Green Cloud Nine | The woman behind this Revolution

Disrupting the world of retail, Green Cloud Nine is the revolution for the concept of a green marketplace providing a platform for sustainable merchants and responsible consumers. Its inspiring mission to make sustainability mainstream is one that shines the light on environmentally-friendly companies, whilst providing a direct connection to consumers who embrace social impact.

The woman behind this revolution:

Mariló Fernandez, Founder, and CEO of Green Cloud Nine is an activist, social impact warrior, nature-lover, and sustainability guru. She has earned quite the reputation with her experience in technology-driven industries and the United Nations.

Additionally, she has a knack for building and connecting ecosystems, and transferring skills across functions, partners, and customers.

So, we talk to Mariló about her incredible sustainability journey, what inspired her to start this venture and even her biggest takeaways from this exciting ride.

Motivation to start Green Cloud Nine

What motivated you to start Green Cloud Nine and how far are you with your progress?

My sustainability journey started around 30 years ago when I was a teenager who developed a healthy and proactive interest in sustainability and the environment. In fact, I became an activist and joined Green Peace amongst other environmental organisations when I was in my home country, Spain. I carried that lifestyle with me ever since and a couple of years ago, I decided it was time to turn my everyday life into a business to inspire others to live sustainably as well.

I am proud to announce that we will be launching our beta phase shortly where we will be testing the ground with our first vendors and customers. This phase is crucial because we want to ensure everything runs smoothly and therefore, we will be gathering all the significant data, asking for lots of feedback and ensuring all necessary needs are met.

Sustainability

Sustainability is not an easy ride especially when you really want to make a real difference and avoid green washing and impact washing.

What challenges do you face?

In general, sustainability on either side is quite an arduous task; both on the side of the consumer trying to find sustainable products from sustainable companies, and on the business side with trying to main sustainability on every front.

In our case, as I mentioned, we are trying to build a sustainable platform for this to become a reality. Therefore, we will be evaluating and assessing our vendors to ensure their dedication and commitment to sustainability and social impact.

To ensure this, we will be hiring the biggest sustainability certified bodies to assess these vendors and their products, and their methodology to achieve sustainability.

We do understand the hard work behind such a task, but this is something we will not be taking lightly.

Awareness About Sustainability

Do you want to share something you can get hold of or wish was a certain way so that it would be very beneficial to the cause?

This is quite simple. I believe the most beneficial aspect is to raise awareness about sustainability, and exactly how crucial it is especially for this day and age. At Green Cloud Nine, we aim to contribute to this awareness by making sustainability mainstream.

We understand that for this to become mainstream, it is important to spread the knowledge and wisdom we have as a collective about what sustainability is, and how people can live more sustainably.

Few Suggestions For Your Stakeholders

Your biggest take-away? And any recommendations/ suggestions for your stakeholders (can be investors, suppliers, customers, shareholders, aspiring entrepreneurs).

I am a proud self-proclaimed responsible consumer. It has become second nature to check what I buy, where they come from, and I tend to not purchase anything that is not necessary.

Admittedly though, this journey has had moments of difficulty because of the amount of time and effort given to ensure the right thing is being done. This has led to situations where I questioned myself, and even felt guilty at times.

So, my biggest takeaway, after leading decades of sustainable living, is that we need to stop feeling guilty. Instead, we need to feel more empowered!

Embracing the positive energy of knowing you have the power to make a difference… makes a true difference.

In my case, I decided to take it one step further. I wondered how I could enhance my contribution to social impact. It was my desire and dream to bring lots of consumers and producers together, and create a platform where every time a product is bought or sold. It would have the stamp of sustainability, whilst completely replacing a product that was not sustainability. Hence, the inception of Green Cloud Nine came into being.

B Corp Certifications

Are you looking for certain certifications for your suppliers? Do you prefer to see them as BCorp or have any certain industry standards you want them to follow?

We have performed quite a bit of research on this matter. Yes, we will be inquiring vendors if they have any certifications, as part of their sustainability assessment. But we are also aware of the fact there are many out there who have completely embraced a truly sustainable business model, without the certification.

Therefore, we have decided to adopt a more simplified assessment version compared to B Corps and what the rest are doing. Rest assured, our mission to ensure sustainability at every turn is crucial. But we would like to give those interested a chance for evaluation to see where they stand.

If we find them to reach our standards, then they shall be granted a chance to use our platform; if not, we will be guiding them on what they need to do to reach that level.

That being said, we are not consultants ourselves, so we will be looking for worthy partners we can recommended to vendors who are interested in adopting a sustainable practice, or who are looking to get certified.

Explore Your Hobbies

Would love to learn more about your hobbies and how you spend your time when you are not working on Green Cloud Nine?

When I am not working, I am one of those people who like to indulge in a wide variety of interests.

I am a nature-lover through and through. In fact, I always get asked the question, “Do you prefer the mountains or the sea?” because I currently reside in the middle of the Alps whilst being originally from Spain. I always answer, “Why do I need to choose? I love both!”.

Apart from that, I enjoy any downtime I have with hiking, walking, cooking, dancing, reading and hours upon hours of upcycling. For several years now, my obsession has been to upcycle things into something else.

However, at the moment, I am devoting all my time to the launch of Green Cloud Nine of which I am ecstatic for.

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Final Words

It has been such a pleasure to understand the story behind Mariló Fernandez and the inception of Green Cloud Nine, of which we are sure will be a great success. We look forward to applauding the next part of her journey and the many accomplishments she will achieve through Green Cloud Nine, and many more.