The Joy of Social Change: Robin Takashi Lewis / Social Entrepreneur

"Direct Talk"

Our guest today is social entrepreneur Robin Takashi Lewis.

He has developed an app called "mymizu," meaning "my water" in Japanese.

The app shows the location of refill spots where users can find free drinking water.

The hope is to reduce consumption of single-use plastic water bottles.

We're creating this new set of values as a new default option.

And I think that's how you slowly change society.

Lewis is working on ways to spur people to take action for social change.

From an online event for shops and restaurants interested in sustainability

to a scuba-diving scholarship program

that teaches young people about the issues facing our oceans.

Lewis believes that the key lies in making sustainability fun, cool, and exciting.

He tells us how he is changing people's minds and attitudes

through joy and creativity.

This cafe is located in Yokohama, just south of Tokyo.

It's registered with the mymizu app as an official refill spot.

Cold drinking water is available here free of charge.

mymizu was launched in September 2019.

Its map shows over 200,000 refill spots around the world.

These include public water fountains in places like parks and train stations,

as well as around 2,000 restaurants, cafes, and hotels that have partnered with Lewis.

A staff member at this cafe found the app through social media,

and the cafe signed up to be a refill partner in 2020.

Our employees explain the mymizu system to our customers.

We get more people involved.

It's a bridge between us and our customers.

With this app, users don't need to buy plastic bottles of water.

They can refill their own bottles for free.

How did it all start?

We were in Okinawa, which is one of my favorite places in the world and

we were on this small island, just walking around, having a good time.

While there are so many beautiful beaches and ocean scenes,

there was one area that was just completely covered in rubbish,

things like bento boxes and deodorant cans,

but the thing that we found most was PET bottles, plastic bottles.

And seeing that we thought this is such a symbol of a larger environmental problem.

And that was really the beginning of the mymizu journey.

It was looking at a specific problem and thinking

"How can we tackle this problem in a creative way?"

So, I spent hours and hours and hours looking into plastic waste,

what's the situation?

And then from there, we started to think about "How can we use creativity?"

"How can we use technology, as well?"

And that's where we thought perhaps something like an app would be interesting.

Lewis takes us to one of the many refill spots around Yokohama.

What's contributed to the growing number of refill spots?

The whole mymizu platform is based on a concept called "crowdsourcing."

So we have people every single day adding information

like photos and locations of these mymizu spots.

And because of that, thanks to the participation of lots of people,

we now have this global network of 200,000.

So it's really not a platform that we make for people,

it's a platform we create together through co-creation.

So, I think starting from the very basics,

we did a lot of communications work to help people understand that

yes, recycling is part of the solution,

but it's not the ideal, it's not the perfect solution.

We need to also reduce, reuse, and all of these other things that we can do.

So, the first thing was really an awareness around plastic waste

and the necessity for this kind of platform.

The app keeps track of the plastic bottles and CO2 emissions

users have helped reduce by using refill spots.

They can also see how much money they've saved.

In the three years since its launch,

the app has helped save over half a million plastic bottles.

But Lewis says this is not the ultimate goal.

For us, the number of plastic bottles reduced is one metric,

but it's actually not the core objective of what we're doing.

What really excites us, the team, is changing mindsets.

This high school in Tokyo is actively promoting sustainability on campus.

Lewis' fun and creative way of tackling the issue of plastic bottles

has resonated with the student body.

The students have been working on a project to make reusable water bottles the norm at school.

One of the project members is third-year student Murayama Hiro.

This is a refill spot we use.

During our break, we all line up and fill our water bottles here.

They first heard about mymizu in 2021,

during one of their classes on sustainability.

They worked with Lewis to achieve their project's goal.

They then launched a campaign called the "mymizu challenge."

Students were divided into teams,

and competed to see who could save the most plastic bottles.

The month-long campaign was a success,

resulting in over 4,000 plastic bottles saved.

Now, around 90% of the students are using reusable water bottles every day.

The result was a reduction of 4,285 bottles.

But as we were saving these bottles, we were also having fun.

That was a crucial part of the project.

Murayama and his classmates want their project to grow.

They are currently planning a mymizu challenge event with students from another school.

We use our own bottles!

I think the main insight, the key insight that we got was that

seeing how students can lead and create things is really interesting

because they do it differently from how we do it, for example, like.

I think young people can bring so many new ideas and different perspectives on board,

and seeing them engage their classmates

in these competitions and different activities

was really, really a good learning experience for us, too.

Lewis, born to a Japanese mother and British father,

spent his younger years living in both Japan and the UK.

He went on to study business at the University of Edinburgh.

He says the more he learned about the business world,

the more he began to question it.

I always say that studying business made me quite skeptical of business

because we were always talking about how to maximize profits of companies.

So I had a lot of difficulty actually towards the end of university

because everyone else, it seemed, had their paths already decided.

And I was just drifting around trying to figure out what to do.

And that's actually when the 2011

Great East Japan earthquake and tsunami happened.

It was just as I was graduating, and that was quite a big turning point in my life.

Lewis' mother is from Tohoku, the region most affected by the earthquake.

Tohoku is a place he's always felt a strong connection with.

Because I knew that a lot of my family were here. I knew that my friends were here,

I was very, very concerned.

So about a month after the tsunami,

I spent about four months

in Fukushima, Miyagi, Iwate just helping out.

I didn't really have any skills, but I was just volunteering my time,

looking after displaced children,

removing debris from people's homes, different activities.

But that really changed my perspective on a lot of things.

While in Tohoku,

Lewis came across an NGO that organized cooperative projects,

as well as educational and cultural exchanges with countries around the world.

He would spend the next five years working with this NGO,

helping communities affected by natural disasters

such as flooding, typhoons, and earthquakes.

I think those five years working in humanitarian relief work

and international development really taught me a lot about

things that are a big part of my life today.

So, for example,

traveling to different countries and seeing people affected by

typhoons and flooding and things really

put a human face to things like climate change.

Lewis next went to work for intergovernmental organizations

focused on climate change policy.

In 2019, he co-founded Social Innovation Japan,

an organization that works with governments, big brands,

and social changemakers to tackle global issues.

Here, Lewis and his team are making use of the mymizu platform

to engage more people into taking action.

In July 2022,

they held an online event showing shops and restaurants

actions they could take to improve sustainability.

Business owners and managers were invited to share their experiences and sustainability projects.

We stopped using plastic straws. We use paper straws now.

We've also started using chopsticks made from thinned lumber.

I think a lot of businesses want to do more in sustainability.

They want to provide better services, they want to reduce their environmental impact.

And that's a really good sign, but I think what that event provided was a platform

for people to discuss new ideas, to meet each other,

to get inspired by each other, as well.

So I thought it was a fantastic event.

In summer 2022, Lewis and his team launched a new initiative,

a scuba diving scholarship program.

Partnering with a well-known scuba-diving association,

the program included a workshop

where participants could learn and talk about the ocean and its current issues

and a three-day scuba certification course,

so they could actually dive in the ocean.

Of course, I'm excited to scuba dive.

But I heard that some divers were doing ocean cleanups.

Now I can do that too.

I wanted to see the color of the coral with my own eyes.

To see how much biodiversity we stand to lose.

I think the first step towards taking any kind of action

is to understand what's happening.

And so to bring young people into the ocean

to see with their own eyes, the different things happening,

I think it provides a lot of inspiration and a lot of credibility too.

So if you're a young person and you've just got your diving license,

you've seen all this plastic waste and the other things happening,

then you can tell your friends, you can create content, you can get more people engaged.

So I think that was very much in line with what we believe

is to get people engaged.

Again, it's kind of a creative way to do it, right?

Three years after the app's launch, Lewis' mission is as clear as ever.

I think social change takes time, right?

It's not a thing we can do overnight.

And what we're trying to do is change the "atarimae."

The "what is normal," right? We are trying to change the default.

The default right now is "Let's buy plastic waste. Let's buy things wrapped in plastic.

Let's consume things that are not necessarily environmentally friendly."

And for us, we're trying to shift that default option.

So I think the impact actually goes beyond just plastic bottles.

It's about using technology and using creativity,

using fun and positive messaging

to get people on board and build something, build something positive.

(Do you have any words to live by?)

"Tackling meaningful problems through joy and creativity."

I think human beings are naturally problem solvers.

I think with environmental issues and social issues,

we have so many big, big problems and if we can bring people together,

hopefully, have fun and use creativity

then I think we can solve a lot of problems,

and also keep going.

If it's too serious and too difficult, then it sometimes becomes difficult to continue.

So that's why I think creativity and joy are so important.