeah.
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  You don't have any idea.
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  Scott Collick: You have no idea.
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  Steve Odland: They report it, but it's not analyzed, it's not looked at.
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  Scott Collick: Correct.
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  Steve Odland: it's not compared except by people in the community, right?
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  Scott Collick: Correct.
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  Right.
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  Yeah.
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  Steve Odland: And this is your point.
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  This is your point.
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  That people need to start thinking about carbon as a metric that is
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  tracked and analyzed across companies.
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  Scott Collick: Yeah, almost all companies are tracking and reporting
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  it, but it's just a number.
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  And now we have to get it to the same level that we do revenue and
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  margin and versus expectation.
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  So Apple's total carbon footprint's 15 million metric tons, and it's not bad.
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  It's actually really good for the economic activity that Apple generates.
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  So for every metric, you really have to know, how is it trending,
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  and how does it compare?
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  And that really gets us from just the measurement and reporting to insight.
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  Until you can say is it good or bad, it's just numbers, and it's
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  not driving better decisions.
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  Steve Odland: Let's just back up a minute.
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  I mean, I think everybody knows that carbon emissions is not good.
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  But just tell us, give us a little bit more on why tracking carbon footprints,
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  and enhance the fluency in it, why is this really important to the environment?
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  Scott Collick: Yeah, so we're a little off course.
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  And so, most companies, including DuPont, but so many companies, have set
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  short-term, what we call near-term goals.
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  Ours is 2035, aligned with Paris Accord to cut our emissions at an appropriate rate.
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  And many companies are net zero, so we're trying by 2050 to make sure
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  that our emissions are equaled out, or basically, net zero by carbon removal.
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  And that will allow us to take a little bit more control from
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  human-induced climate change.
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  Steve Odland: Yeah, and so the important thing here is that carbon
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  emissions go into the environment.
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  It contributes to climate change, global warming.
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  Scott Collick: Correct.
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  Yeah.
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  Steve Odland: And hence, we can't control what the sun does or what happens out,
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  but we can control what mankind does.
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  And so this is why it's important that we try to minimize our
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  impact on the environment.
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  But in order to do that, this is your whole point.
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  Scott Collick: Yes.
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  Steve Odland: You have to track it.
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  You have to know what it is first.
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  That's the big deal.
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  Scott Collick: Yeah, and almost all companies are actually tracking
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  and reporting it, but now it has to come down to is what does
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  it mean, is it getting better?
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  And that's the next phase of our evolution.
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  It's not just reporting a number.
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  It's the context that it's in.
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  Steve Odland: You're raising a good point about reporting cause some companies been
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  doing carbon reporting for decades, but It feels like most companies have picked
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  it up just in the last decade, and it started out more as a compliance exercise.
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  Scott Collick: Yeah.
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  Steve Odland: You're getting this forced upon you.
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  I think we're beyond that, don't you?
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  I mean, I think people are really understanding that this is important,
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  and it's more than just an exercise.
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  Scott Collick: Yeah.
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  It's definitely much more an exercise.
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  And so I like to use this example.
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  So I ask any CFO, what's more important, revenue or margin?
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  Steve Odland: And he's going to say yes.
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  Scott Collick: Right, yes.
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  And then, so that's actually true.
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  And so right now in sustainability, there's a big debate.
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  What's more important, your total emissions or the
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  intensity of your emissions?
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  The answer's both, right?
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  And total emissions tell you the scale, but carbon intensity tells you efficiency.
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  So, you really have to start looking at carbon.
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  It's not just a single number.
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  You have to look at with different lenses and different perspective,
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  and is it getting better?
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  And how does it benchmark?
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  Steve Odland: And the important thing is that companies are making progress
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  towards net zero, to your point.
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  Scott Collick: Right.
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  Steve Odland: And so it's not that, because there are some people out
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  there who argue that, "Oh, well, you're going to turn the economy
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  upside down. People can't afford all these regulations and so forth."
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  But I think most business people are thinking about it more in
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  terms of the incremental progress.
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  It's not, don't crater your company.
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  You've got shareholders, we get it.
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  You've got customers, employees, owners.
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  You've got a lot of constituents, this is one of them.
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  But you've got to make the progress toward it, and you got to have a plan.
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  And that's your point, is that you've got to have a plan here.
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  It can't just be, "OK, we're going to improve." OK, how?
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  What deliberate steps?
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  And that's the planning part.
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  That is what you have done as chief sustainability officer at DuPont.
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  Scott Collick: We actually, it's called a transition plan.
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  It is our plan to get to net zero, and every year we're
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  marching towards that goal.
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  We're increasing our percent renewable electricity.
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  We're working with our suppliers to lower the product carbon
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  footprints of the things we buy.
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  But that's the actual plan that we're working against, and we're being judged
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  and evaluated, no different than if you give guidance versus industry
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  or your analysts' expectations.
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  It's very similar.
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  Sustainability can learn a lot from the finance field.
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  It's not that different.
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  Steve Odland: Now, at DuPont, you've talked about Scope 1, 2, and 3
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  emissions, and you're tracking that.
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  Can you just help our listeners understand what is Scope 1, what
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  is Scope 2, what is Scope 3, and then how do companies directly
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  impact each set of carbon emissions?
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  Scott Collick: Sure.
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  So Scope 1 would be your direct carbon dioxide or carbon dioxide equivalents.
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  There's other gases that have a global warming potential.
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  We convert all those into a carbon dioxide equivalent.
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  So those are your direct emissions.
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  Scope 2 is the electricity you use and the emissions from
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  the electricity that you use.
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  And then Scope 3 has two components.
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  Your upstream, so all the raw materials, your purchased goods and
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  services, your logistics upstream.
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  And then you also have a downstream Scope 3, which is logistics.
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  It's how the product is used in use, and it's also end of life, as well
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  as a variety of other categories.
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  But it's really, your direct emissions, electricity, and your upstream and
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  downstream emissions make up all scopes.
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  Steve Odland: Yeah, and so Scope 1 and 2 seem pretty straightforward.
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  Scope 1 is in your control.
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  It may not be easy to reduce, but it's in your control cause it's coming from your
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  plants or your products or your offices.
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  Scope 2 is a little harder, but also relatively easy, cause
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  it's tracked to electricity.
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  You know what it is.
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  But Scope 3's hard, Scott, isn't it?
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  I mean, cause you're dealing with up and down the supply chain, and it's
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  through your vendors and suppliers, who you don't directly control.
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  But you can influence it, and you guys have done a great job at that.
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  Scott Collick: Yeah, so that's actually my biggest headache, so we're
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  well on our way on our Scope 1 and 2.
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  We're down 76% on our Scope 1 and 2 emissions since 2019, because
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  that's been our constant focus.
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  So much, most of my attention is now on Scope 3.
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  And it's really our inbound raw materials, to be honest with you.
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  So, right now, and most companies are doing that, you
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  start with a spend-based model.
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  I spend $1 million dollars times some factor, and then
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  that's your carbon emissions.
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  Well, the only way that you can lower the emissions is spend less.
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  So it's really important for companies to switch from spend-based
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  models to activity-based models.
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  So I would tell you, we're almost at 60% activity-based model, and
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  we're at almost 30% primary data.
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  That's actually where our suppliers give us a product carbon footprint
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  of the materials that we buy, and that's really important for
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  the next phase of the journey.
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  You have to transition from spend-based models to actual
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  activity-based models to know the carbon of the inbound raw materials.
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  But it's my biggest headache right now, Steve.
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  Steve Odland: And this goes back to your point that there has to be carbon fluency.
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  And that means that you've got to understand what it is, where
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  it is, you've got to track it.
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  It's not only in your direct operations, but it's all the way
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  up Scope Two and Scope Three.
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  So it's pretty broad here.
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  Now, you know, you hear a lot about these ESG-style frameworks, or regulatory
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  frameworks, and there are a lot of these competing ones around the world.
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  How do you simplify this, Scott, so that it's truly applicable?
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  Cause if it sounds like rocket science, people will freak out on it, and they
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  don't really adopt it and make progress.
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  But I think you've talked about simplifying the framework.
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  What do you mean by that?
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  And how do you advise companies to do that?
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  Scott Collick: Yeah.
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  So, one, I like to start with business, not the framework.
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  So, I like to get, at my company, I like the carbon data at a company
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  level, and then I break it down by business and a product level.
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  It's got to be how your business runs.
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  Don't fit to the framework.
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  Look at it how your business runs.
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  But I will tell you, the key step that I found is, and this is where most
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  companies fall short, is I think it's really important to normalize the data,
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  and turn it into an intensity metric.
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  Greenhouse gas per million dollars of revenue.
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  So I'll go back to my iPhone 17 example.
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  So I was meeting with one of our LCA practitioners, talking about this
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  iPhone 17, and I said, "Hey, this has 55 kilograms of carbon dioxide."
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  And she goes, "Wow." And I said, "You know, that actually is 300 pounds
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  per pound of unit," cause iPhone only weighs about 0.2 kilograms.
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  She goes, "Wow, that's incredibly high." By the way, that would be
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  higher than any product that we make at DuPont, 300 kilograms of carbon
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  dioxide per kilogram of product.
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  But I said, "You're looking at it wrong. This is incredibly value-added.
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  If you look at it on an economic intensity, it's only about 70 metric
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  tons per million dollars of revenue."
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  And it's really important that you have to look at both lenses.
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  Engineers look at it, things on a kilogram per kilogram, but financial
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  people look at things from a metric tons or kilograms per million dollars
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  of revenue, and I think it's important.
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  And that's one of the things, is you got to link it much closer
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  to how you run the business.
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  We run business in dollars.
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  Steve Odland: Yeah.
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  Scott Collick: And then I like to look at every one of our businesses
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  on all these intensity metrics.
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  And it normalizes.
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  Not all our businesses and not all companies are the same size revenue.
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  So I think that's really important to add onto the frameworks, to start looking
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  at things on an economic-intensity basis.
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  Steve Odland: Yeah, and it does allow comparability too, across
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  organizations, both kilogram for kilogram, but also kilograms per dollar.
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  It's really an important point.
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  Scott Collick: Yeah.
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  Steve Odland: We're talking about carbon, carbon fluency, and sustainability
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  metrics at DuPont and broadly.
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  We're going to take a short break and be right back.
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  Welcome back to C-Suite Perspectives.
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  I'm your host, Steve Odland, from the Conference Board, and I'm joined
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  today by Scott Collick, the chief sustainability officer at DuPont.
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  Scott, really good discussion before the break on frameworks and how to
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  simplify it and how to think about it.
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  And really helpful to think about it not only in terms of kilogram per kilogram,
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  but also kilogram per dollar in revenue.
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  That's just so simple.
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  But as you think about it, what are some common mistakes that companies
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  make when they're trying to get into this, and they're trying to
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  talk about their carbon footprint?
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  Scott Collick: Yeah.
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  So the first one is the numbers without the context, that we talked about.
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  But the really second one is treating all carbon reductions as equally
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  valuable without cost or business impact.
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  So, like, we talk about a green premium.
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  Lower carbon products typically have a premium, and we've seen them anywhere
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  from 10% to 100% premium for these lower.
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  Some make sense, but others don't.
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  So I ask this question all the time: Does it make sense from a
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  carbon and business perspective?
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  And carbon fluency basically takes that, turns that green premium
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  into dollars per ton avoided.
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  So you take the price delta between a higher-carbon product and a
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  lower-carbon product, and you divide by the carbon footprint savings,
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  just like an iPhone 17 was 55 kilograms versus an iPhone 16 of 61.
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  So there's a reduction there.
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  So you take the price, divide it by the carbon, and standardize
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  it into dollars per ton avoided, and then you compare that.
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  And that's really where the insight comes from because here's the interesting
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  fact: 75% of the world's emissions can be abated for less than $200 a ton of CO2.
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  And that really becomes your decision benchmarks.
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  If it's below $200, it's investable.
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  If it's above $200, it's, you got to be very strategic and selective.
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  So I ask my teams this all the time, "Does this green premium for a lower-carbon
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  product make sense?" And you got to look at it in light of what is the
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  carbon on a unit of avoided emissions.
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  Steve Odland: You made a lot of really good points there.
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  I think two points are really important.
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  One is, and I'm going to put words in your mouth.
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  Where's the low-hanging fruit?
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  Get the low-hanging fruit, make the progress.
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  That's point number one.
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  Point number two is you got to make sure that it's valued by the customer,
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  because people will always in polling, and we've seen this in all of our
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  work at The Conference Board, I saw it in my previous role at Office
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  Depot, people will say they will pay more for a more sustainable product.
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  In fact, they don't, or rarely do.
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  Or if they are willing, it's a very tiny premium.
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  So you really have to gear and engineer your products to build in that
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  sustainability, rather than assuming that people will be willing to pay more for it.
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  That seems you know, a no-brainer, but it's not.
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  I mean, a lot of people—because of what they say they will do,
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  but people act differently.
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  Yeah?
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  Scott Collick: Yeah, for sure.
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  And I would tell you, one of the lowest carbon-reduction options that we're seeing
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  in industry is renewable electricity.
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  The effective carbon reduction of renewable electricity is far less
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  than $40 a metric ton, versus lots of other products on the market that
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  are $200, $400, $500 a metric ton.
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  So, renewable electricity is actually one of the cheapest levers.
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  And we've actually rapidly scaled up.
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  2025, we're about 50% renewable electricity, and I think we'll
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  end this year at about two-thirds.
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  It's one of the lowest-cost options to decarbonize your operations, is
• 17:13
  renewable electricity on that scale.
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  Steve Odland: How do you do that, Scott?
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  I mean, you're a large, really large manufacturing company.
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  Are you building sustainable electric production yourself?
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  Are you working with other third parties to build it and buy it from them?
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  Scott Collick: Typically third parties.
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  They have the economies of scale.
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  So really the options really come from three.
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  On-site solar would be on our own.
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  We only have a few of our plants that have on-site solar, and even those are
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  not enough to satisfy all the demands.
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  Much more of it is done through power-purchase agreements, and then you
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  supplement that with RECs, renewable energy credits that you buy on the
• 17:48
  open market, and that helps us fulfill our renewable electricity demands.
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  Steve Odland: This is really important for our users because I think
• 17:54
  everybody assumes, well, DuPont, they're just building, you know,
• 17:57
  they're building their own generation.
• 17:59
  Or these data centers, they're going to have to build their own.
• 18:01
  That's really rare.
• 18:03
  Every company can do this, to your point, by working through the third parties.
• 18:08
  And if you do that, then it'll create sufficient demand for the third
• 18:11
  parties then to invest and to make it economical on a broader scale.
• 18:15
  So it is really important that they work back up the supply chain and
• 18:19
  hence, the Scope two and Three.
• 18:21
  Scott Collick: Yes.
• 18:22
  And it's actually one of the levers that we've been using to reduce our
• 18:25
  carbon footprint of our products.
• 18:27
  For instance, we just announced that our healthcare, where we sell technologies
• 18:31
  and products into the healthcare market, we went to 100% renewable.
• 18:34
  But that was one very quick lever that we were able to lower the product
• 18:37
  carbon footprint for our customers so that their Scope Three goes down.
• 18:41
  Steve Odland: Yeah.
• 18:42
  We've done papers, as well on generation.
• 18:44
  We're off the subject a little bit, but most of the carbon output from
• 18:48
  generation around the world globally is still these legacy coal plants.
• 18:51
  And if they could just, rather than trying to change the plant and replace
• 18:55
  it with nuclear or strict renewables, if they would just replace it with
• 18:59
  gas-fired on the front end, then you're cutting, what, two-thirds
• 19:03
  of the emissions just from that.
• 19:04
  So it's the incremental progress to do it, and it's taking into
• 19:08
  account the economics, which is what you're saying along the way.
• 19:11
  So then thinking of then about economics, any CEO or CFO is, they're
• 19:16
  faced with short-term pressures.
• 19:17
  They've got to make quarterly earnings.
• 19:19
  Their shareholders, of course, and constituencies love sustainability, but
• 19:24
  they don't want to give up their returns.
• 19:26
  They want it all, right?
• 19:27
  So how do you balance all of this?
• 19:29
  Scott Collick: I think sustainability and performance are not opposing forces.
• 19:33
  And one of the biggest misperceptions is that it exists as a separate dimension as
• 19:37
  from cost and performance, and it doesn't.
• 19:39
  So if I think about the best products or the best solutions, you would never
• 19:43
  optimize for sustainability alone.
• 19:45
  I really think of four things for a product.
• 19:48
  Obviously price, which is your total system cost.
• 19:51
  Performance, it has to have functional requirements.
• 19:54
  Sustainability, which is its footprint and handprint.
• 19:57
  And then the last one, that's just really in our eyes since post-COVID,
• 20:00
  is supply chain resiliency.
• 20:02
  Can it scale and withstand disruption?
• 20:05
  So those four things.
• 20:07
  I will tell you, generally you need three to win on.
• 20:10
  So it's not, it's never just sustainability alone.
• 20:13
  It's never just price or performance.
• 20:15
  It's really the combination of all.
• 20:18
  Four is a real winner, but three really is what it takes today.
• 20:21
  That's how you compete is, don't treat it as separate.
• 20:23
  It's integrated with the other attributes of a product or a service.
• 20:27
  Steve Odland: So my question was then really framed improperly, deliberately,
• 20:32
  but it's important that people within companies think about that.
• 20:35
  It's not either/or.
• 20:36
  It's not a trade-off between short-term and long-term performance.
• 20:40
  But in order to be able to invest in sustainability over time, reduce your
• 20:47
  carbon footprint or any aspect of it, it does take strategic planning, and that has
• 20:52
  to be integrated with the business plan.
• 20:55
  It can't be you sitting over here as CSO, and the business
• 20:58
  people are sitting over there.
• 20:59
  It's all one thing, isn't it?
• 21:02
  Scott Collick: Absolutely.
• 21:02
  And at DuPont, obviously I lead sustainability, but every
• 21:06
  one of our business units have business sustainability leaders
• 21:08
  that are driving integration.
• 21:10
  It's not a separate.
• 21:11
  It's really how you run your business, how you make product decisions.
• 21:14
  It's fully integrated.
• 21:15
  It's not separate.
• 21:16
  And that's really pretty critical to help balance the short-term
• 21:19
  and long-term goals, is integrate it fully at the business level.
• 21:23
  Steve Odland: Yeah, and that's kind of hard because most chief
• 21:27
  sustainability officers are sitting in a staff function, there are
• 21:30
  matrix organizations, yada, yada.
• 21:32
  But it's kind of hard sometimes to be sitting with your staff and then trying
• 21:35
  to work across the business units.
• 21:37
  Which means the business units need to understand the benefits
• 21:40
  financially and otherwise for their customers and within their plan.
• 21:45
  So it can't just be, let's do it for the good of society.
• 21:48
  And that's how you've been successful at implementing
• 21:51
  this broadly throughout DuPont.
• 21:53
  Scott Collick: This is my 37th year between Dow and DuPont, and I will tell
• 21:57
  you, except for the last four years, I've always been aligned to a business, so
• 22:00
  this has been a little bit challenging.
• 22:01
  But what I will tell you, the first thing I brought into this role was
• 22:04
  bringing a business perspective into how we manage and run sustainably.
• 22:09
  Think like a business person.
• 22:10
  And that's been pretty critical, and that's been where I've been driving
• 22:13
  with from a carbon fluency perspective.
• 22:16
  Steve Odland: DuPont was the first publicly traded company to have a CSO.
• 22:21
  In the whole scheme of things, it's not that long ago, 22 years ago.
• 22:25
  I guess that's a long time, but it's, in the course of human history, it's not.
• 22:29
  So this is still relatively new, and you're learning every
• 22:32
  day how to do this better.
• 22:35
  But, if you've made 75%, 76% reductions already, the rest of it
• 22:40
  gets harder as you go along, right?
• 22:43
  So how do you think about, you've made such big progress, cause you've been
• 22:47
  doing it longer than anybody else, but now the net is ever more harder every year.
• 22:53
  How do you take that challenge on and translate that to business plans?
• 22:57
  Scott Collick: Actually, it gets harder as you get towards the end.
• 23:01
  I will tell you it's harder.
• 23:02
  We're trying to incorporate this concept of footprint and handprint.
• 23:06
  So Steve, I'm going to illustrate an example, another example.
• 23:10
  I brought a piece of insulation.
• 23:11
  I know the viewers can't, the listeners can't see, but imagine I'm
• 23:15
  holding a giant board of insulation.
• 23:18
  So it would be two inches thick by nine square foot.
• 23:21
  It's Styrofoam.
• 23:22
  It's a very typical insulation board that you put on your homes.
• 23:26
  So if I told you, and I'm not going to ask you what the carbon footprint
• 23:29
  of a nine-foot high, nine-foot wide, two-inch thick Styrofoam
• 23:32
  board, most people would not get it.
• 23:35
  But I'll tell you, it's 11 kilograms of carbon dioxide
• 23:38
  per nine square meters, right?
• 23:41
  So then I would ask, is it good or bad?
• 23:42
  Won't cover that.
• 23:43
  But then I would say, why don't I just make it thinner?
• 23:46
  That's the best way to cut the carbon footprint, and we've been working on
• 23:49
  this, on cutting this carbon footprint.
• 23:50
  It used to be almost 200 kilograms for that same unit,
• 23:53
  and we've been working hard.
• 23:55
  So I say, why don't we just cut it, make it thinner?
• 23:58
  And that gets to the next point, is, and you know, it's not
• 24:01
  going to insulate very well.
• 24:03
  Steve Odland: Yeah, you can't cut the effectiveness of your
• 24:04
  products, or else you're not going to take care of your customers.
• 24:07
  So you've got to balance it all.
• 24:08
  Scott Collick: Yeah, and that's actually the handprint.
• 24:10
  It saves, like where I live in Michigan, that same unit saves about
• 24:14
  44 kilograms, so it has a carbon payback period of about three months.
• 24:19
  And that, by the way, that footprint's paid once.
• 24:21
  The handprint compounds every year.
• 24:23
  So I really think it's important not just talk about the footprint, but
• 24:27
  also to talk about the handprint.
• 24:28
  What do products do, and how do they deliver value?
• 24:31
  And that's a lot of the things, and that's really an untapped area
• 24:34
  that we have in sustainability.
• 24:36
  We know how to calculate the footprint.
• 24:39
  We as an industry are struggling a little bit on the handprint.
• 24:42
  We want to make sure that we don't do stupid decisions like cut the
• 24:45
  size of insulation and make the insulation performance go down.
• 24:50
  Steve Odland: Yeah.
• 24:50
  You've got to come at this thing through R&D, through engineering,
• 24:55
  through your marketing people, because you've got to engineer in product
• 24:58
  effectiveness that also has lower content.
• 25:02
  So it's all of the above, and that's why, you know, I use the term
• 25:05
  strategic business planning, but it's not just you sitting off in a
• 25:08
  corner figuring out how to fill out a grid or some compliance thing.
• 25:11
  It is really working through the businesses.
• 25:14
  And so your message is the most successful CSOs are going to be
• 25:18
  the ones that integrate themselves, get into the business, get deeply
• 25:22
  into each of your businesses.
• 25:23
  You know, DuPont's got so many different business lines, but whatever your
• 25:26
  business is, even if it's a service company where you think, "Oh, I don't
• 25:29
  have that big of a footprint." Well, you got a lot of people, and you've got
• 25:32
  offices, and you've got electricity.
• 25:34
  There is carbon output, and there's opportunity everywhere, and I think
• 25:37
  your approach is just so important.
• 25:39
  Any final thoughts for our listeners?
• 25:41
  Scott Collick: Yeah, so I would just say, get in the habit of asking better
• 25:44
  questions, especially when people present you sustainability data, and you would
• 25:49
  say, "How has it changed over time?" And then, really, the critical is, "Compared
• 25:52
  to what?" And it puts all these numbers in context, just like we do in finance.
• 25:57
  It doesn't have to be at a company level.
• 25:59
  It can be at a product or a process, but really, what is its footprint,
• 26:02
  how is it trending, how does it compare, and how does it benchmark?
• 26:04
  And I think that's the key next step for sustainability professionals, but
• 26:08
  also CEOs on their journey, is take the numbers from just reporting to really
• 26:13
  driving intuition about where you're going as we head towards net zero.
• 26:19
  Steve Odland: OK, Scott, we'll leave it there.
• 26:20
  Thanks for being with us today.
• 26:23
  Scott Collick: Yes, thank you.
• 26:23
  It was great being here.
• 26:25
  Steve Odland: And thanks to all of you for listening to C-Suite Perspectives.
• 26:29
  I'm Steve Odland, and this series has been brought to you by The Conference Board