E055 - Nik Robinson from Good Citizen

Quick word from our sponsor, 51tocarbonzero.com. If you're a CFO or board member staring down CSRD or Scope 3 and thinking, where do we even start? We at Sustainability Solved would point you to 51tocarbonzero.com. They turn complex, fragmented emissions data into something simple and give boards clear, audit-ready visibility on exactly where the reduction opportunities are. It's not another reporting tool that adds work. It's built so the data holds up when your auditor asks the hard questions. If that's a conversation worth having, get in touch with 51tocarbonzero.com, or just drop me a message and I'll point you in the right direction. Right, back to the episode.

Welcome back to the Green Element Podcast. where we feature business leaders and innovators transforming their operations to be more environmentally and socially sustainable. I'm your host, Will Richardson, and I can't wait to meet our guest today and help you on your journey of sustainability. Nick, thank you so much for joining the Green Element Podcast. So we're here today to talk about Good Citizens and your eyewear company. Is it eyewear or is it glassesware?

Yeah, thank you. It's great to be here, obviously in Sydney at the moment, and you're in sunny Edinburgh, so it's really nice to hear that you've got sunshine there today. Yeah, it's an eyewear business. It's a recycled eyewear business. Eyewear for now, but we are going to be progressing into other products. But for now, let's call it Good Citizens, and it's making eyewear.

Yeah, brilliant. So it's such a cool project because you don't have a background in manufacturing. You have done this completely off your own back. You've done it with your family and you have just done everything with your— I mean, when I say family, children, you've done the whole thing together as a family unit. And so it'd be really interesting to see, to understand where the idea came from and what kind of started you off on making recycled eyewear.

Well, so point to remember for this is I think naivety is a really good thing in business because if you knew the thing that you're about to embark on, if you went to a friend and said, I'm thinking about doing this, and you knew what was about to happen, you would give up. I think naivety is great in business and people don't like to use the word naivety or luck, but you need a bit of both. Otherwise nothing great ever happens. But back to how did it start? My 8-year-old had applied twice to be in the green team at school, and the green team looks after the recycling. He'd been rejected, and he came home and he was all upset. And I said, look, you know, he was really upset. The kids, they come home with things from school that we didn't come home from school, you know. They come home really informed about the environment. They, you know, it's a really big part of their schooling, and they go to a normal, normal school. So I said to little Harry, look, why doesn't Dad have a think about some thoughts and an idea, and we maybe set up a business together? And so I went away for 4 days up the coast and I scribbled some thoughts down and I came back and over dinner I sat with my wife and Harry and his little brother Archie and I got some paper out and I sketched up some ideas. And we basically talked about it and you naively say, yeah, let's set up a business. So I shook hands with my 2 kids and I would lay there in bed and I said, I've just shaken hands with a 6-year-old, well, it was a 5-year-old and a 7-year-old at the time, and when I shake the hand of someone, that is it. I'm known for that. Like, that's it, we're all on. So I woke up in the morning and I said, I believe we have a business together, gentlemen. So we sat there and we scribbled down 4 principles. And interesting, you know, you say to kids, what's a principle, Dad? And it's like, you know, well, we should really have a business plan, but— We do have a business plan, but to be honest, I've only kind of looked at it once. What we have is guiding principles, and principles are things that we will never sway from. No matter what happens, whoever approaches us, I said to the kids, we'll always stick to these little rules. The first rule was we'd always use recycled materials in our products. Let's not wuss out and do 50% this and 50% that. Let's always go 100%. Let's aim for 100%. And I said another thing is that products get designed and they fall to bits. So in the fashion industry especially, and I come from a family of shoe designers, you know, so I've kind of grown up surrounded by lasts and leather and tools, and I understand the craft that goes in, but I also understand that things are mass-produced and someone's always— or the heart or the planet is harmed. So I said, let's design a product that doesn't fall to bits. How brilliant would that be? So it lasts forever, and if it doesn't last forever, every little part's replaceable. So that was the second principle. The first principle was recycled. Second is everything should be designed to last. The third is no one or the planet should be exploited. No one should be taken advantage of. And that was like really an interesting conversation. And then the kids said to me, the most important rule of this new business, Dad, is that we get time with you. So every employee gets time with their children. So we literally scribbled down those 4 principles on paper. There's pizza and tomato sauce all over it, and we've got that, and we've still got it. And I've been talking to some, you know, some fairly influential people. I've gone for some meetings in Sydney since this has kind of grown. And I just show them a picture and say, yeah, this is our guiding principles. And it's really funny because, you know, I've met some really quite intense people and lovely people, but they're obviously highly intelligent and understand the world of venture capital. And when I show this to them, they look at me and go, are you— is this for real? And I'm like, it's real. These were done by my kids. It's got us to this point. So those kind of guiding principles were the basis of this business, and the kids understood it. And if they understood it, they They got excited by it and if they got excited, everybody else will get excited. So yeah, that's kind of how it started and then obviously it's real.

That's nice.

Then you jump onto Google. You know, what do you do? You jump onto Google and I think, you know, I've worked with a lot of startups and I have a business which helps startups get into the media and we have an assessment process that everybody has to apply. So I've interviewed 700 founders in the last 2 or 3 years. And it's really interesting, like, what's the problem you solve? No one cares about your product. They care about how it makes their life better. They care about the problem that it solves for them. They don't give two hoots about anything else. So all of a sudden, I was now faced with, wow, I'm setting up my own thing after I've helped all these startup founders. That was really kind of challenging, going, what's the problem we solve? And I think there's this collective problem in the world that we've all woken up and gone, Ah, plastic. It's great, but the world's drowning in it. But I don't know what to do. So we decided this business could be the go-to one of— we're not naive. It needs everybody to fix this problem, but it is a fixable problem. The world is not doomed. And I think everyone's getting scaremongered. You know, the world is not going to go anywhere anytime soon. Humanity will not go anywhere. The world will recover if man stops chucking stuff in the sea. But ultimately, this little idea, if everyone plays their part, we can do our little bit to help that along. And that's kind of the mentality we've got. If everyone did it, we can fix this. And that's kind of how the business was born. We're drowning in plastic. How do we help untrash it? And that became our kind of motto, let's untrash our planet. And that's kind of our guiding purpose, I suppose.

I have images of your ketchup-stained Purpose. You should frame it and have it on your website, and that, that should be your mission and purpose, as it were.

Yeah, yeah, no, it's funny. I think what we have, and I think what businesses really miss out on, is a true authentic story. People buy why you do it, and they buy the story. And I know everyone's watched the Simon Sinek What's Your Why, and he uses a wonderful example of Apple. Well, that's— I tell you what, it's really hard working out what your why is. It's one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. And I can help other people do it. I just cannot do it for myself. I think, you know, I think people listening to this now that run their own business, you know, when it's your own business, your mind goes to mush. You just become like, I don't understand what's going on, 'cause you're so close to it. I think every founder I've ever spoken to, they'll ring me and say, I'm just not getting this. And I'll say, but you've got an MBA in business. And they're like, yeah, I just don't get it 'cause it's my own business. I'm second-guessing everything. I think that's the biggest challenge kind of founders and the startup and small business people face is you're wearing a million hats and you just get too close to it. You need to pull back and kind of have a helicopter view of what's going on. That's probably the biggest thing I find challenging, you know, myself.

So you've got 4 fundamentally brilliant principles for a business. How did you end up deciding that you were going to make eyewear? From that?

If things are right. So in all honesty, a lot of people are trying to do ocean plastic waste, and it's a real challenge. And so, you know, for a month I very naively used Google and became a bit of a science person trying to understand polymer formulas. But you know what? I got through it enough. And I also used my initiative and picked up the phone and rang some professors at university and chatted to various experts and just found people. You have to be tenacious. And I very quickly understood that ocean plastic for us is not the way to go. We always wanted to do a product as well that would be an easy buy, that everyone would— it would be a no-brainer, right? We live in a really sunny country. What can we make? It's got to be sunglasses. It's got to be sunglasses. What's the material? And we realized that recycled PET plastic bottles, a million are sold around the world every minute. A million. And only about 7% go to landfill. The bottling companies are getting a lot better at repurposing it and upcycling it. But they just go to landfills. We're like, how can we stop this bottle? So we looked at bottles and we went, actually, how much does a bottle weigh? And we got our kitchen scales out and the bottle weighs 28 grams.

Yeah.

And I was looking at a program that calculated the weight of glasses and I went, it's about 28 grams. So let's just do something really simple. One bottle, one pair. And that's kind of how it started. And then we found a design company that specializes in industrial design, marine waste. And I briefed them and I said, but everything's got to be made except the lens. So we need special hinge designing, you know. So that was— that's taken 9, 8, 9 months and a lot of money to just get a special hinge right. But everything except the lenses is one bottle, and we own the design of that hinge, and it's a special clip hinge.

Wicked. So it can't break?

No, it's very flexible and every part is replaceable. So if You know, we're just working on this right now, the warranty. If the biggest complaint from people about glasses is, I sat on them and the hinge broke, so they throw it away. So our challenge is, how do you make a pair of glasses last forever? So we've got literally 2 arms, a face, and 2 clips. And if anything breaks, post it back to us in an envelope, and we'll put it into the top of our machine and send you a new part. We'll just remake it because it's the same amount of plastic.

Right.

And so it's circular. But then someone said to me in a really fancy way, oh, that's the circular economy, man. I'm like, oh, so there's a name for it. Okay. It just felt intuitively right for us. Why would that just not be the norm? So every part's replaceable. And we've got a little phrase at the moment called bum-proof, which the kids giggle about. It's bum-proof. Brilliant. Brilliant.

And you have funded all of this, haven't you? Of course.

Very naively. I mean, I sat with my wife and I said, look, surely 20 grand would cover this. So we worked it out. Yeah, 20 grand. Let's just say the design cost of just designing the frames has surpassed that. And then the process we're using is injection molding, which is incredibly technical. When you actually investigate how bottles are made, you know, they're made in factories where the temperature is like 7 degrees apparently in the factory, and they're made under really cold conditions. And you have to heat the plastic into a super high temperature, get it down to 7 degrees within 3 seconds, otherwise it becomes cloudy. So the tooling costs are astronomical. And we live in Australia, you know, in winter it's 26 degrees, which means it's failed, the polymer's failed. So we're having to build tools and we're looking at all our energy efficiencies, but we are going to make them in Sydney because, you know, I looked at the Far East. It's difficult to say hand on heart that what you think you're getting from them. I wasn't even sure if they would give us recycled plastic. They'd just probably make it out of normal plastic and that defeats point one of our business plan with the kids. So I know I'm using 100% recycled.

So yeah, travel as well.

Yeah. So all in all, the molds are the very expensive part and we did do a Kickstarter, which was a very interesting exercise. I'm not sure I'd do another Kickstarter. It was an incredible amount of work, and unless you put a lot of funding into promoting your Kickstarter, you'll get nothing. And we hit our target in 6 minutes, which we're very humbled about. But the target was only 20 grand when really we needed 130 grand. So we've had to put— we made 60, but we've topped it up. But we believe in it. I think you've got to believe in something. And I sat there with the kids and I sat with my wife and we said, look, if Dad puts A year and a half into this, and at the end of it, we're £30,000 backwards as a family. We can all live with that. Now, the kids have no idea what £30,000 means, but they're like, yeah, let's do it. So we all did it, and we're gonna do it. We're doing it. We can't back out now. I jumped off the phone to our toolmaker tonight, and steel is being cut. There is no turning back. I've committed the money. That's it. We're in.

It's scary, isn't it?

I think that's scary, but it's also exciting.

Yeah, no, absolutely.

There's a healthy dose of naivety.

I think that naivety is so important. I feel because like it resonates with me with competitive footprint in our software. I didn't know what it was like to build a software. I'm not a software designer, and it's a lot more expensive than I anticipated, but you kind of end up getting to a point of no return, don't you? And actually You wouldn't have got there if you'd have— maybe you would have got there if you'd have known, but maybe you would have treaded a bit more carefully or softly on the way there.

Yeah, I think if anyone's listening to, you know, the way I set it out is I broke this up into 3 stages. So I said to the design company, let's work on a concept of what these things will look like and let's spend £5,000 or £6,000. And if at the end of that process, which is part 1 of part 3 of design, then I will move to the next part and I'll release the next funds. And so we got to that first part, but it, you know, it took up quite a while to get to that. But we got to the second part. And then once we got to the second part, we were showing people and they were going, this is great. And so you kind of, you just take that leap of faith. But the risk at the beginning was about £12,000. And then obviously the next leap was bigger. And we have a design, you have to go to design manufacture phase where you take an idea and take it into mass production. And that's where we kind of got to. And then the next phase is paying for tooling. And the tooling is very expensive. And again, getting things ethically made throws a real spanner in the works. It's really sad. All our recycled plastic's 13% more than virgin plastic. It baffles me. Everything's more expensive. But if more people do it, there'll be more of a demand. And already we're getting inundated from banks. Hey, we've got credit cards that we don't use. Can we give you our credit cards? Can you make them into sunglasses or products and we'll buy them back off you and give them to our customers? It's really bizarre.

Yeah.

Yeah, I don't know. We did the Kickstarter, we kind of launched it, we did a bit of PR, we made it onto the front page of the national newspapers, which was really surreal because Harry, my 8-year-old, became this kind of famous eco-warrior for a week. We got onto the national news. New Zealand picked— the national news in New Zealand picked us up. Now all of a sudden Harry, who's never been allowed on social media at 8, is now on the front page of the national newspapers. I've got my mother in England ringing me saying, this is not appropriate. And we're like, we're shutting it down. We're shutting all this down. But, you know, it kind of— we went, wow, there is definitely something here. And I think journalists were just really fascinated that an 8-year-old is seriously involved in a business. And we've just been asked to do our first speaking gig, Harry and I, at a festival, a business quite a big business festival because they want to hear the views of an 8-year-old, and he will answer the same questions that you would ask me in his way, and it's really interesting to listen to.

Yeah, and I think we were talking about before, you asked me what— something a bit about me, and I was talking about the fact that we've interviewed quite a lot of businesses, and they're all purpose-driven businesses, and there's a really common theme. Your 4 guiding principles are really common in all of those purpose-driven businesses. And I think what I absolutely love is the fact that your 8-year-old has come up with those, which means that I've got more faith in the fact that your 8-year-old has come up with it than someone that's in their 40s or 50s trying to help and trying to do good, if that makes sense.

I mean, yeah, it's interesting. My kids have never read a business book. I've read a few business books, but I think deep down, the fuel that I have right now and have had for the last year and a half— I haven't really taken a salary, but I feel really rich. I wake up, yes, I have wobbles, and my poor wife has to kind of talk me down and go, look, we're all right. You know, I go out for drinks and meet friends in the city, and they've all got big jobs, big cars, big suits, big ties, you know, massive mortgages. And after a few drinks, the playing field levels, and I don't feel as though I'm a failure anymore. And they all go— Oh, I really wish I was doing what you're doing because you've kind of got that creative freedom to do it and I'm just tied into the next 15 years of school fees and mortgages and blah, blah, blah. So it's a really interesting kind of space we're in. But, you know, Harry and the kids, it just feels right to them too. It's like, it's a natural thing. Why would you not want to spend time with your children? Why wouldn't every employee want it? So when we take our first member of staff on, whether they've got kids or not, if they don't have children, then we'll just give them some free time to spend with their parents or their sister or their brother. Because I think family doesn't just have to be children. And I think, you know, what a wonderful value to say this is built into the business. So you get off time for special occasions. And then if you don't take those special occasions, you'll get a written warning.

Brilliant.

A written warning for not taking time off. How much would that person value the business? And they would feel very valued because they are. And that came from an 8-year-old.

So Yeah, I think it's brilliant. I think it's fascinating that it— I don't know, that the core principles are— it's so intrinsic to human nature though, isn't it? And it's what every business should be doing.

Yeah, I think it's easier when you're a small business and you're starting from scratch. I think I talk to friends and they ask you questions and then, you know, they'll go, oh yeah, I'd love to do this in my business, and they've got like 300 staff, or some of them will be really senior in a business with 60,000 staff. And it's interesting because there's processes, there's an existing brand, there's existing values, and there's intrinsic history in that business that they're in that's been around for 100 years. You can't just change the course of that ship. Whereas if it's a startup, every day you're making it up. You know, my mates, we laugh. I'm like self-unemployed. I'm giving myself a job every day. I get up and if I don't do anything, nothing happens. And that's kind of the world of small business. And small business can be anything up to like 100 people, I think. So I think there's a great advantage. You're very nimble. You very quickly understand what works, what doesn't work, and you set your own course. And I think if you do have just some guiding principles, I think it's a very overwhelming time when you set up a business. And I think a lot of people give up within the first 6 months because you've got the factors of no salary. Your whole world is shaking because you're not used to this and it's very fearful. But if you can just don't get so bogged down in business plans of, oh, where do you see yourself in a year's time, 3 years' time, 5 years' time? Well, I don't know where I'll be. I'd love to come back on this podcast in 12 months and I would happily share, did it work? Yes, it did work. What's the impact we've had? You know, how much plastic have we pulled out of the ocean? You know, how's Harry doing? How's his school? You know, or versus it didn't work and that $30,000 debt that I said grew to $230,000 driving an Uber. But, you know, I'll still tell you the truth.

What got you into sustainability? I mean, you said you're a graphic designer beforehand, but you must have been interested in sustainability before you had this idea, or did it—

Look, my background is— obviously this is an English podcast— many years ago I worked at the BBC and I worked for Planet 24, which made The Big Breakfast. So I've worked in the media game and it's, you know, entertainment's great. I love entertainment. Before this job, I was head of content for an entertainment company in Australia, and I loved it. It's a very kind of exciting world. And I've also worked in advertising, working with, you know, kind of big brands, small brands, and I had my own ad agency. And I think the jobs that really excited me weren't the money jobs. You need money to turn a business around, but the clients I took on— my agency was 70% social enterprise, not-for-profit. The rest, the 30%, were big brands. And I just, I don't know, I just feel it's a nicer place. to play because I'm making a difference. And I think everybody in any kind of career, you get to a certain level and it's like, right, you know, quite a traditional route to come out of university and you've got through those 3 or 4 years, right, go and get a job. And you're broke and you're skint and you work your way up the corporate ladder and then you kind of get to 30, 35 and go, what am I doing? But then you've got kids and then you're tied into more things. And I know it's a real challenge, but I don't know, I just kind of felt that if I've been given this gift to communicate, and as I said before, I'm completely dyslexic, so I'm atrocious at writing emails. But you've got to surround yourself with the right people. I don't know, just sustainability, design, making someone's world or experience better. And if it helps the planet, then why would you not? I think the younger audience, the millennial group coming through, this is the Like, why would I join a company that doesn't have any kind of purpose or, you know, any kind of purpose baked into the business?

I think we're definitely in a different world.

Yeah, they wouldn't even join you. They'd be like, oh, so you got— you just make money, fine. Yeah, not interested. You know, I needed a sense of something else if I'm going to turn up to work 9 to 5 every day. But yeah, I think I kind of fell into it really, or just— I don't know if I'm even in sustainability, but I think You know, these words ethical, sustainable, I suppose, yeah, it's do it the right way. Why shouldn't it be done like this? And I've got to say, the last year has been hard because trying to do a transparent supply chain, it's very— I could have had this project up in 3 months, but it's going to be a year.

You're almost more sustainable than a lot of sustainable companies because you've done it naturally, because you've done it— you're doing it the right way because you've just done it naturally. You've just gone, right, well, this is the way we do it. Pragmatic approach of going along. How do you think you can influence change on the back of this?

It's a really good question. I think I break things down into— in my head, I've gone, right, if I can go to my local cafe and I'm wearing my sunnies and I see someone else that's bought my sunnies— one thing I didn't explain was with every pair of glasses that we sell, you get given a citizenship number. So today we announced that Hugh Morris in Australia bought the first pair ever, and we've pre-sold 850 pairs. So Hugh is citizen number 1. I know who number 3 is. I've got the whole list, right? So as this grows and you see someone else in a cafe and you see them wearing the glasses, and they're very— we've designed them so they're very easily identifiable to another citizen, but not necessarily someone who doesn't understand the brand. If you saw someone else, you'd smile and go, ah, And the brief to the design team was many years ago when my granddad was alive, we'd go along in his camper van and we'd see another Volkswagen camper van and as a family we'd all wave. And there's this lovely moment of as you pass and you smile and you connect with another citizen. So that's built into the glasses. So, and everyone knows that when you buy the glasses, it's a bottle. One bottle is used to make it, 100%, one 600ml soft drink bottle. And for every pair we sell, we also pull a kilo of trash out of the ocean. So this week we've just written a check to pull out 850 kilos, which is bigger than my house, that pile of rubbish. That feels great. So that makes change. But I think it connects people, the design connects people. People, as it grows and they go to their cafe in 3 months' time, they'll see 5 people wearing them and they'll be like, actually, this little idea is actually growing. And I think people want to be also— they want to be known and liked. People, it's human nature to go, please like me. I'm a good person. And I'm not saying you have to have our brand to be liked and to be good. I'm not saying that at all. But it's kind of a visual signifier to say, I give a shit about this planet, your planet. I'm on the same wavelength. It's a simple step, simple action, little simple solution.

Will you be able to look up the number that's on— I don't know how you see it, but if you're wearing glasses and I was wearing glasses and I saw you in the cafe, would I be able to go online and look up your name?

No, you'd just go up to that person and say, hello, fellow citizen. Hello, fellow citizen back. And you might say, what number were you? And you'd go, I was in the top 1,000. And if they're the 25,000th person, then you can say, wow, 25,000 kilos have been pulled out thanks to you. And wow, you were at the beginning. You're kind of this early adopter. So it's just, technology isn't there yet. And we've thought about it, we've explored it. But then if we put technology into the products, it becomes not recyclable because there's a little chip in the arm. And the whole thing is about being 100% recycled and 100% recyclable.

Yeah.

And I think one of the other keys to business is simplicity. Don't overdo it. If it's simple, people get it, they'll share it, they'll love it, and they'll adopt it. We've been approached by a bank to say, hey, can we put a chip in the arm so then you can pay with your glasses? And it's like, we can, but then it's not recyclable because then we have to chop the chip out. And then it goes against everything we're about. Let's just keep it simple. Let's just smile and wave and say hello. Give them a hug. Give a fellow citizen a hug. That's it.

Brilliant. So how can we connect with you more?

We have a website that we built in a night, goodcitizens.com.au. We're currently building our new e-commerce store. There's a million things going on. You can go to Facebook, Good Citizens Official. We have an Instagram account, Good Citizens Official. I believe there's a whole load of more social media things like Snapchat. We haven't got there yet. We're just focusing on the basics. We're going old school. We're going Instagram. Brilliant.

Nick, thank you so much.

I did want to say one thing. I wanted to say that to my wife when we set this up, let's not have any social media, let's just have a mailing email address. And she told me to get off my high horse and the world is going with social media, so let's not just email people.

Yeah, I think she's probably the right idea, to be fair.

Yeah, Nick, thank you so much for being here. Listen to your missus.

That's the moral of the story, isn't it?

It's an absolute pleasure, Will. But yeah, it's been an absolute pleasure. I think it's great what you do.

Keep doing it. I'm looking forward to 12 months' time.

Keep spreading the good. Yes, so am I.

Thank you so much for listening to the end of this episode of the Green Element Podcast. Do take a moment and share this with your friends and colleagues and rate and review the podcast. Wherever you get your podcasts. I'd love to know what has been your biggest takeaway from this conversation. What are you going to do differently? Please share your thoughts across social media and tag us so we can see them too, @GE_podcast. For links and show notes for this episode, visit our website greenelement.co.uk/podcast. Thank you again. I hope you will join me on the next episode and together we can help create a A better world.