075 Demystifying Nutrition and Feeding

About this Episode

Sarah Almond Bushell is an award-winning Registered Dietitian, ex NHS Consultant child nutritionist of 22 years and founder of ‘The Children’s Nutritionist’ who is working to reduce the stress around mealtimes for parents and is passionate about helping to cut the ties of generational eating habits, fuelled by misinformation and desperation tactics.

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Episode Transcript

Katherine Ann Byam 0:00
Changing what we eat is one of the best ways to have a significant impact on climate change. Yet a lot of us are afraid to make those important shifts, I had a chat with a dietitian and a feeding specialist to talk to her about what we can do to make change happen. Here's a clip of that recording now.

Sarah Almond Bushell 0:18
So I think one of the big myths that a lot of parents have, particularly parents of young children is they worry about how much protein their children having. So one of the most sort of frequently asked questions I get is, you know, my child won't eat any meat or fish I'm worried they're not getting enough protein. But actually, in truth, the protein requirements are really quite small. So we eat far more protein than we ever need. So it's absolutely no problem at all if people want to reduce the amount of meat that they do eat. That's, you know, that's absolutely fine. It's not going to have any nutritional problems at all.

Katherine Ann Byam 0:55
This is season five, the great debates of our times, Season Five will be centred around the great debates. And we will be comparing and contrasting different viewpoints on various topics that are consuming the public discourse at present. The reason I've decided to take this approach is because we, or at least many of us, are losing the skill of debate. And I think this is an essential skill for us all to practice once more. I don't see how we get to the point of saving the world and saving our planet. If we don't know how to discuss our differences. I also think that the solution to most of our challenges are somewhere in the spectrum of views, but never a type of extreme. I will be working with guests to curate the content and discuss beforehand, I will understand their positions, their areas of genius, and navigate my questions around that so that the conversation is challenging and stimulating without being combative. I hope you enjoy season five of where ideas launch the Sustainable Innovation podcast.

Sarah Almond Bushell is an award winning registered dietician, ex NHS consultant, child nutritionist of 22 years and founder of the children's nutritionist, who's working to reduce the stress around mealtimes for parents and is passionate about helping to cut the ties of generational eating habits fueled by misinformation and desperation tactics. Sarah, welcome to where ideas launch.

Sarah Almond Bushell 2:23
Thank you so much for having me.

Katherine Ann Byam 2:25
Sarah, I'm excited to have you because I think food is such an important subject. And I want to be able to unpack all the things we never understood about food, nutrition, feeding. And I also want to explore another angle, which is how we can change and adapt our own nutrition even as adults. Given that we need to look at those relationships later on for what is to come. So let's get started. You are a nutritionist who couldn't get your kids to eat. Tell us about your early experiences as a mother and how this impacted your journey.

Sarah Almond Bushell 2:56
Yeah, absolutely. So I qualified as a dietician and had been working 10 years in paediatric in a hospital setting. So in paediatric clinical nutrition when my first baby came along, and at the time, this sort of buzzword was all about responsive feeding. And so letting the baby kind of take charge and be in control of what they wanted to have and how much they wanted to eat. And so I truly embraced that because I felt that was what I was the right thing to do. And what I found was he was a particularly strong willed little boy who was very, very demanding, and essentially, he would demand milk, he would demand snacks as he became a toddler, and he ended up with iron deficiency anaemia, which made me feel like a bit of a failure considering I was a paediatric dietitian working in a children's hospital and my own child had a nutritional deficiency. And then with my second child, she was actually much harder. So she came along two and a half years later, and from day one, she vomited. She was falling off the growth charts. She wasn't growing in the way that she was intended to. She was covered from top to tail in eczema, but she was just a really sicky baby. And the GPS would kind of fob me off has been a bit of a paranoid mother. Health Visitors didn't know what to do. And it transpired that she actually had quite a severe anaphylactic food allergy, which she was getting through my breast milk, but by the point we identified that she was like eight and a half, nine months old, and by that time, she'd just associated anything that went in her mouth with feeling poorly. So she just didn't eat. She refused breastfeeds. I tried her with formula she'd refuse that, she'd refuse food. Sometimes I could get a little bit of food into her and then she would puke the whole lot up. And then that would be you know, that food written off completely. So she just associated food with pain and ended up with a feeding aversion.

Katherine Ann Byam 4:56
What an incredible trauma.

Sarah Almond Bushell 4:58
Yeah and as a dietitian When I felt absolutely rubbish, you know, this was my job. This is what I did. I was supposed to be the person who you would go to when children had feeding problems. And I'd failed with both of my own children.

Katherine Ann Byam 5:14
You speak about the generational sort of challenge with this, was there something that came also from your own past that might have impacted on your children to your knowledge.

Sarah Almond Bushell 5:18
Not at all that came later, actually, what happened next was a lot of my colleagues and the Children's Hospital where I worked essentially couldn't help because they all said, well, we don't know what to do, I can't help you don't know what to do here. And so I ended up basically going to Google and spent hours and days and months typing stuff into Google to try and find out what I could do to help her in particular, and what I found was a lot of the stuff that's on there was really unhelpful, you know, stuff about changing the food, trying new recipes, cutting sandwiches into the shapes of teddy bears, or stamping hearts in cucumber, and all of this kind of stuff. But none of that actually works. And so I ended up stumbling across quite randomly, a team of feeding therapists based in Colorado in the USA, and essentially, I stalked them and learned so much from them and went on to become a an advanced level feeding therapist with them. And that's what led me to learning that with my daughter, she needed quite specific feeding therapy because of all of the early experiences that she'd had. But with my son, what I recognised there is that my role in the feeding relationship had a start and an end. And his role in the feeding relationship also had a complimentary start and an end. And when we crossed streams, so to speak, that's when the problems arose. After, you know, sorting out my own children, I started to apply this to my patients that were coming through the clinics. And what I discovered there was there was so many of these eating habits that were just passed down from one generation to the next to the next through, you know, with families, and they hadn't really ever considered the way they do things. So for example, one of the big ones is withholding pudding until you've had your dinner, you know, you can't have pudding until you've eaten your dinner, or you need to clear everything on your plate before you're allowed to have pudding. And it was these sorts of things that I started to realise that actually if we flip that around and allow the child to have what the pudding just put it on the table so they can see what it is. And if they choose to eat that first. So be it. As long as it says small enough portion size, because there's plenty other food there to fill up on. It actually changed the dynamic of feeding and family relationships. I think that was that was the main thing sort of the family mealtimes became collaborative, they became calm, people would report back that things had changed quite drastically from just minor tweaks in how they fed their children.

Katherine Ann Byam 7:55
That's quite incredible and quite unexpected. I think a lot of people listening to this will be thinking what feed your kids the dessert first. And let's talk a bit about that. So what are some of the myths that we need to bust about the way we do mainstream nutritional education at the moment, starting with our kids?

Sarah Almond Bushell 8:15
Yeah, so it's mainly around the feeding rather than nutrition, I would say so in food and feeding are two completely separate things. And what I've ended up doing is kind of specialising in the feeding part. So a lot of it is cultural, you know, it's the stuff that our grandparents taught our parents and our parents taught us and then we've passed on to our children and none of it is actually backed in science at all. But now we do have some you know, amazing psychology research, which has kind of unpacked these cultural ways of feeding children and found out that there's better ways to do things. So going back to that example about allowing your child to have pudding, you know, early on in the meal at the start of the meal perhaps what that does, is it it takes the sweet food, the pudding food from being this highly desirable thing that's you know, upon a pedestal that children almost have to earn by completing that arduous task of eating their meal before they get their prize. So when we do it the old way like that, what happens is foods that are sweet essentially, because that's what pudding tends to be, is considered much higher value becomes much more desirable. Children will crave it, we use those sorts of foods in celebrations don't we, so like birthdays Christmases, you know, even going to the cinema, you know, you might get an ice cream or popcorn or something like that. We use sweet foods as a way of celebrating happy times. And so they've already got that power of being something highly desirable. And something that's really nice.

Katherine Ann Byam 9:51
I would also say it's used as a bit of behavioural control as well, right. I'll give you a sweet if you just stop screaming.

Sarah Almond Bushell 9:57
And it works. It works. So that was, I actually forgot about this one, but that was actually how we got to potty train my son. Every time he managed to do a week on the potty he got a sweet. And so he picked up potty training and within hours you know, it does work as a reward. And what's interesting about that is sweet foods, babies are born with really mature sweet tastebuds and it's an evolutionary thing to, it's a survival mechanism actually, is to help them seek out the breast at birth for survival, but that, that really mature sweet taste stays with them all through their childhood all through the teenage years. And it only, the sort of bitter and the savoury stuff that has to be learned over those years, only catches up in that early adulthood time. So those sweet foods have already got you know, far more power over children than anything else that that we can offer them.

Katherine Ann Byam 9:59
That's really, really, really interesting. Thank you for sharing that what I wanted to kind of switch to or move to is how has your training actually influenced your family.

Sarah Almond Bushell 10:57
It's had a huge impact actually. So first of all, my daughter who had this, you know, feeding aversion and fear of food, essentially, she's 13 next week, and she wants to be a chef when she grows up. She absolutely loves food. It's really helped her blossom into this fearless foodie for a want of a better word. So her favourite subject at school is food tech. She wants you know, she wants to be cooking all the time, when the lockdowns hit, we were all at home. And so we would all sit around the table and eat together and share, you know, one meal between everyone. And that's had a real, profound effect as well. So one of the things I do recommend to all families is to try and eat together whenever you can. And part of that is because if you've got very young children, you're their role model, and they need to see you doing it first, before they ever decide to you know, pick up a piece of broccoli or a green bean and see you eating it and know it's safe before they'll ever do it themselves. But it's also where you learn a lot of the social skills as well. And if you're wanting to introduce new food, it's a really safe environment to do that, provided there's not pressure to eat the new food, because a lot of the way that children learn is through their sensory systems. So just by placing the food on the table, they're seeing it, they're smelling it from afar, they're looking at, you know, the colours, there's all this sort of sensory characteristics they're picking up on. And so that can really help. So in terms of my family, I would say that both children are much more adventurous with foods they'll try. And we often see that now and they bring their friends home, we serve what I call sort of family style. So it's where you put all the different components of the meal in the centre of the table, and everyone has an empty plate and helps themselves to how much. And their friends are often gobsmacked at that, because their parents have pre plated for them. Again, it's a cultural thing, not based on science, but their parents have decided how much of each part of the meal they should be eating. And so when they're given this autonomy of having an empty plate, and they can decide how many spoons of carrots they want, and how many potatoes they want, it's really, really interesting to watch, they almost don't know what to do.

Katherine Ann Byam 13:06
Now, thats really great I like this, this idea and this concept. And it's bringing me to you know how this links to my sustainability conversation. And one of the things that we're being told now, and I think it's really important for us to understand and figure out how we adapt, is that the amount of meat that we eat, is starting to really have massive impact on our climate, because it takes so much land space to grow the food crop that feeds the animals, as well as it's a little bit inhumane, right? If you really think about it, then we can get some, at least most of the nutrition that we need, we can get it from plant substitutes. So there is a big change that we need to do. And I'm wondering how we face that change? Because at the moment, it's quite difficult. I've cut my own meat consumption to about 50% of what it was, except during holiday weeks. But you know, this isn't easy for people to do. So what are your thoughts on how we could approach that?

Sarah Almond Bushell 14:05
Yeah, absolutely. So I think one of the big myths that a lot of parents have, particularly parents of young children is they worry about how much protein their children are having. So one of the most sort of frequently asked questions I get is, you know, my child won't eat any meat or fish and I'm worried they're not getting enough protein. But actually, in truth, the protein requirements are really quite small. So we eat far more with protein than we ever need. So it's absolutely no problem at all. If people want to reduce the amount of meat that they do eat. That's, you know, that's absolutely fine. It's not going to have any nutritional problem at all. What I would say is one of the things that we can think about doing is reducing our dairy consumption. So using some of the plant based milks, I would say that if you've got a child under two, that's not a great idea because they still need a lot of nutrition from their milk and cow's milk contains that whereas plant milk doesn't. Even when it's been fortified, it doesn't really match up. It's more like a flavoured water. I often say to people, but you know, from two and above, you can absolutely use a plant based milk. Instead, just make sure it's got calcium, make sure it's been fortified with iodine as well, that's one of the limiting nutrients. So that's the other thing they can do. And then the other thing as well is looking for products that have been produced locally. So not buying foods that have been flown halfway across the world just so that we can eat them, you know, all year round. So seasonal, and local are two big things. So there's lots of parts, I think, to more of a sustainable way of eating that we can all do fairly easily.

Katherine Ann Byam 15:45
Yeah, absolutely. What further tips and advice can you give to young families on their nutrition journeys that we haven't covered already?

Sarah Almond Bushell 15:53
Yeah, absolutely. So if you've got a child who is, eats well, so not a fussy eater, where they might need extra help, the main things that families can do is look at something that we call the division of responsibility and feeding. So I alluded to this earlier, where the parents have their role, and the child has their role, and it's a shared relationship. So what that means is that the parents role is to choose what's on the menu to decide what the family are going to eat. And that's really important because children have very poor nutritional knowledge. So when parents say, what do you want for tea, they're always going to pick the thing that they fancy rather than, you know, with their nutritionist hat on. So parents are in charge of the what they're going to eat. Parents are also in charge of where so whether that's going to be at the kitchen table or picnic in the park. And then parents are also in charge of when. So by that I mean sort of the routine or the shedule. And actually, it's really quite important to have a set routine for children when they're eating, which usually looks like meal, snack meal snack meal bed, because that allows a relationship of trust to build because they know it's predictable, they know when the next meal is coming from, and then that's the parents job done. So they don't need to do anything else, the child's role is to be in charge of their own bodies. So be very autonomous about what goes into their bodies. So they decide if they're going to eat, sometimes they don't. And if they do eat, they decide how much they're going to eat, in what order and crucially when to stop. So when I see battles at meal times, for want of a better word, or drama at meal times, it's often because parents have looked at what the child had and thought that's not enough, please eat a bit more, you know, just just take another teaspoon of peas, or you know what, I'm not going to give you a pudding until you've eaten all your chicken. And actually, that's not our role as a parent, you know, we need to let our children be in charge of what and how much.

Katherine Ann Byam 17:51
This is brilliant. Thank you so much for these really great nuggets of advice. Let my listeners know how they can get in touch with you or work with you if they have children who need some support with this, or parents actually who need some support with this.

Sarah Almond Bushell 18:03
Yeah, it's a pleasure. So my website is probably the best place to find me. It's children's nutrition.co.uk. And I've also, I'm on Instagram at the Children's nutritionist. And I have a Facebook group which is called the children's nutritionists community.

Katherine Ann Byam 18:20
Perfect. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Sarah Almond Bushell 18:22
It's a pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Katherine Ann Byam 18:27
This podcast is brought to you today by the brand new Women In Sustainable Business Awards. That kicks off in 2023. If you're a business owner who's starting your business with principles of sustainability in mind, and you want to preserve some lost skills, some handcrafting or artisanal work, or you're a social media manager supporting purpose driven brands, or you're creating fashion or something that is relevant to the sustainability and green transformation. You are more than welcome to join us and to get involved in these awards. Check out our group on Facebook women in sustainable business or follow the podcast where ideas launch on Instagram to find out more.

074 The Adventures of Scout

About this Episode

The three engineers are on a mission to supply a book to every Primary school in the UK and encourage readers and children to join Scout’s team (the book protagonist) to help better the planet.

Let me introduce you to the 3 Engineers. They are:

Nick – Chartered Senior Systems Engineer - 10 years at Babcock International

Matt - Chartered Assistant Chief Engineer – 14 years at Babcock International – Lead Technical lead for several large programmes

Jon – Chartered Project Engineer – RWG Renewables

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Connect with The 3 Engineers

Episode Transcript

Katherine Ann Byam 0:00
Have you heard about the adventures of scout? The three engineers have applied the science and the tools and technology of engineering to their process of creating a children's book, I interviewed the three engineers and I asked them what they would change about the education system. Here's what they said.

Matt 0:17
I think the first thing we have to do is figure out what's important, we'd have to identify what's really important, is it that children need to be able to spout off facts in a about a specific subject in a exam, or is it that we need to teach our children how to live their lives as best they can.

Katherine Ann Byam 0:43
The Adventures of scout is one of the most interesting and engaging children's books I've had a look at recently. And it really encourages positive action positive momentum for the planet. Tune into this really insightful episode, and give the three engineers and the Adventures of Scout a follow, make sure to go download or buy your copy of The Adventures of Scout today. This is season five, the great debates of our times, Season Five will be centred around the great debates. And we will be comparing and contrasting different viewpoints on various topics that are consuming the public discourse at present. The reason I decided to take this approach is because we or at least many of us, are losing the skill of debate. And I think this is an essential skill for us all to practice once more. I don't see how we get to the point of saving the world and saving our planet. If we don't know how to discuss our differences. I also think that the solution to most of our challenges is somewhere in the spectrum of views, but never a type of extreme. I will be working with guests to curate the content and discuss beforehand, I will understand their positions their areas of genius, and navigate my questions around that so that the conversation is challenging and stimulating. Without being combative. I hope you enjoy season five of where ideas launch the Sustainable Innovation podcast. The three engineers are on a mission to supply a book to every primary school in the UK and encourage readers and children to join scouts team, the book protagonist to help better the planet. Let me introduce you to the three engineers they are. Nick is a chartered senior systems engineer at Babcock International. And Matt is a chartered Assistant Chief Engineer, also at Babcock International. John is a chartered project engineer at RW G renewables. John is not currently available with us today. But the rest of the team is here. So Welcome guys to where ideas launch. Hello, nice to meet you, Katherine, great to have you both. So let's get started. So can I just say this is the first time I'm interviewing a group of men doing a sustainable project. So typically, I get groups of women or I get women who are really trying to make change happen. But I don't often get recommended men who are making changes in this space, and doing it as a side gig. So what are your thoughts on that?

Nick 3:09
I think from our perspective, we've done it just independently, we didn't really consider too much beforehand what we were going to do we got together as a team to do something different. And what happened was we quickly realised that what was important to us and our values, were the environment, health and well being and technology. And then we looked at the amount of time that we had and resources to be able to dedicate that to this idea. And that's how the book was born.

Katherine Ann Byam 3:39
So tell me a little bit about the project and what drove you out of your niche. So you're both working in sort of big engineering type operations? What made it happen if I direct my question to Matt, perhaps,

Matt 3:54
Our work, we were all working together in the same place at the time. And on Friday afternoons, we used to have Friday afternoon off, so we didn't have to work past 1230. Normally, we'd just all meet up and hang out and go to the pub or something like that. And one day, we sort of said, Oh, we should probably do something more important with our time other than just sink a few beers. So I set up five meetings, basically I said, right, instead of, we're still gonna go to the pub, we'll have a purpose to it other than just socialising and try and figure out whether we're going to do something different and meaningful with that spare time that we've got. And yeah, that's just out of those five meetings. That's how Nick, John and I sort of formed together as the three engineers.

Katherine Ann Byam 4:39
And do you guys have kids?

Nick 4:41
Yep, I've got a 13 year old.

Matt 4:44
Yeah, I've got a six year old and a three year old.

Katherine Ann Byam 4:49
And what sort of stimulated you from doing this project from that perspective. What were you seeing in terms of the kind of material or curriculum that your kids are experiencing that made, you want to do something a little bit different. Maybe I go to Nick this time,

Nick 5:06
We didn't really set out, like we said, to come up with books, we came up with lots of different ideas. And as engineers, we've got lots of processes and tools. So we've decided that whatever we do, will stick to those processes and tools, and we'll basically map out an idea. So we came up with lots of ideas, scored them in a matrix. And I think each of us had individual sort of ambitions. So I wanted to improve career advice to school because mine wasn't as good as I had hoped, Matt really liked tech stuff. So he really liked the idea of having forums or websites and blogs and things like that. And John came from a different angle where he wanted to design sustainable products. And combining and merging all of those ideas together, I think Matt came up with the idea of having how can we have the biggest impact. And we all decided that with the time that we had, if we could pull it off, if we could write some kids books, about some of the topics that were personal to us. So for example, I particularly don't like litter, I pick up litter, and Matt is from sort of from the countryside down south. So he really remembers his childhood as like with bees so we kind of tried to link them all to our sort of personal touches. So yeah, so

Matt 6:13
At the time, when we formed back in 2018, my three year old daughter, she wasn't even born, my son, we were in the midst of like, he was just consuming literature, like reading stories to him. It was like dozens of stories every day. And I think that's where one of the ideas that well, we had a couple of ideas in our Scoring Matrix were to write children's stories. One that it's about solving problems, one that was for promoting women in engineering. They were the two ideas. Yeah, that sort of they say it sort of came about because my, I could see how my son was just consuming information, and really thinking about what was being told in these stories. And like Nick said, we wanted our project to make the biggest impact. And by, like, sort of feeding in those messages at such an early age, you can have an impact, not just at that age range, but like a three year old is more than happy to tell an adult to pick up litter because it's bad. So teaching their parents, their teachers, their siblings about this message. We just felt well, why wouldn't we focus on that area. And so that's where it did influence from my kids anyway,

Katherine Ann Byam 7:35
I've just recorded an episode with Susan Krumdieck. She's a transition engineering specialist, she's based out of Heriot-Watt in Scotland, in Orkney. And one of the things that she talks about in her work and in the book that she's written, actually, is that engineers are really the engine room of the of the economy, even though probably engineers don't even see it that way. And she applies this to sort of past major shifts that we've had to make. So things like I don't know, solving water problems, or different types of solutions that we've had over the time of our evolution, and how engineers are actually the ones who make stuff happen, who apply certain methodologies, certain scientific principles, etc. Whereas economists operate more like sharman. It's a really interesting episode. And I thought she was really funny. But I wanted to tap into this, because you mentioned that you have a Scoring Matrix, and you had this sort of discipline of how you were going to tackle this problem. Tell me a little bit about those tools that you've been using.

Nick 8:48
Matt is a pure systems engineer, he's got lots of experience. So he brought to the table Venn diagrams and kind of mind mapping exercises where we could really hone down on a particular idea, but also really expand and understand how wide a range if we're looking at our environment, everything that we could possibly think of regarding the environment to make sure that the stories, made sure they link consistently back to what we wanted to do. I suppose moving a bit forward on from once we captured the idea, we had no idea how to write books. We are all engineers, we prefer maths over English. I'm sure Matt will agree. And we decided to try and design it. So we had no idea how to rhyme. So we went to some bookshops. So we spent four months basically writing up all the books that we could find the best rhyming books. And then we did some pattern analysis and sort of book structure and syllable counts on all of the rhyme such that we could then try and find our own winning formula. And yeah, that was a really fantastic way for us to learn because we were then able to sort of critique our work as we went along with some form of confidence that if we kept that formula, we will have something at the end we'd be happy with.

Katherine Ann Byam 10:01
Oh my god, I've never heard of someone writing a book using a mathematical algorithm. You sound like my partner who's a data scientist. Let's go into a bit about the journey. So in terms of conception to production, you talked about the four men sort of doing the research and background. But I think doing an illustration and children's book takes a bit longer than that. So tell us about that journey from conception to production.

Matt 10:24
Yeah, so the illustrations were a funny one. Really, the original plan was to do everything off of our own backs. If we needed to learn a new skill, learn a new piece of software, find something new, we would do it ourselves. illustrations, when we first tackled illustrations were like, right, okay, let's, let's have a go ourselves. So we did actually do some drawings ourselves. And I think I bought like digital, like art pads that you can get to plug into your computer for, I bought two of them, one for me, and one for Nick and John sort of share between them. So we could have a go at digital artwork, and we produce some pictures. But it takes so long, it's such a like if you haven't been doing it and the hours that you have to put in to master it and to get great at it just weren't good enough. And it didn't really live up Nick, did it to our expectations, we had a picture in our head of what it should look like. And then when we tried to draw it, it was appalling. It was abysmal. So we went through like looking at different illustrators. So we just sort of, we wanted to choose a style. So we had a couple of friends who are into illustration. And I have a friend of a friend that I talked with, and we did a couple of sort of meet and greets, and, oh, here's our idea. Draw, what do you think this would look like? And it didn't quite work out, letting the artist sort of just finding an artist and letting them create it. So we decided to trawl the internet basically for styles that we liked. So we almost did a bit of a, not a Scoring Matrix, but we assessed and evaluated what it was we liked about different types of illustration, and different colour palettes and things like that. And we we came together and we sort of chose, it's really difficult to find a common style that we all liked between the three of us. But we had some like ideas that we thought yeah, it needs to be bright. It needs to be detailed. We like the detail it needs to be digital art not sort of natural art, like drawn. And then, Nick, through hours of trawling the internet, found a lady in Georgia, in the country, Georgia. And we reached out to her, we had a look at her website. And it was fantastic. And then I don't know how many months you spent Nick trying to bend her arm into taking on our project.

Nick 12:57
Six months, got turned down four times.

Matt 13:01
So yeah, we were persistent. And we finally got her on contract to do the first one. And, yeah, we couldn't have been happier in terms of how she visualised Scout. Lots of what you see in the illustrations is actually in the first book, especially is coming from us. So we have designed what it should look like in the perspective. And then we sort of do a really naff pencil sketch, and then send it to the illustrator. And then she does a better pencil sketch, we sort of back and forth on that. And then she does a colour digital image that's sort of blocky, so we know what colours she's going to use. And then when we're happy with that, she will then do the full detailed drawing like, over 40,000 brush strokes per picture. Basically, there's hundreds of 1000s of brushstrokes digital brushstrokes in the book. The second book, we've let her have a bit more creative flair, let her do her own thing a bit more. We've got our working relationship going. But the interesting thing is we've never physically spoken to her. So Nick does it all through Facebook Messenger. So yeah,

Nick 14:18
Hundreds and hundreds of texts a day. But we we do also to add to that we've got a really detailed kind of storyboard description. So down to almost exactly what the characters are kind of like doing, their kind of like expressions, easter eggs, and because we design and wrote all three books first, we were then able when we came to the illustrations to think we're way ahead and be able to basically make references to each book throughout each book. So hopefully when we have our second book out, people will certainly see and start spotting those kin of easter eggs and kind of correlations between them.

Katherine Ann Byam 14:55
That is brilliant though and the illustrations are absolutely wicked. So for my listeners, if you really want to go check out these books, they are awesome. They're fantastic visual content as well as, you know, reading content. So let's move to some of the critical reviews you've received so far. So I know that you're working with schools, and you're having some some different types of collaborations with with education facilities and buddies. What has been sort of the feedback you're getting and what's garnered the most interest?

Nick 15:25
We've had, we've had a bit of a yeah, getting feedback from, our perspective, who are not authors is quite tricky. And it's kind of hard to take, I think we first sent our scripts out to some librarians who literally tore them apart. And said they didn't rhyme, said, why have you got a poison dart frog as a friend and kind of really hit us back and we were going like, we just kind of too close to this. And maybe we can't see that it's any good. But then we tested it a lot with schools and kids and fundamentally, like kids love it. They love finding Vinnie, they love rhyming. And that's kind of why we chose rhyming, because we it's such a powerful tool when it's done right. And yeah, and obviously, you've seen the illustrations, they're just, you know, so essential to have good illustrations, like I've just actually applied for the Guinness World Records to see if they will actually take it as a, or consider it as a world record for the most digital brushstrokes in a book and trying to credit Ann. And because I couldn't see it on their website. So I thought we have to go for it because it's, yeah I think there's 483,000 brushstrokes, in it and it took 11 months full time to illustrate. It's just a piece of absolute stunning work.

Katherine Ann Byam 16:32
Yeah. Wow. That's incredible. And what have been the reactions from kids? So let's, let's ask Matt, this one,

Matt 16:39
They've been really good. In general, we've done quite a lot of virtual book readings, to schools. And we've started doing like physical book readings, now we've been to a number of schools physically. And we were down in Plymouth a few months ago, or a couple of months ago for Plymouth children in poverty, where that charity donated our books to all the schools. And we went round for World Book Day and read to various schools and then did a litter pick at the end of the day. And we read to different age ranges as well. Year one, two and three normally, are the classes that we read to in primary. But yeah, generally the children have had positive feedback, especially if you engage them on the pictures like if they find they've got Vinny to find on every page, like the poison dart frog, and also the message we've got in the back of the book. And each book will have like a glossary. It's like a description of questions that you can ask about the topic of the book. So it allows after you've read the book to really explore the message and the action that Scouts trying to get everyone to take. My own children personally, have been fantastic. Before we had the book, like physically, they liked it, and they went along with it. And then as soon as you have a physical book, it's great to have them say, like I said, on our bookshelf at home, and it's great when I pick it.

Nick 18:00
We also want to add further to that we've had a number of kids basically dress up as Scout for World Book Day, which was incredible. And we get basically sent posters all the time and pictures of basically kids, you know, taking action and actually joining Scouts team and and actually litter pickingin. And yeah, we've got from an educational perspective, we've got so much like material coming in from schools. It's just fabulous to see.

Katherine Ann Byam 18:21
That's incredible. So is Scout going to become a Disney character anytime soon, Nick.

Nick 18:27
Yes. I basically, I think, from our perspective, we wanted her to be as world widely recognised as Dora the Explorer, but also kind of had that Captain Planet feel, which was kind of a cartoon back in the day, that really sort of was a positive role model. Instead of all the stuff we see now just we just kind of like always fighting and sort of we want we want to see some more positive action. Yeah, once the three books are out, we've got great ambitions. And we'll certainly be pushing it under the noses of people to see if they would like to consider it as cartoons, hopefully, or other things like that.

Katherine Ann Byam 19:02
Now, this is great. I do think you have that potential. So like, really good going, guys. So how are you juggling all of this with your day jobs?

Matt 19:12
Not gonna lie. It's quite tough. We both work full time. So five days a week, we don't work four days a week and have the odd day to dedicate to it. Obviously, I have two small children. I've also moved into a house that was empty for 11 years before we moved in. So it's got a lot of work that needs doing to it. So Nick does a fantastic job at keeping the momentum on the project going his energy is what what keeps us going really, I only step in when Nick's energy drops a little bit and he needs a little help himself. I try and step in to help with that. But yeah, it is tough is tough. We used to every We used to meet up every Friday afternoon. And then when the pandemic happened, obviously we couldn't meet physically and then meeting virtually just isn't quite the same. And then now I've moved out of Bristol. I am not as close to Nick to just, on an odd evening, just meet up. So, yeah, we're looking to meet up physically more, but it's yeah, dedicating that that time really don't know if you've got anything to say on that, Nick.

Nick 20:22
Yeah, it is extremely tough. I'm sympathetic with Matt and John's sort of situations with the young kids. We've all got really busy jobs with, you know, big teams, that some of us lead I even had to move home for two years, back to my parents to fund the project, which has been extremely difficult. But yeah, ultimately, like all things, for persistence, you've got to just find energy. But like, if things don't work, like it's acceptable to sort of have those low moments, I'll be sprinting and then the mat sort of bolster me up or when I'm on my lows. But we're certainly looking to sort of get people more involved we're sort of looking to get, let's say, a third engineer back involved a new drummer, let's say the ambition sort of project manage and give me that energy that I need. Yeah, I suppose when you reach a goal, when you've actually published something, it's fantastic. And it kind of the wheels come off then. And it's, it's just trying to make sure that you grind out it's so tough with the day job.

Katherine Ann Byam 21:16
I know what you mean, you touched on this probably before we started recording, but I just want to, you know, put that in front of my listeners as well. But you started as three and and now you're sort of two and a half. Tell me a little bit about that.

Matt 21:29
Yeah. So like I said, when we started in 2018, there was the three of us, Nick, John and I, and we all had the same energy, the same input, we were still, we were keen to make this project a success and make it happen. And we were having a lot of fun. I can't remember what year it was, Nick. But we, it was getting to the crunch point of having to form a business rather than just do it as a as a hobby. And that commitment. And like Nick had a real drive and ambition to make this go, to make this go really far. I was sort of in between John was just happy coming up with ideas and dreaming, that it could be a big thing, but not actually necessarily doing something to make it happen. That sounds a bit harsh, but he'll own up. It's like the commitment is high. And it was we had a lot of discussions together when we were forming the business about how are we going to split it who's going to be responsible for what, what are we going to do. And John was just honest with us and said that he was happy to be involved in helping write books and be part of the story. But in terms of the other stuff around it that we were doing. He wanted to do other things with his time. And he was just had a newborn baby as well. And similar sort of house renovation things. He's now gone part time as a stay at home dad. So who knows? He might find some time, but I doubt it.

Nick 22:57
Yeah, I think we actually had, so there's multiple times where we sort of had to sort of reflect on how we were driving it forward. It's hard to sort well, with one person having a vision, bringing everyone along equally. And it caused not any not resentment, but it kind of did cause some form of resistance, because as we were trying to sort of take this forward, we had to have a look kind of like my leadership style to see whether if it was my leadership style, which was causing it say energy to sort of like lower, and whether or not other guys could step up. And I've really like, take my hats off to the guys, we've done really well to be able to manage those conflicts and come out the other side. And, and like Matt said, John, pretty much was just being fantastic and honest, you know that he understood what he wanted from the project, which made things super easy in our first objective was always, whatever we do, we must remain friends after the end of this. And that sort of still is embedded in us really, we need to make sure that that's the last reller.

Katherine Ann Byam 23:58
That's brilliant. And thank you for sharing. And I know that, you know, it's probably tough to sort of experience this and go on the journey that you're going on with so many big dreams and goals. And you know, working with friends, it's there's always tension. There's always creative abrasion, as they call it when you're coming up with creative projects as well. And yeah, so kudos for learning how to manage that. And you know, bringing everyone along till the end. So my next question is going to be what does growth look like for you guys? So we've already touched on sort of the Disney books. So what's immediately next in line for Scout?

Nick 24:36
So we've got three books. So that's where the second book is almost published. And then we've got, we've managed to secure the illustrator for the third book, which is just amazing. What we started, what we wanted to try and do as each book was designed such that we could have this educational resource but also trying to encourage taking action. And we then decided that we wanted to partner with people that were taking action. And to make sure that that message was coherent throughout. And what we want to do is we want to set up charities, that the books can actually fund and we can apply for different funding to the charity that we then can support those kinds of causes that are in the books. There's so many amazing people out there dedicating their time and volunteering to litter picking. They're inspirational for me. And same with with bees with partner colonise, they pitcture dreams where we want to get the book into every school in the UK. So that's number one priority. And we're sort of talking to lots of big organisations to understand whether they would like to participate in that for their social sort of responsibilities within the communities, I really wouold like the idea of basically creating resource sheets that are free for schools to download, because we're currently encouraging STEM because Scout's a problem solver, what we really want to do is be able to use the imagery of Scout as a scientist, as an engineer, as a mathematician. So when the kids see that positive role model, they might then look at maths and go, Oh, wait a second, I could do this too. So we're working with STEM quite closely around the country really, and basically trying to look at different opportunities where we can create different resource sheets. And then globally, I'd love to be able to do that and tailor like curriculums in different countries with those kind of resource sheets. And really grow with partnerships, really. So there's so much to do. There's so much to do.

Katherine Ann Byam 26:21
If for some reason I had a really important listener on this programme, in terms of a big company that you might want to collaborate with. Who would that be?

Nick 26:31
Oh, we've approached quite a few friends of the earth we wanted to sort of approach them to start off with because they had a fantastic bee saver kit. And it was a kind of everything that we wanted to create, which they already had. So we would love to partner with them, especially with the book that we've got which is about the bees, that would just be the perfect partnership. Yeah, well, I suppose we're not really focused on any particular one. It's kind of like, you know, how can we work with, you know, create a good relationship that sort of promotes Scout but also helps other people with their organisation? So, Matt, have you got any?

Matt 27:05
Well I don't know if, like Chris Packham from Spring watch, or David Attenborough foundation would listen to your podcast. But our third book is about loss of habitat of like animals, specifically UK, endangered animals, and how we can help take action to improve the habitats of local animals and recognise the problems that with having astroturf grass and things what that brings to, to our local wildlife. And yeah, it'd be great to be able to have even a testimonial from, from any of those guys, I'd love to go on spring watch.

Katherine Ann Byam 27:50
That's brilliant. So I want to ask another question. And this is more to do with our education systems as a whole. And like, I know, this is a really fun project. And it's a very engaging one. It's very problem solver oriented as well. Do you think that the way we educate kids today needs to radically change? And would you like to see more sort of problem solving and sort of situation creation in the classroom?

Matt 28:16
Wow, that's a really tough question. Because we are not teachers. And we have friends like my next door, neighbours, both my next door neighbours are both teachers. And they work incredibly hard at their jobs. And I know how tough it is to be a teacher of the schools that we've been in as well, in terms of what education are they getting, from what I've seen, there's quite a lot of red tape for teachers to be able to, before they actually get round to teaching. And the message, I think the messages are really good in most schools at the minute and they're tackling lots of different issues. And there's so many things that need to be looked at, when you're educating young people, diversity and inclusion, religion, the environment as, health and well being. I don't think it needs to change the actual structure, because I don't know as much about it. But I think more funding needs to go into it to help it be as good as it can be.

Nick 29:11
Yeah, and I think, from what I've seen in schools is there's certainly a really large commitment by schools to sort of have eco committees and get kids engaged early with the environment, which is fantastic. And I think most schools then try and aspire to join eco schools and the green flag sort of award system. And I think I might have to just basically err on what Matt said, and I think it just comes down to funding you know, when we have more funding and more publicity and marketing focus around those subjects. I think that's when you'll start seeing a bigger commitment level and then change hopefully in schools.

Katherine Ann Byam 29:44
If this scenario was that we could not do schools the way we do them. And we had no more funding, you guys are problem solvers, remember that? What would you do, what would you change, how would you reshape it? What would you do? a radical question?

Matt 30:02
How would we change the educational system? Right? Okay. (Not a biggie!) I think the first thing we'd have to do is figure out what's important, we'd have to identify what's really important. Is it that children need to be able to spout off facts about a specific subject in a exam? Or is it that we need to teach our children how to live their lives as best they can, whilst exposing them to focus areas and like maths or science to allow them to go into those subjects, if they choose? I, that's what I would do. There's so many graduates and things that we see at work as well that come out. And some of them, they can do so many sums and integrate these crazy formula. But can they boil an egg? I don't know. But life skills, I think are so important. And teaching those in schools needs to be something that changes I think.

Nick 31:10
That was a great answer. Yeah, it's leading towards to problem solving, I think problem solvers. And being able to physically basically recreate and learn through activity, I think that's such a big thing. And I think we are actually seeing that in schools, a lot of that, instead of us just creating sort of standard resource sheets, like colouring in, but they're not that teachers are far more open to activities where the kids are getting involved by building sort of spaghetti bridges and trying to work out whether they're gonna hold them or marshmallow spaghetti towers, and it's that creative hands on approach, which I think is definitely more beneficial for children, rather than, like Matt said, you know, having to sort of study for exams, I'm trying to think that's where I would naturally sort of lean towards, but it comes down to again, what matters is what is important.

Katherine Ann Byam 31:57
Yeah, perfect. Thank you. I had to squeeze that out of your story. So how can people engage with Scout and your work,

Nick 32:05
We've got a number of social media platforms, we've got our Instagram account, which is called Stop underscore dropping underscore litter. And that really showcases how incredible our talented illustrator is you can see almost, her penwork and how she does it on an iPad, which is just crazy. Like, I saw pictures of her doing some work. And she's just sat there at a football pitch with her son doing work, which is just crazy. So definitely worth a look there. Our website is where you can basically get the book. And that kind of gives a good overview of who we are, the project and things to come, let's say, and I think we might have some long term kind of ambitions to get the book on other platforms as well, to make it more accessible to people globally, because we've had a huge amount of interest globally, through Facebook groups. But we don't currently send the books abroad. So yeah, we'd certainly love to do that.

Katherine Ann Byam 33:02
Much Any closing words from you?

Matt 33:04
I'd just like to say, thank you very much, Katherine, for having us on. It's, always great to talk about our project and reflect on it. I think we've achieved so much in the time that we've had; been able to dedicate to it. We really believe in the message in our books. And we get so much fulfilment out of like visiting schools and like teaching kids and things like that. It's great. So anything like this, I absolutely loved it. Thank you very much.

Katherine Ann Byam 33:32
Okay, so I'm gonna do something that I that I didn't tell you about before. So it's rapid fire questions. So I'm gonna ask you a question. And you just tell me the first thing that comes to your mind as quickly as you can favourite animated movie,

Matt 33:44
The Little Mermaid?

Katherine Ann Byam 33:45
Would you choose a car or a bike?

Matt 33:48
Bike.

Katherine Ann Byam 33:49
Wind or solar?

Nick 33:51
Wind

Katherine Ann Byam 33:51
Book or audio?

Nick 33:54
Audio

Katherine Ann Byam 33:55
Why do you choose Audio? You have a great illustrated book. Tell me about this one,

Nick 34:00
I just Yeah, like Matt loves reading books. And I've never been someone to read books I've always like, had a different way of learning through audio and visual so that it was more alien for me to write some books. It really was compared to other people. I just generally read textbooks. And that's about as far as my literature sort of aims and ambitions go,

Katherine Ann Byam 34:20
Which really explains why this is going to be a Disney movie at some point. Great, thank you so much, guys.

Matt 34:28
We get asked that question a lot in schools, what book are you reading at the minute and Nicks says; I don't read

Nick 34:36
Systems functional engineering.

Katherine Ann Byam 34:39
That makes sense. Thank you so much, guys, for joining me today.

Matt 34:42
ckThank you very much, Katherine.

Nick 34:44
It's been a pleasure. Thank you very much.

Katherine Ann Byam 34:48
This podcast is brought to you today by the brand new Women in Sustainable Business Awards. That kicks off in 2023. If you're a business owner who's starting a business with principles of sustainability in mind and you want to preserve some lost skills, some handcrafting artisanal work, or you're a social media manager supporting purpose driven brands, or you're creating fashion or something that is relevant to the sustainability and green transformation. You are more than welcome to join us and to get involved in these awards. Check out our group on Facebook women in sustainable business, or follow the podcast where ideas launch on Instagram to find out more

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About this Episode

Marie Lockwood is a teacher and the founder of Rebyl Vybes

Rebyl Vybes - Helping you to enjoy life's little pleasures in a sustainable way.

She and her mom prepare and ship home kits for those looking to start on their eco journey and pamper boxes so that you can indulge in some guilt free pleasure on a subscription model basis.

Sam Pitman is an occupational therapist and the Co-founder of Eco Essex, an online community supporting you on your eco journey.

Tune in to learn more about how they are making an impact.

Subscribe to Where Ideas Launch

Connect with Marie and Sam

Episode Transcript

Katherine Ann Byam 0:00
I've just had the most brilliant conversation with a teacher and an occupational therapist two business owners who are helping you modify your views and your approach to plastic. Let's hear a little bit about why this matters.

Marie Lockwood 0:13
My class, there's 26 children and all 26 children now reuse their water bottles that we used to bring in plastic bottles to school. And over the last couple of years, we've sort of tried our best to change their opinions on that through education and allowing them really to find the facts themselves. So 26 Children now bring a reusable bottles in my class, and added that up, that is something like 5122 plastic bottles saved by my one class in a year. Now, times that by all the classes in the school and all the schools in the country it's huge.

Katherine Ann Byam 0:58
This is season five, the great debates of our times, Season Five will be centred around the great debates. And we will be comparing and contrasting different viewpoints on various topics that are consuming the public discourse at present. The reason I've decided to take this approach is because we, or at least many of us, are losing the skill of debate. And I think this is an essential skill for us all to practice once more. I don't see how we get to the point of saving the world and saving our planet. If we don't know how to discuss our differences. I also think that the solution to most of our challenges is somewhere in the spectrum of views but never a type of extreme. I will be working with guests to curate the content and discuss beforehand, I will understand their positions their areas of genius, and navigate my questions around that so that the conversation is challenging and stimulating without being combative. I hope you enjoy season five of where ideas launch the Sustainable Innovation podcast.

Marie Lockwood is a teacher and the founder of rebyl vybes, rebyl vybes helps you to enjoy life's little pleasures in a sustainable way. She and her mum prepare and ship home kits for those looking to start on their eco journey and pamper boxes so that you can indulge in some guilt free pleasure on a subscription model basis. Sam Pitman is an occupational therapist, and the co founder of eco Essex, and online community supporting you on your eco journey. Hi, Marie and hi, Sam, it's great to have you both on where ideas launch.

Read Lockwood 2:33
Thank you for having us, lovely to be here.

Katherine Ann Byam 2:36
Wonderful to have you both. So I'm going to start with the truth. So I feel guilty every week when I take my trash out. And it's full of recycling and landfill waste. Still, even with my greatest efforts to look at things in my kitchen, look at things in my bathroom, I'm still producing a significant amount of waste to landfill. And even just buying a lot of plastics that are single use in some cases, because I can't seem to find another option. Or it's just not a convenient option. Why do you think it's so hard for people who care about the planet to give up their comforts? And what can help us take the next step? That's the usum.

Sam Pitman 3:20
I think there's so many reasons why we don't want to make those changes. And I think some of it is generations and generation of lifestyle. But you can't just change that overnight, you know, our parents generation the way they were brought up, you can't change that overnight. And I think however many years it takes to, for us to have been moulded in this way, it's going to take time to mould us back out of that way. But also, I think there's so many things about our lifestyle that are just easy and convenient. And the lifestyle we have now you know, in Western society, is so consumer based, but you know, we're driven to also think that things make us happy. So if we buy things that'll make us happy, which it does for the short term, right? But it doesn't give us long term joy, but that's what we believe. And so we believe that these things give us comfort and that we need them. And actually, it's really hard to give up that when that's almost what you've been led to believe - I need these things in my life. I think the other thing as well is it can be scary. So even if you want to change your comforts, sometimes it's easy, well it is, it's easier to conform with others isn't it? Always it's easier to conform than it is to actually stand up for what you believe in and be the odd one out. So I think there's so many challenges that we have to face in order to make these changes.

Katherine Ann Byam 4:39
What do you think was the simplest steps for you to take when you made your initial changes I know with a family as well. You know, it changes the game a lot. So there's a lot more things that you need to balance and juggle.

Sam Pitman 4:53
I think being realistic and not aiming for perfection. So for example, when I did cloth nappies, I used cloth nappies with all of my children. But I won't ever say that I used cloth nappies 100% of the time, because it came with it's own challenges. And I didn't want to go out and like have to carry the loads of cloth nappies that are bigger, it's just loads of these reasons; there's more washing, you know, we've twins I have enough washing to do, I did not want more washing. So, you know, rather than us thinking that we have to be black, and we have or we have to be white, it's okay, just to do your best. So I say I use cloth nappies, I don't know, maybe 75% of the time. And that's all I could manage. And it's the same with anything, it's almost like, you know, to be vegan as well, like, amazing if you can be that dedicated to be fully vegan, and I'm not there yet. I'm not at that stage of my own journey. But I'm trying to eat vegan most of the time, there's, I think, as well, if you can be realistic, and not have to aim for perfectionism, that will be really, a really good goal.

Katherine Ann Byam 4:57
So Marie, tell me a bit about rebyl vybes, because I invited you to the show, because I really like the idea of what you're doing. And I want to get into what was behind starting this brand for you, how you came up with the idea, how you decided to do it.

Marie Lockwood 6:13
So I just like to start by saying, I totally agree with Sam starting to make changes any way that you can. And being realistic with them is absolutely one of the most fundamental things you can do because I am not a perfectionist. And I don't, I don't want to come on here and portray myself as somebody that is absolutely plastic free. Because I'm certainly not I'm not there either. And it's convenient at times. And in a busy lifestyle. That's sometimes it's a lot's that takes over. I did start rebyl vybes, because of a frustration that I was becoming more and more aware of during lockdown, there was a huge rise in subscription boxes. And probably like Sam said, because you wanted to make yourself feel good. And you bought something nice, cause you couldn't go out of the house, you know, you did something to make yourself feel better. And to get something nice delivered through the post was was great, if that's what you wanted to do. But I was getting more and more frustrated, because so many subscription boxes I was seeing online, were absolutely filled with single use plastic waste from the packaging of them and the contents of them. And I was actually discussing it with my mum. And we were saying, you know, why are people not looking for something different? So we decided at that point that actually, okay, we had an idea why were we just gonna keep discussing it? Why didn't we do something about it? Because if somebody else can start a business up and get lots of sales for all this plastic waste, why can't we do the same for something that's more sustainable, and really, that is where rebyl vybes started. The name itself, which chose rebel as in rebellion. So rebellion against plastic waste, particularly single use plastic waste, and the logo was really created because we live in a very rare location, we're very close to the sea, we're surrounded by the forests, lots of pine forests here, the Merrylands things like that. So the logo, we wanted something that sort of represented us, where we come from, and therefore that's, that's where our actual logo came from. But we do want to provide an alternative. I think getting a gift box through the post is a great idea. Getting a sustainable gift box is an even better idea.

Katherine Ann Byam 8:37
I absolutely agree. I think that receiving any box anything in the mail that's not a bill, there's a lot of excitement, right? It's actually generates a lot of positive energy and to have something that's actually useful that's not going to make you feel guilty. Is really important I guess what I tend to get like people still like giving gifts you know and giving gifts as a nice idea but when you get the 15th tiny bottle of cream that you're never going to use, you know you're going to just lose it in your handbag again, you know versus you know, getting a little package that's biodegradable that you can plant some seeds, you know, something like this, it just changes completely how you feel about that box. So what's inside your subscription box? What's the potential impact to someone like me who wants to sort of cut waste overall? Tell Tell me about your box.

Marie Lockwood 9:31
Okay, so we have two different boxes. We started off with a pamper box. So inside that is a range of different products. They are bath products, beauty products, body creams, soaps, shampoo bars, something nice maybe like a nice, scented bodywash. But everything inside the box is single use plastic free. It's also bought from other small businesses. So it's sourced from within the UK to try to limit the carbon footprint that we have. And also, most of the bottles, for example, the body wash, for example, is glass bottles. So they're reusable, I reuse mine for lots of different things, I would totally say that anything that can be used is included in it. So the boxes we reuse the boxes for school. So I'm a school teacher as well as business owner. So I have a couple of people at school also that buy our boxes and we use them at school for lots of storage. And things such as that. The other box is a new one it is, it started out to be an equal sort of box where each month will be something different. And this is where Sam comes in. So I met Sam, just through a group on Facebook, and we got chatting, and we decided that Sam would be a really good addition to the box. And she was going to be able to provide people with the sort of educational side of things or tips and useful. Hence, she runs her own group successfully. And we thought that, that would be a really good twist on a different type of box. So in our home boxes are a range of different sustainable products that you might have as an easy swap for essential items. And they are really things that you would use in everyday, like scrubbing brushes, reusable Kitchen rolls, things that you might be able to make a really useful equal swap with, they are going to change. Okay, so we we don't want to be in a situation where we're recreating lots and lots of waste. And I think I've quickly learned that, actually, although the idea behind our box was a really good one to start with, it needs to evolve into something better. So instead of having our original idea, which was going to be a different box per month, so ultimately kitchen box, and then maybe a bathroom focus, we're going to change it to actual home kits. So you have a starter kit, and Sam will still be a part of that box, where this kit will set somebody up for an equal journey. So you're going to be able to get a box delivered, which will have lots of different sustainable options. It'll be ideal for if you're maybe for example, if you're moving house, or you're getting your first house, it could be ideal for a student or somebody that wants to start out when more sustainable journey. So that's the way that we're going. And by doing that it also limits any unnecessary waste, because we don't want to be adding to people's purchases and buying multiples of other things when actually, we're trying to do the opposite.

Katherine Ann Byam 12:57
Yeah. And are we allowed to kind of pick and choose what goes into a box every month? Like is that an option?

Marie Lockwood 13:03
At the minute it's not, but it is something that I am looking into. Because what I would eventually like to do is have a selection whereby you can decide whether or not you need certain items, things such as I mean, I have just recently I've started changing as I go, my plastic scrubbing brush that I've had for a long time is out, but not until it was needing to be put out. And now I've got my more sustainable options. So things like that. So yes, eventually, we would like to give options for people to use and choose what they need.

Katherine Ann Byam 13:39
And Sam, what is your contribution to the box. So I know that there aren't many people probably listening to the show who are used to subscription boxes like this, they're probably used to maybe who gives a crap. So they will order the toilet paper and it will arrive every four months or six months or whatever. Or maybe their used to Gusto or HelloFresh to order some food. But what is your contribution from a service perspective to this box? And how does that work?

Sam Pitman 14:06
Well, I mean, I kind of say to people, I'm in the box. I don't have a product in the box, because I don't sell products, but I sell myself in a way that I want to support people I have learned from my own journey and from supporting others and observing others that are making these changes because they are lifestyle changes. And this is, it's about gaining huge lifestyle information to change the way you think about life and you know, the way we live, there's so much to it that actually it can feel overwhelming and daunting for people and you know, that anxiety of like, I do want to do something but I don't know where to start and I don't really have anybody else to talk to about this because, you know, none of my family care about these issues. And so my aim is to support people through mentoring, whether that's one to one mentoring, if they want that tailored support, I come from an occupational therapy background, you see. So I'm very much used to working with people on a one to one basis in order to help people reach their goals. But at the moment, I offer monthly mentoring sessions, which is an idea that I came up with last year. And I wanted to offer that each month that because it's a more affordable option for people because money is, you know, money is important to people, you know, especially at the moment. So the idea is that I can provide support, tips, as well as giving people a community. And I think I've learned so much over the recent years about how important it is to feel part of, and feel connected to, other like minded people. And I try and keep the vibe positive, because this isn't a happy topic, climate change is not a happy topic. But I very much try and keep it as light hearted as I can, when it comes to making sure people end with an action, you know, let's think of something positive you can do. And maybe let's just, let's maybe reflect on something positive you have done this month, because actually, we can always go, Oh, I didn't do very well at that. And I still use loads of plastic, and I still use my car. But again, that's negative. And that's not helpful. So try and keep it positive. And as down to earth and as straightforward as possible. Like, I'm not into complicated words. And things, I just want to make it useful for people that are starting out on their eco journey, really.

Katherine Ann Byam 16:27
That's perfect. And I want to touch on something that you kind of brought up but didn't fully. So you're both collaborating on this. And what I want to say is that a lot of times when you decide to take this journey, whether it be in your personal life, or in a business decision, like you both have made business decisions around this as well. It can feel quite lonely and the decision fatigue, the need to be in integrity with what you're selling, and promoting and stuff like that can can really be daunting. How important is it to have a collaborator, let me start with Marie,

Marie Lockwood 17:03
Really important, I would say I have learned so much from Sam. So I knew a lot of things beforehand, I was really passionate about what I wanted to do, I had a clear idea about why I wanted to do it. And then Sam came along like a breath of fresh air, and really made me think personally about my own life, and what I was doing in it but also looking for my business. And so Sam's really helped me a lot. She's given me sort of a direction. Almost like she's been my personal mentor on this journey as well. And I've joined her groups and know exactly where she's coming from, I know what she does, and how friendly and approachable she is and I knew exactly that she was definitely the right person to collaborate with, we're on exactly the same wavelength. And I feel like she's somebody that offers a real good balance to our business.

Katherine Ann Byam 18:01
And, Sam for you, what has it been like?

Sam Pitman 18:05
Well again, like Marie said, I think when you find somebody you share values with. And you know, you can bounce ideas off each other and support each other. It's really nice, because, I mean, I sit at home for hours a week, on my own on my computer, and I've got so many ideas. I don't know where to start, you know? And yeah, like you said, decision fatigue is like, and so actually the idea of having somebody to share those decisions with and to have conversations with and bounce ideas with people is really lovely. And not just not to feel alone. Yeah, of course, there's financial benefits if you have a successful business, but I don't even think that's why most people do it is because we just genuinely want to make as big an impact as possible. So, you know, you widen your audience, don't you? You know, you can support more people. So I think it's win win. Really?

Katherine Ann Byam 19:00
Absolutely. So, Marie, I'm gonna go back to you. And in terms of the reception of your boxes, so far, what has been the positive sort of feedback and reinforcements in people's behavioural changes that you've seen,

Marie Lockwood 19:15
We have had some really, really lovely positive feedback. Lots of people have commented to say how excited they are when they receive a box. Now, they really look forward to it coming each month, because they don't know what's going to be in it. But they know whatever it's going to benefit, it's going to be something that's going to help a little bit with either self care, or with the other boxes, it would obviously help with a sort of lifestyle choices. They also I hope anyway, that our boxes, inspire people and educate them in some way, shape or form, whether or not it's through Sam involvement in her maintenance sessions or whether or not it just makes them think, you know, I didn't try that before. Maybe, maybe I should try this one now. Because everybody's learning, I'm learning on the journey as much as everybody else is I'm still finding different choices that I can use, I'm still trying out different products, and I'm finding which ones work best for me. So I think it's I'm hoping anyway that our boxes are educating, inspiring and giving a little glimmer of something nice in amongst our busy lives really.

Katherine Ann Byam 20:26
You know, it starts with a spark, right? That's, that's what everyone really says. And when you light that fire, it ripples and ripples after a while, it's similar to me starting this journey where ideas launch as a podcast, when I started it, my aim was to sort of influence my friends, if I'm being honest, like I come from a big corporate background, and you know, all of my friends work in companies who actually have the power to make change, but probably aren't necessarily as passionate about the change. And I wanted to sort of nudge them, right that was my idea behind the podcast to kind of nudge them, let them see that there's, there's possibility not just from a technical standpoint, in terms of, you know, what the great thinkers are doing, and from a business perspective, as well, but also small entrepreneurs, small businesses, people who are just fed up and deciding to do something about it like yourselves, and I think that I didn't know it immediately, because, you know, the initial feedback was great, but then it was like, oh, maybe people aren't listening as much. It's not as big as other podcasts. But today is like, even though it's still a very niche podcast, you know, I have such good feedback, like, the quality of the feedback is just improved and improved. People are really excited to hear these stories, and you know, they really engage in what I'm doing. And it doesn't matter what level they are right from, from the CEOs, to someone who is, you know, just picking up a business for the first time, everyone's excited about what the story and the message is. So I think, definitely, you have to keep going. You have to keep going. And you have to find more ways to collaborate and interact with as many business owners and people as possible. So I'm going to switch to another question now. And there are many who like to challenge the idea of the Sustainable straw and the sustainable toothbrush. So let's explore this a little bit. So I've seen the documentaries of you know, the straws, and in a turtles, turtles throat and you know, getting stuck, etc. Yet, we know that straws aren't the biggest problem in the ocean, right? Like, the actual biggest problem in the ocean is probably the fishing nets. If we really think about it like that, even though the way that we fish the way that commercial fishing is done. Or if we look at things like the toothbrush, typically, we still got plastic in the bristles, right? There's still nothing that we can yet do about that. So what are your thoughts about putting these products together and transitioning to sustainable products? Even knowing that, you know, it's not, it's not fully there, what are your thoughts on that?

Sam Pitman 23:09
I have two views it's like do the stuff that's really easy, that's not going to stress you out and overwhelm you. But also, as you don't stress about all the little things just do something really useful.

Katherine Ann Byam 23:19
Yeah, you know, I see it in two ways as well, I see that making these small changes is symbolic as well. So this is one of the things one of the reasons I'm excited about Marie's box it's like, this is a symbolic, I am making a shift. And every time I go to the bathroom, and I see this wooden toothbrush, or I see my soap dish that's now you know, there when it's little loofa to absorb some of the soap droppings, so that I can reuse that soap that drops off the soap bar, you know, every time you see these things, it's a reminder of what I've committed to, and having them as things that you deal with every day reminds you of that commitment every day. So it's not just about the item itself. It's about what the item represents. I don't know if you share that, Marie?

Marie Lockwood 24:06
Yeah, absolutely. And in my sort of opinion, I think that all change efforts are positive change it's better than no change at all. As I said before, I'm also a teacher. So through education wise, we are really keen to try to turn that sort of tide on the use of plastic with children that we have in our own classes. So anything that we can actually have an impact with so for example, my class there's 26 children in it and I added up the other day that all 26 children now reuse their water bottles that they used to bring in plastic bottles to school. And over the last couple of years we've sort of tried our best to change the opinions on that through education and allowing them really to find the facts themselves. So 26 children now bring a reusable bottle to my class. And when I added that up, that is something like 5122 plastic bottles saved by my one class in a year. Now times that by all the classes in the school and all the schools in the country is huge, absolutely massive. So, in my opinion, one small change, as long as it's a change for the good is better than nothing. And I think I always like to go back, there's a quote that says I am only one said 7 billion people, I love that. And I think that is absolutely spot on hits the nail on the head.

Sam Pitman 25:42
I think what I like about that Marie is that you've not just inspired like one person, though, you've inspired all that whole class, and I'm guessing your whole school, and all of those families. And that's almost where it's bigger, isn't it, because you can start with one thing. That's what I was saying earlier. Like, if I just do that, but never talk about it, I'm not going to have a huge impact. But when one person does it times, you're whole school. And then that those children have inspired all of their parents and all those families, it ends up having this bigger effect.

Marie Lockwood 26:11
Yeah, and children are sometimes the best people to pressure parents, because they nag at you, and they tell you why you should change it. And they're very honest. And they show you the facts and the figures, and they make you feel a bit guilty. So you tend to want to change. So at the minute, as well as my own class, which they are really on board with everything. I've also got another school, further down the country who's also starting out on a plastic free schools journey. So we're going to do a little bit of collaboration, hopefully, so it will spread. And that's the bigger picture that will join the plastic free schools programme. And we'll try and get our message out across as many people as possible.

Sam Pitman 26:59
But I almost think, for most people, that's almost the obvious starting point, isn't it, of like to get them on board is actually making those simple steps because they are easy, and like the subscription kit, you're gonna have like, it's just easy, there's almost another reason to do it. Because you're taking all the pressure off. And it's easy to do that.

Katherine Ann Byam 27:17
That's awesome. I want to switch now to sort of regulation. So I'm going to tell a story before I comment on this regulatory change. So I've been in London last couple of weeks, cat sitting for a friend of mine, and in an area where you know, the families are well off. So at the schools in the neighbourhood, all the cars that were pulling up were Tesla's. Now, one of the reasons I think that is, is that, you know, London has recently introduced this ultra low emission zone, so you have this additional charge, you still have the congestion tax. So there's loads of charges now for having a car for driving around in a car. And that has prompted a wide scale change and switch to electric cars. So this is why a lot of the mums in this neighbourhood are now driving these electric cars. Now, there's a lot of debates. And you know, I have a friend who's been on this podcast, who really talks about the sustainable mobility transition. And we can argue that, you know, maybe they don't need a car, they can just walk with their kids, perhaps that would have been a better switch. But knowing that people have these hard encoded habits, then perhaps electric vehicles are a nice interim shift, and regulation that supports that preserves the economy, and also promotes, the better behaviours for the planet. Now, we know that the UN has recently reviewed its Environment Programme, and recently passed a resolution to deal with plastics throughout its lifecycle, so forcing companies to sort of deal with their plastic throughout the life of the product. How do you see this impacting how business is done today?

Marie Lockwood 29:07
I think that it's a really good thing that's happened, actually, I think that it's gonna make a lot more businesses accountable, and a lot more transparent. Because at the end of the day, we'll reach a point in this time, where it's actually at crisis level, it's, gone beyond what is ever going to be acceptable. And if something doesn't happen now, then there's gonna be a disaster, that's looming ahead of us, really. I mean, I was looking at facts and figures just a few days ago. And even though I knew how bad the plastic production is for our planet, when you actually look into the facts and figures of it, it's absolutely astounding. And the more worrying thing is the forecast and their predictions for what it might become. So for example, I think it was 400 million tonnes of plastic produced at the minute but its potential as to double by 2040 if nothing was to happen, and given that at the minute, we have a huge problem with plastic pollution entering the seas, I think something desperately needed doing. So I think as much as for some businesses, it might be a struggle to make that shift. I think really, in realistic terms, it's the only way forward, because we're heading for disaster otherwise.

Katherine Ann Byam 30:29
And Sam, your views,

Sam Pitman 30:30
One of the things I'm realising is that small businesses especially don't necessarily see how sustainability is relevant to them. If they're not in and they're not selling the toothbrushes or electric cars, it's almost like they can't relate to it. It's not relevant to their business. So I, you know, the more we can do to enforce businesses to do things or follow these policies, I mean, we have to, like Marie said, we, it's kind of we can't be gentle anymore. You know, yes, it is going to have impacts for business. But I almost see as no choice now we have to, these changes have to happen and businesses have to take responsibility for products, you know, the fact that not only 9% of plastic that can be recycled is actually recycled. And that's a crazy figure like that. That's not on, like in theory, like no plastic ever needs to be virgin produce, again, we have enough plastic to make everything. So yeah, I agree that businesses have to start doing more now.

Katherine Ann Byam 31:24
Okay, so I'm gonna move to rapid fire questions to sort of close this out. I'm gonna, alternate between between both of you. And I did not prepare you for this. So I'm gonna with Marie. So my rapid fire question to you is, what's the most transformational sustainability book you've read?

Marie Lockwood 31:48
Oh, my goodness, you really put me on the spot now because my memory is shocking. To be honest, you know, I don't read books are such I read online documents, and probably one of the ones that really hits home to me as one from the United Nations. It's called pollution to solution. And that is full of really good information, facts and figures that support everything that's really behind my business, everything that I strive to try to do, and it really hits home. Why every business needs to change, not just me as a small business, but huge businesses, everybody. You know, it's our responsibility it's everybody's responsibility, because we've all created, we're all we've all created waste. We all do continue to create waste.

Katherine Ann Byam 32:42
And Sam moving to you. What's your favourite documentary? And why?

Sam Pitman 32:46
Oh documentary? Ah, the one that sticks in my mind the most? I've probably watched in the last month is SeaSpiracy. I mean, it was a bit controversial when there was criticisms after it came out, but you know, there's gonna be there's always somebody's gonna say something negative about these shocking facts, I've never actually eaten fish, because I have some kind of random phobia, thing. But if I did, I would never have been able to eat fish again, after watching that. And I like, Katherine, you said something only about actually, the biggest pollution in the sea is actually not the plastic straws. It's the fishing nets. And actually, the devastation from fishing nets I never knew. And that was a real, real eye opener.

Marie Lockwood 33:29
I actually cried after watching that it was horrible, in a really shocking way, but one that I needed to listen to.

Sam Pitman 33:36
Yeah, exactly.

Katherine Ann Byam 33:38
Marie, what's your greatest lesson? In this whole journey?

Marie Lockwood 33:43
My greatest lesson is probably to not strive for perfection. But to know that actually doing something is better than doing nothing and knowing that what I am doing is as good as I can do at this moment in time. And that is, okay. It's, you don't need to be perfect. You know, we all have our flaws. But we're all trying to learn as we go, and we do what we can.

Katherine Ann Byam 34:11
And Sam what's your biggest dream?

Sam Pitman 34:14
My biggest dream? Oh, wow. Well, obviously, just to reverse climate change completely. Obviously, my dream would be if we could keep under this 1.5 degree. You know, heat rise would be amazing. But if I looked at more personal journeys, my role would be about actually feeling like I actually am making a big impact in within Essex and beyond, which is a subjective goal, which I don't know if I can ever achieve. They can't measure it. But yeah, my dream is to have real real impact in Essex to make differences to individuals and businesses to be more sustainable.

Katherine Ann Byam 34:54
Wonderful, ladies, tell my listeners how they can connect with you. Let's start with Marie.

Marie Lockwood 34:59
So you can find me on Instagram under rebyl vybes or via Facebook. Or you can alternatively you can go on and have a look at my website, www dot rebyl vybes.co.uk

Katherine Ann Byam 35:13
And that's vy BS vibes.

Marie Lockwood 35:16
It is it's slightly different, so it's R E B Y L V Y B E S, we had to be very careful when we were looking into trademarks.

Sam Pitman 35:25
And you just wanted to be a rebel and spell rebel, wrong?

Marie Lockwood 35:27
We just wanted exactly that.

Sam Pitman 35:32
Yep, so, yep, Facebook, Instagram. Eco Essex.

Katherine Ann Byam 35:38
Wonderful. Thank you, ladies so much for coming on the show. I know it's late at night. We had to get the kids to bed before before we did this. Thanks so much for spending the time with me. Thanks so much for having us. Yeah, thank you.

This podcast is brought to you today by the brand new women in sustainable business awards that kicks off in 2023. If you're a business owner who's starting a business with principles of sustainability in mind, and you want to preserve some lost skills, some handcrafting, artisanal work, or you're a social media manager supporting purpose driven brands, or you're creating fashion or something that is relevant to the sustainability and green transformation. You are more than welcome to join us and to get involved in these awards. Check out our group on Facebook women in sustainable business, or follow the podcast where ideas launch on Instagram to find out more

072 Transition Engineering

About this Episode

Professor and Chair in Sustainable Energy Transition Engineering at Herriott-Watt University, Susan Krumdieck is also an Author, Podcaster and Documentarian on Transition Engineering. She brings some incredible insights. Before this recording, Susan said to me, the interesting thing emerging from her sustainable energy journey is that the role of engineering in the economy and policy is huge and not well understood, even by engineers. Today she wants us to dive into the underbelly of the economy where the engineers drive the engines of progress, and destruction… Sounds ominous!

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Episode Transcript

Katherine Ann Byam 0:01
I just had the most fascinating conversation with Susan Krumdieck, about transition engineering versus economics, and how the two play out against each other, and what we can expect to see in the near future, listening to these sound bites.

Susan Krumdieck 0:14
The third thing that I would say economists have got wrong is that they are fulfilling a natural role in human civilisation. But pretending that they're being scientists, they just have too much power in that role. And that role is the role of the shaman

Katherine Ann Byam 0:31
Susan goes on to explain,

Susan Krumdieck 0:33
of clearing some land digging, a mine, doing some productive stuff, you can now do at scales that are going to rock the boat. And so that timeframe within which we've unleashed that is really only since the 50s. And it's very quickly become our story because our shamans have said, Oh, look how clever we are. And therefore we don't question, even though it's only been this one generation out of 1000s of generations, that has created this ability, and liability.

Katherine Ann Byam 1:09
This is season five, the great debates of our times, Season Five will be centred around the great debates. And we will be comparing and contrasting different viewpoints on various topics that are consuming the public discourse at present. The reason I decided to take this approach is because we, or at least many of us, are losing the skill of debate. And I think this is an essential skill for us all to practice once more. I don't see how we get to the point of saving the world and saving our planet. If we don't know how to discuss our differences. I also think that the solution to most of our challenges are somewhere in the spectrum of views, but never a type of extreme. I will be working with guests to curate the content and discuss beforehand, I will understand their positions, their areas of genius, and navigate my questions around that so that the conversation is challenging and stimulating without being combative. I hope you enjoy season five, where I just launched the Sustainable Innovation Podcast. Professor, and Chair in sustainable energy transition engineering, at Heriot-Watt University, Susan Krumdieck, is also an author, podcaster and documentarian on transition engineering. She brings some incredible insights. Before this recording, Susan said to me, the interesting thing emerging from her Sustainable Energy journey is that the role of engineering in the economy and policy is huge and not well understood, even by the engineers. Today, she wants us to dive into the underbelly of the economy where the engineers drive the engines of progress and destruction. Sounds a bit ominous. I think, Susan, welcome to the show.

Susan Krumdieck 2:50
Well, thanks for having me.

Katherine Ann Byam 2:51
So you may not know this, but one day, I think it was in February 2021, I was watching 'Living the Change' a documentary you were in. And I thought, wow. I found you in another one as well. And I thought, Okay, I need to get to Know this person, like, where is she hanging out? So I followed you on LinkedIn. And that's brought us to today.

Susan Krumdieck 3:11
Oh, great. It was worth going on to LinkedIn, then.

Katherine Ann Byam 3:16
No, I do love LinkedIn as a platform to meet interesting people with lots of insights. And usually it's people who like to share their work. So it's great to meet you. So first, for the uninitiated, please, could you explain what you mean by transition engineering?

Susan Krumdieck 3:31
Right? Well, I do understand that a lot of people aren't really that familiar with engineering at all. It's true that when they do surveys of who people trust, engineers come out right at the top. So we might not know what they do. But we're glad they do it. And we trust them to do it. And so if you think about the other types of engineering that you might have heard of: railway engineering, or naval engineering, mechanical, civil, what engineering usually means is making THAT work, whatever it is. So right now, we're at a point in time where our economy, our society, all of the systems that we depend on, and the way we depend on them, will transition to what they will be in the future. So we've had 70 years or so of a kind of pattern that we've gotten used to, and that pattern now changes. And so the engineering of that change, making the change work, is what transition engineering is, and probably you don't want to know, many more details than that.

Katherine Ann Byam 4:39
Well, it's interesting because I liked your work, because you took some really hard things and combine them with some things that generally are not hard at all. So what I mean by that is economics, and the economists, have come up with a number of things that actually don't make a lot of real world sense, no offence to economists, but it's kind of true, right? So there are a lot of, there's a lot of assumptions inside of economics. And those assumptions aren't necessarily true things, yet we base a lot of modelling on them. And I think you're right. Like when I followed your work, I realised, well, yeah, this is what actually made this stuff work. So it's interesting to kind of get into that. So what I want to ask you is, what are your views on what the economists might be getting wrong at the moment? And if you could possibly limit it to three things. I know that can be difficult, and if we can start there.

Susan Krumdieck 5:33
Right, well, the fundamental premise of economics, when I compare that to engineering, throughout all of engineering, we start with fundamentals of physics, or chemistry, statics dynamics, we model those fundamentals with mathematics. And then we use those mathematical models, usually in a limited and understood way. I mean, we know we just have a rude facsimile of something. But we use those models carefully to inform ourselves about how things would work that are hard to understand. And then we build and test and try out ideas and test again, and test, compare our model to the data test and test and test, the one thing I have never seen an economist do is test their model against the data. So that's the number one thing that's wrong; is that they just don't ever have that self inquiry. All right, now, what they have developed, that is quintessentially wrong, is what they call time value of money. Okay, time value of money means that we discount money in the future, because the price of things will go up, our income will go up, our economy will grow. Therefore, the future money is worth less than it is today. And it's a very simple little equation they used but when you apply it, what happens is that you take your hands, you put them over your eyes, and you can't see the future anymore, you become future blind. And yes, that is how we are running full tilt into things that we don't want to go into, because we're being purposefully future blind. All right. Now, you said three things. And I guess the third thing that I would say economists have got wrong, is that they are fulfilling a natural role in human civilisation. But pretending that they're being scientists, or pretending that they have actual information. Now the natural role that they're fulfilling, if that role didn't always exist, from probably the first time more than just a family group got together, then maybe we would be okay. But they just have too much power in that role. And that role is the role of the shaman. So you have people who have experience. the wise people, the people who've been around for a while, you have the people who have power, and they want to make decisions, and they're sort of always the shaman, trying to read the tea leaves or look at the entrails of the bird or through casting the rune stones or whatever, in a way to give the confidence in the decisions. The fact that these shamans exist, it's just part of society. It's not wrong that they exist. But the economist taking on that shaman position and claiming that they actually do know something, and it isn't just for the comfort of divining the you know, what the spirits want, or what the ancestors want, or what the omens are, that's where we've gotten into a bit of trouble. So there; three things.

Katherine Ann Byam 9:04
It's really interesting, you touched on something there that I think is fundamental to our challenge, right, which is that the economy will grow. Right. So there's always this infinite assumption of growth, which we now know, cannot continue the way it has. Well, you know, technically, we've known this for a long time. But we've now all kind of owned up to this fact. Yet, we still see this continuous assumption basis. I mean, every time I talk to my pension advisors, they tell me the same thing. You know, it's just a correction. There's so many times that I've heard these these kinds of rules. And I think, what in your mind needs to fundamentally change right now? And how can we support the transition that we want to support?

Susan Krumdieck 9:56
Right, well, what needs to change right now is the story of us. And I think we are seeing it change, maybe not in the most productive ways, in a lot of places, but the old story isn't working anymore. And so new stories will arrive, we will write our new narratives. So I would like to be right about those new narratives and not just destructive, because I can see the old way breaking, right? I mean, it feels good to be in on the smashing, you know, they have those things where they give people; for $1, you can get a baseball bat and smash the computer or something, feels great. But we have to clean up the mess when we're done. So, the narrative of who we are, I know, again, that throughout most of humanity, who we've been, has always been a really important part of our story. And we do love our historical tales and our movies about past events and that, but that's not a very deep look at why we're the way we are. And when I look, I think we need 100 year perspective of the past, because 100 years ago, most of the technology that we like to think we're very clever, and we came up with was already come up with so we're not that clever. But the looming global issues that we have now weren't actually a problem at that time. Inflation wasn't really the way we think of it. The banking system didn't work the way it does now, and what happened was, of course, two giant world wars that changed industry and they changed engineering primarily. How did they change engineering? Number one, some women came into the workplace and had to take over at a time when the companies that existed, that were going to make the machines that were going to win the war, had to cooperate. Before that, before World War Two, they did not have to cooperate. And so you had women and the requirement to cooperate and you've got sort of a change in engineering, which involves standardisation. So that, you know, one company could make all the bolts for 10 companies, equipment, and you would standardise what those bolts were so that they would work because you had to do that. All right. And once you've got standardisation, you can cook a planet, no question, you can level the rainforest. You know what was going on before of clearing some land digging a mine doing some productive stuff you can now do at scales that are going to rock the boat. And so that timeframe within which we've unleashed that is really only since the 50s. So one generation, and it's very quickly become our story because our shamans have said, Oh, look how clever we are. And therefore we don't question even though it's only been this one generation out of 1000s of generations, that has created this ability and liability.

Katherine Ann Byam 13:14
Yeah, that's a really, really clever way to put it. In your working research what countries are you considering to be taking a leading role in terms of how we need to shape change?

Susan Krumdieck 13:27
Right. Well, I'm going to answer that in a funny way. Because one of the things that I have done, in looking at this narrative that we're trying to shape, and understanding we're at a transition point, we are now going to go in a different direction. And we're going to figure out how to do that. And for humanity, it's going to be a moment of evolution. Right? The cultural anthropologists tell us that every time we learned a new thing, like to throw a spear or to write, it actually changed us physiologically and in what we could do and and how we related to each other. And so we're going to have one of those moments of evolution now, where we learn how to correct ourselves, when we're going in a wrong direction. We correct and if you think about cultures, for the, you know, 10s of 1000s of years before the reset era, correction wasn't a thing you would do lightly because probably you were doing the right thing at the moment. Right, you have traditional ways they've always worked the world around you doesn't change fast enough that you need to correct anything. And so that's why I think it is a moment of evolution. So what I've done in my research was to go and work with people throughout the world that I could find, who will not have to correct and so I want to know, are there any roots of corrective techniques or corrective disciplines within people who have traditional economies or traditional ways of doing things. And you can imagine there aren't that many people like that, because colonialism had quite a large reach. But I think I've learned some really important things about this correction. And it is aligned with the transition engineering methodology, the seven steps that we take. So that's really good news. And then the economics of traditional people, I probably won't get a journal paper accepted. Because I'm not an economist, therefore, I can't really write about economics. But the traditional economics is really important, that we learn these things. And traditional economics is funny, because it's not really about growth, it's about balance. And it's about balancing what you would like to do. So new things, new, whatever, that's fine. There's nothing wrong with it, these people aren't stuck in the stone age or anything. But they always balance that against survival. And survival depends on four things. One, having surplus bio capacity, there's way more natural capacity, more nature than we could ever use, that's required for survival. Number two, having way more social capacity than we could ever use. So that always everybody in your society has enough to give that everybody has enough. So the ability to take care of children, the capacity to take care of old people the capacity to help build each other's houses, this is part of survival. Another thing you have to have is equal access to resources. So you can't shut off some people from being able to have fish now from being able to fish. And that doesn't mean that it's required that people all have the same that's not true at all, you know, there's, merit based things and people who work hard to have more or whatever, but you don't limit some people's access to the basic needs. And that's an interesting thing, because our economy doesn't work that way. And the final thing is autonomy. You have to have the freedom to do what you need to do today. So you have to have abundance of freedom, of the ability to give abundance of equity of access, and abundance of nature. And that's survival, everything else you balance against that. So all we need is evolution and rediscovery of our roots, probably.

Katherine Ann Byam 17:40
Yeah. And do you think that there are some good examples, perhaps small subsets of examples where we can actually see this playing out today? I mean, I know that we still have some tribes. And I don't know if you've studied any of those tribes, in the Amazon, for example, or even some indigenous societies, but who you think are really leading in this space now?

Susan Krumdieck 18:02
Yeah, Pacific Islanders, they sort of do that. Like I said, a lot of times people don't end up getting a choice, right, somebody comes and you know, colonises them and sorts them out. But Pacific Islanders are, well, okay, they're not in great shape because of climate change. But you know, they have ways to take care of themselves and each other and so there's that. And then, in Guyana, of course, Guyana just got oil discovery. So I think they're going to struggle now with the resource curse. And here in Orkney, where I'm working, you know, they're really struggling with the transition, but the roots of how to go about, you know, they just say sort yourself out here and work with your neighbours to sort themselves out. I don't think it's sort of a hippie commune sort of idea. But it's just sort of a, just do what needs doing, figure out what needs doing and do it. You know, you asked about countries and I don't think that's the scale at which we see things going the right way. It's more the local level from the ground up, where we see people starting to sort themselves out.

Katherine Ann Byam 19:27
No, that's interesting. I read Kate Raworth's Doughnut economics, which really captures what you're saying, right? So fundamentally, you know, we should be living within a ring, no one should fall through the middle of the doughnut in terms of basic necessities. And we shouldn't be going beyond the parameters of the doughnut in terms of, you know, those real scale tilting events, yet, we still are moving very fast toward some of these scale tilting events. So what do you see as the job of the economist, sorry, of the engineers now?

Susan Krumdieck 20:02
Okay, now this is where it probably a lot of people who might listen to this podcast have kept up with the climate change situation. Maybe they watched huge swaths of the Amazon burning, you know, the news isn't good all around us, it's not great. And so, you know, it can be really hard to have faith. And so you start to have faith in things that maybe are fantastical, and that doesn't get us anywhere, either. So having faith that there is a way; this is a thing that my son, when he was young, really asked me for, he said, Mom, you know, the sustainable engineering, is that going to work? And that's what I was doing at the time, sustainable energy, sustainable engineering. And I actually, because my little kid asked me, I had to take a pause and ask myself, and it is a sad fact that no amount of more sustainable overcomes the unsustainable. And so when I told him, I didn't think that the chances were great. He just said, Well, Mom, you have to figure out what is the way to do it then, you have to do something. So after a lot of thinking, I sort of had a simple idea, which is, well, if unsustainability is the problem, then maybe we work on THAT. And that is bloody simple. And when I started doing research to see okay, does anybody else see this because it seems like one of those inventor moments where something so simple and obvious, just pops out because it is there in the future. And you, you're like, Oh, I'm the first person to see it. That's the inventors moment. And I'm looking around, and I'm not actually seeing it, except I'm finding the same revelation happening throughout history. And the first really big one is in 1911, when a group of engineers when they weren't even a group, it was just some engineers decided to do their job of making goods in factories, but not kill the workers. And that was the beginning of safety engineering. And the trajectory that the industrial technical enterprise was on at that time, was just chewing through human bodies and customers to the things people were making weren't safe for the customers either. And the waste, of course, they were producing wasn't safe for anybody. And so you know, this idea that engineers can do the job that they're good at, and do what society requires just because we call it now duty of care. And safety was just the first one then there was natural hazards engineering, and sanitation engineering, and waste management, engineering and air pollution engineering. And toxic waste management engineering. And every one of those comes after a major disaster in that field. So we can correct. And when these corrections occur, they can occur quite quickly. They're usually pretty simple ideas, the change, which is just well, let's prevent what's preventable. And so that's where I get my hope is that these corrections have happened before. Transition engineering is the next one. And it can happen from within engineering. So we don't even need politicians, none of these previous ones have required politicians to get to get them started. Once they got started, and they were working, then the politician said, yeah, you have to do that. So it's corrective disciplines within engineering, they also are often across all fields. So that's what we're doing transition engineering, it requires maybe a half day of a class, and you too, can become a transition engineer. And the reason it gives me hope, besides that the pattern shows that it should work is that engineers are less than 2% of the workforce. So it isn't like you have to convince people, you don't have to convince people or consumers or politicians or even economists, you just have to convince the few logical people. So there's hope in that, I think,

Katherine Ann Byam 24:44
I think that's a brilliant way to sum up how this has actually played out in the past and make it clear to people, I mean, we're talking about energy transition, and that's the biggest buzzword of the moment. Right. And, you know, we see what's been happening to prices. Where we are. So in Scotland, in the UK, where we're both of us are based right now, what are your thoughts on how that's going? And you know, the decisions that are being made? Do you feel like we're taking into consideration all that we need to, at this point in time, what gives you hope there?

Susan Krumdieck 25:18
Well, energy transition is a funny thing, because in my research group, we did start using that term quite a while ago. And to us, it was pretty clear what it meant. I had already done research on basically all of the renewable energy sources and smart grids and efficiency of buildings. So all the energy engineering, but energy transition is again about taking on the unsustainable. So you know, there, we aren't in the position we're in right now, of using 100 million barrels a day of oil, and putting that much carbon into the air plus the gas plus the coal, same, you know, about the same amount of carbon for each, we are not in that position, because we don't have enough windmills. We're in that position, because we use too much oil. And so laser focus, bring it in, it's about the oil and oil is how you get gas and coal. So you know, oil is the the primary big one, but also gas and oil. So we use about 80% too much of those. And that question of simply okay, how would I downshift 80% of what is used right now in whatever it is I'm doing as an engineer, and how do I help end users of the system that I am going to change to understand and benefit from that change? There you go. There's transition engineering right there.

Katherine Ann Byam 27:02
No, that's brilliant and really clear. So what projects are exciting you at the moment that you're working on either with Heriot-Watt or as an advisor,

Susan Krumdieck 27:12
Right, well, at Heriot-Watt, I've been real busy. The last couple of years that I've been here setting up something called an island centre for net zero. All right, well, the world needs another centre, like it needs a hole in the head. There are plenty of centres. But I went ahead and took this island centre for net zero because I saw this as the toehold for that beginning of transition engineering, we don't need another centre for something. We need 100 transition engineering courses, research groups, you know, just the professional organisation, we just need to get on to training and executing the transition engineering work. So I've got a transition engineering course that will be delivered online. And that will be starting in August. That global association for transition engineering is based in the UK, even though it does have almost 100 members in New Zealand, because that's where we started. But it's legal entity is in the UK. And at Heriot-Watt University, the president of the university, read my book. And he got it he's an engineer as well. And so the buy in from Heriot-Watt university that you know, what we are one of the key universities that really brought the coal age into existence, and then the oil age and then the gas age, that's what we've been good at. And so we want to be there, we want to be that first place where transition, the energy transition gets rolled out, and how it's going to work. And we are working with the oil and gas industry on that proposition, because that's how it's going to happen. So you know, I think that's what's got me excited it's just really, you know, like, at the beginning of the race, when Usain Bolt puts down his foot there on the block, and the other ones back behind him, and you know, it's gonna, it's all on it's gonna happen. That's where we're at here. Yeah. So that's quite exciting.

Katherine Ann Byam 29:27
It's really important work. And thank you for giving of yourself to do this work. The other question that I wanted to tap on, is this whole conversation about space and space travel and, you know, creating this alternative of Mars. What are your thoughts on this?

Susan Krumdieck 29:47
All right, so somewhere back at the beginning of the conversation, we said we're at a point where the story of us is starting to waver, right, our 1950s story of us as you know, building giant cities and going to the moon. And you know, that story of us, it's starting to waver, it's falling apart, it's not working the way we thought it was going to. And so the new narratives start to come in. And in this era, we are going to get the age of silly, okay? It's gonna happen. No question about it. And, you know, I don't know, we're looking for that new story. And so somebody with a story can always pop in, and tell us a whopper. And it'll have our attention for a while, and it'll distract us from the problems of the day. But yeah, be aware of that, that we're going to have a lot of distractions. And in my book, if people care to get it, I use sort of these funny tales, these stories, to depressurise the situations we're in by by using these little stories, and then I've seen people be able to then pop back to that story, to just say, okay, look, I get that we're in that situation again. So the one that sort of fits, this is the emperor's new clothes. In a kingdom, where things have gotten out of control, and the king now thinks he has to have a spectacular new outfit every hour, there's going to be some nonsense merchants turnout. You can bet.

Katherine Ann Byam 31:21
Okay, Susan, tell everyone how they can get your book and stay in touch with you.

Susan Krumdieck 31:25
Well, my book is called 'Transition engineering; building a sustainable future'. And the book is published by the CRC Press, which is a textbook publisher. So I do apologise ahead of time, it's about three times as expensive as Kate Raworth's book. But it is available on Amazon. And if you just Google transition engineering, it's easy enough to find,

Katherine Ann Byam 31:50
Yeah, perfect. Thank you so much for spending time with us today. I've really enjoyed this conversation. I love your insights, and thanks for what you do.

Susan Krumdieck 31:59
Well, thank you for having me.

Katherine Ann Byam 32:00
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