Michele Fox | Patrick Rife | The Pixilated Podcast

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Pixilated podcast I am your host Patrick Rife and I am thrilled to be welcoming another unique event professional onto the interview versions of our of our podcast if you are just tuning in for the first time welcome excited to have you here and if you have tuned in before you know that we like to do a variety of different types of content sometimes it's all about specific information sometimes it's guest interviews and that is the case today so today we'll be talking with Michele Fox she's the founder of Muse she has a ton of experience and sustainability I just recently connected with Michele on LinkedIn and after getting a chance to see a little hesitated 0 seconds to reach out and invite her and she graciously decided to accept it be our guest today so without further ado Michele Fox welcome to the Pixilated podcast hey Patrick thank you so much for having me I really appreciate opportunity yeah yeah we really appreciate you being willing to to share your time and some of your knowledge and insight I know that time is always at a premi for all of us so we don't take lightly that you're willing to be here with us today so that being said I've got some questions that I've written down and no doubt they'll be some great back and forth that spring out organically but before we get into that why don't you let everyone listening give them a you know let us know what Muse is and a little bit of background about who you are and how you got here today yeah so Muse stands for Members United for Sustainable Events so we are a membership community of event professionals that are passionate about sustainable event management and basically we have about 130 members at the time but there's a greater community of Muse there's a lot of people that aren't members and that's okay too so Muse is made up of all kinds of like event agencies catering and we really are all about the United States because the United States is big enough and we have a similar infrastructure here you know instead of being global so I've been an event producer in New York City for well over 15 years and I've also always been an environmental activist so I was in like the anti fracking movement and all those things and I never felt like I could put it together my event production and my desire to make the environmental impact of events not as bad and so cause you know events can be pretty wasteful right we use we make lots of waste we use a lot of energy we ship things we there's people flying all over the place and in 2019 I did an event and sustainability was embedded in the event okay so the client wanted this event to be sustainable it was a weekend event but we were 13 days on site building out a huge event in New York City on one of our islands here and that is the point when I realized that sustainability and events could go together from what I saw and at that point I reached out I started googling sustainable event management and what came up was the sea which was the the sea is the Sustainable Event Alliance and there's a woman named Megan Jones and she wrote a book about sustainable event management in 2008 she immediately got back to me and she said why don't you start a New York group why don't I put you on the leadership team so all of a sudden I'm on the leadership team of the sea and I reached out to everyone I knew in New York so in the fall of 2019 we had about 18 people come together who were really into sustainable events and they were telling me that their their clients wanted events to be sustainable and their clients were people like Google all of a sudden January of 2020 we had another meeting we had 43 people in a room we were asking questions like what is what are best practices what should we do how do we do this how do we message it how do we pay for it and then of course you know what happened the pandemic so at that point I sort of triple down into sustainability because no events were happening and I realized that we could all be virtual and that we could be really like I started reaching out to people in California and all over the country to kind of get together around sustainable events so that's when I started news so it the name kind of takes a part of my my activist roots members United for Sustainable Events and so we are an organization that it doesn't matter like you don't have have experience but it's all about education building community and inspiring people so we're totally positive and you know whether you're a member or not you can take part in like the speaker series we have speakers talking about carbon offsets we've got people talking about their experience doing renewable energy for music festivals food donations and so it's a whole long story but that is that's all about Muse awesome that's a great intro thank you so much for for framing it up for us right off the jp I'm I'm curious I I like I noticed that you went to school in Oregon so are you originally a West Coaster yes I'm from Los Angeles so I lived in New York really long time yeah being from California and going to Oregon in Oregon we sorted our trash from yeah back in the nineties yeah so I think what I'm curious of is you know where do you trace your you know that the internal drive for activism like where do you where's that base where is it grown out of from you as you know as a han being oh my God well I I just I'm one of those socially conscious people I grew up in a family that was really like socially conscious and really science based so you know a childhood hero of mine was Carl Sagan and you know I just recently saw something on the internet of him talking to Congress in 1986 so I was always really aware of this it's nothing new in environment and climate change and you know I was just paying attention from the time I was pretty young yeah that's awesome well so like let's get into the the the ecosystem of where sustainability hits events so I think first and foremost what would be really beneficial is for you to help us understand the motivations for these big clients and why they wanna do it I think so often when we hit these APEX talking point moments right like we're we're doing it cause it's the right thing to do from a perception perspective right like it's more about often times it's more about PR than it is about believing in why you know the why that you're that you're driving your you know your ambition to to make this change or to do this thing and what I hope you're gonna tell me is that it's not about PR and that there's a lot of great fundamental reasons that underpin the success of a business right so I think that's the whole thing is something is a pet cause when it's being entertained and done because from the outside looking in they think they're responsible to do it something has lasting long term impact and scales to something meaningful when it isn't causing them to throw out the acen of the business and how it operates in favor of this thing so you're shaking your head a lot so I'm guessing no I'm I'm that's a great question I think that the beauty of it is it doesn't matter and the beauty of it is is that there's all these different reason and everybody has their entry in so I mean we heard all about like Walmart was changing all of their light bulbs to LED they were doing it to save money and good for them right so really we think about no one likes waste you know no one wants to to live near a waste dp you know we all want we all want efficiency right if we can run our business more efficiently more more cost effective what a great way to think about that is sustainability sustainability is you know the definition is something like you know meeting our needs of today while also being thinking about our future generation and their needs but a sustainability is also we talk about financial sustainability you know of a company well that doesn't really have anything to do with environmental sustainability but it's really important right so we we call there's the triple bottom line and that would be like well there's there's a couple ways to think of it but that is the business case for sustainable events right that would be we are we are sustainable we are people planet and profit so we wanna think about engaging in all those three things so that's one way in is is that another thing is is they talk about risk management in business right so that's something important to all corporations so what is our supply chain well if we're not thinking ahead and we overfish the oceans we're not gonna have business you know even whole food is gonna suffer in business right if they don't have fish to serve fish to sell so I mean there's there's so many things about sustainability is a word that means so many things and many people might have an issue with that word but there's you know we all wanna protect our our businesses and then there's like the people that really care about the environment then there's those people and so yeah so the visionaries versus the bottom line defenders in a sense right so I would imagine that there's a larger percentage of one than there is of the other and you know like the you know the Patagonia is of the world you know like they're equally lauded and I feel like sometimes despised by some of the other companies as well because you know like their their their playbook is is pretty well executed at this point in time you know like there's nothing like being that the definitive brand that people you know think about when when the conversation turns in this direction but that being said as as you you know like ideally you're getting more customers you're getting more members you're having more people that are interested because we need to embrace sustainability in a very serious way kind of at at all levels of our ecosystem to really have an impact would you say that a lot of the the the people that are new to you that are coming in new and finding out information for the first time that they're doing it in a reflective capacity because they're starting to understand that a lot of these big environmental changes that were all part and partial being you know impacted by are are going to you know seriously impact the way that their business is working I think that that really helps I think that what's happening is that if if you as an event professional haven't been asked yet by a client we want our event to be sustainable it it's gonna happen it either has happened or it's going to happen and you do not wanna be saying we don't know what we're doing right once your client asks you you wanna say we've been doing that it's no problem and you wanna be able to talk to your client about it you wanna be able to say we have an embedded in our organization you know we do this this and this I mean imagine your client comes to you and says what are you guys doing about sustainability and you're like we know we need to do that but we haven't done it yet so we always keep saying you wanna get ahead of the curve right so you do need to start I think every business and even all the events need to need to really start piece by piece and and it does take a minute to to embedded in your organization and we always say like it shouldn't be an add on it's not like okay do the whole event plan it all oh now make it sustainable it's like you really wanna embed that in from the from the beginning or and then it makes it easier if you can just hire vendors that are already doing it right so you've got a printer that is like has sustainable certifications that is already been spending like a few years making their operation more sustainable so you just hire that printer oh there's catering companies that are already composting they're already you know getting food from local farms and by the way these foods probably taste better so something that's like really local and organic it's gonna like even be better for your business right I always say to people it can just be better that might be why you're doing it it looks better it feels better you know so yeah hot so going back to like having everybody in this like you said ecosystem of events doing it if your venue is getting their power from like renewable energy credits and you could say that the event was powered by renewable energy you're already there if the venue has a good water system so like people can the crew setting up can bring their own water bottles and is not bringing in plastic water bottles you know so all of these I'm we try to encourage like the vet all the vendors to be incorporating it so when the event planner comes in it's so much easier yeah yeah that makes sense so let like let's walk through large company well established right they they they host events there keenly aware that they're maybe a little bit behind the ball and they want to begin the process of of of bringing sustainability into their events ecosystem right so like clearly you just said like we don't have to do everything at once if if anything maybe that's a bad idea so like let's start what how how do we start as a big company walk me through you know like what some of those early winds are that that a company you know might consider putting on their plate for year one well and and taking one step back from that there is there's something called GRI which is the Global Reporting Initiative right and so like companies big large corporations like the Googles of the world they are reporting their carbon emissions they're already doing it and so events are what's called scope 3 that's a little bit complicated and this has to do with like these difference their scope 1 2 and 3 and scope 3 are like your people flying on airplanes and and that kind of thing so events are all scope 3 so when they're reporting their scope 3 emissions events are part of that and think about how many events they're doing so they need to I mean it may sound pretty it was shocking to me like for a while to think that like do we really need to calculate the carbon footprint of our events but all of a sudden your client is asking you and I've heard of like like a lot of the luxury brands are their owned by huge corporations like LVMH right and they are they need to they're reporting their scope 3 and so now they're asking their fabrication companies can you report on the steel you used the wood you use the alin you use all the resources and so this thing is coming faster than like it's already here and that's why I keep saying like okay get on board now and so I know I'm diverting a little bit but there's actually really great platforms right now for events to calculate the carbon footprint of of your event and so that is kind of like gonna be a step one not everybody's asking that for that now but you probably will be soon I do think just looking at you know obviously your your waist is a really like obvious thing right so if you're a music festival a lot of music festivals now are using a reusable cup system instead of plastic cups that's huge right and that's very visible and so there's different companies like turn is a company in our cup then they're partnering with Live Nation and AEG to like at these and at and at large venues and I keep seeing on LinkedIn when you follow these companies like the the Colise The LA Colise is now using reusable cup system so how great is this right we're like totally reducing and our our our plastic waste and then hopefully in the long term that will maybe save money and it will certainly reduce the money of your the cost of your of your garbage pickup but it you're also gonna have to pay for like the washing of these cups so so there are there are other costs but ultimately you know like it's not all about cost savings although it sounds like I mean primarily it's not about cost savings right primarily it's about another initiative but clearly there are lots of cost savings to be realized in in in the pursuit of this even if they're not as great as they could be yeah so I think before we jped on the call we were talking a little bit and you had some some some pretty staggering data points for a customer and what they were able to accomplish in hard nbers around the sustainability wins that they got out of their event did you want to would you be willing to elaborate a little bit on that yeah certainly and and and stepping back what I love about what Muse does is we just start like the members whether you're a member or not there is a community and it spans across the world but in the United States like I have members from all over the country Florida Indiana you know Massachusetts like Colorado and it's so much fun basically talking to people from in within this community and so in Florida there's the Florida International University and they actually have a a lot of like they're like No. 1 hospitality school in the United States and they've put together like sustainability and tourism is one of their paths now and so the one of the like directors of the program his name is John Bushman and I I interviewed him and the Florida International University has been partnering with the South Beach Wine and Food Festival for like 20 years so they started doing he told me that there was one year there was a really bad storm just like there is now on the first day of the event so as you can imagine they had all of this leftover food and so as a necessity like we have to do something with this food we don't want it to go to waste so what did they do they gathered the food and they brought it to or organizations that help like feed the homeless or the food insecure right and so then they're like we should do this all the time with leftover food or food that can be eaten so for like 16 or 17 years they've been doing that about 10 years ago they really started doing like waste meant like helping with divert waste from the landfill so recycling now we can compost a lot of stuff and he told me that 10 years ago the buying wasn't there yet and then of course we came across the pandemic and you know I think things kind of shifted then and this year the organizers of the festival said let's let's go back to our what we were doing what we tried 10 years ago and all of a sudden like there's magic now and everybody is really into it and they had 400 students just working on the volunteering for the waste management aspect of this alone so at every waste station they had like compost recycling and landfill and they would have students there like as people came up helping saying okay this goes here this goes here this goes here and then they partnered with an organization called Clean Vibes and Clean Vibes is an expert for Waste Management for large festivals music festivals and then they had a compost company and of course they work but they're waist taller and in doing this I will read off this they rest they had 48,000 pounds of recycling that they diverted from the waste stream and this is actually on the events like three and a half days they had 14,300 pounds of compost and 29,000 pounds of rescued food and that translated into 19,000 meals wow that's impressive that's impressive so when you do it right it can have a huge impact and and not just from a reduction perspective but also from a reuse in recycling yeah and I didn't really mention it before but sustainability is not just about the environment it's all about like there's all these other aspects of it like the Dei you know diversion equity inclusion there is you know and we always talk about like the Sustainable Development Goals as as part of this to like ending hunger and things like that and if like the environment isn't something that really like a company that might not be important to them in their mission and their values but you know helping children might be really important to them so think about having like food waste given to kids who are food insecure how that will you know we always talk about when we start about with sustainability what are the clients mission what are their values and starting there and how it all kind of comes together yeah that's awesome so I mean let me ask you you know give given where things are headed given that the climate is warming towards this kind of effort not in general it's also yeah it's also warming could probably pick picked better bitter better words for for that but right there's an openness to sustainability practices thinking about them from a long term perspective and figuring out how to adopt them not because they're a trend but because they're important you know critical like two part question what are you excited about and what are your expectations ah well it's you know I go through my dark dark dark dark moments with this whole sustainability thing you know like there's so many as a so I'm also an event freelancer I'm not I'm not just the founder of Muse that's not really you know as you can imagine that's not really as maybe a sustainable way for me to you know pay for my life but so it's like I see I'm I work on a lot of events where there's no sustainability thought about or like we don't talk about it or it's talked about a little bit so I do go through like ah this is so far away you know and then I can I can come on the show and like talk about all these amazing things but I think that we do have a long way to go we we we're we're we're just beginning and that's why I wanna just tell everybody that like it's okay to like feel like oh my gosh we're just starting or I interviewed someone and he said it's okay to ask the db questions you know it's okay I think step one is just talking to your vendors and and he said you can see who comes out of the woodwork when you talk about like you start talking about sustainability it's normalizing this conversation it's saying to each vendor you know do you think like we're doing you know we're doing lanyards like a lanyard company do you guys have more sustainable ones or how could we do this and you know your vendor might say we we don't know we haven't thought about it or they might say well this is we have been thinking about it thank you for asking so I mean the question was like where are we going in the future I think that I'm not really sure I think that that is the same question that we might say where are we going like in terms of everything right like the bigger things I think events they do seem to be a reflection of like what's going on in the world right we always say that when we do festivals and things we we basically replicate these like little cities for time right we have to use the same things that a city will think about is like a waste management system we have food we have energy we've got all these aspects of it that are really similar to just the real world and and I think in the real world what we're bping against is infrastructure issues like it's really easy to say let's just go to with electric cars now but if your town and your city doesn't have like charging stations and things that's really hard to do and same with events right if if the if if we don't have infrastructure if your town or the municipality doesn't have good recycling or composting or these things it's really hard to do it yeah yeah well I think you know like you hit on something interesting before as well which is that you know the education loop is so incredibly important and the more that we can simplify and that we can we can pack those little lessons down into bites that are easily easily consed and digested but also they're they're simple enough that they resonate so that way you're thinking about them later right and I think that you like the you know you mentioned before having a volunteer standing at all three of the bins because like you know nine out of 10 of us are in a restaurant and we go to you know throw our things away in there the three bins there and you're just like what goes in what bin and like the overwhelm is is legitimate right like the self doubt is there like am I doing this right like if I put it in the wrong thing am I ruining all the things that were already in there you know like there's all of this doubt that surrounds how how to go about it and you know like the the great enemy of doubt is information and I think the more that we can continue to make it easy and digestible and relatable for how to get that information the more likely we are to have these solutions that you know like we're not going to change exhaust on like the the the the global scale of vehicle exhaust doesn't move the needle when the only green cars are 80 grand right you know like it's not until the Dodge Neons like the the PT Cruisers the the cheap car of the year that becomes ubiquitous the the Chevy Cavalier from 1997 right like those are the vehicles that need to be green first and foremost the ones that are gonna be bought the most and are gonna last the longest and be driven the hardest like that's how it works but that's not the way the new technology works that's not the pattern that it follows so figuring out how you know we flip those those things and their importance and application is a big problem but you know like I think it's a problem that people see and if it's a problem that people see the good news is in in the entrepreneurial world if there's a problem people see there's there are people that are working on that problem so hopefully we'll begin to to see its impact too yeah and we also you know it's it's really hard like we were doing this we did one of our need like our sustainability speaker series and someone's talking about like energy renewable energy at music festivals and someone brought up what about the unions like they're actually used to coming in and laying all this cable because when you do like battery power generators you run you have to put them like close to where they are so you're running all this less cable well that's someone's job is running those cables and then the the companies that like have all of these big contracts they make their money on these cables and their legacy equipment and what do we do so I definitely will say that it is gonna take time and it's gonna take change and it also you know it puts another burden on the event planner to actually have these conversations and make these changes and do these things like there's a learning curve right but I will say that's why I kind of say we'll start now and that's easy I know it's easy easy to say and hard to do but I think that's why we keep I keep trying to find like good solutions for people like I think everything scary the first time you do it and one thing that if you are a Muse member and I never try to push a membership but we do have like 600 a database of 600 sustainable suppliers across the country which you can filter by you know you could do like caterer and Maryland you know and see who comes up and so that's helpful there's also resources for like you know food rescuing things and the first time you do that might be really hard but you know talking to someone about it who works at a food rescue organization and there's so many of them like make it easier for you and then you can start doing that at all your events right that becomes the normal yep one other one other thing that I wanna add in is I believe that everybody should have a line 9 in for sustainability in their event okay it could be contingency it could be very small amount but it's like we're putting in the budget right and the client sees this it's like carbon offsets or you know sustainability line item and then immediately they'll say well what what's that for and you could say we don't know yet we might not use it but here are some things that you know we might wanna spend that on or we could like reusable cup system or you know and then there's also like hiring a truck at the end of the event to take the items and give them to like a place like in New York we have materials for the arts which is this big huge warehouse where you can donate like fabricated elements or things or costes for your event and then they go to nonprofits in New York like schools or people that do theater use these and so I think putting in that line item for sustainability could really be a game changer yeah yeah and it tease up the conversation too right it it it allows you the the the entry point to be able to have that discussion with you know with your client or with whoever whoever's planning the event and you know like a minim maybe you're introducing them to the idea for the first time and it and it doesn't completely resonate but it starts the conversation yeah yeah Michele this has been super enlightening chat I I you know I really appreciate you just coming up with such good examples such detailed thoughtful responses to the questions I think that everyone listening is going to benefit tremendously from this conversation we are we're approaching the end of our time here but I want to make sure before we go why don't you let everyone that's listening know you know whether they're interested in in in bringing sustainability into their companies events that they're hosting already or there are planner that wants to make sure that they have options and solutions for sustainability to offer to their clients let them know how do they how do they get in touch with you and and what's the best place to start so you can go to the Muse website which is Muse USA dot org and from there like I could tell people there's a section called learn and there's all these articles and interviews and you can start there you can just spend a little bit of time reading and going oh my God I I and and every like article has links so if you wanna know about carbon offsets if you wanna know about food donation food rescue if you wanna know about like sustainable floral design it is it's on there and it's always growing you can follow us on LinkedIn so if you just go to LinkedIn and put in members United for Sustainable Events then you'll you'll see when we're having like there's also on the Muse website the event section so we do have we have classes we have one coming up and it's a deep dive on all like your event waste so how to reduce waste and how to divert waste and it's you can take the class live or on demand you can of course join Muse as a member so and you can follow us on Instagram as well and just keep you know keep up to date on when new articles come out new classes on on memberships on events and and all those things wonderful awesome so guys just for everybody that is listening whether you're watching this in video format on LinkedIn or YouTube or if you are listening on your favorite podcast network you should know that all of the links for Muse and for Michele and everything that she just mentioned they're all gonna be in the show notes so make sure that you go ahead and and click in browse through those click them give her a follow so that way you stay informed I get this motorcycle outside of my window all the sudden and the last moments they've come to their that's the emissions as the rhetorical joke inside of here at any rate find the links they're all there waiting for you so that way you can begin your education or you know continue to broaden your resources Michele thank you so much for taking time out of your day I know that your September is getting ready to get crazy and we're wishing you all of the best luck with it but on behalf of all of the listeners to the Pixilated podcast of myself I just want to thank you so much for being our guest today thank you so much alright guys so that brings us to the end of another great interview on the Pixilated podcast I have two asks for you the first one is if you have been listening and you love it please leave us a 5 star review our podcast is all about it's education right it's education for people inside of the event professional community and communities that are adjacent to it and your 5 star reviews help us get suggested to more event professionals which helps us get more listeners and spread the stories and the information that we so desperately want to share and then secondly if you aren't yet please make sure that you hit the follow button whether this is on YouTube or whether it's on your you know Spotify or Apple Music or whatever you listen to podcasts make sure you're subscribed it ensures that every time we publish a new episode you get notified so that way you can check it out as soon as it comes out so that's it until next time I'm Patrick Rife with Pixilated. Peace!