Julia Collins, Planet FWD

Founder and CEO of Planet FWD

In 2019, food systems pioneer Julia Collins founded Planet FWD, the leading sustainability and supply chain intelligence platform for global consumer brands. A year later, she leveraged Planet FWD to create crackers brand Moonshot Snacks under a concept of shorter, low-emission supply chains and more traceable ingredients. Moonshot was such a successful impact showcase that Patagonia Provisions acquired the company in 2023.

Julia has a long track record in entrepreneurship. After graduating from Harvard and Stanford, she became the first Black woman to found a unicorn startup when Zume Pizza, a company she established in 2015 to revolutionize pizza delivery with robots and automated ovens, reached a $2.25B valuation. 

Ahead of her SF Climate Week lunch event on April 23, “Women Leading the Future of Food,” Julia shares what’s next for the decarbonization industry and how we’re voting to shape a better tomorrow every time we buy a mundane household product. 

Tell us about Planet FWD and how you support your customers.

Planet FWD is a technology platform that works with large brands to help them measure and improve their sustainability. We use artificial intelligence to build digital twins of our customers’ operations, and we help them measure the impact of everything from their head office downstream to a head of lettuce in a field. 

We’re very focused on helping brands spend less time reporting on their environmental impacts and more time actually reducing their environmental impacts. We find that customers working with Planet FWD have been able to accelerate the reduction of their greenhouse gas emissions by up to 40 percent. This is certainly true of Compass Group, the largest global food service company. We’re making expansive, measurable impact with our customers.

Did your experiences founding Moonshot Snacks and Zume Pizza lead you to develop a particular interest in Consumer Packaged Goods?

I’m interested in consumer products because I’m a person using consumer products. 

I believe every person has the right to be part of the solution to climate change—you shouldn’t have to be a multinational company, politician, or legislator to make a difference. Every purchase we make is a choice—a vote for the kind of world we want to live in.

Recently, I learned that the average individual makes hundreds of purchasing decisions daily, which means you’re making about 35,000 or more a year, or more than a million in your lifetime. This is why consumer products matter so much to me. These purchasing decisions might seem mundane—what kind of toilet paper or toothpaste you buy—but they’re not routine at all. Every choice we make is a significant vote that directly shapes our environment.

That said, the fact that I founded a CPG brand gives me a better perspective on what brands need from a technology company. My experience building Moonshot gave me even more insight into what I needed to build Planet FWD to work with companies in this category—ritual vitamins, Seed probiotics, or Impossible Foods.

Did you Moonshot inspire Planet FWD, or vice versa?

We founded a company called Planet FWD in 2019 that we knew would work broadly across the food system to drive change. But initially, Planet FWD served one brand, Moonshot, which was founded in 2020 and inspired the software aspect of Planet FWD. 

As confusing as that might sound, we needed to structure things this way. As a small brand, Moonshot needed better information—we wanted to know our products’ carbon footprint and assess our life cycle. We looked for solutions, and everyone we talked to said this level of understanding would cost between $14,000 and $25,000 per product. As a small brand with three products, that was way ahead of my budget. 

When we wanted to analyze our supply chain, we were told we could hire a team of consultants who would charge us a quarter of a million dollars. It was the same story when we began researching carbon insetting opportunities, a strategy where companies directly invest in environmental projects within their particular supply chain to reduce their Scope 3 emissions. The extant market solution at that time was to hire the same consultants at the same rate. 

I realized that we needed to do more than build one brand. We needed to build the set of tools that all brands needed to make their own sustainable products. So ultimately, Planet FWD’s software was inspired by Moonshot. We sold Moonshot to Patagonia Provisions in 2023, and now Patagonia Provisions is a customer of Planet FWD.

Where are your clients based?

We are a global solution. In fact, our largest customer is based in the UK. We primarily focus on Europe, the UK, and the United States; we also have customers in Australia. We want to expand into Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa soon. 

Does Planet FWD specialize in specific industries within consumer products?

We’re open to all companies, although Planet FWD has carved out a differentiated positioning by working with consumer products companies in food, fashion, beauty, and consumer electronics—essentially everything in your home. It’s often surprising to people to hear that globally, 45 percent or more of greenhouse gas emissions come from consumer products: everything that we eat, use, and wear, from toothpaste to toilet paper, is having a massive impact. 

Consumer products are also a key focus because of the size and complexity of their supply chains. Scopes 1, 2, and 3 are categories that classify an organization’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Scope 1 is direct emissions, Scope 2 is indirect emissions from purchased energy, and Scope 3 encompasses all other indirect emissions in the value chain. 

Supply chains live in Scope 3, and for consumer products companies, 90 percent or more of their overall impact typically comes from Scope 3. As you can imagine, this is a big deal for companies making and selling consumer products with large and complex supply chains. 

Is it easy to get oversight into a chain of custody and supply chain, given that companies source and manufacture in many places worldwide, often in developing countries lacking independent oversight? 

Planet FWD has worked since its inception in 2019 to develop a more extensive data set for these complex global supply chains. We look at a given company’s primary, secondary, and even tertiary suppliers. We’re able to ingest primary data, whether it’s from a farm or a factory. While it’s not always the case that we have perfect information, we certainly have better information than we did when we started, and we’re working hard in partnership with our customers to gather even more.

Generally, companies are becoming more focused on becoming carbon neutral. Some, like CANOPY, are setting their sights on becoming carbon-positive—we remove more CO2 from the atmosphere than is generated by our operations and Members’ commutes combined. Since you founded Planet FWD, how have your benchmarks or product offerings evolved to meet new decarbonization standards and ideals?

As it relates to decarbonization, net zero, Planet FWD doesn’t just measure greenhouse gas emissions. We also measure water and energy usage. We measure land and land use change, so we measure deforestation and biodiversity with a view to protecting nature.

Decarbonization is just one part of Planet FWD’s overall vision, which is to bring about a climate-friendly future where every product is part of the solution and not part of the problem. That means we need to look at carbon emissions, of course, but we also have to look at other impact categories. 

In terms of where the industry goes next and where Planet FWD goes next, many consumer products companies don’t yet have a sustainability imperative. In contrast, consumers are demanding more and more that brands are more sustainable, and this pressure will become stronger in the future. We see a lot of inspiration from Europe and the UK regarding the appetite and the demand for sustainability amongst consumers, and we’d like to see that adopted more broadly in the US. When consumers make demands, brands listen.

Do you have any upcoming news you can share with us?

At Planet FWD, we’re super excited to launch more products on our platform and more features within our products. Our goal is to make working toward becoming sustainable easier for our direct customers, who tend to be Chief Sustainability Officers, but because so many individuals within organizations increasingly have to weigh in, we’re expanding our offering for all stakeholders, whether they’re Chief Marketing Officers, a Chief Financial Officer, procurement professionals, and so on.

We’re always asking how we can make certifications easier for staff at every level and how we help them engage with their suppliers or customers. We’re finding ways to allow them to model cost improvements around food loss and waste and how to model the cost of decarbonization. There’s a lot more that we’re building underneath our platform that’s exciting.

What are the main opportunities and obstacles for Planet FWD?

The biggest headwind right now is the politicization of climate change and the way some people view it as a political tool. The fact of the matter is that we need a healthy planet where all beings can thrive, regardless of our politics. I also worry about the spread of misinformation that tries to convince people that climate change isn’t real or that nothing can be done to mitigate it.

In terms of tailwinds, what encourages me most is the power of people and how young people and women, in particular, are standing up to fight for what’s right. We’re going to be hosting a lunchtime event at CANOPY on April 23 called “Women Leading the Future of Food,” where we’ll showcase inspiring women like Lara Dickinson, Executive Director of One Step Closer (OSC), Christina Skonberg, Senior Director of Sustainability and Mission at Simple Mills, and others, moderated by Olivia Whitener from Brightly.

Why did you choose these women, particularly among the people you know making huge strides in sustainability? 

I chose Lara Dickinson for this panel because she is a true pioneer in the sustainable food industry and a relentless advocate for regenerative and climate-forward practices. As Executive Director of One Step Closer (OSC), Lara has built a powerful community of mission-driven brands and leaders transforming our food system from the inside, out. Her collaborative spirit and systems-level thinking make her an essential voice in shaping the future of food. I deeply admire her commitment to advancing both environmental and social impact through bold, values-driven leadership, including an unwavering commitment to Jobs and Economic Development Impact (JEDI) models.

Simple Mills is an example of a company doing very well by doing good—the brand is founded on a gluten-free product principle by working with novel and unique grains. Diversifying your grains is one of the best things you can do as a consumer to stand up for healthy food systems. Simple Mills recently released their most recent Impact Report and announced their acquisition, which is a big deal. It’s amazing to see the work Christina is leading within the company.  

This will be our second year doing an event with Olivia from Brightly. Olivia studied sustainability and is a star ascendant in the sustainability world. Brightly built a better way for brands to offset their emissions, which can be essential to a climate strategy.

What type of CANOPY Membership do you have, and how does it support your work beyond hosting impactful events?

Planet FWD is based in San Francisco, and my team has a hybrid membership at CANOPY’s Jackson Square location. I was evaluating local coworking space options, and we chose CANOPY because of its commitment to sustainability. Of course, we love the location, the outside space, the amazing team here, and the coffee bar. However, the one thing that CANOPY offered that other spaces did not provide was a clear and consistent commitment to sustainability.

What’s the most valuable piece of advice you’ve ever received?

“Do it scared.” Courage isn’t about waiting for fear to disappear—it’s about moving forward with purpose even when the fear is there.

What’s the greatest lesson you’ve learned in your career?

No amount of ambition replaces alignment—when your mission, team, and values are aligned, everything flows more powerfully.

Is there something–professionally or personally–you wish you’d known sooner?

That rest is a strategy, not a reward. Recovery fuels vision.

Is there a skill you think everyone should master?

Deep listening. It’s transformative in leadership, relationships, and systems change.

What’s your source of inspiration?

My children. They remind me what the work is really for.

**

Follow Julia on LinkedIn and Instagram @juliaecollins.  

Follow Planet FWD on LinkedIn.