Transcript by Kensho.

Lindsey Hall: I'm Lindsey Hall, Head of Thought Leadership at S&P Global Sustainable1.

Esther Whieldon: And I'm Esther Whieldon, a Senior Writer on the Sustainable1 Thought Leadership team.

Lindsey Hall: Welcome to ESG Insider, a podcast hosted by S&P Global, where we explore environmental, social and governance issues that are shaping investor activity and company strategy.

Esther Whieldon: It's Climate Week NYC and we've been doing something a little different here at ESG Insider for this week. Now if you listen to our recent episode on what to expect from Climate Week, you'll know that this week included thousands of stakeholders gathering for hundreds of events across New York City. And as you might be able to hear from the background noise where I am, I'm currently at one of those events. 

At ESG Insider, we're thrilled to be an official media partner with the Nest Climate Campus, which took place from September 19 through 21 at the Javits Center. And over the last couple of days, we brought you short interviews from the sidelines of Climate Week. And today, we're bringing you one more. Okay, here it is.

Gayle Schueller: My name is Gayle Schueller. I serve as 3M's Senior Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer. In the background, I have an undergraduate in physics, a PhD in material science, 3 children and a husband for a very long time. So I've been in this space for a while, and I just think it's fabulous, and I love the opportunity to have the wherewithal of a big corporation to help make a difference in the world. So it's a pretty cool spot to be.

Esther Whieldon: Yeah, so what is your goal and mission and messaging here at the conference at Climate Week?

Gayle Schueller: Yes. Climate Week is a really cool event. It brings a great opportunity to have lots of individuals like myself from corporations, but also convening with government people, with NGOs and really having the ability to have conversations around what can we do now? How do we make things happen. 

And I'm really excited because I've been in this space for a while. And when I started, there was like all of this discussion about what is climate change. Is it real? Are we causing it? And is there really anything we can do? Well, I think we settled all of those questions. There are so many things we can do. Yes, we're driving things forward. 

With 3M, we have some big bold commitments for ourselves and where we see opportunities with our customers. And so I'm excited about bringing forward the things that we can do and the things that we can do now. And I think there's also a growing recognition of the importance of materials in these solutions. And we're not only a science-based company, but a material science-based company. So I think it's pretty exciting to see that it's all happening.

Esther Whieldon: So when I think of 3M, I just think of all the things I can buy like a Staples or a CVS that you sell, right? But given our listeners an idea I looked up -- you have more like 60,000 products or whatever. So can you or listeners a sense of sort of the bandwidth of the range of what kinds of products and services you offer?

Gayle Schueller: Yes. So I mean like you were saying, posted notes, Scotch tape, scotch bright, scouring, Command strips. -- those are all great products, but it's actually a relatively small fraction of what we sell of the 60,000. 

We have entire businesses associated with transportation and electronics which are actually converging in wild and crazy ways these days. A whole safety and industrial business, as for our N95 respirators, that's starting to be a popular thing that people know us for around the world. And we have our health care business. 

So each of those are based around 51 technology platforms that we mix and match and bring together. So the rolled kind of manufacturing, the adhesives, those all are things that we were talking about, even the nonwovens for some of those consumer products, but they're also used in other industrial spaces. So things like helping electric vehicles get a broader, longer range, or films that help solar panels be more effective or wind turbines last longer and then numerous types of areas in our health care space. So broad areas, and that's something that, again, I think it's fun. It's certainly challenging, but like the sustainability space, it means that there's a lot of different directions in ways we can make an impact.

Esther Whieldon: What are some themes or key takeaways you'd say you have from Climate Week thus far?

Gayle Schueller: I think one of the things that is coming really clear now is there is this recognition of the importance of the private sector. So corporations stepping up. But I think it's more important that maybe a few years ago, governments and NGOs really look at corporations to bring money. And while that's something we work with, there's this recognition now that it's not just about that. It's there's expertise that corporates bring that really don't generally exist at least at the same level with the NGOs and the governments. 

So corporations in 3M's case, we're really that scientific-based culture and that materials expertise. And really, we can come with things that are not only feasible to do, but are scalable. So we can help work with the various groups to demonstrate something our first proof of concept, then we can scale to a pilot. And then if it's really looking like this is going to work, then we can scale the large-scale manufacturing and distribute all over the world. 

I think that the science-based nature of our company causes us to think things through in certain ways and want us to prove the technical feasibility of things early, wants us when we're setting our own goals, we're pretty strict with ourselves about having a path identified with specific projects with specific actions, certain time lines and know the feasibility to get there. And have it makes sense from a mathematical perspective, both the science of the map, like, say, if it's reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but also the financial math that we know how we can afford to do this over what time period. So we're really rigid with ourselves about making sure that we have a math with a path for any goal that we're setting for ourselves. 

As far as new products, I would say that there's actually a different twist on this. And what I would suggest might be really important for us is that we have a 15% culture, where that means that anybody at the company can spend up to 15% of their time working on something that they're passionate about that is not what their boss tells them to do. Now if we tried to get us through our senior leadership and our Board today, it would never happen, but we've had it for 65 years. So what we now look back on and we recognize that, that's how things get started and how they survive through difficult budgeting cycles. So, for example, we have a whole bunch of things going on in the Climate Tech space that were not things that management said you must work on this. They were things that people felt passionate about. And now they're growing into things that we're scaling and looking at feasibility and starting to look at maybe how we can have things happen in a bigger way. 

So I think that 15% culture, combined with the intention and the way that we think about from a scientific perspective and then that freedom of going after that and using our laboratories and other resources of the company to check things out, I think that's really important. 

In fact, I'm not alone in thinking that because in 2018, we actually committed that we would have every new product we launched would have a sustainability advantage versus previous. So sometimes they're environmental, sometimes they're social and it's now rolled out across all of our products as we launch them. And so it's kind of exciting to see the teams thinking about that and recognizing that it's not this big sacrifice to make that happen. It's actually a new way of thinking about innovation with the sustainability pieces in mind. So whether it's climate challenges or water or social aspects, people are always looking for those.

Esther Whieldon: Can you talk to me about sort of the intersection of how you think about climate solutions and sort of the social factor in there?

Gayle Schueller: Very interesting. You're asking questions in a different angle. I thought you were going to say water. 

So we do have a strong intersection between climate and water. In fact, one of the goals that we set forward in 2019 was about investing $1 billion to help reduce our carbon footprint and water footprint simultaneously. Because when we worked on that math with a path that we were talking about, we learned that the levers that we needed to move to reduce our carbon footprint and reduce our water footprint we're very similar. And so we put it together rather than separating them out and worrying about double counting or something like that. 

But your point that you were asking about was really more about how does that interface with people and humans and equity. And that's something we're watching and trying to educate ourselves and make the right decisions on going forward. 

We have an effort around environmental justice, where we've mapped our facilities, and we've mapped that to using the EJ tool that the [Environmental Protection Agency] has developed and then kind of similarly looking at things outside the United States because the EPA tool is really just for the U.S.

And so we've been mapping our locations. And just really -- I'd say we're much closer to the beginning than the end of this, but we recognize that places where there tends to be a disproportionate effect from climate emissions from carbon emissions, and water, whether it's usage or quality or availability, we tend to recognize that those tend to be the communities that are otherwise disadvantaged as well.

And so we're trying to put a better connection in to better understand how that works and better because we're so scientific and so quantitative, that one's just a little bit trickier for us, but we're definitely doing the community engagement. 

We're starting the listening exercises. It's one of the things that we're doing as part of our work with the Water Resilience Coalition. We were doing a pilot with them right now on the net positive water impact. And we're really looking at what is that intersection to have a net positive water impact that has to be about how it affects humans, how it affects people. And so we've started our listening exercises on that. We're looking forward to providing some insight towards the end of the year. And I think that WRC is going to be presenting the data in January. 

But what we're finding increasingly, it's not that these variables are independent. They interact with each other. And so trying to find the right one and the best action is really critical. And we've done a lot of that with that water carbon emissions nexus. 

The human piece is just a little bit trickier because it's not fair for us to presuppose that we know that the answer what the solution is. We need to engage with the communities to hear exactly what they feel like the solution is and then make sure that we're finding the right way to have an intersection where we can make a difference and where they're getting what they prioritize. And I think about it a lot like a carbon footprint. -- honestly. So it's first, we're going to look at our own operations, what does that do? And we've reduced our water usage by more than 50%. At the same time, we've grown our business. That is an index number, so it's really about we've decoupled the water usage from our growth. 

And then if you look at it from an absolute perspective, it's a 24% reduction since 2005, absolute reduction from water. And that's an important piece of data, but that's only one piece of data. So right now, we're analyzing our sites all around the world. And our goal right now is to make sure that the water that's leaving our facilities is cleaner than the water coming into it. Now we're still collecting data and really making sure that we understand all of our measurements and all of our baselines on that. But that's an objective that we're driving for right now.

Esther Whieldon: That's a pretty big objective there.

Gayle Schueller: Yes. But it gets to that concept of what is net positive water impact. This is our exception to our math for the past rule is that we decided we would join the W, the Water Resilience Coalition and work on this net positive water impact because we thought it was such an important definition to frame. I'd be lying if I didn't say it makes me a little nervous because we're figuring it out as we go. And we're learning and learning what those communities are thinking at the same time.

Esther Whieldon: So thinking about Climate Week, what do you think would define a successful climate week to you and just in general?

 Gayle Schueller: Yes. Well, there's a whole range. I love this theme that appears to come out. We heard about the importance of the private sector collaborating with governments and NGOs. This is just my theme. So my 3 words for this kind of event are got to be about science. It's always collaboration because nobody does it alone whether you're in a corporation or even the entire private sector, you've got to work with the different sectors and different parts of the sector. So science, it's collaboration and it's acting with urgency: science, collaboration, urgency. And really identifying those new opportunities that we haven't had for some better new collaborations and it's kind of fun to see some old friends in the sustainability space, too.

Esther Whieldon: Well, thank you so much for talking with me.

Gayle Schueller: Sounds great -- thanks so much for making the time. It's been fun.

Esther Whieldon: We have so much more insight to share from Climate Week. So please stay tuned for more key takeaways over the next few episodes.

Lindsey Hall: Thanks so much for listening to this episode of ESG Insider, and a special thanks to our producer, Kyle Cangialosi. Please be sure to subscribe to our podcast and sign up for our weekly newsletter, ESG Insider. See you next time.

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