Social Impact Tech: Josephine Liang of CauliBox On How Their Technology Will Make An Important Positive Impact
Our technology is addressing the problems with a simple plug and go solution. If a food provider wants to start offering CauliBoxes, they can have everything they need and be ready to go within a week or two. Also, the process is really simple, there aren’t many extra steps for the provider except to start serving their food in a CauliBox.
In recent years, Big Tech has gotten a bad rep. But of course many tech companies are doing important work making monumental positive changes to society, health, and the environment. To highlight these, we started a new interview series about “Technology Making An Important Positive Social Impact”. We are interviewing leaders of tech companies who are creating or have created a tech product that is helping to make a positive change in people’s lives or the environment. As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Josephine Liang.
Josephine Liang is a sustainability expert and CEO of CauliBox, the award-winning, tech-enabled reusable food packaging solution for workplace dining. She has worked with corporations (including Unilever & Sainsbury’s), local authorities (Westminster City Council) and higher educational institutes (London School of Economics) as well as numerous food enterprises such as Costa and Gail’s Bakery in cutting food waste and advising on sustainable development. Josephine was awarded a special “Women in Food” award by the Mayor of London in 2019 and was named on Forbes 30 under 30 in 2021. She holds an MSc from the University of Oxford and a BA from Colby College.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory and how you grew up?
I grew up in Hong Kong and as a child I was a classically trained Chinese opera singer. It was a huge part of my life and taught me so much; In Chinese opera everyone has a role and each role is important because no matter the size. Even if your role is to hold a vase on stage, without you, the stage is not complete. So that’s how I view my childhood, doing lots of small, but important roles, then slowly training into bigger roles.
Then, when I was 16, I moved to India for the last two years of high school. The school was a United World College and it was so, so cool to move there because I’d never been outside of Hong Kong but now I was living with 200 young people from 70 different countries. The school was a biodiversity reserve and it was so beautiful — there were peacocks, rabbits and snakes running around everywhere. It was the first time I felt truly in touch with nature. The school was really focused on social responsibility and impact so that’s where the seed for my own interest in sustainability was planted; when you live in such a beautiful place you really want to preserve it.
From there I moved to the US for college where I studied psychology and chemistry, but in my third year I went to study in an oceanography lab where the main thing we studied was climate change. We worked with a lot of data and could see how the temperature was rising, and it showed up in the algae and microbes which had a much earlier bloom. It was really scary and while these amazing scientists were talking about climate change, no one else was — I mean, we knew about it but it was like an afterthought. I couldn’t understand why nobody was talking about this huge, pressing issue in the mainstream.
Then I moved to the UK to study Global Health Science. I was fascinated by food and food waste because it’s so crazy to me that we produce more than double the food that the entire world needs to survive but we waste 40% of it. When I first moved here, I lived in Poplar which is one of the London areas with the highest measure of deprivation where food poverty is rampant. I was living in a place where you can see Canary Wharf from your window but are surrounded by people going hungry — it’s where I decided to start my career in food innovation and social entrepreneurship.
I ventured into campaigning, with a focus on food poverty and food waste. I worked with large brands and supermarkets on their sustainability campaigns, which was really interesting. However, campaigns are designed to raise awareness in a short period of time, and eventually I grew more interested in building infrastructures that enable sustainable living for all.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
The day we launched Caulibox everything went wrong. To start with, the boxes weren’t washed so the night before the launch we were at the City of Westminster building until 10pm, using their dishwasher to wash and hand-dry 400 CauliBoxes. Then the washing partner we had lined up decided they weren’t going to do it, so we needed to negotiate a new deal there and then. On the day it was raining like crazy — we had a press release with the Councilors at the Tachbrook Street Market and there were only a handful of vendors and customers because of the bad weather. Everything that can go wrong, went wrong.
Ultimately though it’s not about the launch, right? It’s a marathon, not a sprint. The rest of the trial went really well, the concept was popular and we had over 200 real users at that time, with many of them using CauliBox every day. We were able to get a lot of insight from the trial and used that as a jumping point to work with the Westminster City Council to tackle disposable waste across all the street food markets. So, expect everything to go wrong at some point — because it will — but it’s about bouncing back with a solution and learning the lesson. That’s what starting businesses is like for everyone.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
The person I’m most grateful for is my mum because she taught me so much about how to make sustainability work for a normal person. She’s an avid food preserver, she preserves lots of things like eggs and meat and she does it not only because it tastes good, but it also makes food last much longer. She learned how to do it from her mother and she taught me when I was a child — it never crossed my mind that we were avoiding food waste, it was just a way to make food last.
My mum used to tell me a story about her neighbor who’d lived through the war and, during the war, they used to scoop up and save any food like rice and beans that got spilled on the table because food was the most precious thing they had so they had to preserve it.
All these people, like my mum and her neighbor and my grandma, have so much knowledge on how to be sustainable and right now we really need to tap into this wisdom. We like to treat sustainability like it’s this new thing when actually it’s the oldest thing that we’ve been doing for the longest time. That’s what we’re trying to do with CauliBox — it’s preserving tradition but making it more relevant for now using new technology.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
My favorite quote is “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.” There are two reasons why I love this quote. Firstly, the future can often feel very bleak with wildfires, pandemics, and more that paint the picture of a collapsing world. It feels like we are behind in our sustainability goals to save the world from the climate crisis. Sustainability feels very urgent, the climate crisis is very urgent. But the fact that mankind arrived was a miracle against any odds. And I think that we need to keep our spirits up because there’s something extraordinary out there that’s waiting for us to discover if we work together. We’ve survived so many disasters, so if we keep up with a positive attitude, we have a much better chance to discover extraordinary solutions. Despair is easy, optimism is hard work.
Secondly, even though it is often attributed to Carl Sagan, who is one of my personal heroes, it was actually coined by Sharon Begley, a path-breaking science journalist. Even the current NASA livestream of the James Webb Space Telescope misattributed the quote to Sagan rather than Begley. Statistically, female founders face many obstacles, like lack of funding — only 9% of all funding to UK startups goes to female founders — despite delivering twice as much revenue per dollar invested. We all know the Jeff Bezos, the Jack Mas, yet much like Sharon Begley, who changed the horizon of journalism, there is just much less recognition and fanfare for female entrepreneurs who are innovating towards a better tomorrow, which is why it is so important to raise the Anne Bodens and Payal Kadakias up!
You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
1. Grit — With £200 between my Co-Founder Ming and I, we started our Cauli journey in London, a place where we had limited experience and connections. We tried and failed so many times in the early days, at every turn of the road. With Cauli, we were doing everything ourselves, it was us running the trials, washing the boxes, strategizing between lunch breaks, after work, and every weekend to discuss what we were learning, build prototypes with our limited capital, and improve constantly to make a functional and accessible reuse solution work. I think the reason why we’ve really taken off after just two and a half years is because of our grit to keep going — knowing it won’t just take one shot, it will take many shots, but you have to stick with it.
2. Passion — You must truly love and believe in what you’re doing, otherwise you’re going to get tired very quickly. I think we glamorize entrepreneurs in WeWorks with free beers, but it is a lot of disappointment, rejections, and hard work. A lot of the work, especially at the beginning, is the most unglamorous work because you’re the janitor, and also the accountant, and also a strategist. You’re everything and every single role, even if it’s things that you really don’t want to do — like cleaning the boxes — you have to do it because you’re the only one available to do so. Its why grit is so important — you have to keep on fueling that passion, remembering why you’re doing this and why you have to do this, be it a strong belief in the cause or achieving a goal that you have already dreamed of.
3. Decisiveness — knowing when something isn’t working and quickly changing directions is very important. It is important to know when to persevere and when to pivot, learn a lesson rather than dwelling. I would say the ability to know when to stop stems from knowledge and experience, from mistakes and wisdom of supporters. We switched to a different business model during the pandemic when we did extensive market research through operators and users and switched to a B2B model. This enabled us to scale and become one of the few circular economy models that is actually profitable and has a clear commercial case. I think that came from us having grit to begin, then being able to decisively pivot after extensive research, fueled by our love and passion for sustainability.
Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion about the tech tools that you are helping to create that can make a positive social impact on our society. To begin, what problems are you aiming to solve?
There is a lot of goodwill and momentum in the sustainability sector, but we recognize the importance of tech in driving an accessible and scalable system to drive the food-to-go sector away from disposables and embrace reusable packaging.
Right now, there’s a huge problem with recycling and waste disposal. Just in London the rules are different from borough to borough and recycling can be a maze for companies and everyday people to navigate. There’s a lot of focus on compostable packaging, and it is essential to keep innovating in this space. However, there is limited infrastructure in the UK for commercial composting which means much compostable waste end up in the landfill or incinerated, and the high waste management cost drives away a lot of catering companies.
With government regulations and consumer pressure, catering companies have to pivot to more sustainable options, and we utilize tech to provide an accessible and trackable reuse solution that has the added benefit of providing real-time impact data and usage insights that is win-win-win for users, clients, and the Earth.
How do you think your technology can address this?
Reuse is the most sustainable solution. However, commercial adoption is difficult, with barriers including low return rates due to lack of tracking, high upfront costs, and low adoption from users.
Cauli provides an all-inclusive solution through powering the sourcing, tracking and impact measuring of reusable Food & Beverage (F&B) packaging with award-winning SaaS products and supply chain to eliminate single-use waste from canteens and events globally.
Our technology is addressing the problems with a simple plug and go solution. If a food provider wants to start offering CauliBoxes, they can have everything they need and be ready to go within a week or two. Also, the process is really simple, there aren’t many extra steps for the provider except to start serving their food in a CauliBox. Additionally, we provide impact data for each business; all they have to do is log in to their admin panel to see the real-time sustainability impact their users are having, and reports that can be directly used to keep track of their net zero targets. After trialing different options, our clients lauded us for being the most complete and well-considered solution.
For users, Cauli is simple and fun to use. They build the habit of using our system because we operate where they are, and they are encouraged through our CauliCoins loyalty system, which rewards sustainable good behavior through discounts and gifts. Our UX/UI are fueled by market research and our app has a DAU/MAU of 40% compared to benchmark of 25%.
We continue to invest in our technology to make the process more intuitive for our clients and users. We are currently prototyping and trialing an improved tracking system using computer vision and AI and an updated smart CauliKiosk, which would eliminate errors and steps to make using reusables the best choice and provide accurate and granular data that has immense value in driving sustainable habits and helping companies achieve net zero.
Can you tell us the backstory about what inspired you to originally feel passionate about this cause?
I was working an office job focused on sustainability campaigning. We were a sustainable office, so no printing documents, a lot of people were vegetarian or vegan, but I noticed the biggest source of waste was food packaging and takeout containers. One of the reasons I love London is because we have a big street food culture with so many delicious food options. One of my favorite things to do is go out and buy lunch, but with that you get all these different food containers that can’t be easily recycled or composted and it’s confusing for everyone, so all this packaging ends up in the bin and eventually in landfill. I really wanted to build the infrastructure to ditch disposable food packaging and luckily so did Ming, who I’d met through Chinese opera class. Ming was leading sales teams across Europe, UK, China, and the Middle East, is a successful serial entrepreneur, and we had been dying to work together with our compatible skill sets. Many sleepless nights later we came up with the concept for Caulibox and here we are today.
How do you think this might change the world?
We’re not just trying to replace disposables; our unique tracking system and smart kiosks means we’re building the infrastructure that can eliminate every piece of disposable packaging and track all recyclable assets to ensure a world without waste. Because it’s highly scalable, it is truly a solution that could be implemented in every aspect of life, from food to cosmetics, manufacturing to logistics. It can become an integral part of your life and make sustainability very simple for everyone. Currently, with our Cauli reusable food and drink packaging solution, we’re able to scale to be in all the canteens, places where you work, places where you get takeout, where you get delivery, and our plan is to expand beyond the UK to anywhere food and drink is served. Then I think we have the right solution to not only raise awareness but actually push the reuse revolution. We want to make sure that disposables, something that only lasts five minutes in your hand, become a thing of the past. We’re going to make reusables as simple as disposables, everywhere for everyone.
Keeping “Black Mirror” and the “Law of Unintended Consequences” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks about this technology that people should think more deeply about?
I think a lot of sustainability businesses find that when they expand, they become unaware of the unintended consequences. Especially when it comes to impact; as a sustainability startup you need to be aware of the impact you’re having and not become a solution that’s more polluting than the current counterpart or become a solution that’s no longer needed but keeps going because it’s making money. I think we avoid that by always keeping our clients and our users in mind — we’re always pushing out better, newer features and getting rid of things that are unnecessary. Additionally, everything we are thinking of launching a new feature is due to a client/user demand, and we test and trial them in real life until they are perfect. We have a very clear goal in mind, which is just to make the simplest system that makes sense for everyone to replace disposables. If one day that becomes completely unnecessary, like we have a much better way to consume food than using packaging or develop completely different systems of how food is consumed, then I’ll be happy to just say we’re no longer needed and focus on something else.
Here is the main question for our discussion. Based on your experience and success, can you please share “Five things you need to know to successfully create technology that can make a positive social impact”? (Please share a story or an example, for each.)
1. Mentors and network — our mentors and network of peer entrepreneurs were essential in keeping us on track and driving our success. We’d never done anything on the scale of CauliBox but our network has always helped us, and each other, with how to approach problems, or with things like how to write a good deck or handle financials. Finding the right mentors who share the same passion but have different skill sets are vital, especially for us as female founders — female entrepreneurs who have been in our shoes, understand our ambition and champion our cause. Our mentors and network have been the bright lights to guide us to where we are today.
2. A good ear — A big part of why we’ve been able to scale has been through having our ear to the ground, collecting feedback and interacting with users and clients at the places we operate. Speaking to the operators, becoming friends with them and learning from the users of CauliBox has given us the advantage of knowing what our customers really want, so we can create something that people really want. Listening intently and passionately should never be underestimated.
3. A good co-founder — I wouldn’t have been able to do this if I was a sole founder. We’re tackling such a big systemic problem and working with my Co-Founder Ming, who shares my passion and vision, was the best decision ever. Not only is she able to do things I can’t do but having camaraderie and not being alone in this journey is something I’m so grateful for. Also, between the two of us we’re able to cover more markets; I have links to Hong Kong, India and America, while Ming is connected to the Middle East, China and Europe. This helps with our growth ambitions.
4. A yoga membership — Or whatever you need to help keep your head clear. For me its yoga, for Ming its taking a nap after lunch, for our Ops Lead its meditation class. There are so many busy times and late nights with a startup so having something to help you destress is so important. As they say, work hard, play hard.
5. Awareness of the world — It could be through a computer or phone or whatever, but as important as it is to think big and creative, it is equally important to connect your work to the world. Being in tune with the latest regulations has been one of the most useful things for us, as we’re able to anticipate changes and how Cauli fits into them. Read the news, keep updated with policies around the world, follow academics, keep an eye out for new market research — those are the true compass to your startup.
If you could tell other young people one thing about why they should consider making a positive impact on our environment or society, like you, what would you tell them?
For young people, it’s their future. The consequences of our action or inaction in sustainability are going to be much more apparent in the coming years. Climate change is already one of the biggest problems we’re trying to solve but in their lifetimes the magnitude will only grow. When you engage in creating a positive impact, you are creating a positive future for yourself.
But young people already know this, and it’s great to see so many climate activists, climate tech companies, and climate movements coming from teens and kids. I am always surprised by the compassion and empathy shown by the younger generation; they’re so in tune with inequality and world issues — their fingertips are connected to the world through technology. They already know that the climate crisis is going to disproportionately affect the people that have contributed the least to it. Through their phones, the plights of those affected can reach millions, and the tools to change the future are available 24/7. More than anything else, I think young people are very smart, they can see through marketing, they do their own research, they’re united behind causes. Climate change is the overarching issue that is going to affect them and everything they love. But they don’t need me to teach them this, they already know.
Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. :-)
He’s passed away, but it would be Carl Sagan. My favorite book from him is Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space — I’ve talked a lot about being positive and passionate, but the state of the world does get to me. I want to talk to him because in his book he amazes me with the scale of the cosmos, the intricate beauty of science and knowledge, how insignificant we are in the grand scale and yet how important it is for us to save each other on this floating rock in the vast nothingness. He’s able to see the beauty in the massive emptiness that is our cosmos. I’d love to have a meal with him to find out how he is able to strike the balance when you’re working on something so important you feel it might swallow you but also be able to find the beauty and appreciation too.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
On our website at: https://www.wearecauli.com/
And we post a lot of fun stuff on socials:
https://www.facebook.com/wearecauli/
https://www.instagram.com/wearecauli/
https://twitter.com/wearecauli
https://www.linkedin.com/company/caulibox/
Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational, and we wish you continued success in your important work.
About the Interviewer: Jilea Hemmings is a staunch believer in the power of entrepreneurship. A successful career revamping Fortune 500 companies was not enough for her entrepreneurial spirit, so Jilea began focusing her passion in startups. She has successfully built 6 startups to date. Her passion for entrepreneurship continues to flourish with the development of Stretchy Hair Care, focusing on relieving the pain associated with detangling and styling natural black hair. For far too long, people with tender heads have suffered in pain. Until now.
