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Writer's pictureMeg Carney

11. Greenwashing in the Outdoor Industry with Steven Sashen



In episode 11 of the Outdoor Minimalist podcast, we are going to hit a topic that I love to talk about but I hate that exists: greenwashing.


Like many topics that I cover in my book, I feel confident I could do an episode on my own about this, but I’d rather hear from industry experts about greenwashing specifically in the outdoor industry, their experiences, how they avoid it, and their ideas moving forward.

So, to help me dig deeper into this important topic, I am thrilled to share my conversation with Steven Sashen.


Steven is a serial entrepreneur who has never had a job, a former professional stand-up comic and award-winning screenwriter, and a competitive sprinter -- one of the fastest men over 55 in the country (maybe the fastest 55+ Jew in the world!).


He and his wife, Lena Phoenix, co-founded the footwear company Xero Shoes, creating "a MOVEMENT movement" which has helped hundreds of thousands of people Live Life Feet First with happy, healthy, strong feet in addictively comfortable footwear. Xero Shoes has been on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing companies for 5 years in a row. Steven and Lena also appeared on Shark Tank, where they turned down a $400,000 offer from Kevin O'Leary.


Xero Shoes



 

This transcript was edited to remove some filler words and phrases and is not verbatim according to what is spoken in the audio recording.





MEG: Thanks for joining me on the Outdoor Minimalist podcast, Steven. I'm really excited to have you here! Before we jump into the topic, I’d love to hear a little bit more about your experience in the outdoor industry and how Xero Shoes got started.


STEVEN: Oh my! I’m the CEO and co-founder of Xero Shoes, and we started the company in late 2009. The way it all began—I love that you’re the Outdoor Minimalist since we are minimalist as well, and that was what started this whole thing 14 years ago. When I was 45, I got back into sprinting after a 30-year break, which I don't necessarily recommend. I was getting injured pretty much constantly for the next two years.


After a couple of years of that, a friend of mine, who’s a world champion runner, said, “Why don’t you try taking off your big, thick, padded, motion-control shoes and see if you learn anything from getting your bare feet on the ground?”


To abbreviate the story dramatically, what I learned was A) why I was getting injured, because it was a form issue that I couldn’t feel when I was in regular shoes, and B) how to stop getting injured because that form issue adjusted naturally. That’s simply because when you’re running with bad form barefoot, it hurts, and when you’re doing it properly, it feels good.


My injuries went away, I became faster, and I became a Masters All-American sprinter—one of the fastest guys over 55 in the country. I just wanted that natural movement experience as much as I could have it. I didn’t want to have to argue with people about whether it was legal to get into a restaurant or a supermarket barefoot (by the way, it is, but that’s not important).


So, I made a pair of sandals based on a 10,000-year-old design idea—just something to protect your foot and something to hold that protection onto your foot. That’s what footwear was for the first 99.5% of human history. People kept asking me for more of those sandals, and I was just doing this as a goofy little hobby.


One day, a guy said he was writing a book called *Barefoot Running*, and if I treated this sandal-making hobby like a business and had a website, he would put me in the book. I’d been an internet marketer since, oh gosh, 1992, so I built hundreds and hundreds of websites. I rushed home and pitched this incredible opportunity to my wife, who assured me that it was really stupid, wouldn’t make any money, and that I shouldn’t do it. I am a good husband, so I agreed with her. I’m a typical husband, so after she went to bed, I built a website. That’s how it all began.


Since then, we’ve evolved from selling a funky little do-it-yourself sandal kit to having a complete line of boots, shoes, and sandals for performance and casual use. People use our products for everything from taking a walk to running 100-mile ultra marathons. We’ve been one of the fastest-growing companies in the U.S. for, oh gosh, the last eight years.


MEG: That’s pretty amazing! I actually have a pair of Xero Shoes, and it came about in a similar way to how you started the company. I got injured while training for an ultra marathon, and it was a form issue that my physical therapist could only see when my shoes were off.


STEVEN: You can often see them with shoes on, but they’re more obvious if people take their shoes off and if they still have that same form issue. I did some research with Dr. Bill Sands—actually, more accurately, I was in the lab with Dr. Bill Sands, who at the time was at Colorado Mesa University.


We looked at his research and saw that most people changed their gait almost immediately if they took off their shoes. Again, doing it wrong hurts. For the roughly 8% of people we saw who didn’t change immediately, it took a very small amount of coaching until they could adapt to a more natural form, and then not very long until that became ingrained and they relearned how to move efficiently.


MEG: So, before Xero Shoes, you were in internet marketing for a long time?


STEVEN: Oh gosh, I like to say, as a 59-year-old guy, I was just a little too old to have been given Ritalin as a kid. So, I’ve done a lot of things. I invented an industry-standard word processing software for film and television writers. I did some real estate investing. I got into internet marketing way back when I was teaching meditation. I did a whole stack of things between the time I was in my 20s and late 30s.


MEG: You have a very well-rounded career path, I must say.


STEVEN: Okay, yeah, that’s a nice way of putting it.





MEG: When we first connected, you mentioned that you were really passionate about marketing, particularly the idea of greenwashing and how that fits into today's market. I’d love to hear your thoughts on greenwashing, and for anyone who doesn't know what it is, could you define it in your own terms?


STEVEN: Well, let me back up and say my interest as a marketer has always been how to give people something that’s demonstrably valuable and how to present that in a way that is truthful.


In fact, there’s a guy who put out a course on copywriting who used a long-form sales letter that I had written for a nutritional supplement. The title of that chapter in his course was "How to Market by Telling the Truth." In that particular instance with that product, I said things like, “If anyone tells you this product will change your life, they’re lying. In fact, there’s no way to know if this product is even working.


You just have to understand the concept of what it’s doing, and if you think that’s useful for your health, here it is. Oh, by the way, money-back guarantee—so, no harm, no foul.” It was a pretty radical thing to do instead of promising that if you took this product, your kids would get into a better college, your mortgage rate would go down, and you’d suddenly develop the ability to play the violin that you never had before.


So, I’m a big fan of doing marketing that is honest, which brings us to greenwashing. Not too surprisingly, in the last few years, the idea of doing things that are good for the planet has really taken off, and rightly so. Greenwashing is claiming that you are doing good things for the planet when, at best, that is obfuscating reality, and at worst, it’s just flat-out lying. It’s not unique to the outdoor industry by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, energy companies are doing quite a bit of greenwashing.


The natural gas industry loves to talk about how natural gas is such a clean energy source, but the reality is that, for a number of reasons, including methane leaks and others, natural gas is barely, barely more green, if you will, than coal. People don’t know that. Even the big energy companies, when they are engaged in more green concepts or objectives, are still hiding a lot about the reality of what they’re doing.


So that’s kind of the gist of it. My interest again is that here we are in the outdoor industry, where if you go to Outdoor Retailer or any other trade show—ISPO in Europe, for example—there are just so many companies talking about the wonderful things they’re doing to save the planet. I know from talking to the providers of many of the products that these companies use that it’s not as simple as one would think.


In fact, I’m going to cut to the end of the story and say that the green movement, or the value of green products—products that are not harming the environment—will only be fully realized when marketers can’t use them for marketing purposes. In other words, when everyone’s able to do it because these products are available for everyone and are demonstrably providing value, then people can’t use it for differentiation and marketing. That’s when we’ll know we’ve accomplished something. Until then, boy, it’s just the wild west out there. It really is, and marketing is a challenge for consumers to understand.


Let me give a fun example. There’s a company whose name I won’t mention. I could give hints, but I won’t be that annoying. They built their entire brand on their sustainability story, but in their first audit of their sustainability, they explicitly mentioned that they left out the cost of transportation.


This is particularly interesting because they were making a product in one part of the world, flying that component to the other side of the world to make—what’s the word? So they took the raw materials from one part of the world, shipped them to another part of the world to turn them into a component, then shipped that component to yet another part of the world to attach it to another component, and finally delivered the product in the world’s most expensive box.


So transportation was a huge piece of the real impact on the planet, and they explicitly left that out. That was amazing.


Or here’s another over-the-top example—again, I won’t mention any companies because I don’t want to get sued—but there were companies claiming that they were saving a certain number of water bottles when they turned those water bottles into a fill-in-the-blank product.


What people didn’t know was that they were making the water bottles and then recycling them. They weren’t pulling them out of anywhere; they were deliberately creating a product to then destroy it to turn it into another product for their marketing story.


That could not be more reprehensible—actually, I’m sure it could be more reprehensible, but that’s a pretty good example of the level of reprehensibleness you can get to in the marketing world.





MEG: I’m glad you brought up those examples specifically. I’m pretty sure I know what you’re talking about, but I also won’t mention names because those are examples that consumers don’t usually think about—or even sometimes marketers don’t think about. It’s often seen that greenwashing is just a blatant lie, not something that involves leaving out important information.


STEVEN: Well, let’s get to a simpler version then. We were recently pitched by a company that is very well known in the green product world, if you will. I grilled them on what they were doing, and again, they were leaving out the transportation costs of where they were harvesting the materials to create another material.


They just left out what it cost to get on a boat, go out into the ocean, come back from the ocean, and get on a truck to take it to a factory. It was amazing, and they received some seal of approval about how green their practices were.


Let me back up a little bit. The basic question is, when we talk about “green” in general, the biggest thing we’re discussing is carbon and carbon dioxide. It’s kind of silly because methane could be an even bigger problem than carbon dioxide, considering how much longer methane lasts in the environment compared to carbon dioxide.


But most people think about carbon offsets or the carbon cost. So, when we’re talking about green, we’re talking about a net carbon benefit—meaning we’re not putting more carbon into the world through manufacturing, or ideally, we’re taking carbon out of the ecosystem.


This brings us to the magic question: Are you doing that? Are you not putting more carbon in, or are you taking some out? Show me how the process works, including everything from start to finish.


When I was at Outdoor Retailer—oh gosh, when was the last time we had one that was well attended? Two years ago, something like that—definitely before COVID. I think I had this conversation even at a show before that, so let’s call it two years ago for lack of a better and more accurate calendar. I talked to a number of people in the business of making green components—CEOs of companies I’ve known since the early days of Xero Shoes.


I asked them, “So, are you carbon positive or not?” Every one of them said no, and that was amazing to me. It wasn’t surprising, but what was amazing was how readily they told me. They said, “We’re working on it. We hope we get there. We hope there’s an economy of scale where we have enough people using these products that we can find a way to get there, either by economy of scale or new and improved processes.” But they weren’t there, and that’s a critical piece of the story.


Oh boy, where to go with this? We like to think that we’re helping, and that means all of us as consumers. But the question is: Are we, or are we just banking on the fact that what we’re doing now is setting the stage for being helpful at some point in the future?


I think there’s a valid argument to be made that we’re just setting the stage and hoping that at some point, everything will become more efficient, that more people will be using the products, and that it’ll all work out.


But I don’t think that’s good enough, frankly. If that’s the case, we need to be honest about it, and people need to say that. We need to factor in how much difference we’re really making.


As an industry, the outdoor industry is tolerating a certain level of greenwashing just because of the math. What I mean by that is, I was chuckling thinking about my experience at ISPO, which is the big trade show in Germany. I was on a panel about this exact topic—sustainability.


There was a shoe company that had won an award for having some sustainability factor in their product. They were talking about how wonderful they were and what a great thing they were doing to save the planet. I said something really obnoxious—not that I was trying to be obnoxious, but sometimes when you tell the truth, that’s how it sounds. I said, “Look, there are 400,000 tons of stuff dumped into the ocean every year by the U.S. alone. A couple thousand pairs of shoes that you’re going to sell this year are not making a difference.”


Again, the argument is, “Yes, but we’re doing the best we can, and we’re trying to help, and eventually, we’ll get there.” Well, okay, but in the meantime, you’re not really making a difference. We’ve got to be honest about that.


Here’s another example that’s even crazier. This was in the news a little over a year ago. What we discovered—not by me, as in I had anything to do with it, but what we as consumers discovered—is that taking plastic bottles and turning them into fleece that then gets put in washing machines, etc., creates even more microplastics that are even harder to get rid of than the plastics from the water bottles to begin with.


That was big news for a little while, and then something else took over the news. But that’s huge news—to find out that the thing many people thought was one of the greenest production techniques we had, recycling plastic water bottles, does not provide a benefit or could even be worse. I mean, that’s massive! But as far as I can tell, it didn’t change anything.


MEG: Those are all really good points, and it kind of becomes really difficult to navigate all those things.


STEVEN: Impossible. It’s impossible to navigate, and that’s the challenge. Some of that is because marketers try to obfuscate reality, and some of it is because reality is complicated. As a marketer, you can’t tell a complicated story. So what do you do?


I don’t have anything resembling an answer for this, obviously. I just want to raise the topic, engage in the conversation, and see what we can do.


MEG: I guess I’m going to reel it back to a couple of different points that you touched on, and we’ll just move through those. One thing you brought up was carbon offsets and the idea of being carbon positive.


That’s been something I’ve always struggled with—the concept of people buying carbon credits. Is that even really a green practice? Because selling carbon credits is a business.


STEVEN: Oh yeah, that’s an interesting one. Well, Tesla, for example—I read something, so please pardon me for not being accurate about this, and I don’t know if it’s still true because I read it a number of months ago—but I read that most of the money Tesla was making was from selling carbon offset credits, not from selling cars.


So the question is: Is that a valid thing? I’m going to lean in the direction of yes, it’s valid on a global scale, but it’s not valid on a local scale. So, is Tesla a green company? You know, it’s tricky. Well, yes, let’s say it is kind of. Now I’m thinking about what it costs to mine lithium for lithium-ion batteries. Things do get complicated.


But to bring it back to the question: Is the selling of carbon offsets or carbon credits a green thing? My reason for saying it could be is if the net effect—once you take all the companies involved in the buying and selling of these credits—is pulling carbon dioxide out of the air, then sure. Is it a great solution? No. But again, if there’s a net positive effect, I don’t want to kill the whatever in exchange for the whatever else—whatever that metaphor is supposed to be.


MEG: That makes a lot of sense, and I agree with you. My concern with carbon offsets is that companies, regardless of size, might use them to avoid changing their processes.


STEVEN: I completely agree. The question is whether it’s even possible to change those processes. In manufacturing, particularly footwear, there are instances where valid options simply don’t exist.


When we started Xero Shoes, all our products were vegan-friendly. Our growth came from responding to customer needs. We began as a do-it-yourself sandal company, then created a ready-to-wear version when customers requested it. Then, they asked for closed-toe shoes for winter, which led to further evolution. Eventually, we had many requests for leather shoes for work, so we decided to make one. Unsurprisingly, that sparked backlash from our vegan customers.


Some of them mistakenly thought we were exclusively a vegan company. I explained that we prioritize natural movement, and while we aim to be vegan-friendly, there are times when that’s just not feasible.


One of my favorite conversations was with someone who emailed me about using pineapple leather. I knew it wasn’t suitable for footwear and replied accordingly. Then he asked about mushroom leather, which at the time had only been produced in a small quantity.


I told him it wasn’t available yet. He kept throwing out suggestions, and I responded to each one. Finally, he asked, “What makes you such an expert?” I said, “I’ve been doing this for a living for ten years, and our team has about 250 years of combined experience.”


Often, there aren’t great options, and while we can strive to do better, we can’t always go all the way. A key part of our green story is that we create products that last longer. As a minimalist footwear company, our designs use fewer materials, which also reduces energy consumption in manufacturing. Our outsoles come with a 5,000-mile warranty, helping to keep products out of landfills.


We still use synthetic rubber, which isn’t carbon positive, but by creating durable products, we extend their lifespan. For example, we’ve had customers wear our sandals—a mere 4.5-millimeter thick piece of rubber—for eight or nine years! That’s impressive. In fact, when we approached our rubber manufacturer about making something extremely durable, they told us that’s not typical in the footwear industry. I responded, “Exactly! That’s why we’re doing it.”


So, while some companies might use carbon offsets to excuse bad practices, there are also instances where better options just aren’t available yet.





MEG: That’s a common theme among many outdoor manufacturers. Consumers often don’t realize how difficult it is to obtain vegan leathers or if they even exist for specific needs.


STEVEN: I love that you mentioned “for your purposes.” Yes, these alternatives exist, but they aren’t universally applicable. Many consumers, myself included, think about products as if they were available through a Star Trek replicator—if you can imagine it, it must exist. Unfortunately, reality is more complex.


I want to bring this back to Xero Shoes and how you’ve tailored your marketing to avoid greenwashing. Everything I've shared is what we communicate publicly. We emphasize our 5,000-mile sole warranty and how minimalist products using fewer materials, especially less EVA, can be beneficial. Transparency is key.


In the spirit of transparency, we’re hoping to launch a new product in the spring. Given current supply chain uncertainties, it’s hard to say for sure. We want to create a sustainable story that is genuinely carbon positive.


However, we’re still testing and ensuring every component is either recycled or biodegradable in a carbon-positive way. If we discover that our due diligence was inaccurate, we’ll expose that and revise our story. We believe in being honest and transparent, even when mistakes happen. It’s crucial for both consumers and businesses to understand that mistakes are part of learning and growing.


Success involves managing unexpected challenges while working hard day after day. For example, we recently discovered that our lace manufacturer changed materials without notifying us. While this didn’t affect our green story for that product, it shows how things can be outside your control. You have to handle these situations without becoming overly stressed. If there’s an issue for consumers, just admit it and do your best to resolve it rather than hiding behind spin.


Yes, it’s tough to tell the truth, and I understand the anxiety surrounding it. However, I’ve found that the stress of not being honest is far greater than dealing with the aftermath of telling the truth.


MEG: Another question about your marketing: how important is green marketing versus performance-based marketing?


STEVEN: That’s an excellent question. Reflecting on a discussion at ISPO, I pointed out that many green products are more expensive than their non-green counterparts, and these costs are passed on to consumers. This can create a market primarily for affluent consumers. I argue that this doesn’t create significant impact.


There are claims that consumers want green products and are willing to pay more, but I question who was surveyed. Did they talk to shoppers at Walmart? More importantly, I don’t care what people say they will do; I want to see what they actually do.


Many love the idea of being eco-friendly but may not act on it. I suspect that the appeal of green products mainly serves a wealthy subset of consumers.


MEG: Have you read any studies about market trends in green marketing?


STEVEN: On the marketing side, there’s definitely been a rise in companies trying to tell green stories. But that brings us back to greenwashing—if they can’t provide a valid story, they might just say, “We’re recycling water bottles,” even if they’re making those bottles for the sake of the story. This trend makes people feel good, thinking they’re changing the world by buying more products. However, much of this is another form of greenwashing, catering to that feel-good narrative without full transparency or honesty.


I have another thought on this. I’m not saying the following company was outright greenwashing, but it’s a good example of what we might call “social washing.”


In the early days of TOMS, with their “buy one, give one” model, the shoes they donated were not the same as the canvas espadrilles people thought they were. Those who loved the buy-one-give-one story often engaged in a bit of virtue signaling, believing they were helping people in the developing world by wearing those shoes.


However, the shoes given away didn’t allow for natural movement, and from my perspective, any shoe that hurts people’s feet isn’t a good product to give away. There’s a similar dynamic with some green products and marketing, where people give each other a knowing nod, thinking they’re saving the world. This creates a warm, feel-good effect, but it often doesn’t lead to real change.


It’s hard to shake these beliefs once people feel good about them. It’s similar to studies on fundraising for starving children in Africa. If you present an entire village as starving, you won’t raise as much money as if you focus on one appealing child. This taps into our evolutionary psychology, and marketers know how to exploit this for both good and bad.


The same principle applies when people feel good about small actions and don’t look too deeply into the bigger picture. For example, people often complain about grapes being imported from Chile in winter. Ironically, it can be less environmentally damaging to import those grapes because planes flying mostly empty from Chile can fill their cargo with grapes, making it cheaper than sourcing local, seasonal grapes.


There’s a great book about sushi that discusses how the sushi boom happened when planes were flying consumer goods to America, returning mostly empty. Someone realized that tuna migrate to the North Atlantic in winter, and if they filled those planes with tuna, it not only satisfied Japanese demand but created a global sushi market. It became more economical to fly tuna back and forth rather than harvesting them in other ways.


I might not have all the details right, but the key point is that what seems obvious—like flying tuna around the world—might not be what we think. And for consumers, seeing the bigger picture is often hard because they lack information. Who really thinks about the supply chain for the yogurt they just had for lunch?


MEG: To wrap up our conversation, what final tips would you offer consumers?


STEVEN: That’s a great question! I’d suggest that consumers see this as an opportunity to ask companies for more information. It’s essential to seek out details about products and their sourcing. When you find something, don’t just stop there—look deeper. If a product uses recycled materials, for instance, try to find out where those materials come from.


Maybe we need an organization dedicated to doing this research for consumers, similar to Snopes.com. For those unfamiliar, Snopes verifies claims and helps people understand what’s true or false. We could really benefit from a similar resource focused on outdoor and greenwashing issues—an index that answers these questions for us.


I know some people are trying to create a green product index, but I’m a bit skeptical. Often, such certifications seem more aimed at promoting companies rather than genuinely helping consumers.


MEG: I was going to mention those certification processes but decided against it since it can lead to a complicated discussion.


STEVEN: You’re right; it can get tricky. If an organization is offering certification, it’s crucial to ask where their funding comes from. If they’re funded by the companies they’re certifying, there’s a potential bias. We see this in pharmaceutical research—studies funded by drug companies tend to favor those companies.


It’s not to say that every certification is invalid, but it’s important to dig a little deeper. Ideally, we’d have an independent organization that certifies without taking money from companies—now that would be ideal. I’m not sure how that could work, though, since funding sources often reveal a lot.


MEG: Following the money is a key point.


STEVEN: There have been instances where major footwear companies conducted studies labeled as independent, but they designed and funded them themselves.


MEG: I appreciate you coming onto the show to share all this information; it’s a lot for people to digest. To wrap things up, where can people find more information about Xero Shoes and your story?


STEVEN: First, I want to say that if anyone finds anything I’ve said to be factually inaccurate, I’m open to feedback. Please point me to the resources! We’re doing our best under challenging circumstances, and I welcome corrections. A good friend once told me that my tendency to correct inaccuracies can make people uncomfortable, and I hadn’t realized that. So, I’m all ears for any input.


The simplest way to find us is at Xero Shoes—spelled X-E-R-O shoes, plural—at xeroshoes.com. If your computer autocorrects it, that’ll still lead you to us. We’re also active on social media under the same name.


We have some of our sustainability story on our website, and we’re in the process of redesigning it to make that information more accessible since people have been asking for it. If anyone can’t find what they’re looking for, they should reach out, and we’ll share what we can.


MEG: Thank you so much! This has been a really enlightening conversation.


STEVEN: My pleasure!






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