As a growing number of people decide to switch careers to work on climate change, we’re running a series of interviews with people in climate-related jobs about their work, from Google’s Kate Brandt and Ikea’s Karen Pflug to PepsiCo’s Jim Andrew and Delta Air Lines’ Amelia DeLuca.
Klean Kanteen water bottles are the vibrantly colored, stainless-steel containers that may have accompanied you to work, the gym, or a music festival over the past two decades. The water bottles were some of the first to replace single-use plastics in 2004, long before multi-use habits had entered the mainstream.
In 2000, Danielle and Jeff Cresswell were working on fisheries in Alaska, but moved back to Jeff’s small hometown of Chico, California. That was supposed to be a short-term stay. But within a few years, an inventor, Robert Seals, built a prototype for one of the earliest stainless-steel water bottles, forming Kleen Kanteen. Jeff’s family’s business, Cressline Distribution, bought out the company—and the couple never returned to Alaska. Now, Jeff and his sister, Maria Kalberer, own Klean Kanteen, and Danielle, an environmental scientist, is the senior manager of sustainability.
Almost 20 years on, having now branched out to coffee cups, pint glasses, and food containers, the company’s head start in the sustainable container industry has kept them in good stead—for the most part. They have the environmental know-how, but a much more modest budget than big corporations entering the space. But they continue to hold themselves to high standards; they’ve been certified by Climate Neutral—one of the most prominent third-party standards for carbon reduction—since 2020.
We spoke to Danielle Cresswell about her role.
You’ve been Climate Neutral-certified since 2020. How does reporting for that help your sustainability work?
[My work is] very data-oriented: I have to measure. That’s so, so important. I had already established a way of tracking our emissions for most of our business. [But] we saw [Climate Neutral certification] as an opportunity to create accountability for Klean. If you make a commitment to a public-facing certification, it helps Klean make sure that we’re following a rigorous standard. It helps us ensure that going after reductions—and not just little reductions, but big reductions in our operation—was going to have greater emphasis.
Also, by having to purchase carbon credits for 100% of the emissions we haven’t yet reduced, we’re taxing ourselves for our greenhouse gas emissions. That creates pressure on the organization: You want to alleviate your tax? Reduce your emissions. Purchasing carbon credits is a way of supporting immediate climate action while we’re working on things that may take us a year or two or five to achieve.
Almost 100% of your emissions are from Scope 3 (referring to emissions not caused directly by the company but along the value chain). Does that make the work more challenging?
It makes it much harder to quickly resolve, because it’s not within our control. We know where [the emissions] are. Because we use a consistent set of materials and manufacturing process practices, all we need to do is a lifecycle assessment for a couple of products, and we have a good understanding of where the [emissions] hotspots are in our product lifecycle.
Largely, they’re from energy use and manufacturing in China. Emissions from grid electricity in China [is] 40% of our Scope 3. The next part is the emissions from raw materials: the whole set of activities that leads to stainless steel [and] polypropylene silicone. Then you add on to that the logistics of moving that product around the world. [In total], that’s three-quarters of our Scope 3.
How do we get after those things? We’re a small company, so we’re no supplier’s biggest customer. We don’t have the ability to tell our suppliers: “Hey, you must do [something].” [But] we’ve worked with the same partners for many years. We’ve always pushed them to show us how it’s manufactured. We want documentation of the energy and the water and the waste that’s generated for every one of our products. We’ve taken the time to build trust over the years, and that has made it possible now for us [to ask] for change. In the end that has served them well, because others are [now] asking for them to do it.
For example, the stainless steel that our factory partners use comes from a very large stainless steel facility. We’ve been asking for increased recycled-content steel since 2012, [and] every year since then. And then in 2020, without any notification, they came to us and said: “Hey, would you like 90% post-consumer recycled stainless steel?” Yes, please!
What’s been the thinking behind branching out into other products, like multi-use alcohol containers?
For sure. Outdoor has been at the root of who we are, but we’re a lifestyle brand at the end of the day. There are 170 trillion pieces of plastic out there, and a good amount is tied to food and beverage waste. People need to drink and eat, and what we’re trying to do is help them do that without creating waste. We have a whole line of canisters and food boxes. This is a solution that is beyond just a drinking bottle. Where are the untapped ways that food and beverage are being consumed, carried, purchased, where a nice replacement can be identified? Eighty-six percent of our revenue in 2022 was from products that displace single-use waste, and that continues to drive where else can we go.
You’re selling multi-use bottles, often as “one bottle for life” which surely reduces repeat purchases. Does sustainability actually impede revenue?
Not yet. The drinkwear industry is projected to keep growing and growing. There are a lot of people on this planet, and people like to buy stuff.
We’re on track to hit our 2030 climate reduction in alignment with the science, but 2050 is net-zero. To hit net-zero, we and probably everybody else out there who makes a consumer product needs to figure out a circular business model. How do we decouple revenue from volume of units? How do we make money off the same unit over and over again? That’s the next step, and it’s kind of scary. We’ve got to figure out how to get [a product] back from that person and replace it. The circular business model is the next big nut to crack.
If expanding your consumer base is important, how essential is education so that the general public buys into multi-use items?
The rise of social media has allowed Klean to channel those messages actively. As opposed to passively, where we post some information, but it requires someone to come to it, [like] videos on our website about repair kits. We’re actively messaging information to folks about bringing your bottle or food box or coffee mug with you. Every time you do that, you’re doing your part. As long as someone’s following Klean, we can have a steady diet of that information. We’ve worked with ambassadors who are really big on avoiding single-use plastic, and they actively are sharing that message, too.
Once you have a habit, you’re 90% of the way there. You’ve got to help people build that habit, if they want it. Is there a technology feature that people can opt into that helps them build that habit? Is it an app? Every time you use your bottle and take a picture of yourself, you earn points, and then somehow there’s some reward system? We’re not there yet.
Do you work with any venues or events to help transition visitors to multi-use items?
We used to do that a lot. Helping reduce waste at music venues was what spurred the creation of our steel pint. Organizers of music festivals would just be in tears, like, “Look at all this plastic!” We’ve worked over the years with a number of events exactly doing this, co-branding Kanteens so that they can sell them as merch. We’ve been going to the Telluride Bluegrass Festival for a long time. They also have water stations throughout the venue, so you can either bring your one from your house, or get the latest one from the event. Once we came out with the steel pint, you could take your steel pint to the beer garden, fill up your beer, [and] you can take it home, or you can trade it in and get a clean one the next day.
That tended to be a lot of energy and effort, and not necessarily a ton of revenue.
I see what’s happening now: The venue itself is bringing in aluminum cups all season long, [like] the Portland Trail Blazers. Venues are a perfect place for a reusable, but it’s about making that model work. How do you ensure you get [the cup] back? Stainless steel is valuable. If you take it home, then we’ve got to buy and generate another one, and that’s just expanding the footprint. If you serve in a stainless steel cup versus a plastic cup, yes you’re displacing the plastic, but stainless steel is not an environmentally inexpensive thing. So what you want to make sure you do is keep that stainless-steel cup being used over and over again.
Overall, has it been advantageous that Klean started sustainably from the get-go, rather than having to work it into strategy as an afterthought, as many companies are doing now?
Does doing right earn you shelf space? I don’t think that they’re necessarily connected. The big guys are taking up a lot of shelf space at Dick’s and Whole Foods. A lot that has to do with the marketing dollars. We have to be clever and nimble with our marketing dollars, to make the case that Klean is out in front. If you’re buying from Klean, you’re buying the one that has the lowest footprint. We don’t want to be the biggest company out there. We just want to make sure we have a stable enough revenue that we can keep doing the important stuff that we want to do.
Once upon a time, having a Klean was a badge of honor. When I was in college, I didn’t have any money. But I would save every little bit that I had, because I wanted to buy a Patagonia fleece. Because I believed in the things that the company did to make that fleece. Klean Kanteen has often been referenced in that way: Klean Kanteen is the Patagonia [of] the drinkwear space. If you’re carrying a Klean, it’s signaling your values. I think part of what we have to do as a company is continue to effectively signal that. It’s about being crafty with the assets that we have.
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