Christina Jäger On Social Businesses Driven By Solving Environmental Problems

Christina Jäger co-founded Yunus Environment Hub (YEH) together with Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Prof. Muhammad Yunus and his Creative Advisor Hans Reitz.

YEH develops social business solutions that tackle the environmental and climate crisis. The expertise of the global YEH network covers waste & plastic management, circular economy, carbon neutrality, biodiversity, afforestation, sustainable agriculture, clean energy and access to clean water.

Christina is an Advisory Board member of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Climate, Energy and Sustainability at Bucerius Law School. She was appointed to the Commission on Sustainable Business, Trade and Finance of the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation & Development from 2018 until 2021 and serves as co-chair of the ministry’s PREVENT Waste Alliance since its inception in 2019. Since 2015 she is a Responsible Leader of the BMW Foundation World Responsible Leaders network and has received a Social Impact Scholarship of KfW Foundation in 2016. She has lectured at several universities and speaks regularly at high profile events.

Christina discusses helping social businesses become sustainable through circular economic principles, and exploring the intersection between climate technology and deep social impact.

Highlights from the interview (listen to the podcast for full details)

[Tom Allen] - Christina, can you please share a bit about your background and what made you interested in social business?

[Christina Jäger] - It was throughout my studies I first became interested. I studied political science and economics and was trying to figure out what I wanted to do in life. I was always very passionate about the environment because I'm a person who loves nature. As children growing up, we were always sent out to play in nature, and my grandparents come from the countryside. It was really difficult for me to find the career path, which usually university shows you. I didn't see myself working in politics or for a business, but I was always very interested in entrepreneurship.

Then I came across Professor Muhammad Yunus, and I learned about social business. This was the moment I realised, "I can combine business with doing good."

That's what we are doing at the Yunus Environment Hub; solving environmental challenges through the power of entrepreneurship.

When was the moment this passion 'clicked', and what did this lead you to do? Did you start by getting experience within another organisation or did you look to study in the field?

Learning about Professor Yunus was the moment where I started to think, "how can I get the best exposure to social business and learn those skills?" At the time (it was towards the end of my studies), I felt too inexperienced, so after a crazy idea I just booked a flight and went to Bangladesh. I wanted to learn how Professor Yunus was creating social businesses, and I went to the website and saw that they offered study programs with The Grameen Bank, which was his first social business venture. I was trained in how microfinance works, and through that I got exposure to the other social businesses and eventually introduced to The Yunus Centre, which is the hub in Bangladesh. I asked if I could work there, and they accepted me. I was working there for a while learning about what his work was, and then later on I joined another Grameen organisation based in Europe called the Grameen Creative Lab, who are organising this fantastic summit we are here at. I was in charge of organising that for a couple of years before I wanted to focus back on my passion; the environment. I focused on one problem that was bothering me a lot at the time, all of the plastic packaging we are creating that's ending up in our oceans eventually.

We started to develop our first programs, designing social business solutions that prevent plastic waste or help people in countries where the waste management system doesn't work to improve plastic collection and recycling.

From that, we then developed the basis of the Yunus Environment Hub, and now we have a huge portfolio of different programs where we support social business entrepreneurs working in various fields, including the circular economy, carbon neutral businesses, and even programs in the Amazon where we're going next to address deforestation. In business, you first need to start with an idea; a concept to try out things. We also had to reach out to find partners with whom we could work with. While we started this within the Grameen Creative Lab, the Yunus Environment Hub became an entity within it to try out these different things. Over time, the business unit has grown and generated so much interest that we said, "okay, there's enough need to make this a separate entity and create a spinoff. For two years now, the Yunus Environment Hub has been an entity of its own, trying to accelerate climate action around the world.

After establishing projects in Kenya, Ethiopia and Asia, what have been some of the standouts?

We have one program in Kenya I find particularly interesting. It's a program where we invite social business entrepreneurs and help them explore and develop concepts to become more circular. We are networking with social business entrepreneurs who are already working in the circular economy. They might come from various sectors, some work on healthcare or education, but we look at their operations and try to circularise their processes. I think this is super interesting and also needed, because we need everyone to join in the circular economy. We are now expanding that program to four other countries. Eventually we can bring the program to other places in the world.

What have you observed as some of the main challenges for businesses, and what is the advice you would give from your experience?

What helps social business entrepreneurs become more circular is that they are problem driven. Whatever they do, their entire business is built around looking at how we can solve problems.

Problem solving businesses are very different. Traditional business focusses on how they can make more profit, which prevents them from really seeing where the solutions lie. That's why it's more challenging for them.

What I love is to combine both, so we also work with corporates and big companies. We engage them with a social business sector and various formats. For example, we have one format where we invite a social business entrepreneur who has a challenge, and he or she presents it to a group of people, such as employees from their company. The company employees brainstorm and help think of solutions, which they feel good about because they contributed to something that creates societal good.

But it's also interesting for the company, because this problem solving process helps the employees to take back some ideas and thoughts into the core business of that company.

For early stage entrepreneurs, what would be your one piece of advice for them?

I would say have resilience, because it's really hard at the beginning. Usually at the very beginning, people are very excited because they see a problem, have an idea and they're conceptualising something. But then it really takes a lot of time. Often, you run into a lot of doors, because of you will either need funding, technology or something else. That's where you have your first barrier you need to climb over. I see many entrepreneurs studying very enthusiastically, and they have a moment where it gets hard, they become frustrated and then they stop.

Resilience is really needed, because it takes time.

You really need to be a crazy person and have something that keeps you going, because that's what it takes.

Do you think passion is at the core of resilience and a deep understanding of problems is fundamental?

That's what I've seen with many social business entrepreneurs; they either have a direct personal connection to the problem, or their closer friends and family circle do. If not, it can also be something that you're just passionate about.

It's very important you have a connection to people affected by the problem. You need to get up every morning, and in challenging times, you really need to work on something you're truly passionate about.

Otherwise, you will not get out of bed again, or you will say, "let’s do something else instead, that's easier."

Something we're seeing quite a bit of is a lack of founder wellbeing. People who are highly driven by a problem they're passionate about keep hitting walls and barriers. What advice would you give to entrepreneurs to help sustain themselves?

My advice is you need to look after yourself. It's not sustainable if you're burning yourself out, so it's important to take breaks. For me, there was also a time in the beginning when we created the Yunus Environment Hub where I was basically working seven days a week. You can do this for a while, but then at some point I said, "I need to stop this." I need weekends and holidays off and a couple of breaks in between. Gatherings like this Global Social Business Summit, where everyone's coming together, are great boosters for motivation, because you can connect with people experiencing the same thing. Through those new ideas and connections can be made. What we need is more support and funding to organisations who are building support structures for entrepreneurs.

What organisations do you find particularly inspiring who are either supporting enterprises or are enterprises themselves?

I wanted to mention some of our social business entrepreneurs, but it's hard to pick one. I'm going to pick the one who's here at this event, because she's amazing. Her name is Madvi, and she started a social business in Kenya. They're replacing sanitary hygiene feminine products, (which are creating a lot of waste), with reusable pads, and it’s a very innovative business model. She's been doing some amazing work around awareness creation and education. She came all the way from Kenya to this event, so I think that's really inspiring. We are trying to help her make some connections in order to scale her business. I love organisations working on climate tech and trying to connect technology with social outcomes. What I'm seeing around the era of climate action is that on the one side, we have a focus on technology, which is very important to scale the solutions we need in order to achieve a minimum chance of getting away with all of the doom the climate crisis is creating. On the other hand, there is the social sector where we are missing technology to quite an extent I would say, because the focus is very much on the societal part.

We need to marry both [technology and social outcomes], and that's actually one of the plans I have for Yunus Environment Hub, bring technology work closer to social innovation so we can get to a scalable climate tech solution that has a deep social component.

That's also what I'm missing in the circular economy discussions a lot, it's always about economic potential and ecological benefit, but what about the social one? I’ve missed this component. Organisations are trying to bring that together, and these are the ones I'm particularly interested in at the moment.

To finish off, what resources, books or blogs would you recommend to our audience?

There is of course Professor Yunus' books that are super inspiring. His latest book is on creating a world of Three Zeros: zero net carbon emissions, zero unemployment, and zero poverty. I think my favourite book of his is called Building Social Business, because it really talks in a very simple way about how to get started in setting up a social business. Other than Professor Yunus' books, I can recommend a book called Factfulness from Hans Rosling, and it’s about presenting and understanding figures. I think this is very important when you want to set up a social business, because you first need to analyse and understand the problem you want to solve. He is very talented in the way he conveyed these messages, and that's something I see the world needs right now. When it comes to the climate, we need a new communicative narrative, because right now there are too many created by political agenda setting. We really need to create this new narrative, because often people don't see the connection their daily lives and interactions have with our planet.