Where’s the Animal-Free Materials Revolution? Nicole Rawling of the Material Innovation Initiative Wants You to Launch It

Nicole Rawling: [00:00:00] Consumers don't generally say. I can't give up my leather, like they say, I just can't give up my cheese. Right? They don't have that emotional or cultural attachment to the products, and they don't mind technology in their clothes and homes and cars. Actually, in many cases, it's desired. We all want more technology, but consumers are more reluctant to accept technology in their food.

Paul Shapiro: Welcome to The Business for Good podcast to show where we spotlight companies making money by making the world a better place. I'm your host, Paul Shapiro, and if you share a passion for using commerce to solve many of the world's most pressing problems than this is the show for you. Hello friends and welcome to episode 67 of The Business for Good Podcast, and what an interesting one it is.

Have you ever noticed that there has been an explosion of investment into the animal free food space with makers of alternative meats and milk and eggs making more and more advancements every week it seems. But there is really very [00:01:00] little comparable happening in the animal free. Space. Sure. We've had plastic based leather alternatives like pleather for a long time, but in terms of products that are not derived from animals or from fossil fuels, what's out there on the market that's actually at scale.

Turns out just not that much. Enter the Material Innovation Initiative, a relatively new non-profit organization started by veterans of the Animal Welfare and animal free food space. Their. To be The Good Food Institute of Animal Free Materials, helping to attract investment and entrepreneurial activity to build a new industry of animal free fur, leather, silk and more.

And we've got their ceo, Nicole Raw, on to Reggaes with details on the importance of building such an industry and how there is such a massive white space out there. Just waiting for you, dear listener to fill. So are you thinking about starting your own company to help animals on the. If so, after listening to Nicole, you just may think that you'll have a more open field if you go into the alternative materials space, but we'll see.[00:02:00]

I'll let her make the case to you herself. I now give you Material Innovation Initiative, CEO Nicole Rowing. Nicole, welcome to the Business for Good Podcast. Oh, Paul,

Nicole Rawling: thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to

Paul Shapiro: be here. Hey, it's my honor, although I have to admit there is some irony in me interviewing you in that I am not often credited as being the most fashionable person in a room.

And in fact, my wife, Tony recently said that she believes that our dog, Eddie, has more clothing than I do, which very well may be true since she has gotten him a bandana for seemingly. Every occasion of the year, of which occasions I couldn't believe he needed a bandana for. But, um, I'm glad to be talking with you because I presume that you know a lot more about fashion and materials than I do.

Nicole Rawling: I probably know a lot more, I would say I'm also not very fashionable, so it's a little odd. And I would, I would love to see Eddie, so Eddie's clothes, um, I've seen his pictures on Facebook. He's absolutely adorable. I have to say pit bulls are my favorite dog. We've fostered over a hundred of them, and, uh, so [00:03:00] he is, he's a pleasure to, to watch

Paul Shapiro: as well.

Very nice, very nice. Well, first of all, that's amazing that you have fostered more than 100 pit bulls. Over what time, over what timeframe is this, Nicole? Is this over a decade or what? I mean, how, how long could you it have taken to fosterer that many dogs? So we've

Nicole Rawling: actually done almost 400 animals, um, starting after I graduated from undergrad, so around 2002.

Paul Shapiro: Wow. Wow. Amazing. Good for you cats. Skinny pigs,

Nicole Rawling: bunnies.

Paul Shapiro: Squirrels. Wow. . Well, Eddie actually started out as a foster and we fostered another pit bull at the, uh, about the same time. And we ended up keeping Eddie and adopting out the other dog. But, uh, we knew that he was not going anywhere. But my hat is off to you.

And, you know, there's only been, uh, one guest who's been a two timer on the show. John Mackey the co-founder of Whole Foods, but anybody who is as much of a pit bull lover as you are, we might need to get you back on because that is like a whole other episode just to talk about that. But hopefully, uh, you'll get to.

Some time, and I'm sure that he'll be appropriately [00:04:00] dressed that time if Tony has anything to do with it. But that is really cool that you are, uh, that you're such a pit bull lover. You, you definitely would fit in in our household. Thanks. I'll

Nicole Rawling: have to get him some next gen material

Paul Shapiro: outfits. . Well, the last episode of the show was with Pena Text.

The, with their, uh, CEO and I, I should have asked her if, if she has any customers, if there's using their pineapple weather for dog, uh, outfits, that would be pretty cool if, if we could get something like other pajamas or a bandana or something out of Pina. See,

Nicole Rawling: I know you ask all of your, um, your guests as well.

What are new businesses ideas? I think we just hung up with

Paul Shapiro: one. Ah, okay. Very good. Some next fend material for dogs. Clearly a hole in the market, no doubt. Okay. All right, good. Well, we're gonna get to that. So don't, don't, uh, if that's your answer to that question. That's good. That would be a good one. You certainly would've a customer in Tony, at least.

Um, but before we get there, Nicole, you know, I want to ask you like, you know, you have had, um, an illustrious career. You know, you're an, you've been a [00:05:00] practicing attorney, been a litigator, you've worked in a nonprofit space for a long time. How, how did you get into this? Like, why were you, uh, so interested in law in the first place?

Nicole Rawling: Oh, goodness. Um, Actually I, from my mother, she's told me that I was born a litigator, I guess quite a, quite a difficult child. Um, and very curious about, um, the world and constantly asking why. And actually that's how I initially came into animal advocacy, which is figuring out that we were having cows for.

And it just, um, it really affected me. I think I was around five years old and I just couldn't believe that, you know, we were actually killing and eating animals. And so I think it just grew out of that, my desire to make a difference in the world. And obviously as an attorney, you, you have a lot of power.

Paul Shapiro: Mm-hmm. . So tell me about that legal career. Cause I was listening to [00:06:00] an interview with you on, um, a different show and you said something that really struck me. You know, you were working at the time at the Humane Society of the United States, and I wanna just quote what you said. You said we kept suing factory farms and winning.

Yet nothing changed. So what do you mean by that? Like you were winning these cases yet nothing was changing. Why do you say that?

Nicole Rawling: Yeah, it was, um, I loved my time at hss. It was an incredible team with John Lavo and Peter Brandt and we. You know, as I'm sure a lot of your listeners know, it's very hard to sue on animal cruelty charges.

There's not a lot of protections for farmed animals, and so we sued on environmental violations and we had cases in North Carolina and California and we would win the cases, but basically things, the practices did not change because the issue with animal agriculture is there's such low profit margins that engaging.

Positive [00:07:00] practices are actually, you know, not violating environmental laws is almost impossible to do. So the insurance companies would pay the attorneys, they'd pay the fines, and I didn't see much change in the system. And I mean, litigation is time intensive, it's very expensive. And I wanted to be more effective in my time.

And so I went into nonprofit management cuz I thought there was a lot more good we could do in this.

Paul Shapiro: Sure. So nonprofit management. What was the next step then? Cause you were already in the non-profit world, but then management. So what happened?

Nicole Rawling: Yeah, so I was, um, I was suing the factory farms for HSUS and the animal legal defense fund through my law firm or a Carrington Siff.

They had a terrific pro bono program that really helped animal. Advocates. So at that time I actually joined the board of the Animal Legal Defense Fund, and Steve Wells was looking for a deputy director to come in and, and help him [00:08:00] run the organizations and oversee the, the legal programs. And I tried to help him write a job description and I was like, You know what, actually this would be amazing.

I would, I would love this job. And so that was my first real full-time job in animal.

Paul Shapiro: What happened then, Nicole, from, um, the time when you're at Aldf working on non-profit management to the time when you think, All right, I morally want to get more into using markets rather than, uh, rather than the legal battles that you were fighting to try to make changes for animals.

Nicole Rawling: Well, I think, um, everyone who works in animal protection knew Bruce Friedrich, the head of founder and executive director of gfi. We'd actually, um, connected when I was in North Carolina on, I had some connections to the US Attorney's Office and I wanted to help him out while he was at Farm Sanctuary.

And so we connected back then and I'd actually, my ex-husband was in. And I thought he could be really valuable [00:09:00] to gfi, so I connected him to be on the advisory council and then started to get all the GFI newsletters and just thought, this is brilliant. Like this is using GFI is using the. Power of the markets to affect change.

And I'm sure most of your listeners know about how, um, GFI works, but it's not changing consumer behavior. It's not asking consumers to give something up, right? It's recognizing that consumers like the taste of meat. They buy it because it's convenient, it's cheap, and. It's something that they really enjoy eating.

So what we need to do is give consumers what they want. So let's just create those products that meet those needs, but don't kill animals. And I think, you know, all omnivores will agree you don't eat meat because you want to kill an animal. You eat meat despite killing [00:10:00] an animal. And so I just, I thought that theory of change was absolutely brilliant and I wanted to be involved.

And so I joined to run the international.

Paul Shapiro: Well, as, as you may know, I could not possibly agree more, Nicole, that you know, the reality is, is that raising awareness about the problems of factory farming is insufficient to change it. That most people just are not making their food choices based on how animals are treated or the environment.

Um, even health is oftentimes a secondary or tertiary concern. When it comes to the motivating factors that actually drive our food choices. And so I too agree, uh, with uh, Bruce's and the Good Food Institute's argument that really if we want to change this system and reduce humanities reliance on animals for food, we have to actually start addressing the areas.

That really motivate people's food decisions, which, uh, you know, has been famously said many times, uh, that it's really, it has to [00:11:00] taste good. It has to be cost effective, it has to be convenient. Um, I don't necessarily know that that's even sufficient, even on its own. Uh, cuz I think the desire for animal meat is really high.

Um, but I think that's where we gotta start. And so I've been very impressed by the work that gfi, including yourself, have been doing. All right friends, I hope you're enjoying the interview so far and let me just briefly interrupt, to let you know that this episode is sponsored by the very good food company, more commonly known by one of their brands, The very good butchers.

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You can check them out at their [00:12:00] ticker V R Y Y F. Again, that is V R Y Y F. For full disclosure, even before they were a sponsor of this show, my wife Tony and I became shareholders. Our. Since we were so impressed both by the array of really great plant-based meat products that they're offering and the All Star team that they have assembled over there at the Very Good Food Co.

These folks are growing fast. They're building production plants a restaurant and more. They even just pass their first ever $1 million revenue month. Showing that this startup is no joke, whether it's steaks, ribs, burgers, sausages, pepperoni, or more, you name it, the very good butchers are making and selling it.

They even do plant-based salmon and yes, before you ask plant-based cheese to via an acquisition that they made, while they are based in Canada, they have production in California too. And yes, they're treated in the. And they are rapidly expanding the reach of the animal free meats that they are selling.

I love their messaging, which focuses on how they are proudly butchering beans, not animals, but they still embrace that [00:13:00] artisanal butcher aura in their imagery and in their packaging. So go check 'em out@verygoodfood.com to see all the brands they, the good work they're doing and how you can become a shareholder yourself if you're so inclined and of.

Tasting is believing. So make sure to order a few things from their site and prepare to be wowed. Now back to the interview. Tell me then, Nicole, you know, you get to this point where you're, you're at GFI for years working on international expansion. At some point you think, you know, the world really needs a new non-profit organization.

I'm gonna start it. So what happened? So

Nicole Rawling: I wish I could claim credit for the idea. It's completely not mine for the Material Innovation Initiative. So in my international work at gfi, I establish our Indian operations. And through that I met Stephanie Downs, who is the co-founder of Good Dot, a plant-based meat company in India.

So we, we met in India and just [00:14:00] immediately connected and, and kept in touch and she's, she's just so impressive and. In, It was around, I think July, 2019, I was having a conversation with her and she said, Hey, I'm, I'm actually starting a, the GFI for vegan materials. And I was like, Really? And she's, she was writing the job description at the time, and what she needed is she needed somebody with nonprofit management experience who could basically copy GFIs operations for the fashion industry.

And it was really an exciting prospect. And so I took me about a month and, and then I accepted

Paul Shapiro: the job. Wow. Congratulations. Well, I'm a big fan of Stephanie as I've known her for a, a very long time, uh, long before even. Good dot, And I have really been impressed by her work, and I know that she is. Well, you are the head of the organization.

I believe that she is the board chair and co-founder. Is that her role in the company, or excuse me, in the organization? [00:15:00] It is. Cool. Well, that's great. Okay, well, you know, we're already a little bit into this interview and we really haven't even said yet. Aside from the fact that it's GFI four materials, uh, what is the materials innovation initiative?

Nicole Rawling: So, uh, like you said, we're a GFI for vegan materials for whoever understands that, but our mission is to accelerate the development of next gen materials that are high performance animal free and more sustainable for the fashion, automotive and home goods

Paul Shapiro: industries. Okay. Fashion, automated and home goods.

So what's that leaving out? What don't you focus on then? It seems like a lot of materials. Yeah, so

Nicole Rawling: the, think about it as we are working on replacements for animal based materials, so that's leather, fur down, woo, exotic skins and silk. Got it. And so those, those are some of the main materials that are used in those industries.

So we are not working [00:16:00] on things like cotton because they're not animal based and we're not working on things like, you know, construction materials. I see. Buildings, but we would work on, you know, couches, rugs. Mm-hmm. , obviously

Paul Shapiro: clothing. Yeah. Are there animal based materials used in construction?

Nicole Rawling: Uh, it's not my area of expertise, but I believe there are, I think there are byproducts from cows in concrete.

Paul Shapiro: Hmm. Wow. Interesting. We actually had on, um, Joanne Rodriguez as a guest a few episodes ago. She's the CEO of My Cycle and, um, while they're not working on creating new construction materials, they have, uh, started this company to. Use my salium to essentially buy over mediate, construction waste. And it's a really cool company so that, you know, like for example, uh, like shingles from your roof when you throw them out, um, you know, they just go and they get landfilled and nothing.

They just sit there for oh, you know, centuries or millennia. Whereas, um, Joanne and her team have created this method for, uh, decomposing them within a matter of weeks. It's really [00:17:00] cool. Feeling's.

Nicole Rawling: An amazing,

Paul Shapiro: amazing material. Yes, it is. So we're gonna talk about that as well, but I, I do wanna ask you, you know, there's a lot of, let's say, alternative leathers out there right now.

Nearly all of them are based on fossil fuel. So is that something that MI also promotes? Um, or do you consider that not a sustainable alternative to animal based products like,

Nicole Rawling: So we do promote them more than the animal based materials, but we don't believe that's the future of the industry. So, you know, you're referring to things that I think most people think of as pleather.

Mm-hmm. , right? So if you are what we all have as vegans at home, that's our bags and our, our shoes, wallets, et cetera, is highly likely a petrochemical deriv. Material we need to move away as a society from petrochemical derived materials. But right now they're still better than traditional animal leather.

On that, both the lack of killing [00:18:00] animals as well as environmental

impact.

Paul Shapiro: So aside then Nicole, from the, you know, the fossil fuel based alternative leathers. I mean, I have a pair of dress shoes that I presume are made out of them. Um, I presume the belt that I wear every day is made out of them. But what are the weather alternatives that are really commercially available?

Obviously, you know, we see things like, you know, my sodium leather, that's not really on the market yet. There's doing cactus leather, which seems really cool. But is there anything at scale. That is being made right now in the way that like you have, you know, a beyond or an impossible in the meat industry.

Is there anything on alternative leather right now in the material space that is at scale and available to consumers?

Nicole Rawling: So it really depends on your definition of at scale. There are products on the market, but I would say they are not at scale. So I know the, your interview on Pex, the company and nnm just came out.

That is one great example of a NextGen material. It's a leather based material that is on the market right now and is [00:19:00] available, but it's not mass market, it's in specialty product. That can be difficult to get. You mentioned cactus based leather. There's a company desert. They have products on the market now.

Actually, I think one of their. One of their fossil, The company just came out with ATO based bag, and so it is available, but it's a, it's not,

Paul Shapiro: Yeah,

Nicole Rawling: probably located anywhere where you would purchase your, your materials, your clothing.

Paul Shapiro: Well, you don't wanna know where I purchase mine as virtually everything is coming from Goodwill for me.

uh, we actually had on, um, uh, Vice President from Goodwill on an earlier episode, and she was talking. Basically how the most sustainable thing is to buy used, um, which I, I certainly agree with, but obviously it's only a limited amount of demand for that. Um, but let me ask you, Nicole, why, like, why is it, why is it that there's been so much more innovation in market penetration in alternative meat than in alternative [00:20:00] leather?

Nicole Rawling: So I think it's a very good question. I mean, part of it I would like to say is there was a gfi, you know, five, six years ago when there was not an mii, right? I think that GFI did an incredible job of getting into the media and into that mass market. The idea of these alternative. Protein products and by encouraging entrepreneurs and investors and even big food companies to work in that space, that there's a positive, there's an opportunity for a positive impact on the world as well as a, you know, strong financial return.

I really got a lot of people involved and excited and then that support that GFI gave to the entire industry was extremely valuable. Mm-hmm. . And so I think that's one difference. I would say too, it's likely that, you know, food I think is, is a little bit easier for [00:21:00] people to get involved in. So, To make an new protein.

You're looking at things that are like, how does it, how does it cook? How does it taste? Um, you know, how does it hold together? Those, those are actually a lot easier challenges to tackle than something like a leather that has to last long term, has to be scratch resistant, has to resist water, has to resist color changes, has to have strong tensile strength so it doesn't rip.

So I do think some of the materials can be, More complicated technology.

Paul Shapiro: I, I think that what you're saying makes sense, Nicole, but I, I also am persuaded by an argument that I've heard you make elsewhere, actually, which is that in some ways it may be easier because you don't have consumer perception issues where, you know, people are far more accepting of technology in the materials that they put on their body rather than the foods that they put in their body.

And you have far fewer government regulat. Like, you don't have to worry about FDA approval or generally recognized as [00:22:00] safe status. Um, it, it does seem like there may be a lower bar to meet when using some of these, um, high technology products, uh, in fashion rather than in.

Nicole Rawling: Yeah. Well thank you so much Paul.

You've definitely done your research. Um, yeah, I think there, there are two different parts of the industry, right? There's the demand and there's the supply. I do think that the supply is low right now. I know the supply is low. Like we were talking about. There aren't many of these products on the market, and I think that is because there are some more technology barrier.

To creating those materials, but when you get into the demand, I a hundred percent agree. Um, obviously I said that before, but I we're very excited about the lack of barriers to switching consumers and brands away from animal based materials into vegan materials. And what I can say is we've had meetings with, Oh goodness, the number keeps increasing.

I haven't looked at [00:23:00] it recently, but it's, it's somewhere around 50 of the top international fashion and automotive brands. And they are actively looking for these next gen materials. They just don't exist. Mm-hmm. . And so the brands want them. They know consumers want them, but they're not there. And then what I would say for consumers, and we've done some research I can talk about, consumers are much more likely to move away from materials made from animals than they are from food made from animals.

These consumers don't generally say, I can't give up my leather. Like they say, I just can't give up my cheese. Right? They don't have that emotional or cultural attachment to the products, and they don't mind technology in their clothes and homes and cars. Actually, in many cases it's desired, right? We all want more technology, but consumers are more reluctant to accept technology in their food.

And then finally, I would say that consumers also use [00:24:00] and purchase vegan materials. And in many cases they're not even aware of the difference. So all of us have vegan materials at home, and if you talk to people about food, I know I've heard people say, Well, I don't eat vegan. Well, you're not a carnivore.

Like yes

Paul Shapiro: you do . Right. Have you ever enjoyed french fries? Yes, exactly. Yeah.

Nicole Rawling: A Coke right? Is also vegan. So, um, it's people very aware that they have non-material, not animal based materials.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah, I don't really think that people contemplate that much at all. What their things are made out of. I mean, if you buy Gore-Tex, how many people know what that actually.

They just know, you know, this is this material or, um, I, I have this, uh, very lightweight shirt that's really, uh, warm. You know, despite being very thin and lightweight, it's very warm. And frankly, I have no idea what it's made out of. I never even, I never even contemplated what it's made out of. Um, so I do think that there's probably hot way less fidelity to having something that is animal based in, in fashion.

So I, I'm really just affirming [00:25:00] what you're saying, but I do think. You know, there's just, uh, probably, uh, far, far fewer obstacles in this sense than there are for animal products that we're consuming. And to me, that suggests that for entrepreneurs or want people who want to be entrepreneurs, like this is a massive, massive white space.

You know, like I'm not against starting another plant-based burger company, but you know, there's a lot of competition in that space already. Um, I think there's room for even more frankly. I mean there's, after all there's room for McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, even though they're all selling fast food burgers.

So, you know, certainly room for a lot of plant-based burger companies too. Uh, but at the same time, you know, there's nearly nothing as you're pointing out that's at scale yet, uh, when it comes to alternative leather. Uh, so this is like such a massive white space. Which leads me then to this question, Nicole, that I'm wondering, and I think that you probably know a lot more about it than I do, you know, how much good does it do?

Um, you know, like for example, you know, no cow to my knowledge is raised for their leather, right? We raise them [00:26:00] for the meat. And a lot of people consider weather a byproduct. Would you say it's more of a co-product? Like what percentage of the economic value of a cow is coming from leather? So, you know, how much do you, uh, let's say save animals by replacing weather as opposed to saving meat, or excuse me, replacing.

Nicole Rawling: Yeah, it's an excellent question that I actually get quite a lot. Um, you know, is it a byproduct and we'll just focus on leather? Is it a byproduct or is it a co-product? And a co-product is produced along with the main product and it really carries equal importance to the main product, whereas a byproduct is, you know, not really planned.

It's, it's a side thought. I think a co-product is something that's required to maintain that industry. That if you were not getting that a profit from that product that your main, you know, source, your main source of income would fall away because it doesn't, it's not economically viable, and that is definitely true with leather.[00:27:00]

So we're actually, we talk about us as part of the entire movement to remove animals, animal agriculture completely. And it will have a positive impact on the food industry as well. And actually two, two very respected organizations. Um, rethink acts. So if, if someone who's read the Rethink x uh, animal agriculture report, I think it's, it's almost two years old now, but it's really good.

We'll, we'll link

Paul Shapiro: to it in the show notes for people who would like to see it. Great. Thanks.

Nicole Rawling: Yeah, that's, it's really helpful. And we've been talking to them quite a bit on the disruption, their disruption experts and economists, so helping to understand the materials industry and animal agriculture in general.

And then also Dr. Liz Buck from the Good Food Institute. She wrote a, a great blog that we could also link. I can send. That the, as the profit margins in the animal agriculture industry are so small that a disruption in the price of leather could [00:28:00] actually have a ripple effect throughout the beef industry, significantly increasing the price and lowering the demand.

So the profit in animal agriculture for a cow is about 5%. The profit from leather is also about 5%. And the way the economists at Rethink X, um, Catherine Tub was one of the authors of that report, has talked to us on materials that when you start to decrease the demand for that part of leather, for some farms, Raising cattle is gonna be unprofitable, and so they're gonna start to close.

And then once you start to, to reduce that supply, The price is going to increase and then there's going to be lower demand, and so they really do believe that focusing on materials could be a great inroad to ending the beef industry.

Paul Shapiro: Wouldn't that argument then apply Nicole also to byproducts, like [00:29:00] whether it's a CO or a byproduct?

I mean, couldn't you make that same argument that, hey, you know, they're getting some marginal percent return on. I, I don't know this, the bones that are going to gelatin as an example, and if you eliminated that, that could be like this tipping point. Would you say that's plaus?

Nicole Rawling: Yeah, I would, I am not an economist, so I would leave it up to the economist on whether that profit margin is high enough.

But there's um, actually someone recently told me about an economist named Buckminster Fuller who had this idea of a trim tab. So he said, Describe a think of, um, a big, huge. Make a massive, you know, shipping ship or a, um, cruise ship that's heading in one direction if you want. That's animal agriculture.

You want to steer that ship away from its path of killing animals. What do you do? Do you get in the front of it and like, push your hands and try and, you know, stop this huge, smash this ship that's going forward? No, you could take an action where you could actually [00:30:00] switch the entire rudder to the side, which is also a, a big movement.

Or you could, uh, move the trim tab that is on the rudder. It's really tiny. It's really easy to move, but it does affect the movement of the entire ship. And so his idea is when you're trying to disrupt an entire industry, you need to look for those trim tabs. What is the easiest way? To affect change. And in our case, it's what is that easiest way to produce the profit of animal agriculture?

And we do believe that that's materials based on what we've been talking about before, that not only is the industry looking for it, but you have these massive, like Adidas just made an announcement. Of new shoes. You have huge companies that are introducing these products, looking into them and believing they're the future of the industry.

I, I wanna say a side note on this in a second, but you have that and the ease of the consumers, [00:31:00] that the consumers just are not, as opposed to this change as they are in food, that the, this makes a lot of sense of a place to focus. Um,

Paul Shapiro: Sure. Yeah. And, and the Adidas announcement to which you're referring, I believe is the, the, uh, partnership with Bolt Threads to do a MyUM based leather shoe.

Is that right?

Nicole Rawling: And they just announced another shoe that came out on the market right now.

Paul Shapiro: We had on, uh, one of the co-founders of Bolt Threads talking about that on a past episode also, which is a, a pretty exciting commercialization for that company, which is been around for, you know, like a decade. And this is like their first really meaningful.

Commercialization, uh, opportunity with, with Adidas. I know they had done their, uh, spider silk ties that they made a very, like, small run of, but this is like the first real mass market penetration for them, so it was really exciting to see that coming to fruition.

Nicole Rawling: Yeah. They partnership was also with Caring and Stella McCartney and Lululemon.

So there's, there's um, there's a lot of big names that are supporting the snack gen material industry. And actually, if I [00:32:00] can mention that little, um, anecdote that I wanted to. Say about how quickly I think the fashion industry will change. We are working with a 10 billion French luxury brand. Can't mention their name.

We're under strict nda, but they are not publicly. Talking about working in NextGen materials, but they're doing significant work behind the scenes and they've told us that they want to be the leaders in this space. So they're preparing to come out as, as the top leaders in NextGen materials and replacements to silk, cashmere, and leather.

They're just not doing it right now. And for me, that's, that's what's so exciting is that you have all of these massive, very influential companies with a lot of power who see this as the future, but it's not out there in the market yet. Mm-hmm. . And so there's just, there's massive opportunity in

Paul Shapiro: the space.

Indeed. I, I totally agree. There is massive opportunity and, uh, you, you've mentioned silk a few [00:33:00] times, so I wanna ask you about that. But before we do, I wanna say, you know, Buckminster Fuller is a, I'm a huge fan of his. In fact, when you walk into the Better Miko in our lobby, we have a gigantic quote from Buckin Fuller on the wall there, and the quote is very relevant to what you're doing, Nicole.

Um, he said that to change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. And so I, I have, you know, I, I think many people who have devoted their lives to trying to raise awareness and trying to change hearts and minds have realized that it'll probably just be faster to go the buck, Mr.

Fuller route, which is simply render the existing model up. So we, rather than trying to persuade people that they have some moral opposition to the existing model, um, which seems to. Uh, yielded, uh, the, the type of results that many people in the animal welfare and environmental movements would want, I think.

Um, but I do wanna ask you about silk because you mentioned a few times, Nicole, and on your website, I was pretty surprised. It indicated that, uh, the most environmentally taxing material is silk. And so you [00:34:00] listed them, you said the five most environmentally damaging materials are in this order. Alka wool, leather, cotton, and then regular wool, I presume from sheep.

Not, not Alka. Um, I don't really know much about the Alka wool industry, but it's, it was fascinating to me that silk was the number one most taxing thing, cuz I don't really know that much about it. Um, I know many people have a hard time, uh, sympathizing or, or especially empathizing with worms. I, I know that the worms are, are boiled alive, but I think many.

Sadly just don't care that much about worms. But what is so environmentally taxing about silk? Um, it's clear from an animal welfare perspective if you care about worms, why it's bad, but why is it bad for the planet? Yeah. Well, what I

Nicole Rawling: say, I wanna, what I'm about to say, which is sustainability is extremely complicated.

Um, Establishing the parameters of what you examine and how we're having an impact on the planet can be very, very complicated because there's a lot of, you know, interdependent factors. [00:35:00] So this specific data comes from an organization called the Higg Index that collects life cycle analysis information on materials used in the fashion industry.

They, they collect information about all the materials. They're not just focused on animal materials, and they look at global warming unification. Water scarcity and abiotic resource depletion. They do not, The data right now does not have chemistry, so the, you know, negative impact on potential chemicals and.

Things like microplastic pollution, that data just doesn't exist right now. And those are the big critiques of hag. So if you take out those two and you just, if you take out the microplastic and chemistry and you just focus on global warming, unification, water scarcity, and abiotic resource depletion, that's where silk has the largest impact.

Right? And the biggest areas are, you know, use of [00:36:00] water and global.

Paul Shapiro: Interesting. And for those who don't know what unification is, you wanna just tell people, Nicole?

Nicole Rawling: Sure. It's, uh, usually when you have too many nutrients that get into waterways, and it's usually runoffs from animal agriculture. And then I think you, a lot of algae grows and takes away the oxygen in the water.

It's killing a lot of the other

Paul Shapiro: species and. Yeah, right. U usually from like nitrogen or phosphorous, which are, are very prevalent in animal manure. But, um, yeah. Well, you know, it's really interesting. Um, I, uh, I, I don't know what the silk alternatives are, aside from what Bolt Threads is doing, and I know that they haven't really commercialized that yet.

Um, but, and there's also fiber I know, um, which I think is in Japan, But is there anybody who has really commercialized anything as a self alternative yet that has meaningfully penetrated the.

Nicole Rawling: So right now the biggest alternative to silk is poly. But again, we do not wanna use polyester. It's [00:37:00] a petrochemical drive material.

And so if you're talking next gen silk, there really is very little. So like you mentioned, bolt threads, fiber, there's a few others. Micro silk, Amil, Cvis, spy techs. Um, I think orange fiber, smart fiber, anca, those are some of the other companies who are working on this. I, like we talked about with leather, there's a few products, especially using the mechanical chemical technology that are on the market.

Um, but they're not mass market yet. They're still huge opportunities for development in that space.

Paul Shapiro: It's remarkable, Nicole, that. Category that we're talking about. There is like nearly nothing of a big company. There's a lot of little startups, but there's no big company that has some big footprint in the marketplace for any of these next gen animal free materials.

Yeah. No, it

Nicole Rawling: really, it really is. I think, um, that's what's so exciting for entrepreneurs and [00:38:00] investors about this space is it is wide open at the moment, and we're actually putting out, hopefully in the middle of June, our first next gen industry report. So Elaine Sue, who's our chief Innovation Officer, is analyzing the market right now and putting that out to really help investors and entrepreneurs understand the opportunities in this space.

And obviously like it worked in the food industry. We are, um, targeting mass. Like chemical companies who produce these, you know, pleas or polyesters and help them understand the huge value of getting into this space.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah. Is there any pushback from any of these companies? Obviously in the meat industry, we have seen pushback from like the National Cattleman's Beef Association and other, uh, other interest groups that represent the folks who raise animals for food.

Is there any type of pushback, though similarly, like, you know, there's a lot of litigation battles, let's say, over how meat gets labeled, um, and other similar, uh, battles that [00:39:00] have been fought on the courts over alternative meats right now. Is there anything similar yet in the fashion world?

Nicole Rawling: So not as strong as there was in the, in the food industry.

There's. The co the material companies are pretty worried about two policy issues. One is the labeling. So like we saw in the food industry, the challenges to using traditionally animal based terms for, you know, vegan products like, um, a burger or sausage or milk. Unfortunately, Italy has banned the use of the term leather for non-animal based leather.

Paul Shapiro: Wow. Wow. Yeah. So what, so what do they have to call it?

Nicole Rawling: I don't know. I don't know if there's a recommendation on what they need to call it, but they cannot use the term leather. Wow. So it's, that's a big concern. And Italy is, you know, one of the top fashion, you know, countries in the world. And then the other, the other concern is tariffs.

So there's actually significantly higher [00:40:00] duties on materials. Replace animal based materials versus the animal based materials. And that can be actually as high as 35% , which obviously if you're trying to reach price parity, that's a huge burden. So I'm hoping, actually, I had a great call on Friday with a major lobbying firm in DC that I think will take this on pro bono.

They're really excited about it. Um, so I just have to, you know, have to work that out. But I think they. The industry understands that this is going to happen, right? It's just how many blocks are we gonna have to overcome?

Paul Shapiro: Sure, Sure. Um, great. Well, uh, speaking of overcoming blocks, so there's gonna have to be a lot more innovation, a lot more companies, a lot more investment in this space.

So if you, Nicole, had your wish and you could create any company that you wanted in this space, and let, let's just say that you, you know, had a, a vast amount of wealth at your fingertips and you wanted to put out and noticing [00:41:00] I'll fund a company to do this. What do you think is the most pressing need right now?

Nicole Rawling: So I would probably say, From an impact standpoint, silk, because we're talking 1 trillion silk worms that are boiled alive or or baked alive every year. And like you mentioned, the high environmental impact. I think there's huge opportunities in the precision fermentation technology to basically grow proteins.

So whether it's keratin or fibro or collagen. So I think that is, is a huge impact. As well as, and this is sort of unrelated to our mission in saving animals. Polyester was developed as an alternative to silk. Polyester actually makes up 70% of the materials used in the fashion industry. It's by far the the highest volume, and so if I was a investor or an [00:42:00] entrepreneur, I would wanna tackle both of those simultaneously.

That you could create a silk replacement that really was a true silk replacement. And then if you look at the brands, why would they, And we can actually even improve on silk, right? So anyone who owns silk, you know, you can't get water on it. You can't put it in the in the wash using, when we're not constrained to the biological constraints of that animal, we can do a lot more.

So you. Replace silk, make it better, and then actually tackle the problems with polyester as.

Paul Shapiro: Cool. Well, for all of you folks who are interested in investing in or starting your own company, you heard it right here from Nicole, start a Silk Alternative company and you're gonna get support from Mii to do it.

Uh, now Nicole, for those of people who might wanna start a company or maybe they wanna join a company in this space, um, you know, you've seen this issue from a lot of sides. Now, having been in the non-profit animal advocacy space to, uh, the, um, Good Food Institute and now to [00:43:00] mi, uh, what resources would you re.

Are there things that have been helpful to you that you would recommend to other folks who might benefit from, from consuming them as well?

Nicole Rawling: So unfortunately not, there's really not a lot available on this because it's a nascent industry. I will say there's a few publications from to understand the fashion industry from Global Fashion Agenda and Boston Consulting Group.

That's called the Pulse. Pulse of the Industry report. Those are really good reports. I think they also put out the CEO agenda to understand the entire fashion industry. I will then put a personal plugin for our materials that where we really are doing a lot of different analyses that we hope will make it easier for entrepreneurs, scientists, investors to get into this space.

Our chief Scientific officers finalizing a report we're calling What Makes Silk Silk. Which we hope to publish June 1st. [00:44:00] And so please sign up for our newsletter and, and you'll get a notification as soon as that comes out. And it's really geared towards helping scientists understand what they need to do to replace silk.

What are those components like? What really does make silk silk? Why is it so special? And combining that scientific viewpoint with the fashion. Uh, viewpoint. So Dr. Sidney Gladman is our scientist. Thomasine Dolan is our fashion designer. So they're working together to basically merge those views to help develop this entirely new industry.

And then, like I mentioned, our chief Innovation Officer, Elaine Sue, is putting out the next gen market industry report in hopefully mid June.

Paul Shapiro: Okay. Very cool. So for those folks who want to sign up for the newsletter that you're encouraging them to, I presume they can just go to the material innovation.org website, Correct.

Okay, so go to material innovation.org and check it out. Sign up and you can learn more about how [00:45:00] you can work with the Material Innovation Initiative to do great things to advance the animal free material space, which as you, if you take away any from this, anything from this interview, it's that. It is a nearly untapped space, and we need a lot more innovation and investment into it in order to achieve the goals of sustainability that so many people are seeking to achieve.

So, Nicole, we'll be rooting for you. I'm really glad to see your new endeavor here and hope that it's a smashing success and that you, uh, become as big as GFI is now and continue to grow this nascent industry of next gen animal free materials. Oh,

Nicole Rawling: Paul, thank you so much and I really appreciate you helping us get the word out because that's what we need.

Paul Shapiro: Thanks for listening. We hope you found use in this episode. If so, don't keep it to yourself. Please leave us a five star rating on iTunes or wherever you get your podcast. And as always, we hope you will be in the business of doing good.