In episode 8, we’re pleased to welcome another guest to the podcast – Stanley Black & Decker’s Product Sustainability Senior Director Dan Fitzgerald.

If you don't know about Stanley Black & Decker, it is the largest tool company in the world with over 100 manufacturing facilities worldwide. In his role, Dan leads the ‘innovate with purpose’ pillar under the corporate social responsibility strategy, which includes goals focusing on addressing unmet societal needs, circular design, and sustainable supply chain.

In this episode, Dan, Neil and Jim discuss the problems product managers have in embedding sustainability into products, recycling quotas and design requirements and the growing demand for a ‘greener’ approach.

In this episode

Shelley - Dan, could you start by telling us what you think is hindering product managers from embedding sustainability into products? [01:09]

• Dan - It's not that product managers don't want to. I just think the nature of the job has been so granularly focused on the details of the product itself in operation. How much does it weigh for a tool? How much power does it have? Does it rest nicely on my belt hook, right? We're talking personal preferences on how you use a product and gathering those requirements of what is going to make a winning product. [01:22]
• It's not that end users don't care about sustainability. I think there's an assumption from an end user that things of that nature, such as following the laws, and minimizing impact when you create things that companies are doing that already. And it's not on them to tell product managers, even if they know how to communicate that in the first place, because sometimes if you're not in that space, you just don't know the details.
• What I think misses a little bit is that the follow up because the end-user is not saying anything about it [sustainability]. So, it doesn't get placed in a high priority in the product specification because the end user isn't directly saying it. But we all know it is needed at some point to either pass through a regulatory requirement or even the customer. And in our case, our customers are retailers because we don't sell directly to the end user. So, a customer may have a requirement because they're focused on sustainability that we need to meet such that the end user has an option to buy it in that store.

Neil - Dan, could you clarify that a bit? Because I think that's unique to the other conversations we've had. You have two customers, and I think that's not obvious to everyone. [03:03]

Dan - We maybe even have more behind the contractor. The person that hires the contractor could also have requirements. I think this idea of the expanding end user and seeing it more of a worldview about everything you have to hit to get a product out the door, that's when sustainability starts making it into the doc. [03:11]

• Neil - There was a study done by McKinsey, I think back in 2019, where they asked exactly this question because they were wondering, why is it that we don't see sustainability in requirements from customer surveys? And what they found was customers expected brands to take care of this. I think it was a pretty significant number. [03:31]
• That said, we're assuming the brands we buy from are not engaging in unsustainable practices. I think in the past, if there was something bad happening in the supply chain, you didn't need to tell anyone about it. But this has become very different especially and regulations in Europe are forcing this. In one of these podcasts, I mentioned what Europe is doing is, and what regulation does in general is it makes you live in a glass house. And people live very differently when they'...