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Stephen Carl: Welcome to the Needle Movement podcast. I'm your host, Stephen Carl. Got a great episode lined up, really pumped. Today I have Roberto Crivello who is the founder of Science of Apparel and the Chief Creative Director here is known for being a textile innovator and has been the global creative director for some big names, DuPont Textiles, New Balance, DDC Lab and many others.

Welcome to the show, Roberto! And as a fellow Italian, I'm happy to say "Buongiorno". Roberto, did I say that correct?

Roberto Crivello: Buongiorno, Stephen. you did say that correct. But you said "Isadora" not “Isa-OR-A”

Stephen Carl: Okay. Touche!

Stephen Carl: So, so great. I was really excited to bring you on Roberto cause you have been, you've been on the production side of marketing clothing and sneakers for a long time and you have so, so many insights. So what have you learned from being in the fashion industry for over 20 years? What seems to work? Okay.

Roberto Crivello: Thank you for having me on your podcast. Yeah, so I, I think, you know, it's, it's good that you're raising this question. Marketing is definitely a key to any business. I have a few approaches.

1) To always follow my heart and on my brain. You could, you know, say it's right or not right. Just, that's just my philosophy. I always follow my gut, my heart.

2) I believe that in business we must always deliver honesty and an educated consumer.

And you need, we need to change. We need to create change that matters. Make an innovative product or idea that'll teach us at Dell teach and inspire them and then promote it. So take, you know, for example, Steve jobs, you know what he did with think different? He did ads with Einstein, Dr. King and Gandhi. He was always making consumers think. Then there's a different approach like Calvin Klein. He does, you know, provocative or essential. Then there's a Supreme, Kith and Balanciaga. They, they do, what street kids look up to. I just think that a brand without marketing is, is nothing. You have to, you have to do marketing.

Stephen: Yes. Or they there they're just tapping into something unique. Correct, correct. Find your voice. Yes. Right. Like, especially with like Kith and Supreme, Noah as well. Like that's like streetwear has been so interesting the past few years and how much it's changed fashion so much. Cause I remember when there used to be, you know, when everything came out in a certain season and now it's just everything's a drop. Yeah,

Roberto Crivello: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I, you know, but Steven today, 9 out of 10 Gen Z consumers believe that companies have a responsibility to address the environmental and the social issues. Right. transparency you know, color, whatever you want to call it, transparencies, what they know it as, it's obvious that key element to the Science of Apparel and we believe that it's our responsibility to share and educate our customers and end users. And we continuously need to create change that matters. We have to think this way. And, and these guys are not stupid. They know everything that's going on.

Stephen: What's going on? What's going on in this world these days?

Roberto Crivello: This whole transparency, they want to know, they want you to be honest and not lie to them. You know, this thing, we had a discussion earlier about Gretta Thunberg. It's like, people don't want greenwashing. That's very, very important. And there's a lot of, I don't know, if you know what greenwashing is. There's a lot of people, a lot of big companies, a lot of big corporations that are saying, “Oh yeah, I'm tapping into, you know the sustainability”

I hate that word. They're tapping into the whole, the whole ethical issues, or they're trying to change our products and making them a little bit more responsible, but they're not.

I went to one of the fortune 500 companies yesterday with one of my clients. I can't say their name, but I went and seen him yesterday and I said to them, “You know, why aren't you guys tapping into this?” Ah, you know, “That's just not the way.”

“What do you mean you're not in the way? Your company thinks it's” It's…. you have to do something about this.

Even your poly bags, that's like, they're there. They're the ones that are wrapping your clothes when you ship them. It's like every little thing counts. Our planet is being destroyed and how could you not think this way?

So the final consumer knows that there's all these problems out there and they're going to go like this new brand, Noah, they're gonna go with brands that are socially responsible.

Stephen: Yeah, I think with greenwashing. The idea is that I think consumers are cool these days and that they give, they're giving some flexibility. Like companies are saying they're transitioning and they're doing better. So companies don't have to do it exactly on a dime, but they can't bullshit their way through it. Marketing, it's like the Force, there are two sides of it and there are people that kind of use language sometimes to imply that they're doing more than they're doing when like they'll focus on the source, the one element of the product and then ignore shipping.

You mentioned that as a case where if someone is ordering a package online and there’s a lot of excessive packaging then, you know, people are looking for more of a commitment.

Roberto Crivello: So that's a big problem that big corporations have. They're not taking advantage of what the consumers are saying. They're not listening to what the consumers, the young consumers anyways are saying that the brands have to be a socially and environmentally more conscious. And another thing that other brands are not doing in marketing is they're playing it safe. You know, what other brands are like with the crash in 2009. The recession in 2009. You had two ways of going. “Should I go change my whole company around and push towards a new strategy and marketing or should I just play it safe.?” Some people that played it safe are not around, are not doing too well today.

Stephen: Correct. I think with fashion. It's not difficult to make a basic product in fashion anymore. You can modularize every element of it, but you gotta make yourself distinctive and that's why sustainability is and mission, purpose-driven company is such a good angle because it differentiates you because people want to help people. Like if someone buys something, your clothes and you can tell them you've done something responsible and you're supporting a company that's doing something good for other people, people are going to want to come back. Cause I think with brands, one of the biggest problems in retail is people shop once and they don't come back again. So it's a way to differentiating yourself.

Roberto Crivello: Totally agree with you. I'll tell you an example of what I did that was a big mistake. For example, our brand Science of Apparel, when we launched the brand, we partnered with a factory. And at the last minute, our factory says, we don't have Tencel available anymore. We have this yarn called Viscose. And I said, “Absolutely Not.” Viscose is a damaging fiber is going to hurt our planet, et cetera, et cetera. They did the fabric anyways, so it was a cashmere tee shirt. I don't know if you remember, I did some t-shirts that you didn't have to wash for four weeks. It will never smell. So the idea of the tee shirt was incredible, but the fact that our factory, our partner used a Viscose yarn, it made it - call it greenwashing - it didn't make it ethical. So that's the kind of stuff that a lot of companies are doing. They're not going all the way. So if you're going to do this, do this all the way. Believe in It! Mean It!

So it's true. So, a client will come to me and they'll say, “I want to do an ethical brand.”

So by the way, I don't like the Google dictionary word of “SUSTAINABILITY” It's able to maintain a certain level.

I mean, “What does that mean?” That doesn't mean anything. I don't understand that word.

You know, from my industry, it's meaningless. I will not sustain, defend, justify, maintain, you know, anything meaningful. Instead, I'll always make it better. I really believe in the word “ethical” and “positive impact.” And these are . . . we're trying to do good to the planet and, and it's again, that's, that's what I think. So when a customer comes to me and he says, “I want to do an ethical brand”. I say, “What is it that you want to do?”

Roberto Crivello: Do you want to have something that is what’s it called “tree hugger?” You know, like it's cotton or hemp and it's just going to biodegrade and disappear in our planet, but it's not going to last too long. Or do you want to have something that is extremely strong and it's never going to biodegrade and it's going to last and it's going to stay in our landfills for another thousand years? Or do you want to have something?

What is your priority? What is, what is it that you want to have that, that is your priority, your word for “ethical”. So that's the first question that I ask and there's always a medium, there's always a way to understand, you know, what the consumer wants to do.

Roberto Crivello: But I gotta tell you it's not possible to have something that is 100% ethical. It’s not realistic. Cause you still need trucks to carry stuff around. You still need packaging, you still use tape, you still use this and you still use that. You can… there's so many things that you can do to try to be the best that you can be.

So, one client, for example, we developed a biodynamic cotton, which is a different story that I can tell you later that we developed a biodynamic cotton for them, which is the most ethical cotton that exists in the world. And we suggested to add a little bit of a stretch to the cotton. We did an underwear collection for them. We suggested to add a little bit of stretch to the cotton and so that it would make the lifetime of the underwear last much, much longer.

Roberto Crivello: So, big problem. What underwear is, after a year, you throw away. Instead, these underwear is going to last much longer. So this is our vision of ethical DLS stick waistbands are recycled polyester instead of being real polyester. So there's a lot of little things to thread as recycled polyester. So there's a lot of little things that you gotta think about. The packaging is bio-degradable the hang tag, the metal clip, the only thing that's not ethical in this packaging is the metal clip that's holding the hang tag out of the whole thing. So this is really good. This client really wanted to go all the way. They want it to be ethical the whole way. So it really worked. But you know, we're being transparent about it. We're actually telling them where to continence coming from more so, we're saying all of these resources, you know, we're telling the customer where everything is going to be coming from.

Stephen: So that's going to be an interesting that is an interesting project that we're working on. So what about…. and I'm curious about this with cotton because we hear different names about cotton and you are definitely the right person to talk to about this. So I'm excited. But okay. You know, cotton is such a ubiquitous element of our clothing and you know, there is Pima cotton and regular cotton. 

So what's the difference between a biodynamic cotton and the cotton we see in a lot of our clothing that a lot of us just think, “Oh, that's a good, you know, that's a good material to use.” What's the difference? 

Roberto Crivello: So the regular conduct everybody uses from, I don't want to say brands, but cotton is grown with pesticides. So what happens to a best size so that it doesn't eat up the actual plant so they kill the insects, the bugs around that, et cetera. So what happens with, and then they also use fertilizers, synthetic fertilizers that actually make the plant grow supposedly better. But what happens with these pesticides and fertilizers is that it kills the soil. So, and not only does it kill the soil, but the pesticides or fertilizers goes, seeps all the way down into the soil and then into the water. So we're actually drinking these pesticides. We're actually killing our own water by putting all of these chemicals into the plants.

So instead we went to the original way, that are thousands of years old, the conventional way of growing cotton or farming altogether. It's called a biodynamic cotton where you are basically replanting every year or every two years, you're moving the crops from one place to another. So in one place you might have a, you might have one vegetable or maybe you'll have an animal like goats or cows. Then you're moving the crops. You keep. . . you’re constantly continuously moving the crop. So what happens is that the fertilization. You don't need pesticides anymore because of the fertilization. And naturally you use 20 to 30% less than organic conventional organic cotton.      

Roberto Crivello: So the biodynamic is far superior than regenerative cotton. Regenerative farming is far superior than organic cotton and obviously a superior than regular cotton. So you end up using up to 70 to 80% less water than a conventional cotton. It's just an amazing, I w I was the, in our, our partner is a Egyptian growers. And what we're doing is we're using the most ancient, ancient cotton seed that exists in the world. It's cotton, it's called a Giza. He's the cotton. I don't know if you ever heard of it. It's the ones that you use for bedsheets, et cetera. It's basically the best continental world. So we're using this cotton out of the Giza. We're using the best of that they have. And and biodynamic farming, you know, treats us all tills, the plant growth and livestock care as ecologically interrelated processes.

Roberto Crivello: So the whole thing is together. The whole thing is mixed in together. It's not just cotton growing or just farming. And then the best part of all this is as you know, there's going to be to the another solar eclipse, a full moon or some next in the next few days. And so, and so it integrates cosmic forces to have an impact on living systems and emphasize a spiritual science perspective. So what I'm trying to say is that, you know, how the moon affects the moon or effects are, are the oceans, the moon affects animals. It affects our bodies. Also. We are 80% of water, right? So it affects our bodies, affects our moods. So I had a few years ago, I'll tell you how this whole biodynamic thing started. A few years ago, I had a I built on my own vegetable garden would raise beds. And there was this I had a beach house in the North fork and this lady that had a, this incredible vegetable stand.

And I said, “Wow, why do you have vegetable stay so good? She goes, “It's all biodynamic.” So I looked into it and then, you know, she, she actually sold me some plants and she helped me. She trained me how to grow my my vegetable stand. I gotta tell you, six months later, a few months later, I agree with the day that she told me to grow. You know, depending on the moon and the sun. And she told me exactly how to do it. I grew the most amazing of vegetables I've ever had in my life. It was incredible. So I told my partner, I go, “Listen, you know, cotton exist. What about biodynamic farming?” Yeah. And he goes, “Yes, actually my family's, you know, somehow related.” And, and so this is, this is how we got to this.

So we are one of the first companies in the world, cause nobody's really used it. They’re considering it as organic cotton. But biodynamic cotton is by far the best and most ethical cotton in the world.

So now we're doing a biodynamic denim. We're doing biodynamic knits, we're doing shootings, we're doing biodynamic beddings it's just really, really wonderful how people are, are just jumping on this.

Stephen: Okay. So let me get to. . . I'm trying to understand the difference between biodynamic and organic cause I think organic for many people is that standard that they can really trust. And I've seen other like other fashion brands like I believe Eileen Fisher also uses organic cotton and has been very committed to sustainability among oother brands. But what is it? Just that the Giza cotton is, is just a little bit better or significantly better than what we've known with organic cotton?

Roberto Crivello: I think you're not the first to ask this. I should do it on what my website. What is the difference between all the cottons and why? You know, there's a, that's genius and, all I can say is that organic cotton is not biodynamic is not, is not the best and most ethical in the world, whereas biodynamic is by far the most ethical in the world. There's a a certification, it's called a Demeter certification that is with biodynamic. It has 16 different standards and has 16 different levels that you must abide to, to become certified.

So organic cotton is just, you're going to get the beautiful seed and you're going to grow without pesticides. That's really what organic means. It's, they just want to have toxin-free and no pesticides. The problem is that many organic farmers are next door to regular, conventional farmers and they just, you know, Oh, sometimes, you know, the birds will take from the regular farm and they'll poo and you know, their organic farm or the winds will blow their sprays.. that go and go into their farms.

So there's a lot of cons to this and to be honest with you, not many people are doing this. The biodynamic farmer is 100% fully committed. They'll go from every morning, they all meet, all the farmers meet, and they'll all talk about their day and what they're going to be doing. It's just like a whole, a holistic, a holistic bio. I forgot how to it's just the whole system is from the seed all the way to the end. So what the farmers methods they beyond, they, they've expanded, you know I'm sure you heard about this biodynamic of food or biodynamic wine. Have you ever heard of….

Stephen: Yes. I think wine. Wine is where I've seen it before.

Roberto Crivello: Exactly.  So, today cotton has the same principles as, as the wine. So not many people have heard about it in the cotton industry, but definitely, you know, in the food and wine industry. So yeah, the, the whole biodynamics has become a buzz word for the wellness industry. But this whole thing started in 1924. The the actual guy that started this is Rudolph Steiner. He was the actual certification was based what all Steiner's agricultural course that he gave in 1924. S basically some farmers, they asked them to help them to improve their farms and they noticed a rapid decline in the crops and their health and their animals. So what he did is he applied the principles taught by Steiner and Demeter was formed in 1928. And when you apply for Demeter, Demeter is what you get. Whereas, you know, when you do a cotton just different types of of other certifications, there will a little bit of gray areas, whereas Demeter is very, very strict.

Stephen: Got it. Got it. So let's take this to. With our listeners and with us continuing to hear about climate change that brands want to do more and there's a lot more going on. During the taping of this podcast, we're hearing about the Australian bushfires and all the damage there. And a few months ago it was the Amazon and it's just every other week there is something that is really making everyone understand that this isn't just politics. There is a real crisis here that we have to do something about. But just on the brand side how can brands handle product, material sourcing if they don't know what they're doing or they don't know how to change but they want to? What can they do?

Roberto Crivello: Well, apart from the obvious, which is Googling, there's companies like mine that will help guide them in the right direction, whether they just want to do a little bit of help to our planet or change their business style. They want to do a little bit or a lot, we can help them from the, you know, just consulting to all the way to handling their production for them and the packaging for them. So there's a lot of ways that people can get informed. Do they want to be informed is a different question? I think we know that the apparel industry is the second most polluting industry in the world. What is the most polluting? The oil industry. So what you gotta do is use less of a petroleum plastic or petroleum-based textiles.

Go Vegan. Go natural. Stop using chemicals to grow our plants. It's a simple solution. How do we get Nike and Adidas and those guys to stop using petroleum-based textiles?

So I bought this brand a few years ago, Isaora, which you mentioned. Okay. The biggest challenge that I have is to convert this brand to an ethical brand. By using nylon and polyester and all the other fibers, virgin fibers, you are killing the planet. So immediately, you know, we're changing the packaging immediately. We're changing it from 100% nylon where we're changing to recycled nylon or recycled polyester. Even a stretch is recycled. So we're trying to do our portion of, you know, again, if you're using cotton, yeah, you use more water, but if you're using a synthetic, you're using more petroleum.

So what is the right thing to do?

Stephen: I wanted to get back to your company Science of Apparel that, you know, so companies come to you and say, “Hey, I want to make a more ethical product. Well, how do I, how do I do it?”

Roberto Crivello: Yes. So we launched in 2013 with the idea of creating our own brand. And, and we realized, Oh my gosh, we need a lot of marketing money to create our own brands. So why don't we just pivot and yeah, we'll still do our own our own clothes here and there, but why don't we pivot and offer these services for customers?

Cause people were asking, a lot of people are asking us, you know, how do we, how can we get these fabrics or how can we get this for our brands? So that's how we started the pivot of Science of Apparel. In 2013, I think. So we were just…. people will come to us and they'll say to us, “We want to have our foot into this world.”

Roberto Crivello: How do we do this, right? There's doing it and doing it right. So just, my point of view is you can just have a fabric, which is all right. It's good, it's good to do that. Or you can just be, your whole mission is about that. But then you have to totally believe in it. You know, you have to 1000% believe in it. So for example, we have a client that wanted to have some sleepwear and we tried to get some silk and the best way to do silk is by not killing the worms after they hatch the silks. So what, that's the most ethical way, but then it's beyond slow to produce this silk and extremely, extremely expensive. So we had to stop doing it this way. Instead we had to find a way to do it with a bluesign. That's another type of certification. So there's different levels of what the word “ethical” means. And by using silk, it's, it's still not polluting our planet, which is a good thing, but you're killing all these little worms.

Stephen: So you guys are… I'm trying to understand this too, and when we say with companies, they can progressively work towards higher grades of sustainability with different choices they make. Right? Like, they could say, one year I want to be at 60% and then I'm going to shoot for 68 for next year. And then 70, like it's a progressive thing. It's not, my analogy is you don't have to be a Buddhist monk or you know, 100% Saint to become more sustainable.

Roberto Crivello: Okay. So there's a brand, which I'd rather not name that is claiming to say that they're, maybe vegan is the right word. They were, you know, sustainable and vegan. And so they're not using any leather whatsoever. But what are they doing? They're using what is now considered as vegan leather, which is petroleum. It's frigging petroleum. It's… guys, you're killing our planet by not using, by not using animals. I'm not saying that you got to kill or use a byproduct of an animal to look better. I agree with you. Let's go vegan. But there's other solutions you can have. There's apple leather, there's other solutions to this. You don't have to use petroleum. So that's the kind of stuff that customers want. I want you to know from them, how sustainable do you want to go?

Roberto Crivello: What is your approach? You want to go all the way and I can help you with, with the banana fibers, with a hemp fibers all the way I can help you as much or as little. Are you willing to, for example, what are biodynamic cotton? You know what our customer had to do? They had to pay 40 cotton growers eight months in advance. That is considered fair trade. This is what biodynamics is. We had to pay for the cotton growers eight months in advance to grow the cotton. So that is sustainable. Right? You know what I'm saying? And then as you can see, the whole transparency, how far are you willing? And we're talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. These guys didn't even know me. They didn't even know. They only knew of my reputation. We never even worked together.

Roberto Crivello: And this is what they did, which is amazing. People really believed in this principle and they went all the way. So the farmers, how are guarantee that are going to have their crops picked. We paid them not only eight months in advance with paying them 20% more than what the average the average farmer is getting paid. So again, these, you have to think about what is ethical in our world. What is, again, the word sustainable in our world. It's not only about the plastic and the garbage, and it's about helping the world. It's helping the workers to do, to live better, helping the world, helping to humans and helping our planet. It's not only about the planet.

Stephen: Right? And there is there is a linkage between sustainability and fair trade. Cause those are the people that are producing the clothing and having fair working conditions. Cause there's some terrible stories about like consequences that have happened in you know you know, I'm just thinking of a couple of events of, you know, just horric working conditions that are the result of some ultra low pricing on products to hit those product points. They couldn't give safe conditions which is terrible.

Roberto Crivello: Yeah, you've got to care about the people and the planet. You can't just do one or the other. And, and that's what's happening to our world nowadays. People are much more conscious of what's going on, which is great.

Stephen: Right. Cause you have that consumer base now that's saying….I think it's a little tough because I think that there's that conscious consumer, they're definitely there and we're hearing about them, you know, but it's, I think the big question that, and I hear this in the circles that we're in, is the more they buy products with that conscious commerce, the more they're sending that message to the industry. And it already is happening, but like, you know, just like you were talking about with those actions, like when you, it's just like… when you go to a local store to buy a product, you know, there's that saying that you're making someone dance or jump for joy, but every time a consumer does that they're helping a person, they're helping a small company. But like when you buy reusable product, you go secondhand, you buy it, you reward a company that's doing, that's really trustworthy or changing the industry like. it's because these companies, they can't keep doing it if people don't buy, so the consumer definitely does have an impact.

Roberto Crivello: I totally agree with you. I mean and on a, on a separate note, we were talking about the government and it's, it's really unlikely that that the government is….that soil carbon segments, sequestration….that it's going to be government approved. So in other words I dunno if you know, if, do you know what that is? Soil. Carbon sequestration. So basically when you, when you tilled the soil.

Stephen: It basically, it keeps it there.

Roberto Crivello: Instead of keep… It takes, it takes the carbon. And so the government is not, is not into this yet. They don't understand how it's actually it's actually helping our planet. So instead of just regular soil, which is, you know, putting all the pesticides and all the stuff, and then they don't, till the soil, what biodynamics does is it has this layer of, of soil, which always, you know refertilizes, and it's called a soil carbon sequence sequestration and that mitigates the the whole greenhouse effect. So that’s, all these little things that we can do to help decline it. So you know, you can shop local, you can buy ethical cotton or, or not, you know, use plastic or petroleum-based textiles. These are all things that we can do to help.

Stephen: So wanted to talk about pricing a little bit because I know with, I know one of those objections that customers have, which is like, I want to support this, but I can't spend three times the amount or whatever that multiple is. I just wanted to ask, “How does the pricing materials compare to non-sustainable and we're not talking about fast fashion, we're talking about just more general”? And then “How does the price of sustainable products get brought down in the future?”

Roberto Crivello: I think it's like your first fax machine. I think my first fax machine in the 80s was $6,000. So everything, you know, with time will, will develop. And evolve and, and get much accessible, much more accessible. So yes, I think our biodynamic con is 20% more than organic cotton. Organic cotton is more expensive than regular cotton. But again, you know, what do you want? Do you want quality? Do you want to do good for your planet or, or not? So it's different consumers, different mindsets and you know, we're offering we're offering both and the prices are going down as you know, as more people are going to be adapting to this way of living. And you know, the organic section or a vegan sections are growing slowly and in grocery stores. So prices, yeah, prices will go down eventually. But yes, it is a little bit more expensive than….

Stephen: Let me get to the benefit because the durability of that product, cause I think we realized that when you . . . I think we've all had the experience of using clothing that wearing clothing that's not made as well. I've had a pair of jeans that was definitely not unsustainable. And it lasted maybe six months before it was torn. I couldn't wear it again. So what do you think that, so by using a biodynamic material, how do you think that improves the . . . how long will that piece lasts compared to something that's conventionally and cheaply made?

Roberto Crivello: Well, it's not, well the cotton we're using is the finest in the world and it's, it's by far not the cheapest. But what happens is that when you weave the fiber fabric a certain way, or when you might have to blend it with another fiber, for example, recycled less stretch to make it stronger than this. These jeans are actually gonna last you a very, very long time. We're actually launching, like I said earlier, a denim fabric brand. It's going to be called Science of Denim. And we have a few different fibers of which, you know, one is biodynamic, the other one is hemp. We're going to be blending with other fibers. We're thinking you know, cause it also grows very, very quickly. Uses very little water. And then we're also using thinking or using a Bulletproof fabrics which are Dyneema, which it is a petroleum based, a textile but is extremely durable.

Roberto Crivello: So again, you know, we have to think about all these things when we're, we're using the word “ethical”, but what is it that the consumer wants? What is it that the consumer is looking into? The jeans nowadays are using a lot, a lot of chemicals are using a lot, a lot of water. We are going waterless for the cotton. The cotton that you're going to be using has no pesticides.

Think about it guys, it's chemical free. Even the way that we dye it is going to be a botanical dyes. So everything that we are doing, we are thinking for the final consumer.

Stephen: Yeah. And that's where, that's where plastic gets a little freaky too, because now they're talking about microplastics. Oh my gosh. It's everywhere. I know. There's no, right. and with these, and you know, and this is a but without even with animals and fish that they find now they're finding these, these dead animals that have plastic inside them. And just by absorbing, by interacting with plastic too much, you can absorb it into your body.

So that's what's a compelling argument for what you're saying. That's the benefits of purchasing something that's going to….

Roberto Crivello: You're not wearing chemicals. and we're, because of the internet. We are all much more conscious of everything that's happening. Social media is just moving really fast and people find out that there's a problem immediately. But, but what I'm trying to say is that social media is telling us, yes, bio-plastics is telling us, you know, that that climate has to have you know, progression. We have to. We have to fix this.

This is an emergency. Yeah. And I, and we've got to fix what we're doing and, and I'm trying to do my share with the apparel industry.

Stephen: We'll close with a couple of things. I mean first off, you know, just so that the listeners don't get annoyed with any sort of sermonizing why don't we close with an –I'll offer one and you'll offer one –which is the ways that we fuck up in our daily lives on sustainability. Like that thing, so like the thing that we want to do better

Roberto Crivello: I love it. I love it cause there's always room for improvement.

Stephen: Yeah. So what do you, what do you fuck up on sometimes with your sustainability routine?

Roberto Crivello: I think you know what I'm going to, the way I want to answer that is by thinking positive. So instead of saying where I'm going to fuck up here is I'm going to try to, when I do breakfast or lunch for my daughter to food that I'm not using, I'm going to compost it. I'm going to ride my bike to work instead of taking the subway or a new Uber, I'm going to try not to shop from brands that are not ethical. I'm going to try to do my best, I'm trying to do my share. I'm trying to I called Con Edison.

I said, I want to convert to Con Edison I want to convert to your ethical plants. And they say, it's like, I do know that they had this existing, you have to find out by yourself, right, that they have these divisions, but they don't want, they don't want to publish it. They don't want to push it for whatever reason.

So I'm saving, you know, 50% money every month, you know, because I switched to these ethical plants and I'm also doing better to our planets. So, do your share. You got to do your share, you know, all the time. And where I fuck up, you know, I don't know. I forget to take my tote bag one day. I even though I carry it in my backpack all the time or I forget to, you know, I have to buy some plastic in a grocery store, yeah, that's why I fuck up.

Stephen: Yeah, I think so. That was a very thoughtful answer. The bulk bin is actually very good for if I'm seeing more. I think it's more on the West coast of the United States than the East Coast. And I mean, you know, we're both in New York. I see. I'm hoping bulk bins get bigger cause that's how you get out of the plastic. That these things are available that

Roberto Crivello: And that are available. I totally agree with you. I think Colorado and California is way ahead of us. There's a few stores in Brooklyn that are using this system of purchasing goods, you know, and, and all like, I love that. I love the idea. Even here, know your straws and don't use a paper straws cause they have wax inside it don't people you, but all these things are, you know, they're there. They'll educate the consumer. And I didn't even know I was in Miami. I said, “Wow, do you use the paper straws instead of plastic straw? I find out later that the paper has a wax inside. So the, the actual, what? It's not wax actually, it's plastic inside so that the water doesn't go through. So all of these things are, are don't use the fricking straw.

Stephen: Right. I mean, that's the whole life. Yeah. And that's what it's like that's what sucks about sustainability sometimes. Cause you go with the best intentions and you're trying to use something better, but sometimes you find out that better solution isn't better, which is fine. You just, you'll come up with something else. I mean that's what's kind of that ingenuity that comes with it and finding new materials.

Everything's a science experiment. It's really fun in that sense. Yeah.

Roberto Crivello: I, my friend was at the at the cinema idea. They, I said, “Why do you have to have a straw? I go, how am I going to drink this the usual way. Like the normal, yeah. You can't survive with a straw!”

Stephen: I was going to say for myself, I want…the thing that I can do better, I think is – well to your point– one solution with, there's a movement called precycling and that means, right? Like don't even get into the situation where you're using a better version of a plastic bag. Bring your tote, prevent the scenario altogether.

Roberto Crivello: Proactive. Yes.

Stephen: All right. Thank you so much for coming on Roberto. This was great. You gave me a lot of ideas for my everyday sustainability practice.

Roberto Crivello: So, I'm sorry I'm not very eloquent speaker, but trying to speak all languages isn't that corporate experience like doing this was, you know, it was really it was really cool to hear. I'm trying to do my 2 cents to help companies to go into right direction. So yeah. So whether you know, whether it's you want help with just consulting or to buy fabrics from me or to do full package, I can definitely help you out.

Stephen: Great. So so if iour listeners want to reach you in the future, how can they reach you?

Roberto Crivello: They can call me. I think it's the best thing. Text me, don't call me. Text me, text me at 917.371.7029 or you just email me at rc@scienceofapparel.com. Wow. You offered your digits. I love it. Yeah, It's called being transparent. Right? Cause if people don't answer phone calls these days, that's kind of funny too. I never answered a phone cause you get two minutes to my junk mail. Texts me and I will answer you.

Stephen: Awesome. Great. Well thanks so much for coming on the show. It's great to have you here. Thank you.