Ethical Swag: How Sustainable Promotional Products Are Changing Supply Chains

In this episode of the Sustainable Supply Chain Podcast, I sit down with Tara Milburn, founder and CEO of Ethical Swag, a certified B Corp reshaping the promotional products industry. Too often, branded merchandise ends up as waste or is produced under questionable conditions. Tara and her team are proving there’s a better way, where every procurement choice can align with values, improve transparency, and create measurable impact.

We discuss how Ethical Swag was built on the principle that business can be a force for good, even in a sector not known for sustainability. Tara explains why greenwashing remains a challenge, how third-party audits are essential for supplier verification, and why embedding sustainability across all departments, much like digital transformation, creates lasting change. She also shares practical strategies for procurement teams, such as offering “good, better, best” options that balance budgets with environmental and social impact.

One of the most striking parts of our conversation was the reminder that products with your logo should reflect your brand values, because when those items end up in landfill, so does your reputation. Tara shows how companies can move beyond token gestures to meaningful storytelling, from seed paper giveaways linked to the UN Sustainable Development Goals to impact reporting that makes sustainability visible.

If you’re a supply chain leader looking to reduce waste, build brand trust, and rethink procurement as a driver of sustainability, you’ll find this episode full of insights and inspiration.

 If disruption hit tomorrow, would you know where your supply chain was most exposed? In 15 minutes my free scorecard helps you assess 27 resilience statements, calculate your score, and turn the result into three priorities and a 30 day action plan. You can download the scorecard free at tomraftery.com/scorecard.

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How can you meet your customers where they are? How can you demonstrate and make your values visible through the products that have your logo? Because when you've got a product in a trash can with your logo on it, yeah, it's not so good. Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in the world. Oh, welcome to episode 86 of the Sustainable Supply Chain Podcast, the only podcast focused exclusively on the intersection of sustainability and supply chain. I'm your host, Tom Raftery, and I'm delighted to have you here today. Before we get started, a quick reminder. You can now support the podcast and unlock the full back-catalog by becoming a Sustainable Supply Chain Plus subscriber. For just five euros or dollars a month, less than the price of a fancy coffee, you'll get access to all 80 plus past episodes of this podcast and more than 380 episodes of the Digital Supply Chain Podcast. The most recent four episodes remain free for everyone, but the archive is exclusively for subscribers. Plus members get a shout out on the show and a direct line to me for suggesting guests topics or even shaping where we take the podcast next. You'll find the link in the show notes or at tiny url.com/ssc pod. And speaking of shoutouts, a huge thank you this week to Kristal Maharaj for becoming a Sustainable Supply Chain Plus subscriber. Kristal. I really appreciate your support. It helps keep these conversations going. Now onto today's episode, today we're exploring an area of supply chain that's often overlooked, but hugely powerful, promotional products. Joining me today is Tara Milburn, founder and CEO of Ethical swag. Her company is rethinking branded merchandise with a sustainability lens proving that even the smallest procurement decisions can reflect an organisation's values and have real impact. From tackling greenwashing to embedding transparency into supply relationships, Tara's story is one of entrepreneurial grit, global perspective, and a belief that businesses can and must be a force for good. If you've ever wondered how everyday procurement choices can drive sustainability and strengthen brand trust, this is an episode you won't want to miss. Tara, welcome to the podcast. Would you like to introduce yourself? Certainly, I am, Tara Milburn. I'm coming to you from Canada and my company is Ethical Swag. We're certified B Corp and we deal in sustainable promotional products. Okay. First question obviously then Tara, is why, as in what made you go out and decide to set up Ethical Swag? Well, it is not because I thought we needed another company putting logos on pens. There's enough companies doing that as far as I'm concerned. But I come from a a long background in sales and marketing and foreign direct investment, all kinds of different things in my background. I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I knew I wanted to, start a business. I had no idea what the business was. It had to align with my values. It had to be something that I could be good at. It had to be a global opportunity. There were certain things that I had sort of listed, but I didn't know what it was. And then I more and more increasingly saw companies that talked about what was really valuable to them, and then they put their logo on things that didn't reflect that. I was like, wow, like promotional products are a really powerful marketing medium, when done properly. How is it that there's such a disconnect? And when I looked into the industry, I realised there was a disconnect because it was kind of a hard thing to navigate. The industry was not set up to provide that kind of clarity. And so I thought, ah, there's my business idea. That's how I came to it. It wasn't, I didn't know anything about promotional products. I had never done it in my life. I had never sold them. I had never, I don't even think I'd bought them, honestly. I'd been given them. It was very much identifying a market gap, seeing a problem that needed solving and jumping in and going about it. Okay. And you mentioned Canada, in fact, you're on Cape Breton Island, which sounds magical. Do you think where we live shapes how we build businesses? Certainly how we live helps us shape businesses. I've lived in a number of different places. I was born in Montreal and spent over a decade of my career in Vancouver, British Columbia, and it was through my experiences. It was the opportunities that I found myself able to participate in early in my career. Honestly, it was people that I heard speak and demonstrate how business can be used as a vehicle for change that sort of inspired and led me throughout my career. So I choose to live in Cape Breton now. I live in the, the middle of the UN Biosphere Reserve. It's absolutely beautiful. I had a swim this morning. That's a choice. There's also, you know, not a lot around me, so, in terms of population, in terms of economic prosperity and that sort of thing. And so I really value the fact that we have, technology today that we didn't have when I was starting my career, that allows me to live here and still have really meaningful work. And meaningful work. you said that Ethical swag is a B Corp. A certified B Corp. What connected the dots for you in going from helping land an NBA expansion to launching a B Corp? It, it's, it's not a normal path. So the National Basketball Association geez, this is over 30 years ago. So they were looking at their first international expansion and I was working for the owner of the Vancouver Canucks at the time, which is a national Hockey league team. And he was building an arena and he said, I want another tenant. And so we went through the process of bidding for and being successful in the first international expansion for the NBA. And through that process what that really fed my knowledge was you can do it. Like it was something that had never been done before. It was, we were, we were the underdogs. It was sort of last minute, a little bit. We, you know, we were late to the game. But we, we made it happen. And so that really inspired me and, and taught me that we can make things happen through business, through thoughtful leadership, through coming up with ideas and figuring out how to execute. Like there was nobody saying, here, Tara, this is what you should do to go do it. I literally went into my, the owner's office and he's like, I think we're gonna go after an NBA team. And you know, I was in my twenties and I had my clipboard and I was like, oh wasn't expecting that in today's meeting. And literally I wrote down like five things on my clipboard. I'm like, well, we're gonna have to talk about the market. We're gonna talk about the city. We're, we're gonna need financials, and we're gonna have to talk about the arena and the ownership, who, like, who's the, and I wrote those five things down and I said, when do I have to have this all put together for? And he said, Friday is the, we have to put the initial, sort of, we're interested. And this was Monday. And I was like, oh my goodness, how am I gonna do this? We just made it happen. And it was back when there was no email and there was no internet and that sort of thing, and our architects were five hours flight away. And so I had to have them create all of the schematics of the arena with basketball courts and basketball dressing rooms and all that sort of thing, and they had to fly them into us. To put in the package to fly to New York City. And so I took a team out to the airport and we put our booklets together and put them on the plane with like three minutes to spare. And if it didn't work, I was gonna take the red eye to New York to drop them off. But it was, it was just, it was a very exciting time, but it was very much just make it happen, you know, like dream it, make it happen. And that's what we were doing. We were all young. I was in my twenties. The owner of the Canucks was in his thirties. Wow, So it was, it was an interesting time. Yeah. sure. And sustainability. I mean, you've decided to move into that sphere now with the ethical swag. Why that? Really interestingly, I was at a conference in Chicago in 1995, and the founder of Aveda was the keynote speaker. Now imagine 1995. People weren't talking about sustainability at all. It was just not even on the radar. And I was at a sponsorship conference in Chicago and there was about 800 to a thousand people in the room, and the founder of Aveda got up and he talked about how he sponsored events that aligned with his values and his mission. So it was a sponsorship conference, but he was talking about how he was really voting with his dollars and how he was aligning the organisations that he chose to work with, with his mission to create products that were healthy for humans. And he talked about his origin story and how he saw his wife put lipstick on and it was gone in 20 minutes and he was like, okay, she must have ingested that. It's a petrochemical. It's not good for her health. And so he talked about his origin story and then he talked about finding the natural pigments and going to the tribes in Brazil and saying, how do you get the colors in the pigments of the, the face paint that you put on? And then he said, well, I can't be your only customer. So he helped them develop their business to be able to sell to other people. And it took a long time. And then he went into health food because he had so many employees and he wanted them. And so I listened to this and I was, I, I'll never forget it, Tom. Like it was, it was an absolute wow. Okay. So we can do all these things with business, but then we can also have a really positive impact in the people that we're buying from, in the people that are working with us. And that's 1995. And I've never forgotten it. I remember where I was sitting. I remember the guy beside me had, he was a diabetic and he pricked his finger at lunch and like I, it's amazing how I remember it. And when we came outta that room and I was going up in the elevator, everybody in the elevator said, well, that was a waste of time. And I was so inspired, I can't even tell you. And it fell flat for 80% of the people in the room. It was just 'cause it was a bunch of sports people. And this is 1995, so like there's not a lot of people talking about sustainability back then, but it lit me up and I never forgot it. Fantastic. Fantastic. What do you say then, when talking to maybe procurement leads or people who say, we'd love to be sustainable, but it's too expensive. Yeah, it's interesting because there is that perception. That it's too expensive. It's really just not accessible and that sort of thing. And, you know, there is some validity in that statement. So sometimes when you get best in class, it is more expensive. And so our business model and how I endeavored to solve that problem was to do a good, better, best. So what I heard when I was doing my research into the industry was, it's too expensive. What they left off of that sentence was, so therefore we don't procure that way. And it's like, well, hold on, hold on, hold on. There are things that we can still look at around fair working conditions and fair labor and, really what that supplier is, where they're coming from and what they are doing. So there, there are things that we can do and we and we can take any given product like a pen or a notebook or anything. But if we sort of look under the hood and we understand where is it made? Where's the country of origin? Are there audits around how they are making that product? Are they treating, treating people properly? That should be table stakes as far as I'm concern, concerned in our sourcing. But that information isn't readily available and therefore it was just sort of like, I can't solve this big problem over here, so therefore I'm just not gonna think about it. So we were like, we'll sell you a pen at the same price as you're finding the other pen. But we will let you know that we've done the research into the supplier and into the supply chain, and we've, done the heavy lifting for you. And so if you can only afford the pen worth a dollar, that's okay. But if you can go for that recycled certified B Corp pen, awesome. But here's an alternative that sort of gives you that opportunity. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah, of course. Giving people options. Yeah, of course. Makes a lot of sense. Yeah. And how do you embed sustainability across an organisation without making it feel like a compliance checkbox? So that's an interesting one, and that was something that I really had to look at honest, honestly, when I, like I had the idea around sort of doing this and I've done a, a, a lot of research. And the analogy I like to use is when I started my career. The guys that were doing the technology were off in a room by themselves and they'd come in and, and you know, it's like my computer's broken or I don't know how to use this, or how do I solve for this problem? And it was always the tech guys that came in and did it. But now there isn't an office in an organisation that doesn't have technology that drives So if you democratise, like if you think about digital, it's now democratised and it's, it's across like it's in the president's office right down to whoever's answering the phones or doing whatever, right? We're, we're all using technology to facilitate. If we did that with sustainability and not wait 25 years like we have with digital and we had it embedded into every department. And if we had the folks doing their jobs and daily, part of their success criteria is, oh, could I do this differently, to save money, to be better on the environment, to have less waste. Now all of a sudden you've distributed all that thinking across the entire organisation and people are thinking that way and they're bringing solutions forward and it's, it's a far more interesting thing. So we, I like to say sustainability is the new digital Hmm. Good. Yep. Going back to that pen example you gave a minute ago, how do you go about verifying suppliers, particularly given the amount of greenwashing that's awash in the world today? Yeah, so we look for third party audits, is what we look for. So we have an onboarding. My compliance and product person, she has an onboarding form. Like electronic. We're actually a very tech forward company. I think I have half a drawer of a filing cabinet that is the paper that runs this entire company. Every decision that I have made has been really focused on leveraging technology. And so she has an online form when she's onboarding a supplier that has very specific questions and criteria. That is sort of step one. And then we've built our back ERP system. I couldn't get anything off the shelf that allowed for us to be able to track compliance in the way that we were interested in doing it. When I started I had to sort first create a company that had customers and I was like, how do I do that? When it was just me, 'cause it was literally just me when I started. And so I looked to a third party organisation. It was at the time called QCA, so Quality Certification Alliance within the promotional products industry. And they did third party audits on suppliers around supply chain security, product quality, product safety social compliance, and environmental stewardship. And so I was like, bingo, I'm only gonna buy from QCA suppliers. That was how I started. And then we got more fine tuned and more fine tuned. And unfortunately, QCA went the way of the Dodo during Covid. It was one of the first things to go with some of these organisations because they didn't see the direct sort of impact of the money that was being spent. But at that point, Ethical Swag had a far more robust sort of system and background in it. And so we, in actual fact, we have an advisory board and the executive director of QCA is on our advisory board. And so we've built it in house now so that we have that ability and it's at the fingertips of all of the staff. So they can very easily call up a product. They can very easily see country of origin. They can see the compliance documentation and everything else on file. And then with all the tariff challenges that we're having in North America over the last several months, the team said a lot of our clients are asking country of origin. And so we quickly were able to put country of origin. And display it on our website. And I think that that took overnight for every single one of the products that you find on our website. We had it, people didn't care before we had it in our database, but we were able then to translate that. And really that's what we're all about is sort of the transparency of it. We have products that come up from all over the world. We do have products that come from China. You can't run a business without it, otherwise products would be just too expensive. So what we do is we just dig deeper on our supply chain and we make that information readily available when clients ask so that they have an understanding of where the product is coming from, and the background of who's making it. And I mean this whole thing about, goods being manufactured in China and therefore they're of inferior quality is complete rubbish anyway, because most of the people who are listening to this podcast or watching the video of this podcast would be doing so on devices that were manufactured in China. Exactly like we live in a global economy, Yeah, that's, that's not changing and that's not a bad thing. You know, as long as we do it responsibly, It's, it's not okay for child labor. That's just never okay. It's course. Yeah. that's table stakes. That still happens today. And you know, I, I, I hate to even tell the story, but when we became a certified B Corp, I was interviewed on the radio and somebody that I know. They have two biological children, but they've adopted five children as well. There's three girls from China and two boys from Africa. And so I know these kids I. know when they were adopted, I, you know, like I've known them, they're now young adults. But I know, I remember the day when they arrived 'cause they're literally next door at, at our cottage. And so she heard me on the radio and she phoned me and she said, I, I didn't know what a B Corp was, but I wanna thank you for what you're doing. And I said, well, thank you very much. That's very kind. And she said, when we adopted, and I, I won't say her name, but I, I, I did ask permission to, like, I've told this story a couple of times and I asked permission to tell the story. She said, when we adopted one of their daughters. She said It was Christmas and we were so excited and we were, you know, it was her first Christmas with the family and we were celebrating and we were decorating the tree and doing everything else. And she said she was very despondent. And she said, I went over to her and said, what's the matter? This is a joyous time. You know, we're, we're celebrating. And she said I wasn't allowed to go to bed until I put those lights together. And she was adopted at six years old. And she took the Christmas lights apart and she put the Christmas lights back together and she was in an orphan orphanage in China and she wasn't allowed to go to bed until she finished her lot of putting those Christmas lights together. Okay. Right. Speechless. This is a young woman that I knew, you know, when she came over, and that's less than 20 years ago. That is what's going on and it's not okay. And that's, you know, my next door neighbor on Cape Breton Island. Just imagine, right? What, what we don't know. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. What's your take on balancing local sourcing with global impact? Are they in conflict or can they align? So our approach to it, and I'm not saying what we're doing is right, and so I, I guess one of the things that I'll say is we're not sort of on our soapbox saying, you are wrong. We're right. We do it, you know, the better way or anything like that. We just do it our way and we're very sort of transparent about how we do it. And so. Having a 35 year career in business, I realised you don't have a business unless you have customers. And so you have to meet your customers where they are. And our customers, we have found when they can, they will do best in class, but when they can't, it's like if our budget just allows for X, right? And so we're like, okay, let's make sure that we provide options that meet them where they are. Without judgment. Right. So we source things globally. There's one supplier that we have in Honduras where the manufacturing plant is powered by solar energy. They contribute to the communities of their workers to give them better lifestyle. But those shirts are cheaper than something that's made in North America because the labor is cheaper. So is that bad? I'm, I don't know. I don't think so. I think that we are benefiting these communities in Honduras. It's just different. And so let's meet our customers where they are. Let's provide options, but let's do it with our eyes wide open. Let's be aware of what we're doing and how we're spending our money. I think that that's the key to our approach for any of this. And do you think the pressure for the kind of transparency you're talking about in supply chains changed in the last few years, or is it just talk still? It depends, right? Like there are people, there's absolute greenwashing that goes on. And one of the challenges I think that we're recognising post COVID is it did become very trendy to be eco. Hmm. Right? Even the word eco, we use the word eco, and I have folks that are sustainability experts saying, you shouldn't use that word 'cause it's greenwashing term. I'm No, I said, I know, but that's what our customers Google. That's what they are searching for. And so that's why we use it. It's not because we're greenwashing, but we have to meet our customers where they are. And in order for them to find us, we need to be using language that they're familiar with. And so post COVID, it sort of did jump, like a lot of people jumped on the bandwagon because customers were starting to say, oh, this is really important. And look, actually, we can change things really quickly because when we stopped the world during COVID, you saw regeneration of the ecosystem. And you saw really interesting things happen very quickly, which was actually really good for business. And I was talking to somebody that I know who's a certified B Corp in the wellness space and she was kind of complaining that the space has become very, very busy now because everybody saw the value and profitability of wellness post COVID. And she said, there's a lot of folks that are in my space that are now not really authentic, but are claiming to be. And so I said, well, we could say the same thing about our industry. A lot of people jumped on the bandwagon. We were already a certified B Corp. We were already, you know, like that's why we exist. But all of a sudden there's more. Not a lot. There's still very, very few, but there's a few more B Corps, there's a few more people that are seeing this as an opportunity. And I say bring it on.'cause the more B Corps and the more people that are talking about this, the better it is for everybody. And I, I don't see that as, as a negative necessarily. But we do have to, as consumers work a little harder to make sure that it isn't greenwashing. And that's why we're a C certified B Corp. We felt from the get go, I was like, how are people gonna trust us? Trust is at an all time low. There is greenwashing that goes on. So how do we demonstrate to folks that we've never met that we're legit? And so I did my research and I looked into it and. I knew what a B Corp was obviously, because, you know, I, I, I tend to vote with my dollars and I, I tend to buy B Corp products. But when I did my research into it, B Corp was the highest global standard for sustainability and you can't buy it. It's a hard, hard certification to acquire. And so that's why we did it because it was our ability to let folks who had never met us know that we had gone through a third party audit.'cause that's what we rely on as well. You need respected third party audits.'cause you can't go to every manufacturing firm. You can't go into like, if that was what success looked like, then we'd never get anywhere. Because it's just too heavy a lift, so we have to rely on third parties. But those third parties have to be globally recognised and they have to be authentic and you can't buy them. There are a lot of certifications you can buy, and we need to avoid those. And who are typical customers then? My goodness. We have such a broad range. We really do. We have not-for-profits. We have, geez, over 130 universities in our database that have bought from us. We have tech giants like Google and Shopify and Stripe. We have the Jane Goodall Institute. We have Doctors Without Borders, you know, we have, when I, sometimes, when I look in our, our CRM and I see who's buying from us, I, I'm just blown away honestly because we haven't really done any active marketing, which has to change. But we've been so focused on our systems and making sure we are doing it right and making sure as we were growing that we didn't alter who we were at our core and at our foundation. So we've done a very staged growth. And one piece, which was the last piece, was the sales and marketing piece to be honest, we really focused on product curation, customer experience, meeting our customers where they were, that's where all our investment and time has gone in the past. Now it's time to get sales off. I'm not gonna lie, because we've spent a lot of money on those things and we need to really now balance that with growth. But certainly our customers have found us, they've self-identified to this point. Overwhelmingly the number one thing that we get is, I'm so glad I found you because I think, I think one thing I would like to say is I am not interested in selling more pens with logos. Okay. We are interested in providing alternatives to organisations looking for a different way. So we're not trying to grow how much. We're actually doing the opposite. We encourage our clients that do events don't give away a lot of things that people don't want. So we're actually going against the grain a little bit within the industry because we don't want to sell 10,000 of something that's gonna be given out at a conference and end up in the trash or left in the hotel rooms. We're like, how can you be thoughtful about what you're doing? How can you do choice-based gifting? How can you meet your customers where they are? How can you demonstrate and make your values visible through the products that have your logo? Because when you've got a product in a trash can with your logo on it, yeah, it's not so good. Mm. And do you assure that? I mean, I've been to hundreds of events at the very least over the last couple of decades. when I do register at the events, if there is a swag bag, I will typically take it, look in it, see if there's anything I want. If not, I'll say thanks and hand it back because I don't wanna be taking the stuff that I'm not gonna use. There are a couple of times when I get, and we, we discussed this on the intro call, there are a couple of times when I do get something in swag, which is useful. So for example, I was at an event in Chicago a couple of years ago, 22. It was, and they gave me bag, which looks like a, a regular bag, but you open it up and what it is, is it's a cable organiser. And for someone who travels a lot and is bringing cables with me for my phone, for microphones, if I'm bringing you microphones, all these kind of things, to have something like that is phenomenal. So that is not getting thrown away. I am taking that and I'm using it all the time. But that's a rare exception. So how do you work with companies to ensure that the stuff that they're giving out is not thrown away? Right. And it's interesting because that is a, an exceptionally useful swag item for you, but it might not be for somebody else. And so, so it's a challenge as you've highlighted, because when you're trying to appeal to the masses. It is very difficult. And so the ways that we've done that, I can give a couple of examples. We worked with Advertising Week in New York and we did a lot of digital based. So the products that we gave out were seed paper. So I spoke on a panel actually with the Jane Goodall Institute and HP Hewlett Packard and their head of global sustainability. So the three of us were on a panel and we were talking about storytelling and very much around sustainability, right? So it was the global lead for HP, it was the executive director of the Jane Goodall Institute and myself, and our whole theme of our panel was storytelling. So the product that we gave away that was en masse was a bookmark, and it was a plantable seed paper bookmark. And on it was an QR code. And so no matter who received that, they could plant those seeds and wild flowers would grow. But if they scanned the QR code, they went to a landing page that told them more about the speakers, told them more about the topics that we were talking about that gave them links and that sort of thing. And then also gave them the opportunity to sign up for a handful of very high value swag bags. And so they could look at it and say, oh, I really like that, and they could choose to enter to win a high value swag bag. So that's one example that we did for Advertising Week in New York. I spoke at a conference in May, just this year. And my, the theme of my talk, I, I, I want the products to reflect who we are and we encourage our customers to have the products that they put their logo on, reflect who they are. And so what I did is I wove through my entire speech how we as business leaders need to plant the seeds of change. I talked about the founder of Aveda and how that back in 1994, 4 has informed me and how that seed has laid dormant for many, many years. But it was there waiting to sprout and you know, so I wove that story through my storytelling. And the product that I gave away to everybody was Basil Seeds. Nice. And again, there was a QR code that led them to more information. There was a swag bag that had beautiful certified B Corp products in it. And you entered to win so you don't enter if you don't want the stuff. And one of the other speakers at this particular event, he is a chef and he has served millions of meals to those in need. And he's created an entire network. He's an amazing, amazing individual. But he took the basil seeds that we gave out 'cause he was one of the speakers and he posted, we just posted about this on our social, how he planted the basil seeds. And he posted a picture of them growing and he said, this basil is gonna go into meaningful meals Oh, lovely. Your talk really resonated with me and it really sort of had an impact. And so, and he said, I never do these things. I never take the swag. But he said your talk did. I took them, I flew across the country, I planted them, and they're gonna go into meaningful well. Now. Isn't that what you want your, your brand to be associated with? So, Absolutely. and it wasn't expensive, right? That's the beauty of it. Now we've got a thought leader in serving meals to the homeless, talking about Ethical Swag. Two things that you wouldn't sort of put together necessarily because what he's doing is very thoughtful and what we are doing is very thoughtful and that's where a lot of synergies exist. Fantastic. Fantastic. And you're launching ESG reporting for your customers. How important is it for companies to show impact now, not just talk about it? Yeah, so we're sort of ahead of the curve on that honestly. Like when we show our customers what we've put together, they're like. Oh wow. But they almost don't even know how to use it, some of them. So what we've done is we've mapped every one of our products and our suppliers against the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and we've created a rating system so that you can understand through your purchase. Oh look, you know, 60% of my order had environmental impact, so it was either recycled or, and we sort of break that all down in the reporting. And so they're like, oh, I don't even know how to use this, but this is really cool. And I feel like we're a little bit ahead of the curve. I think that it will be an impact reporting tool for folks when they sort of catch up. But similar to how we became a B Corp and we did everything online prior to COVID. That really served us well during COVID because we were already remote first and we already had our B Corp, so people could trust us. Our impact reporting, I think, is a little ahead of the curve because people love it when they see it. And they're like, okay, so everything's mapped against the UN Sustainable Development goals. And again, it was okay, this is a global standard that people have accepted. And understand, and that's why we used it. Just like we used B Corp as a global standard,'cause it's accepted and people are using it. So we just mapped all the products and we, that's what we do is we map the products against the sustain. And so there's only certain Sustainable Development Goals that we can have an impact on. So we're like, there's a bunch over here that we don't have an impact on. But here's where we can and here's how we can demonstrate the value of your purchase and the impact it's had. Nice. Okay, great. And what does success look like for Ethical Swag in five to 10 years? You know, what's your vision for the industry as a whole? I'm really pleased that you asked that question as it relates to the industry, because really that's what I would like to see is, and I'm already seeing it since. I came up with the idea and came into the industry. People said I was crazy when I first started. People within the industry, they said like, you'll be outta business in a blink of an eye. Because that's not the way people think. And I was like, Nope. This is how I'm gonna build it. Right? And so, sort of stuck to my guns and now I am seeing a significant shift in the supply. Like the suppliers are absolutely thinking about these things. They're absolutely sourcing products. Like it's a lot easier to get the compliance documentation from some. Some are still difficult. I'm not, you know, it's not across the board, but it is becoming far more something that you see within the industry. So if you wanna say five to 10 years for me. I would love to see loads of competition for ethical swag.'cause it means that we're actually having an impact. It means that there's more places for people to source really responsible products to put their logos on.'cause ultimately that's what success looks like. We weed out those suppliers that are just trying to make money at the expense of people and planet. And we create an ecosystem where all of the companies within this industry are really paying attention to people, profit and planet. And that would be amazing for me. So I, I love competition because it just means that there's more good things happening. And I love, and I, I, I really do think that more customers demanding it is really what we need. Okay. And what other industries do you think are ready for the kind of rethink that you've brought to promo products? I think we're seeing it everywhere. Honestly, Tom, we really are. The reason I picked promotional products was it did align with my background and I found that promotional products were ubiquitous. But also, and this was a little bit hindsight, I'd love to say that I had this idea right from the get go and I, I was brilliant that I, I sort of saw the opportunity, but that's not the case. But as I got more into it, I realised, okay, I've entered into a mature industry with no barriers to entry. So if we can demonstrate, you can do that here, you can do it in any industry. And so, a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of budding entrepreneurs, it's hard to be what you can't see. When I was thinking about entrepreneurship, it's like I'm never gonna invent anything. Like, that's not who I am. And there's limitations to all of us. And my limitation was I'm not gonna invent anything, but I really wanna, create my own business. And what I'm hoping to do is inspire people to say, oh, it kind of doesn't matter what your industry is. If you think about where you source products, if you think about how you treat your people, if you think about more than just shareholder value, but stakeholder value, when you're creating your business in an actual fact that long term shows that it is actually better for growth. It's like not scale at all, at no costs or anything like that, but it, it is for sustainability of your business. It's very positive. And so that's really what I hope to demonstrate through an industry that's very mature, been around a long time. It's $26 billion industry in North America alone. There's 26,000 distributors in North America alone. And so if we can show that you can do this here, you can kind of do it anywhere. Okay. And if every company made one small change to their procurement strategy starting tomorrow, what would you want it to be? Awareness, like think about how you're spending your money. I think that that's where we've really seen the largest impact with some of the customers that we have. In procurement, we won't answer an RFP unless they rate sustainability with enough weight in their RFP process that it can actually have an impact. And so I think from a procurement standpoint, if you do distribute sustainability across the whole organisation and say, how can we, no matter where you are, let's use a university for example, no matter what you're doing in that university, if a measurable impact is sustainability or how you source products and you make that as part of your procurement. And we've actually, we respond and were successful to an RFP for a a college because they really did say, okay, this is really important to us and we're gonna rate it. I think it was like 20 or 25% of the rating for the RFP. Quite high. It doesn't mean it's more expensive. They still have agency around how much they spend and you know the different departments and that sort of thing. But they rated it very high and they said, okay, you have to source from these particular suppliers because they vetted us and we weren't the only promotional products distributor. There was a couple of us. So that gave them choice. But they said, but these are the guys you have to buy from. I love seeing that because it, it was procurement voting with their dollars around a key pillar of the organisation that they said was important, and you can see the impact of that. Nice. what advice would you give to someone who's trying to start a mission-driven company today? You know, who might be scared to take the leap? It's hard. It is. It is hard. And thankfully I was sort of old and gray when I started this and when people told me I was wrong and that I shouldn't do it, I didn't listen. Mentors today, it's hard to find mentors that are focused on sustainability and governance and that sort of thing, right. So I guess my advice would be seek out mentors and folks in your community that have done and are doing sustainable business so that you get with like-minded individuals. Because again, it's hard to be what you can't see and if you're just in an incubator or if you're just in a community where people aren't thinking about these things. I've had to go far and wide to develop my network because locally people said I was nuts. They just didn't see it. And so I was like, okay, I'm just gonna go elsewhere. Right. And so I don't compete with the promotional products companies within my community.'cause I'm like, you take the, the local business, I don't need it. I do, I've some local businesses come to us because they've heard about us and they like what we're doing, but we don't actively pursue it. I went where our customers were, I created technology and I created our brand. So that folks could find us that aligned with us rather than trying to tell people how they should spend their money. I went looking for people that aligned. And I think that if you are looking for a sustainable business, I think more and more people are looking for solutions. So don't look just in your backyard, look for like-minded individuals and create your brand in a way that makes you seen. Ethical swag. It's a, it's a real friction between two words. Right. And I did that very purposefully because people remember it. It's, it's, it's a hard business name to forget and in two words, you can figure out what we do. true, true. Right. it works nicely as well for search engine optimisation, I gotta think! Yep. Well, and I think that that's why we've been so successful without any sales or marketing background, right, is because I we're kind of the Kleenex of swag when it comes to sustainable swag. People, I think literally Google us and I do know our competition's buying our name. In Google Ads, right? Yeah, yeah. No, it's, you know, we, we see that they're, they're buying our name in Google Ads, so, you know, we, we've done strategically, we've been very thoughtful around some of the, the pieces that we've put into place. We haven't been in a complete rush. We've been. How do we, how do we scale this responsibly? How do we build this so that it's not gonna break as we get bigger and that sort of thing? And I've surrounded myself with, and I've had to go outside of my borders quite a bit, but I've surrounded myself with folks that sort of think like me so I can learn from 'em and it's been very helpful. A left field. Question for you, Tara. If you could have any person or character, alive or dead, real or fictional as a champion for Ethical Swag, who would it be and why? Oh man. Okay. I gotta think about that. A champion for Ethical Swag. I'm gonna say the first thing that came into mind, Pink, the musician Pink. I think she's just badass. I think she's awesome. And I think that she's a really good role model. I think her music's awesome and that's what came to mind first. So that's what I'm gonna say. Brilliant. Fantastic. Great. We're coming towards the end of the podcast now, Tara. Is there any question I didn't ask that you wish I had or any aspect of this we haven't covered that you think it's important for people to be aware of? I would say is let's start, let's not get stuck starting in terms of voting with our dollars as business leaders. We've had folks that are receptionists in offices. I remember one time I noticed they bought plantable seed paper business cards, and then they posted on social media and I noticed there was other products that they hadn't purchased from us. This is when I was first getting started, so I picked up the phone and I phoned the person on the order and I just said, I noticed that you posted pictures of our business cards, but other products that you didn't buy from us. She said, well, I just started here. And she said, I said to the guys, I think we can do it differently. And they kind of, she said, I'm young, it's one of my first jobs, and they gave me a budget of$500 and said, go buy something. And she said, I found you guys and I bought seed paper business cards. And she said, but, and this was several years ago when, when you didn't see them as much and she said, everybody was coming over to our booth. They were really interested in them. She said, and I got the attention of my bosses, and now I've got a bigger budget. And so I just love that story because we can come up with excuses for why we don't do things, but let's be open-minded and let's start when we have budget and we have, we, we have agency. And it doesn't matter if it's a hundred thousand dollars budget or a thousand dollars budget and it doesn't matter where you are in your career. Let's be thoughtful about how we source and buy products. Great. Tara, if people would like to know more about yourself or any of the things we discussed in the podcast today, where would you have me direct them? So Ethical Swag is across all platforms. So just at Ethical Swag on Facebook, Instagram, we aren't on X. We have the handle on X, but I chose for just principled reasons when the new ownership came in ages ago, like long before any of the more recent stuff, we just sort of left X. LinkedIn, absolutely. Our website, ethical swag.com. And myself, I'm on LinkedIn and you can find me there, Tara Milburn. Superb. Tara, that's been fantastic. Thanks a million for coming on the podcast today. I really appreciate the interest Tom Okay. Thank you all for tuning into this episode of the Sustainable Supply Chain Podcast with me, Tom Raftery. Each week, thousands of supply chain professionals listen to this show. If you or your organization want to connect with this dedicated audience, consider becoming a sponsor. You can opt for exclusive episode branding where you choose the guests or a personalized 30 second ad roll. It's a unique opportunity to reach industry experts and influencers. For more details, hit me up on Twitter or LinkedIn, or drop me an email to tomraftery at outlook. com. Together, let's shape the future of sustainable supply chains. Thanks. Catch you all next time.