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We interview sustainability leaders across industries to learn what they are working on and how they are steering their companies toward a climate-friendly world.
OSS - Meta
Alex: Welcome to Open-Source Sustainability. I'm Alex Lasseter CEO of Green Places. On this show, I talk with sustainability leaders to learn how companies are adapting their business models to be in line with sustainability goals. We believe sustainability has to be open source to be successful, and these leaders have offered us a glimpse inside their strategies in the hopes that we can all move forward together. We are fascinated by some of the unique challenges these sustainability leaders face and are excited to dive deeper.
In this episode we speak with Paull Young, sustainability Strategy Manager at Meta. Meta is the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, and is pioneering the combination of social media and virtual augmented reality with the Metaverse. With many people using these products, they're in a unique position to pioneer sustainability with the world watching. Meta envisions a transition to the zero-carbon economy that will create a healthier planet for all. And as sustainability strategy manager, Paull connects with partners in the climate and sustainability sectors to advise on their sustainability operations, renewable energy projects, and their new climate product team. Let's get into it.
Hey Paull, how are you? Welcome to the, Open-Source Sustainability podcast.
Paull: Thanks for having me, Stoked to always happy to, to talk climate. Happy to be here.
Alex: Absolutely. Well, maybe, maybe to start off with would love to hear a little bit more about your role at, at Meta, especially as it pertains to sustainability.
Paull: Yeah, yeah. So I work for META's Sustainability team. We, our sustainability team actually sits in our infrastructure organization, so the organization that builds data centers all around the world and keeps Facebook working, and a lot of renewable energy projects as well, as we'll get into. My role is to work with partners, with the work with the kind of broad climate and sustainability industry, to connect with experts, both to help, us with our sustainability operations, but also to help our new climate product team, to develop products that people can use, that can help climate change overall. That's probably the best way to describe my role.
Alex: Yeah, I mean, the, the main question here is like, You know, what is, Meta is a lot. Like Meta is, there's so many different facets of this business. What does sustainability mean to, to, to Meta? Like where does the bounds stop there? Like what is, what's all encompassed in that?
Paull: Yeah. Sustainability at Meta is really for us, first and foremost about our operations. how do we run our business in the most sustainable fashion, but also how can we support communities and how can we help, have a large positive impact on the world.
Operations though is, is most important I think for any business. And I think when you think about, how a business thinking about sustainability, what goals is the business setting, what goals is the business setting, and talking about publicly what's in the sustainability report. you can see a lot of this in detail in our sustainability website, sustainability.fb.com.
But a few of our most important goals and targets. we have a goal to be net zero across our value chain by 2030. so scope one, two, and three, aligned with the Science-Based Targets initiative. So focused first and foremost on reduction of emissions. So that's, that's a, it's a big goal. 2030s I think relatively, quite, quite early.
I was reading the other day; I think only 2.8% of the Fortune 500 have a net zero by 2040 commitment. So honestly, it's the most important thing, I think great question for people is, is does your business have a net zero target? cause that's the most important thing your business can do. Secondly, we have a commitment to use a hundred percent renewable energy, and we've been using renewable a hundred percent renewable energy, for some time. This really helps us. We, we've already reached net zero across Scope one and two, and it's predominantly from using a hundred percent renewable energy, and this is a very large scale. I think we're probably one of the largest purchases of renewable energy in the world.
I think every year it changes a little bit, but at the end of 2021, we had contracts in place for more than seven and a half thousand megawatts of solar and wind energy. 4,900 megawatts of that operating now, which is enough to power 3.6 million US homes and Wow, It's a lot of Americans. I'm, I'm Australians. Not a lot of Australians, like 3.6 million homes is a lot, but yeah, a hundred percent renewable energy. And we have a big commitment there and a lot of what we do is frequently we're working to build solar projects, wind projects that both service our operations, but also the, the local community where they are.
And then finally, this is a newer target that we announced last year that I think is really cool. cause I have a water background, but we have a goal to become water positive by 2030. So we wanna be restoring more water than we're using to run our business. so we think the water goal's also really important so that, that's probably our most important targets that really show what sustainability means for us.
Alex: So as a, as a technology company, as a company that's building, I mean, I know you do more than just like software and tools like that, these are some pretty big goals.
Like why is this a part of what y'all do? Like why is this, why does this even matter to Meta in the first place? You're, you're not, you're a huge company, but you're not the biggest emitter of carbon on the planet. So why is this something that y'all have taken some leadership in at this point?
Paull: Yeah, I think, yeah go back, go back to our mission. Our, our mission is to, to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. So really, you know, we serve everyone on the planet, ideally, everyone with a smartphone. So communities can't exist in a, in a world with a climate exchange. So I think that simply aligns with our mission.
But then also, if you look at every level, people care about this. Our users care about this. We, we always try to serve our users globally. our employees care about this. at, at every level this is, this is very important to people. we serve people. so therefore we care.
Alex: So one of the things that I find fascinating about this is, is that you're an enormous organization. And obviously this is something that you have a background in, and I know you have a great team behind you of people. that think and are knowledgeable and just work like wholly in sustainability. But, the vast majority of team members, across the world, this isn't their core job. So how do you take these pretty complex topics, these extremely, I think ambitious goals and then get that out to everybody.
Like how does, like, is this something that if I'm an engineer at Meta, that I think about, like is it somebody, if I'm a salesperson selling ads on Instagram or whatever it might be, like, is this, like, how is it disseminated through the culture? I guess that's one of my questions is how's this move from like a kind of a big corporate initiative you can put up on a slide somewhere to something that your employees,
Paull: Educate tens of thousands of people around the business, so it's interesting. So always these things. You start with data, you start with where's data, where's the footprint? A lot of our footprint sits with our data centers and sits with our cooperation. So that's why our sustainability team sits with our, our cooperations team. We spend a lot of time there.
So the folks that are closest to the, the impact are spending the most time and they're the closest. However, we have tens of thousands of employees all around the world, as you mentioned. So we do a lot of work internally to, help people understand, get trained on this and frankly, feel, feel inspired.
So. We have one person on my team, who leads this all, for the company. And so she does a whole bunch of activities ranging from education, internal events. We have green act groups that are really quite active. We're also starting to do some, some early pilots of training, so more formal training on all the pieces because against a net zero target every single human can have real impact, like no matter what your role is, even before your role, how you get to the office, how much you are traveling for business, and can you take a train instead of a plane? In many cases, we serve food, most of our offices. So what's your food choice? So there's some like key pieces there that do hit our scope Three.
And then there's the piece of, we envision a world where we're, we're kind of already there, but we're trying to formalize it much more, where across the whole business there's gonna be people extremely oriented towards having a positive climate impact. And how can they, in their role, yeah, if you're an engineer on some certain product that might be like, very specific to a corner of Instagram or something. how can you have a climate impact? so we're trying to help find those people, educate them, have them understand what a scope three target is and, and what, what measurements really matter.
I had something of a personal journey on this front. I've been at Meta for nine years, the sustainability team, only two and a half. My background's social impact, so I've always kind of, you know, had this like, used the internet to help the world has been kind of the, the, the, the core of my career. But I worked on our media partnerships team for many years launching projects for Instagram and in my spare time I took climate reality leader training and started to get really educated and reading books like crazy, but through connecting with our sustainability team, when I didn't work on it.
I was able to do a whole bunch of internal work and projects. and know and Align. And so often when we are thinking about how do we educate tens of thousands of employees. I, I have this, I, I work very closely with that person who leads it because I have this personal piece of, like, I was outside of the org, the org's biggest fan internally and trying to help, trying to find out a way to be useful in a, in a way that made a, made an impact, and needed help to get there.
So, yeah, so there's pieces there, but we got a lot to do. And, I, I envision a world where like, one day everyone will be like gold or I'm working on it. That's kind of my personal, where I think we're gonna get to.
Alex: Well, I think that, I think that's really cool. You know, one of my favorite organizations when it comes to this is, is Unilever. And I think a lot about how you take something like a big corporate goal and you make it part of like the culture of what it means to be there. And I think for me at least, a lot of this comes to education. I feel like I don't have to convince a lot of our employees, we work in the tech industry and obviously I'm a sustainability company, so a lot of our employees care about this anyway.
But I think a lot of people do want to learn about this stuff, and I just feel like a really great corporate sustainability team understands that people are on all different sides of the journey and they can give them resources to learn and then a lot of them will, and maybe one day like you, they jump over and they do this full time, or it just becomes part of a, a way that they can better manage their life. which I think is just such a, such a great opportunity for technology to me to, to be able to do so.
So y'all some really big goals, and obviously you've been very public about those things, which I think is great. What are some things that people would be surprised to hear about when it comes to sustainability at Meta? Like is there something that you wish, like your employees or your customers knew that they probably didn't.
Paull: Yeah. So I, I find this interesting. So for me, we are such a big business, you know, we're a very large organization. there's so many people doing so many interesting things that, you know, you can like go into some like AI tech talk and listen to someone who's got a doctorate who's talking about stuff that, I'm non-technical, it blows my, my head off. so often I, I kind of look within. Big goals and the big targets that are very impressive and, and try to look for like what are the bright sports, what are some of the specific projects?
I'll, I'll share a few of them. There's a few that I think are individually compelling and sort of talk to the, talk to the impact within those goals. one, one around renewable energy. So, you know, we fund renewable energy projects all around the world. You can go on our sustainability website, you can see a map of where they all are, what they are. But, one of the things, yeah, I'm, I'm an, I'm an, I'm an Aussie, proud Aussie and an and APAC boy, so I'm always interested in the APAC region cause it's, it's home. Our, so we have a large Singapore operation. We have to have data center in Singapore. So therefore we build renewable energy projects in Singapore.
And if you think about Singapore, if you've, if you've ever been there, like Singapore's a lot smaller than Kansas. you're not gonna have tremendous wind farms everywhere on a, on a broad landscape. When you're looking at a plane window, you, you're, you don't have a lot of room. So in Singapore we both helped like rooftop solar wind up on about 1200 homes.
But we also helped fund and create a floating solar farm. And like, I've seen images of it and it's like, it's, it's, it feels to me like I'm just so glad that that technology is like not an idea, but exists and is being used at scale. And so I find that there's such a cool example of what this like, you know, seven and a half thousand megawatts, such a huge number. Like what does that even mean? I can't picture 3.6 million homes, but a floating solar farm, you know, powering, data centers and, and, and other things in Singapore, renewable energy is great. so that's one.
On the waterfront, so when we think about being water positive across our operations, I was talking to our lead of water partnerships the other day, and she's brilliant. And I'm, I've, I used to work for a nonprofit called Charity Water. So I just, I love, I'm so interested, water's and I, I, my family had a farm in Australia, my grandparents, so every farmer in the world cares a lot about water. We, we're doing things like river restorations and, and more, you know, understandable eco, eco ecological projects.
But some of the water projects that our partnerships lead most excited about at the moment are where we're working with farmers in areas where we operate to help them upgrade their irrigation and basically have better technology that uses much less water. And, and I love that. cause we have a focus on where's the higher water stress areas and how can we have more impact.
And those things can make a real impact, I think, I think about my grandparents and it was the two of them running a farm. It's, I don't know, a bit of a different model in America often it's more of a business, but we, it would've been really hard for us to have upgraded all our irrigation. and to be able to do that and have that impact in useless water is powerful.
So that's a, that's a few that really jump out to me. Oh, one more. This one was cool. data centers are huge buildings, and that's a large part of our footprint. Cement and Concrete is a huge contributor to global greenhouse gases. I think it's like 8% overall, and it's very hard to decarbonize. Like if you read Bill Gates book, it's really hard to, to decarbonize cement.
Alex: That's one of like the core pieces that has to get fixed, That's like one of the core tenets of like, we have to solve the cement problem.
Paull: Yeah, yeah. That's right. That's right. The whole, and we wanna build things and so it's a, it's hard. So, We, and we are good at, we are good at data. we're good at ai.
We did a partnership with researchers at the University of Illinois to develop an AI model to optimize concrete mixtures, to optimize both for sustainability and strength. So this is early, but we've done some early field testing and for, for this concrete, carbon emissions reduced 40% while strength, the requirements of what we needed from strength were exceeded.
And so it's basically trying to use AI to look at the mix of how concrete has traditionally been made and like, can you optimize? Cause there's less cement in the concrete, Bring emissions down way, way, way down.
So that, that, to me, those examples are like the small stories that are business at scale, decarbonizing, like that's what it's gonna take. So I, I, I just find them really, really cool. Like I on all of those, I wish I could like, sit down with the people doing them for hours and ask them a thousand questions.
Alex: Well, what's cool about this too is like, you know, I feel like Meta is like such a, like an intangible company, but these are really tangible things, like these.
Like working with farmers and figuring out water solutions. I come from a family, family farmers as well. Like, yeah, these are real things you could put your hands on. Like these aren't just sort of like, Hey, it's in the internet and we can figure things out. You're using the tools that, that, you know, Meta has at its disposal to be able to actually help this problem and lend a hand to it, which to me gives me like a ton of climate optimism.
But it's, it is like, it's, it's these very, I think, tangible solutions that a lot of people, I think, usually don't realize are actually happening, you know?
Paull: Yeah, yeah. And, and, and, and, and can have huge impact. Like, like 40% less for an AI model, you know, it's not at scale yet, but that's, that's a lot, that's promising, Yeah. It, it feels insurmountable. Like this, the world's so carbonized, But all these things matter and, and how can we do it all faster?
Alex: Yeah, that's fantastic. I assume you have; you have a fair amount of support in the business. You've got executive support, you've got lower-level support. You know, what, what can the average consumer of your products do to help? Like if I wanted to, to make things better or be able to help, you know, Meta achieve their sustainability goals and net zero targets. Like what are things that that individuals can do.
Paull: Yeah, I, I don't think about it exactly that way. I don't think about it as people helping us. I think we have a responsibility to help the people. And I think that's our, our biggest opportunity is, is beyond our operations, beyond scope one, two, and three, as a platform. You know, as, as, as a platform that's bringing communities together and giving people tools, to strengthen their communities, strengthen their communication.
We are actively thinking about how we can do more. How can we help the whole climate industry accelerate? How can we help individuals take climate action faster? we just recently, this is the main focus of, of a lot of my work, but we just recently formed our first formal climate product team, and a product team within a tech company. for anyone listening is not like technical.
Imagine this is the team that, that builds experiences that you can see on your phone if you log into Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, both put it in a headset and you're in the Metaverse. Like, if you are one of our users, what could we give you that could allow you to take climate action. We're really early.
We do a lot of like testing and, and internal work and a lot of expert engagement. We really, there's much smarter people in the whole climate space than us, so we're trying to just understand where, where what we do really well can accelerate. But like one example, if you go to Facebook on your phone and type in climate, you'll get pointed to the Climate Science Center.
We have this out in many, many countries. it's available to millions of people and the Climate Science Center has things like information from expert sources that explain what's happening. You can see how temperatures changing, where you are. you can access, the common myths that you might hear about, about the space and understand like why those are myths and why those might be out there.
So that's just like a hint of where we're going but there's a, there's a lot more here and a lot of the insights are we, we do a partnership with Yale, where we do a global climate survey, on people's climate opinions. And so we've been running this for a few years now. Most recently we reached, you know, a hundred thousand Facebook users in about 200 countries and territories to understand what are their opinions about climate.
The findings are becoming consistent, that the majority of people nearly everywhere, 200 countries are somewhat or very worried about climate change. 9 in 10 in Central and South America. Like people see this as a, as a threat. A majority in nearly all countries. Two-thirds of countries think climate change will harm future generations a great deal and pretty much everywhere people think climate should be a high priority for the government.
And so we see that use case. We see the need from people. We wanna serve people, we wanna serve their communities. I think how can we pull this together and, and help individuals take the actions they want to do to, to, to help on climate.
Alex: Broadly you know, on the, speaking on the tech industry. Next 10 or 15 years, how do you think the tech industry will be shaped or be shaping the discussion around climate? Like, what does this look like in, in 10 or 15 years from now? Like this is a part of everyone's you know, toolkit. Is it something that tech plays a big role in? Like what's, what, what do you think it looks like?
Paull: 10 or 15 years in tech is really hard. But I'm, I'm glad you're not asking me like, specific ideas of what, what the experience of internet looks like because wow, it's gonna be amazing then, I'm excited.
I'm an optimist. at my core, I'm very excited about tech's potential here. my whole career has been focused on, on tech for positive social change because all society needs to move extremely fast to decarbonize the world. We have to do it together and technology's the path I believe that will get us there.
I think you already see a lot of the tech companies, a lot of the larger tech companies have like solid climate commitments, solid net zero targets, like pretty solid teams and, and from an operation standpoint, so moving really fast towards where, where we all need to be. But I honestly think it's, it's this layer of like, help every individual have as much positive climate action, impact as possible.
That's what we are hoping to do with our climate products, but I think everyone's trying to do it. I admire what Google's been doing with their suite of tools. Like, you know, you jump in your car and Google Maps put you on an eco-route that's the same time, like, why not? Like that's a no-brainer. I literally, so Google Flights have a cool tool now where you can see the carbon emitted by different flights.
We went to Australia for the first time since the covid lockdown. The first time my, my daughter went to meet all her extended family. And that's like, that's a big fly. And so I was thinking about the carbon emissions, and through Google's tool I learned that flying through Fiji was significantly like something like 27% less carbon.
Alex: Really? I thought direct…
Paull: which I thought takeoff and landing would I think, cause it was a, apparently Fiji air I guess has like a really, must have a really modern plane that's really efficient, So we literally went to Fiji. Wow. And had a lovely four-day time and used 27% less carbon to have like a nice.
Alex: That's a total win.
Paull: It was even slightly cheaper. So like what a great, just make, yeah, I think, I think it was because it was an optimized plane versus the longer ones, Like it's a 14-hour flight from LA so it's like this, Your accrue more benefit from efficiency. I think those examples, and I just think about can every business do that. In LA anytime I use an Uber, I use Uber Green or Uber Comfort, I frequently get a Tesla and it's like a better experience.
I wish it was the default, but I think that those business will work towards it. So I think I envision a decarbonized world soon, hopefully for my kids and for all of us. I think tech may be able to just speed everything. hopefully as long as we get really close with the experts and both really close with the experts and really close for measurable impact on carbon. And don't just do things that like seem great, but don't move the needle, but get really good at holding ourselves accountable for what really, really matters.
And secondly, build experiences that people want because, you know, that's always the hard thing as well. You can't just like hope. You have to find, find value for people and, and provide value for them in an experience.
Alex: That's great. Well, and you know, as a fellow optimist on this, I think one of the messages that I think is so important here that, you know, I don't think it's like heard enough, is being more sustainable.
Decarbonizing doesn't necessarily mean a worse experience. I think a lot of people have this view sometimes that doing better for the world, you know, that means a tradeoff of some capacity. If you're a business, it means, you know, less profit. If it's an individual, it mean, may not the comfort that you have, but you know, that experience in Uber Green, like the ability to be able to stop in Fiji, all that type of stuff.
Like there are ways to be able to do this in a way that's smarter. there's a way that the, the future looks a lot brighter. And there's certainly a way to be able to participate in this stuff in a way that's an additive experience, which I think is a big shift.
Paull: Future generations are gonna look at us like we're crazy cause we burned, dug rocks and burned them for so long.
Especially now when we have different solutions. Like I even think about like, like air quality, and the impacts of air quality from when you decarbonize. Like we, we often have quite bad air quality in LA. I keep a pretty close eye on it, and there's cars everywhere. And the fact that they're not all EVs is wild to me.
And when we are, and the air quality is massively measurably improved, like our kids' generation are gonna look at us and be like, you used to breathe air that bad and just think it was normal? Yeah. And you didn't have to? And other things too? And that's beyond even the climate impact.
Alex: Yeah. I was, I was in London recently and they've done a really great job of putting EV bikes throughout the city.
Paull: I Love a bike share.
Alex: Yeah. The most remarkable thing that I saw was the EV charging infrastructure in London. Looks like it's been there for 50 years. Like it's not the big fancy stuff that we have here that you see where it's like this supercharger type thing.
It's literally like just marked off on the street on a side kind of street somewhere, and it's coming out of like a telephone pole. And it's like super, like, it just looks like it's been there forever. And one of the things that, that my wife and I noticed was how quiet the city was. It was, it was remarkable walking through.
Yeah. It was a remarkable walking through town. And it was quiet and it was because we noticed about half of every vehicle that we saw was EV and I was like, I just completely didn't even think about it, but it was a totally different trip. And that type of stuff is exciting. I think so.
Paull: You eat a plant rich diet, you're gonna feel great. Like, you just did that as a, as a for health reasons, you're gonna feel phenomenal. here's all these pieces. We're a, we're a one car, two E-bike family. And gosh, I love the e-bike. It's such a great way to get around, so fun. And this is even, even in LA when we have like terrible bike infrastructure. But I can get lots of places. I ride a bike, a beach park on my e-bike places, and it'll take the same time as driving my car. And it's phenomenal.
Alex: I scooter to work now, and it's my favorite thing to do in the morning. Like it is, it is like, it's the best part of my day is waking up and, and I, I walk basically to a daycare and then from there I, I scooter the rest of the way and it's fantastic.
Paull: And so this is the thing, like how can we have these experiences that are clearly better and better for the planet that we, we need them to be? How can we just speed them as quickly as possible? Like, how can we give everyone that experience and, and understanding other people? Cause until you talk to a human and like hear about it.
Or in, in, you know, your influence part too. You see it a lot. Like those make a difference. So I think for us, like for Meta, there's a lot of what we're thinking about is ways to just, just make it easy for people to find the options they want that are more sustainable. And I think, I think all of tech has a role to play in that, and can amplify these like, positive climate solutions that are great for people.
Alex: Yeah, I totally agree. Was there anything that I missed that I should have asked that I, that I didn't? from your side?
Paull: No, I think, I think you, I think you covered it. There's like so much territory, but no, I don't think, I don't think I missed anything that I wanted to particularly call out. We're still like, we're still at the point where so much of what we're building is, is kind of in the test. To like Meta, it's always like build it, test it, like really get it right for people, And when it fits scale, scale, scale,
And so we're at the early steps. Like I, I can't wait for the day where I'd. The whole conversation, I'd be like, pull up Instagram, press this button, check this thing out. Have you seen this? Are you in a group about this? Are you, have you been to this Metaverse experience? Like it's phenomenal. And we're just, we're, we're still early. but that's all right, moving fast.
Alex: That's a remarkable difference than being in a, a startup software company cuz it's the opposite. It's like, I think this work, let's put it out there and hopefully it doesn't completely collapse the system and then we'll try it again. So, well cool. Well thank you so much for, for joining today. Really, really appreciate it. I'm going on. Congratulations on the upcoming baby and, keep up all the
Paull: Good work. Great, great to be here. Really fun, appreciative of the opportunity just to come in and, and chat about what we're trying to do.
and you know, I love what you guys are doing. Big believer, I'm happy to support in, in any way, like the, the needs so there. Like, I'm just seeing it again and again. Every I'm talking to client, people now, like people can't work it out fast. And so I think you're, you, you guys are in a great place. I just wishing new success and scale cause we all, we all need it.
Alex: Thanks man. I really appreciate it. Thank you to Paull for joining us and thank you for listening. If you like this show, please be sure to leave us a review and follow this podcast wherever you like to listen so you don't miss an episode. This podcast is powered by Green Places. If you are looking to reduce your company's environmental impact and reach your sustainability goals, visit green places.com to learn more. I'm Alex Lassiter and I'll talk with you next time on Open-Source Sustainability.