Keeping families healthy is an ongoing effort and a passion for Rayne Guest, an innovative and forward-thinking female entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of ArrowClean. While living in Los Angeles, Rayne was inspired to launch her career in the green industry, developing customised recycling programs for hotels and other commercial properties. Vowing to change the game, Rayne created a successful company that manufactures an EPA-regulated device that attaches directly to a facility's water supply to produce a hypoallergenic disinfectant proven effective in killing COVID-19.
ArrowClean is a state-of-the-art on-site disinfecting and cleaning solution that is safe for humans, animals, and the environment. ArrowClean is used in schools and industries that understand that toxic disinfectants poison their workers, clients, and the environment.
Michelle Miles is the Founder of the Sustainable Wedding Alliance, a purpose driven business with the singular aim of making the wedding industry more sustainable.
The Alliance works with businesses of all sizes to help them to understand sustainability, what it means for them, and how they can develop long term sustainable strategies that will benefit people, profit and planet.
Businesses that become members are assessed on their sustainability processes and procedures, and receive a personalised action plan to make appropriate changes. Membership also includes accreditation, for those businesses who achieve a minimum standard.
In addition to working with responsible businesses, the Alliance educates and inspires couples to plan sustainable, conscious weddings.
She is an Associate member of IEMA and holds a Foundation Certificate in Environmental Management.
Michelle is passionate about creating a more sustainable wedding industry, through education, support and accreditation.
Michelle also runs Fusion Events and Weddings, with a focus on organising environmentally conscious events and weddings for clients across Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Wiltshire.
Katherine Ann Byam 0:01 What are three sustainable wedding tips that you could give to some of my listeners who might want to get into this?
Michelle Miles 0:08 So if you're thinking about your own weddings, top tip is start thinking about the season, what is it about that season that you've been drawn to, and then go all in on it, make sure that you are only using seasonal produce, make sure you are buying from a flower farm that is growing local, that is looking after their land, that is putting back into the environment. Buying local flowers isn't just about the flowers. It's not just about, you know, having grown and not flown and reducing their carbon footprint. It's also about biodiversity in our country. You know, having these massive amount of flower farms in our country. We are improving our countryside, we're ensuring that pollinators are getting what they need, we're ensuring that wildlife tunnels are being created.
Katherine Ann Byam 1:00 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 at either 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. Michelle Miles is the founder of the Sustainable Wedding Alliance, a purpose driven business with the singular aim of making the wedding industry more sustainable. The Alliance works with businesses of all sizes to help them to understand sustainability and develop long term sustainable strategies that will benefit the triple bottom line. In addition, Michelle also runs fusion events and weddings with a focus on organising environmentally conscious events and weddings for clients across Oxfordshire, Berkshire, and Wiltshire. Michelle, welcome to Where Ideas Launch.
Michelle Miles 2:31 Thank you so much for having me.
Katherine Ann Byam 2:33 Really awesome to have you here. We met in my Facebook group, I think it's been like a year, I'm not really sure. But you joined the community. And now we're collaborating on a super meaningful project the WISBYs. So I'm really, really happy to have you and I really value the experience you're bringing to the team as well.
Michelle Miles 2:49 It's absolutely amazing to be able to work with you on that project. I think that it's going to be we're really excited about the launch, obviously. And it's been a long time in the progress and the planning. And yeah, I'm really excited for it launching.
Katherine Ann Byam 3:05 So let's start with your wwhy, Michelle. So tell us about your reason for founding the Sustainable Wedding Alliance and what this sustainability and conscious journey really means for you personally as well.
Michelle Miles 3:17 That's probably good to go back, right back to when I joined the industry. So I left school at the age of 16, wasn't particularly into the world of academia, I realised quite quickly that it wasn't for me. So further education wasn't going to be right for me. So I went straight into events at the age of 16. I've now been in the industry for a couple of decades. And it's got to be, going back about 10 years that I really started to notice, and it really didn't sit well with me, about the wasteful element of events. So in particular, I worked on a lot of large scale festivals and production, heavy events. And so I was seeing both from the back end of the organising of the events, but also from the front end, from the public side of things and how the convenience culture had really played into the wasteful nature of events. And so kind of started to feel quite uneasy being part of that. So I've had a decision, I had to either get out and go do something different, or try and change it from within. So me being me, love a challenge, decided that I needed to start making some changes. So I founded my own business, left, the corporate world, had to have a bit of a side hustle for a little while until I could build it, like many, many other businesses, but really started working hard to try and find the right clients and work more consciously. So I then had a daughter, it became even more clear to me and my why changed it became about leaving a legacy for her. And then my son a few years later, and absolutely at that point. You know, I couldn't do anything other than only work on events with clients that really cared and got it, and also to I used to work with clients that would push the boundaries on stuff. So it wouldn't just be enough to run their own sustainable event. Actually, it was about making a larger impact beyond them. So then that started to translate into the weddings work that I was doing, noticing lots of couples looking for more environmentally friendly options. Green weddings, as they were called back when they started to become popular, and then in to suppliers and actually talking to venues, and caterers, and planners, about what they could do in their business. And then that is what really sparked the idea for what can we do to help more of these businesses, there's clearly a community of businesses, we're like minded, we're all working towards the same goal, how can we start to make this bigger and get an impact, and then the pandemic happened, and then everybody downed tools, and nobody in the weddings and events industry could work, virtual weddings, were never going to be a big thing. So it gave us a little bit of time. And I'm a positive person, I like to take the silver linings where I can. And for me, that's what COVID gave me, it gave me the headspace and the time to sit down and work out what the alliance would be, and how it could have the biggest impact and help the most people. And whether that was businesses or couples, we very much came down on the side of businesses recognising that actually, we're a 14 point 7 billion pound industry, as an industry employing over 400,000 people, you know, absolutely massive. And, you know, we as businesses could really make an impact on every wedding that we're involved in. So the Alliance got formed back in 2020. We then started with working businesses, to connect people together, help them work on where they're at in terms of sustainability, teach them what it means to be sustainable. And then I'm really excited to say that last year, we launched our accreditation, so we actually now work with businesses to understand what they're doing, how they can make it better. And then we can accredit them based on an international standard for event management, we then go in, and we actually look at what they're doing. And then they can work towards something. And for couples, they can look at businesses and say, amazing, they've got that standard, we know that they're working to a sound standard, we know that they're working to that minimum level, and it's been independently verified. So for couples to be able to look for something, because let's be honest, no couple understands ISO 14,001, they don't know what that means for their wedding. Whereas we hope that by having a specific wedding accreditation will allow the couples to understand that that couples doing everything they can to be sustainable.
Katherine Ann Byam 7:45 That's brilliant, and really powerful. I like the the angle that you've taken on this, I want to probe a little bit on the data, I want to understand a little bit about what this industry size is in terms of impact on the environment in the UK, specifically.
Michelle Miles 8:00 Absolutely. So I work with different organisations over the globe. So in the States, there are a couple of Wedding Alliances, specifically at the Green Wedding Alliance that are based in Chicago, they have a fantastic pool of people that they work with, and they're collecting their own data, over in Australia and New Zealand, there's another organisation called Less Stuff, More Meaning, that again, doing amazing things. And what they have actually done is they've developed a wedding carbon footprint calculator, and they've developed it for use across the globe. And so actually, there's no point in reinventing the wheel, we all want to work together to achieve the same outcome. And so what we do is we recommend our businesses and couples to go on to that calculator and work out their own wedding footprint. And then in exchange for that, obviously, we're getting a building and brilliant data set to understand what it is about weddings, that is most carbon intensive. And because it is, you're able to allocate where you're actually having your wedding. We know that in the UK, the average wedding produced 14 and a half tonnes of carbon equivalent emissions. That's quite massive. That's in one year, obviously, that is near enough the same as a UK household for a whole year. And when you think about the amount of weddings that take place, and post pandemic it was, it you know, it was an unusually high figure of over 550,000. But on an average year, it's between 250 and 300 weddings. So if you think about what that means that's over 3 million tonnes, like that's absolutely insane. That's nearly a million cars, diesel cars, you know, that's absolutely insane kind of figures. And I think that people completely underestimate what actually happens at a wedding and they underestimate the amount of people and the travel that takes place, the food that they eat, the wastage that's involved. And I think there are so many, well know there are so many things, and small things, that couples can do, but also businesses can almost enforce on couples that will make massive savings in emissions.
Katherine Ann Byam 10:07 Wow, this is such a big topic for waste in particular, and food waste being what it is, in terms of representing, you know, one of the most significant ways we could we could reduce our footprint, etc, you feel like weddings really can make a difference in this regard. Tell us about some of the wedding events you've worked on, and why they matter, the impact you've had, for example.
Michelle Miles 10:29 As the, as a sustainable planner, I've been really blessed to be able to work with conscious couples, you know, couples have come to me that have the mindset of, we want to do better, we want our wedding to have a positive impact and not a negative one. And so although they come to me with that mindset, actually, it's still quite a challenge to think about what sustainable swaps they might be able to make, and also why they need to make them and explaining how much of a difference a plant based menu can actually make. And I think that's always been my biggest challenge. You know, as a, as a sustainable planner, it was my biggest challenge in working with businesses, it's my biggest challenge, breaking down what they think they know, and actually explaining the facts and the reality around sustainability. And many people don't want to hear about some of the harsh truth. And I think it's really important that people are open. And I mean, I'm talking about people that are already in this mindset of you know, we want to do better. But actually, it's quite difficult to hear some of the facts. Every time I tell people that a wedding, you know, average wedding, it's 14 and a half tonnes they're always so shocked. I'm like, why are you shocked? When you are thinking about 100 people travelling to a location, eating three courses, all of which have some form of animal product in, you know, what, what is it that? Where do you think it's going to be? Where do you think it's gonna fall down? You know, so it's really, really tricky. And it's definitely the biggest challenge I've had. But it's also where I can have the biggest impact, you know, looking at what a business needs. Now, thinking through putting plans in place and a framework together that they can then work with, that's become my day to day life. And that's become where I can have the biggest impact because for the businesses I'm working with, if I can impact what they're doing, and we can make changes for them, then they've got a supply chain, they've got customers, they've got stakeholders that they're then influencing. And so it's, it's, you know, it's a spider's web, it's about you know, not being, it's not linear, it is absolutely circular, you know, the more people we talk to, they talk to, they talk to, they talk to, and it grows.
Katherine Ann Byam 12:45 Yeah, that's powerful. If you were to be given, for example, a pot of money right now, with no strings attached, where would you invest it to make this movement that you're creating more powerful?
Michelle Miles 12:58 Absolutely, my biggest problem is always time, you know, having the time to be able to do everything that we want to do. So I'd invest in people, you know, I don't think there's anything better to invest in, bringing additional team members on board, giving existing team members more training so they can expand what they do. But being able to expand how we reach people, but in a really manageable way. You know, people have said to me, you could get external funding, you could go and you can get an investor to come into your business. But actually, I started the alliance with funding from my previous business, because I didn't want to take outside investment, because I wanted to be able to control the growth of the business. You know, so for me, the growth comes from the people, people's ideas, people's connections, people's experiences. And I think that is the best way to ever invest in your business.
Katherine Ann Byam 13:57 You are currently doing an award yourself. Tell us about it.
Michelle Miles 14:02 Yeah, we're really excited. So we are launching this month with the first ever Sustainable Wedding Awards. So it has been a long time in the planning, even before I launched the Alliance, this has been in the planning. And I want to do it right. I didn't want to rush it. I didn't want it to be half hearted. I wanted to be able to put everything into it. So I've run award ceremonies for clients for years and years. And now it's our time to be able to recognise everything that the industry is doing. So, the most important thing for me is about recognising everyone. It's not just about reward, it is about recognition. So it's not all about the winners. It's about everyone that gets involved and recognising how many amazing things are happening in our industry. We will use all of the applications, all of the finalists, all of the judging comments to show people in our industry, and beyond, all of the amazing things that are happening. And so yes, it is absolutely about recognising, you know, those leaders and those people that are absolutely making amazing strides towards fantastic things. But it's also about promoting sustainability in the industry. And so we're really proud that we are working along the awards trust mark standard, we hope to achieve an outstanding rating for that. It's about being open and honest, our judges are from all over the country, there is no bias involved. We, all of our judges, judge the categories independently, everything is judged by more than one judge so that there's no bias. And everything is reviewed, then by an external, independent. So for us building, that process has been really key, really important. And waiting until we're able to bring the right people on board. And everything will be honest and transparent. So you'll be able to see, all the criteria will be available upfront, we're really excited that we won't be charging a admin fee for this project. And the reason that we're doing that is because we're very lucky to be able to be supported by our partners, for us to be able to do that. But in the same way, you know, all of our team have to be paid they, we've worked out how much it costs for all of our team to be able to work on this project for the very many months that we've been working on it, and actually is a substantial figure. But it's something that we're really pleased that we're able to do. And this is definitely the right time to do it. There is definitely a movement change, there is definitely, our industry are starting to take notice. And we feel like now is the time that we can hit them in the face with it, show everybody what amazing things are happening. And hopefully bring those people that are sitting in the wings and waiting to get involved. Hopefully, they'll jump in and they'll start making changes.
Katherine Ann Byam 16:57 That sounds awesome. I want to tap in now to some tips that you could give us because you clearly have such a vast amount of experience with events. And with weddings, specifically, let's start with the events, what are some of the things that make a sustainable event successful?
Michelle Miles 17:14 So you know, another silver lining coming out of the pandemic; hybrid events, right? I mean, if we could all move to a hybrid event model, you know, giving people the opportunity that aren't local to the event, the opportunity to still engage with the event, and engage in a real way, not just watch it on a webinar, but actually feel like they're getting the same experience virtually as they would do in person. It's something that as an events industry, people are investing heavily in to be able to achieve that. There is still some work to go. But I think absolutely ensuring that people can access your event in a way that works for them is really important, the saving on travel emissions alone is going to be absolutely huge, not having as many people in person, being very aware of what you're feeding people, and also looking at and measuring the actual events emissions. Now how on earth can you run a sustainable event, if you don't know what its impact is? You know, ensuring that you're working with the right partners to be able to measure it, to be able to produce it and then have to offset anything that's left, is you know, is really, really important. And it's something that is becoming increasingly unpopular, popular. But it's something that you know, shouldn't just be popular, it should be a must for all events going forward.
Katherine Ann Byam 18:39 What are three sustainable wedding tips that you could give to some of my listeners who might want to get into this, who might be thinking about their own weddings?
Michelle Miles 18:49 So if you're thinking about your own weddings, top tip is start thinking about the season. What season are you getting married in, why are you, why have you chosen that season? Have you chosen it because it's your favourite season? Have you chosen it because the light is at its longest? Have you chosen it for the food, the flowers? What is it about that season that you've been drawn to, and then go all in on it, you know, make sure that you are only using seasonal produce, make sure you are buying from a flower farm that is growing local, that is looking after their land, that is putting back into the environment. You know, buying local flowers isn't just about the flowers. It's not just about, you know, having grown and not flown and reducing that carbon footprint. It's also about biodiversity in our country. You know, having these massive amount of flower farms in our country. We are improving our countryside we're ensuring that pollinators are getting what they need, we're ensuring that wildlife tunnels are being created. It's not just about, and I think many people think, you know, they, they always go to carbon emissions. How can we reduce carbon emissions, but actually it's about so much more than that, and there are so many businesses within the wedding industry that, that, that's important to them. And you know, and it's a really good example with flowers. So sticking to your season as an absolute must, you know, really think about it and go hard on it, you know, really, really talk to your suppliers. And then the other one is talk to your suppliers; is ask the question, you know, in your checklist, when you're walking around the venue, add in the question about sustainability, where's your energy coming from? And then it's that your lights aren't on sensors that they're on all the time? Why? Why are they on all the time? Do they need to be on all the time, you know, there's so many things that we can be asking people at the beginning of your wedding planning journey, that will make a massive impact on the footprint at the end of it. If we make all the decisions up front and make sure they're all right, and be really conscious about the choices, then actually, everything's going to be much easier for you, you know, find a sustainable venue, they're going to have caterers that are, know what they're doing, they're going to be able to talk you through a plant based offering, they're going to be able to talk you through a lower waste offering. You know, so it's about finding the right people and asking the right questions.
Katherine Ann Byam 21:16 I absolutely love that great tips. My final pivot in this episode is going to be because the majority of my listeners are female business owners or senior managers. And at the moment in the UK, we're going through so much, what are your thoughts on how we can raise the consideration of ESG to those that are making these sort of critical decisions? Like I feel as if we've been talking a lot, you know, there's, we've hosted cop 26, you know, we've made so many commitments already yet today what we see is completely different. And how can we raise that consciousness?
Michelle Miles 21:56 It's so difficult, isn't it? Because right now, in the UK, I feel like our government is lost. I feel like there has been so many changes in the last few years, that there's no real leader, and where everything is falling down is around growth. And it's not about balance, and they've got it wrong. You know, we should be looking to balance our country as the triple bottom line. That's what you should be doing. And the balances are all out. And it's really tricky, I think, as a, you know, as a business owner to see where you can have an influence and to see what changes you can make beyond a local election. But you know, how can we, you know, okay, I can email my MP, but how much good is that going to do? How do we get them engaged? And I think, over the pandemic, it was really obvious that the wedding industry in particular didn't have a voice. And so you'd, the events industry fell very closely with hospitality, and they had a voice in government. The wedding's really didn't. And so during the early stages of the pandemic and the lockdowns, there was a fantastic Task Force formed, and they're still in existence, the UK wedding Task Force, and they are essentially a spokesperson, a body for the weddings industry, to try and push and get answers on things that are important to our part of the world. And so they are the people that have got us the data on how much money is spent on weddings, how many people are employed by our industry, because we don't even have our own zip code. And so it's really, really difficult to understand what, what actual size and scale we have and how much of an impact we are having. So they also pushed, and we got to be so grateful for this. They pushed for an all party parliamentary group for weddings. And we're really, really proud that we are part of the Council of Representatives for the UK wedding Task Force. So we can take our voice and what we're hearing from our members about sustainability and how we feel to government, and we can take it directly to them and have a conversation with them. And we are talking about being in the room with people from bass we're talking about being in the room with Penny Morden, who was recently in the, in the running to become the leader of the Conservative Party. These are real people that can affect real change. And so because of that Wedding Task Force, it feels like we actually have a voice and it feels like that we have the opportunity, and now a seat at the table, because we haven't up till this point. And so I'm really proud and I encourage anybody in the wedding industry to get behind the Task Force and everything they're doing with the APPG and to make your voices heard, because if we don't know how you fail then we can't predict government and we can't force change.
Katherine Ann Byam 25:04 This is really powerful. I love this idea. I did not think about forming a task force around some of the projects that we're doing. But it absolutely makes sense. And it sounds like it's already having great traction. So congratulations on that, and, like really reassuring that, that there is some some good efforts happening. Thank you so much, Michelle, tell my listeners how they can connect with your work.
Michelle Miles 25:24 So you can find us on our website. So Sustainable Wedding Alliance.com, you can find us on Instagram, and also on LinkedIn. And you can also reach out to me on LinkedIn as well. I am Michelle Miles events. And you know, I'd love to hear from anyone, in the UK or not, some of our members are global, so you know, I'd love to hear from you guys about what's happening in your part of the industry and what you're doing to make a change.
Katherine Ann Byam 25:53 Super, really wonderful to have you. Thanks for joining us.
Michelle Miles 25:56 Thank you.
Katherine Ann Byam 26:00 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; Woman In Sustainable Business, or follow the podcast; Where Ideas Launch, on Instagram to find out more.
080 Youth Perspectives 2 - Sustainable Periods
About this Episode
Sara Udin is a client, friend and absolute go getter and one for youth voices in celebrating on the podcast.
Sarah is the founder and CEO of Amala Periods, Cambodia’s first sustainable period underwear and education company.
She spoke to me about what it's like being a Brit starting a business based in Cambodia.
"These were all huge things for me to both emotionally, and obviously commercially to overcome when starting a period business in a country where periods are not spoken about periods are not considered clean they are to do with your beauty and intelligence.
It's shown me that the period of education is missing. And that's why we're going to provide it.
Katherine Ann Byam 0:01 Sarah Udin is a client, friend, and absolute go getter, and one of four youth voices I'm celebrating on the podcast. She spoke to me about what it's like being a Brit starting a business based in Cambodia. Listen to this clip now.
Sarah Udin 0:16 These were all huge things for me to both emotionally, and obviously commercially, overcome when starting a period business in a country where periods are not spoken about, periods are not considered clean, they are to do with your beauty and intelligence and all of the other things. Really for me, this has been a real big learning curve. And it's shown me that the period education is missing. And that's why we're going to provide it. Another thing is that only one of the 15 girls that we interviewed could tell us why they got a period. So that again, was a huge factor for me when we said, actually, we're not just going to make this a sustainable business that solves a waste problem, we're going to make this a social impact change, change these women's lives.
Katherine Ann Byam 1:00 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.
Today, my guest is Sarah Udin. She's the founder and CEO of Amala periods, Cambodia's first sustainable period underwear and education company, Sarah, welcome to where ideas launch. It's such a pleasure to host you on this programme and to hear your story.
Sarah Udin 2:16 Thank you so much for having me, I feel absolutely honoured that you've invited me on as a guest.
Katherine Ann Byam 2:22 So how does a girl from Cambridge end up founding a startup in Cambodia? Tell us about your journey?
Sarah Udin 2:28 That's a great question. Thank you. It's a very, very random story and a very long story. So I'll try and keep it nice and short and to the point, but, I don't know from a very, very young age, I always knew that I was going to live abroad, or I always dreamed of living abroad, let's say, I didn't know it was going to happen. But I made it happen for myself. So I started learning foreign languages. When I was about three years old, I continued with that. And I always, I always knew that, that was going to be my way to leave England, was actually learning foreign languages. So I ended up studying a French and German degree, which really helped me build that confidence. But I actually started travelling alone when I was 16.
So I was travelling over to France, to Germany. And I'd been working since I was 13. So this was all money that I'd earnt and that this was all that I wanted to do with it. So I started coaching gymnastics when I was 13 years old. And it really opened a lot of doors to me. And it showed me that I can actually make decisions to visit places around the world that actually, I always just dreamed of. So I was, I feel very blessed that I had that opportunity. And I first came to Cambodia when I was 18.
So I did the classic gap year I had three jobs, I worked very hard to get enough money to travel the world and I did it. I came over to India, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and I absolutely fell in love with Cambodia. On that trip, I just, the language, the culture, it made me feel calm, it's a more calm version of Thailand, but it's a little bit more lively than Laos, say, and it just felt like somewhere that I knew I was going to come back to and I ended up coming back after studying abroad in Germany, I met some friends there, one of my friends had moved here. And so I said, of course, I'll come visit you on holiday. That would be great. Thank you so much. So we came out, a group of the girls, and we had the best trip ever. And also just being able to see the lifestyle out here and realising that this dream was actually a reality for somebody that I knew. And this was something that's no longer just a dream. It was something that was within my grasp.
So I came back home to England, and I carried on with my nine to five and I, to be honest with you, I was miserable. I actually got diagnosed with depression and anxiety at that time, and I realised that this was not the place for me. And it was a really, really tough decision. But having a friend out there really helped me. So I managed to book that flight and leave everything I knew and loved. And I didn't have a return ticket and that was in January 2020 just before the pandemic, woho! It was a scary decision and at that point I wasn't really sure if I should stay or not. So when I first arrived in Cambodia, I got a job as an English teacher. So I've actually done lots of different jobs. I've been a gymnatics coach, I've been a ski resort manager, I've been a wedding and events coordinator, I've been a data analyst for Amazon, I've been lots and lots of different things.
So I thought actually teaching is a good way for me to use these skills. Schools in Cambodia are run like businesses and it made me not very happy to be a part of it, because I didn't feel like the education was being accessed by the children in the way that I wanted it to. So I basically wanted to find a way out of that. And I was talking to the TAs and the teachers at school about period panties, because I had tried them once before, and I was wearing them that day. And I was telling everybody about that in that nice, oversharing way I have, and nobody had heard of them. So I was quite confused by this. And I thought, Oh, what do you mean, nobody has heard of them, so I kind of explained them, I showed everybody, everybody seemed really interested by this product. And I thought, actually, this could be a possible opportunity for me, because this is a sustainable item and I've always dreamed of running a sustainable business myself, like this has been something that I've always wanted as my own baby. And I just thought this is something that makes sense.
So then that was basically where it started, I so, I researched a lot, I got some support from people like, of course, Katherine, and from Lara and I basically, I just started asking around and selling to my friends and selling at local markets. And that's the point at which the business started to take off. So I couldn't run a business alongside a full time teaching job. So I then switched back over to my coaching. So I then started a dance school, at the same time, I've been coaching gymnastics at the dance school, while running the business, and also coaching other sports in other locations around the city. And that's kind of the short version of the random journey that brought me to being the CEO of Amala Periods.
Katherine Ann Byam 6:42 This is insane. Like, how old are you now, if you don't mind me asking?
Sarah Udin 6:46 No, that's fine. I turned 28.
Katherine Ann Byam 6:47 Right, and in that space of about 10 years, you've basically done like 10 jobs explored so many different aspects of yourself as well, finding out what you liked what you didn't like. And I think this is such a great empowering story, both from a career perspective, but also from, you know, the sustainable transition perspective, and I think being in Cambodia is a bit of an eye opener on many different aspects of life. Very, very different from the UK. I've been there myself, roughly around 10 years ago, maybe. And I think it's such a change and a shift from what we would expect. So I want to touch on something that you said, So you talked about the education system in Cambodia and being run like a business, etc? Would you say that it is tilting toward a more western standard of education? What are your thoughts on it?
Sarah Udin 7:37 So I would say the schools in Cambodia being run like businesses is kind of an independent issue, it just was the final trigger for me to realise that this was, I didn't want to just fit into something that was set up for to make profit for somebody else, that was not actually supporting children in a good educational way, it was more of a profit building situation. And that's not how I felt comfortable teaching. It also felt like we had to just tick a lot of boxes and take a lot of photos rather than actually teach the children. And so that's also part of what I've put into the period education workshops is that I don't want to do it so it's just to tick boxes and to take photos for people and all of these things, because that's how the education system worked.
So although I can't say exactly that this was the trigger, what, I've, what I'm doing is I'm making sure to take all of this information from working in the schooling system in Cambodia to make sure that when we do our period education programmes, which is we've started doing now, we aren't doing it in the standard Cambodian way. And we're actually doing it in a much more dynamic, entertaining, fun, sports coaching style way, which makes people just much more comfortable about learning about this very taboo topic.
Katherine Ann Byam 8:44 And just in terms of the whole relationship with women's health, in general, like I think if I were to speak for myself, and I'm a bit older than you, but I don't think we received the level of education that you receive today in terms of period health and how to manage those things. It's also because, you know, we're learning more about the whole topic as well. But what would you say is one of the reasons for the big gap in knowledge that you found there?
Sarah Udin 9:11 I totally know what you mean, actually, by that, I would say it does feel a little bit like we are living in the past, in, not in a bad way, but it does feel like you know, the way that we live certain ways in Cambodia that still like lots of things that would have been acceptable in the 70s and 80s, in the UK, and in the western world, that is how we live over here now. And I think that the education system reflects that where there's still things that are just not spoken about, there are just tick boxes that people have to fit into. And also women's health is not spoken about because it's not relevant because it's not important as part of society, and it's, it's deemed to be shameful.
So it's not something that is very important as part of the education system. I would definitely say that. Yeah, that's a really interesting point. I was actually talking to one of my friends about that the other day, she said I'd never thought of it like that, but it's literally like we're living in the 70s like we are doing what our people like in the 70s were doing, but we're doing it in the 2020s, this is strange, but I think that that is definitely reflected in the, in the gender equality and the way that women are viewed as well. So actually, I have a very short, little anecdote that I can tell you about from the other day.
So I went to the Miss Universe Cambodia event. And I, one of my friends was competing. So I went to support my friend. And I'm really pleased I went to support it. And I thought, it's a very strange idea, this whole beauty pageant thing I'm not, I'm not 100% sure if I actually support the idea of it. But I'm very happy to support my friend. And she did an amazing job. But at the end of it, there was a little altercation. And there was basically a guy following one of the contestants around with his phone, and he was harassing her. And he was following her and shouting at her and nobody was doing anything. So I stepped in. And I stopped him from filming her. And I didn't understand what was going on. And to me that, that was the most shocking thing in the world, because these, this is one of the women, I would have expected to actually have been able to say something and to have actually been able to stop this. But this was a really clear image for me about how this gender inequality is so still here and then when nobody else was willing to step in to stop this harassment, of a contestant that has just been celebrated on national television, and I was the only person that stepped in, it accidentally went viral on Tiktok as well. But at the same time, I still I stand by it, because I would much rather step in when I can see something like that happening.
Katherine Ann Byam 11:29 That's insane. And again, yeah, it's a great example of the challenges that you're facing actually dealing with this. So I want to, I want to go directly into that question. I mean, how have you sort of adjusted and accommodated all the cultural learnings that you've had to have in order to run this business? Tell me a little bit about how that went?
Sarah Udin 11:49 So again, great question. I yeah, I'm not gonna lie. It's been challenging. Of course, learning a new culture and learning a new language is always going to be challenging, especially when it's very, very far away from your own because I am very much not Cambodian. And I don't have any Cambodian cultural heritage or anything. My, my ancestors were Indian, but it's not something that we actually carry in our family particularly. So learning the language during the pandemic, of course, has been the biggest struggle just because meeting people has been difficult. We've then kind of tried to counteract that by working with combined marketing teams and translators, which has been expensive, but then obviously worth it to connect the audience more authentically. But honestly, the biggest thing is that the cultural taboos, has been huge.
So even when I started talking about this, like some of the TAs were, too, they were too embarrassed to talk to me, even though they have spent, you know, all day every day hanging out with me. They know all about everything we do. We know everything about each other, that was still not something that they felt super confident until everybody was interested and everybody came over, and to have a look and things like that. What I found really interesting is that me and my business partner, we interviewed 15, Khmer women about their periods. So these were my students when I, was an English conversation class teacher. So adult students in tech, so they were very intelligent, very, you know, well, well established women and listening to them talk about the cultural taboos around periods was absolutely fascinating. So they said things like when you're on your period, you're not allowed to eat bitter foods, sour foods, spicy food, or salty food, or pickled or preserved food, and Cambodians favourite food is sour mango, with chilli and so they were, all it's like, they were all crying about that they were like, I can't believe my mum doesn't let us eat this when we're on our period, kind of thing.
So I thought that was really crazy. It's like stopping us from eating chocolate in the western world, on our period, you'd be like, what! You can also not drink iced coffee or coconut, because this apparently might affect your period length, or heaviness, and it also can affect your beauty. So these are big cultural things that I had to, I really struggled with, and I was really shocked by when I was first talking about them. Apparently, as well, another one is that your period and your beauty are directly related. So you only can be beautiful if you have a healthy period, which I personally believe is a really, really toxic view, because actually your period is not necessarily reflective of anything like that, and your period can change in so many different ways for so many different reasons, that's a, that's a scary one, for sure. But for me, the most kind of powerful one was the one where they said when you get your period, you are now ready for marriage and children - like that's it. That's what happens once you've had your period, you are ready for marriage and children.
These were all huge things for me to, both emotionally and obviously commercially, overcome when starting a period business in a country where periods are not spoken about, periods are not considered clean, they are to do with your beauty and intelligence, and all of the other things that, there's a lot of falsities around it as well. But actually, for me, this has been a real big learning curve. And it's shown me that the period education is missing, and that's why we're going to provide it, another thing is that only one of the 15 girls that we interviewed could tell us why they got a period. So that again was a huge factor for me when we said actually we're not just going to make this a sustainable business, that solves a waste problem, we're going to make this a social impact thing and actually change, change these women's lives for the better, and actually help them learn about their bodies. Because once you know about your body, you have so much more increased confidence, you can actually go to the doctor, if you know there's a problem. If you've actually been told about it, all of these things that we don't even consider. But when there is this, these cultural taboos around this natural process that's happening, it really changes the way that people access information as well. So people just don't have the information to access is the biggest problem. So that's another thing that we're trying to solve.
Katherine Ann Byam 15:33 Yeah. No, that's great and the two things that you touched on that I think we haven't yet covered. So just for the for the benefit of my listeners, can you share why period panties are a thing today?
Sarah Udin 15:44 That's a very good point. Yeah, absolutely. So period, period pants. I actually don't love that term period panties. But the, UK, if I say period pants in this country, people think I'm talking about trousers. So I will call them period panties, or period underwear. But basically, they are this really amazing system where it looks like a normal pair of underwear. But each one of the underwear has got this special four layer system, the top layer is moisture wicking, so it keeps you nice and dry. So wicks away the moisture. The second layer is odour proof. So it' stops the smell. The third layer is super absorbent. And then the fourth layer is leak proof. So these four layers work together to keep you clean and dry for up to 12 hours.
This can be huge, especially for girls that, for example, can't afford to buy pads to wear, and they can actually go to school for the whole day. These can also be huge for people that don't want to create plastic waste, and also have any other problems with things inside their body or outside their body. So anybody that can't use a tampon or doesn't want to use a tampon for any reasons, the hugely beneficial solution as well. And in my opinion period underwear, period panties are better than reusable pads even because reusable pads move around. And as a person that does sports all day, every day, I need something that doesn't move around when I am moving around as well. So that's what period underwear is. I can also tell you kind of why I care about them so much as well, if you like I can tell you a little personal story. So for me period, underwear is such a passion because I've actually suffered from terrible periods for a very, very long time I started my period when I was 12.
And I was taking weeks off school from that time with really bad period pain, really heavy bleeding, really just a terrible experience. It gave me hormonal mood swings a lot of the time. And I've been on hormonal contraception since I was 12. Even despite this, I've had irregular erratic bleeding, sometimes up to two weeks at a time. And it's just been horrendous in terms of obviously, self esteem, it doesn't make you feel good when you can't understand what's happening to your body like this. But in terms of waste as well, this was huge, especially when I, in 2019 I read the Paris, the Paris treaty, and that was, that was a real turning point for me in terms of sustainability. It was before that, it had always been something that I was aware of, but for me, I was like in 2019 this is something I need to take charge of. So, I basically searched around and searched around and I found that you could have these period underwear and that saved me so much money and so much waste, it just, because when you suffer like that you can't help but use so many tampons and so many pads, so for me period underwear was just an absolute lifesaver. I know that not everybody has such a terrible experience with their period, but it's something that you don't even realise how life changing it can be until you try it.
So that is basically the, for me as well though period underwear is so important because actually plastic pads and tampons are not a good solution. At the moment in Cambodia, over 80% of women use plastic pads. Tampons are not used over here, because if you use a tampon, then it's considered to lose your virginity. So it's not part of the culture to use tampons, so pads, I will, I can talk about pads. And in Cambodia alone there's over 1 billion pads thrown away each year, one person can throw away up to 150 to 200 pads themselves per year. And 80% of a pad is made out of plastic. And these can take up to 800 years to decompose. So this is obviously a big issue. We need to be solving and period underwear as, is a solution to that. And it's a really good solution that's actually really good for your body as well. Because not only is plastic bad for the environment, surprise, plastic is bad for your body as well. So if you're putting plastic pads up against your vulva for extended periods of time, it can actually lead to an increase in cancer and other terribly terrifying diseases. So actually, this is a very good solution in terms of vaginal health as well, especially if girls are using pads for a really long time. Bacterial infections, especially in a hot humid country like this, are rife. So it kind of solves all of the problems there's, there's no discomfort, you feel clean, you feel dry, your, your, the smell is protected. You can do all of the things.
Katherine Ann Byam 16:59 What would you say have been your successes so far?
Sarah Udin 19:53 I would say probably, obviously the biggest success would be, we've actually sold over 500 pairs of underwear since we started last year, so that is huge. This was exactly on target, for me, that was exactly the goal. And that was, I was really pleased about that. So that's been huge. We also had a really, really successful first big donation event, where we have donated 60 pairs of underwear to a village in a place called Stone Minjae in, just outside of Phnom Penh, whereas basically, it's a, it's a village, run by the Cambodia Children's Fund, and the world housing organisation, and it's called the girls to Granny's village. And there's 200 females that live there, and they're kind of from any age, up to Granny's age. And they all live together in a community. And we thought that would be a really good first place for us to do our donations.
Just because that's the safe space for us to talk about periods. And it's a good place for us to make sure it's a female safe environment. So we had such success. We had such a good time, we had a really successful period education workshop, and at the end, the girls all had questions about, you know, is this normal? Oh, my gosh, are you sure? And you could see the, the smiles on their faces just by saying, yeah, no, that's normal, this is fine. And we realised then that that was a form that they just had never had, because a lot of these girls don't necessarily live with their own parents as well. So they wouldn't have had that conversation with their mum to say, Hey, Mum, is this normal? So that was, that felt really amazing to actually say, this is a way that we're able to give back to our community. By providing this sustainable solution to people, we're actually also able to put massive smiles on girls faces as well. So that's been absolutely huge.
Now, another massive success that I had was actually when I expanded the team. And I am just gonna very quickly talk about my business partner, Angelique, who joined last year in October. So she's a brand strategist and UX design consultant. And she's from South Africa, she's got experience running her own business. And she's also worked as a teacher before, and she basically is in charge of everything creative. So she has been my brain behind the change from Athena to Aluna to Amala. And she's basically now transformed us into a brand that really resonates with my audience. So that has been a huge success, as well as in the rebranding with Angelique has been huge. The only thing is, we still don't have a Khmer team member, so we really, we really, really would love to have somebody Cambodian on our team as well, because it doesn't feel right that we're trying to connect with a Cambodian audience without actually having people on the team. So we've been working with our Cambodian friends, our Khmer friends, we still haven't found that, you know, that trifecta effect, we haven't found our, the missing piece of our triangle.
Katherine Ann Byam 22:28 Congratulations. I think that's really great news, and very proud of your success, and happy to have seen it grow. Because I've been working with you for just under a year, I guess is for some time.
Sarah Udin 22:38 I think that's when I joined the community, was when I was like, Oh, I'm gonna be a woman in sustainable business. And my friend Decra was part of the group. And so she recommended, so yeah, so you've been on this journey with me the whole time. And you've watched it go from Athena to Aluna to Amala. And now we are definitely sticking with Amala. Because the Amala means clean, or lack of impure, in Sanskrit. So yeah, that one really resonates with me and the audience so much.
Katherine Ann Byam 23:05 That's really great. So the next question is going to take us to another angle of your experience in Cambodia and some, and around the whole sustainability topic. Now, just to, for the audience listening, I've also been to Cambodia just once, I went for a weekend to Siem Reap, because I heard I had to see Angkor Wat if I was in that area. So I flew from Malaysia to Cambodia. And I was shocked when I arrived because we stayed in this five star hotel, very plush place with loads of people waiting and serving you. And when you looked out the window across the street, there was this floating village where the rest of the people lived without proper sanitation, without a lot of things that you would consider very normal in the West, in the Western world. And I couldn't understand how this could coexist. How this place of abject poverty can coexist with this five star hotel, like it made no sense to me at all that this could be happening. And then we took a bus journey from Siem Reap route to Phnom Penh and I have never seen so much waste on the streets, as in Cambodia, at that time, I mean, I'm sure there are other places that that struggle as well with this, but I was really shocked and impressed, in a bad way perhaps, of the level of waste and rubbish and lack of cleanliness, as we talk about, about being clean. So I wanted to touch on this because I think you being there in Cambodia, in this time is relevant for so many reasons, I wanted you to reflect on what you've seen in terms of big corporations and how are they being socially relevant to the people of Cambodia today?
Sarah Udin 24:51 That is, yeah, absolutely, spot on. I would say I had a very similar experience. I first came to Cambodia nine years ago and I was absolutely shocked by the amount of trash. But then I, I don't remember it being any more than there was in Thailand or in Laos, I just remember being shocked in general, how much trash there was this side of the world. At that time now, obviously, it's now nine years later, and lots has changed. But I am going to be honest with you, the trash problem hasn't really changed. They have only recently started with waste management companies here in the city of Phnom Penh, which is, of course, the capital city of the country. And there was actually recently a strike. So within the last year, there was just a strike, and all the trash collectors stopped working. And you really saw the problem at that point, because they didn't collect trash for a week. And there were piles bigger than houses, it was extremely shocking, because Cambodia is a dumping ground for the rest of the world as well as its own citizens. So recycled waste, it doesn't get recycled, it gets shipped to Cambodia, and it gets dumped in Cambodia anywhere, it gets dumped on the side of the streets in Cambodia.
So there's already a problem. And so I think that, I don't know this, but my personal opinion is that maybe when you're overloaded with that amount of trash, it is very difficult to see how your own personal impact can or your, your own personal choices can make an impact. Because actually, if there's piles of trash bigger than your house, and you're thinking about whether or not you should try and recycle that one plastic bottle, it's a really, really confusing feeling. Because we all know, we should, we should be creating the least waste possible, we need to be absolutely reducing, reducing, reducing, but it's really difficult when there is no running water that's drinkable. And your only option is to go and buy a bottle that has been created by these big corporations that just don't care and could actually be creating different options, maybe reusable fountains and reusable, there are solutions possible that they could choose to channel their money into instead, like setting up vending machines that actually you just fill your bottle, and you could even have branded everything in that same way.
But they're, I don't know, that's, that's a little bit of a tangent anyway. But that's just a idea. But I would say yeah, absolutely. The waste management problem is still huge. And recycling, there is only one glass recycling plant in the whole city, in the whole country. And so we have to ship it from Phnom Penh. And we have to pay for that. So those are kind of big issues. But in terms of big corporations, I would say stop sending your waste to Cambodia, please stop creating things that are wasteful, because when they are the only option available, it's not fair, it's really not fair make make there be different options available for people that don't have access to running water and don't have access to drinking water. Don't give the, this as the only option. I would say that basically the infrastructure in Cambodia is amazing. It just needs a lot of investment. And Cambodia in general needs a lot of investment it needs a lot of development it is still very much a developing country in development. And there's loads of growth opportunities here. But people need to actually invest in things that are going to be sustainable, long term. Because at the moment, there is a throwaway culture here. And it's being perpetuated by these big corporations that are just saying by this, quick, try and become more like the West, quick, when actually this is an opportunity for big corporations to choose to do it a different way. So they could choose to actually say, hey, we've seen how much we've messed up over here in the UK and in France and in Germany and in the US and in Australia. How about this time, we do it differently. And we don't destroy the environment, every single aspect just by trying to, because you can still make profit, this is the thing, they can still make profit without destroying the environment. So maybe those are the, I got more emotional about that than I thought I would actually.
Katherine Ann Byam 28:39 I totally support your points, when I see big corporations trying to make change and come up with something innovative and pioneering etc. They start in places like Japan and South Korea more because they're trendsetting, then because they're relevant. And there's so many relevant situations that we can do tests in and we can change the protocols. And we can do something that really allows people to live a more fruitful life without going through the same loops that we went through in the west of learning, right. And it's disappointing that it's not pursued enough. So I totally support you. The other thing I want to sort of pivot to is if you could receive any funding now, what would you prioritise?
Sarah Udin 29:19 Haha, I mean, I have a list longer than my arm obviously, of all of the things that I would need to prioritise. But I don't know, I think probably the first in my opinion, the first thing that I would like to properly invest in if we got a big amount would be investing in designing and manufacturing our own period underwear here, because that obviously leads to job creation that's better controll of the quality, much more increased profit margins and way more sustainable in terms of packaging, shipping, all of the things that I would be in full control of, so that would be my main priority, and that's something that we are definitely talking about with other local sustainable businesses in Cambodia. So we have started that conversation. We are very excited, we are now just trying to find the funding for. And the other thing we are looking for is actually we're planning on developing an English and Khmer period app to make our information much more accessible. So that would be another thing that we, would put some investment money into. Because I think that those are really the key points, it's making sure that we're being the most ethical and sustainable we possibly can be and actually creating this education platform that actually does serve the community in a productive way. So those would be my main priorities. And also, being able to pay us some salaries at some point might be nice perhaps, purchasing some stock in bulk, hiring a Khmer person, I can go on. Those would be I think, the most exciting things to actually spend the money on, and they would definitely be some of our priorities as a team.
Katherine Ann Byam 30:46 Perfect. So what I want to ask now, how could my listeners support you given that the majority of my listeners are not, yet, Cambodian? Maybe I will get some after this interview.
Sarah Udin 30:56 Absolutely. I mean, the best way to probably support us from the UK is talking to people about sustainable periods. That's, that's our message is let's have sustainable periods. But for real for real, you can go to our website, www dot Amala periods.com. We have a donation button that's there and available. We are also planning on shipping worldwide shortly. So we, once we have that all set up on the website, you will be able to purchase our sustainable period products on our website. So we will have period underwear, reusable pads, cups, and also waterproof pouches for all of those things. And they will all be available and beautiful and sustainable. And available for sale online. You can also like us on Facebook and Instagram. And we will soon be releasing a Tik Tok. So you can also find us on there. And any kind of liking, sharing, supporting, commenting is always really helpful for small businesses. So anything like that would be amazing.
Katherine Ann Byam 31:53 Wonderful, Sarah, it's been such a pleasure to have you. I have loved your story and your transformation and your growth over the last year. And I just want to see it continue. So all the best wishes. We're going to chat again very soon this week. But, But best of luck for the future.
Sarah Udin 32:09 Thank you so much. And Katherine, I honestly, I must say I couldn't have done it without you. You have been an absolute rock in my journey on this. So thank you so much.
Katherine Ann Byam 32:17 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 handcraftin, artisinal work, or you're a social media manager supporting purposel 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
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
070 Growing a Successful ESG Consulting Practice
About this Episode
Heather Burns is an independent ESG and sustainability consultant who for the past 15 years has helped global companies and NGOs find ways to improve and report on their social, environmental, and corporate governance performance. She has also helped to develop global ESG certifications and standards, and is the founder of a nonprofit business association focused on scaling business solutions to climate change. Her work in sustainable development (an initiative called Haiti Onward) was recognized as a semi-finalist in the 2011 Buckminster Fuller Challenge.
Her interest in sustainability was sparked in 1998 while traveling and working as a Divemaster on a small island in Thailand, where the waters she dived every day were in rapid decline due to two local economies (tourism and fishing) battling over the same fragile ecosystem. Working with local residents, dive shop owners, and local fishermen, she and other divers formed an island conservation organization still in operation today.
Her latest adventure involves teaching consultants of all types how to start and grow a successful ESG Consulting practice.
Thank you, Katherine. I'm so happy to be here. I love your podcast.
Katherine Ann Byam 1:33
Thank you so much for joining us and for shedding some light on this whole idea of ESG. And I think that's going to be my first question to you, actually. I talk about it at times, but I think that not everyone understands what ESG is. Why don't you share with us what exactly this means and where came from?
Heather Burns 1:51
Yeah, so I think I love a good definition. And it's really important, particularly in sustainability, because there are so many of them flying around. So ESG is the practice of measuring, monitoring and reporting on environmental, social and governance performance. So the environment can include operational impacts, like wastewater energy, or those related to climate change, such as carbon emissions. And then social impacts can include how a company treats its employees, how it engages with the communities in which it operates and whether or not it prioritises diversity, equity and inclusion. And then governance addresses decision making and transparency and the distribution of rights and responsibilities. But it's important to keep in mind that the goal of ESG is actually sustainability, which is defined as our ability to meet the demands of the present without jeopardising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.
Katherine Ann Byam 2:52
How do you think we're doing?
Heather Burns 2:55
Well, we could always be doing better. You know, I definitely think we could be doing better. But I think that and as I'll get into a little bit later, it really has reached the tipping point that many of us have been hoping for for the last decade, and has hit the mainstream. So I think we're on a good trajectory.
Katherine Ann Byam 3:15
That's a good answer. I want to get back a bit and talk about how you came to this in the first place. Because when I meet consultants now in the space; Environmental Consultants who've been around, or that's what it was called in the old days, environmental consultancy. How did you come to this? And where did you come from to bring those skills to this space?
Heather Burns 3:35
Have you ever watched a movie that changed your life? Yeah, right? And so that's happened to me twice. And the first time and both are related. The first time was back in the late 90s. And I was feeling a little bit lost, you know, all my friends are settling down, getting married, doing that whole, you know, kid thing. And I was like, still trying to figure out what I'm supposed to be doing. And I remember watching Seven Years in Tibet, and I was just so enthralled by the idea of getting out of the United States, and seeing the world. So I sold or gave away all my stuff. I bought a one way ticket and I spent the next three years living and working in Asia. And while I was there, I lived on this tiny island in Thailand called Koh Tao and I became a scuba dive master and I was diving the same waters every day for hundreds of dives. And I really witnessed human impacts causing the coral reef to die. And when I stopped to think about it, I realised that it was because commercial fishing and tourism, you know, two main economies of this community were at odds over the same ecosystem, and that really sort of planted a seed. So fast forward.
A handful of years later, I'm back in the United States, and I'm doing that whole thing of getting married and having kids and I sit down to watch Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth which is a doctor's memory about climate change, as you probably know. And what I learned watching that movie really became the sort of before and after period in my life, right? It was like before I knew about climate change, and after I learned about climate change, and let me tell you, it's not an easy movie to watch. And I almost turned it off. But there's this part, you know, where he looks at the audience, you know, and he's looking you dead in the eye. And he's like, before you jump from denial to despair, like, stop in the middle and do something. And I was like, Okay, I'm going to figure this out.
So at first, I thought about going to work for an NGO, like Greenpeace for Sierra Club, because they were doing really cool things. But that seed that has been planted back in Thailand, around economies, you know, really kind of needle me and it told me that working with business was one of the things that not a lot of people were doing at the time. And perhaps it was actually one thing that can have a great impact. You know, the problem was that the industry at that point was incredibly nascent. And everyone was like, still trying to figure out what sustainability and ESG actually even were.
So I started with what I knew how to do, which was research and right. And so shortly after watching the movie, I created this blog called CT Green Scene, which was basically like a round up of all things green and environmental that were happening in my state, and I focused as much as I could on business and entrepreneurs. And, you know, I learned as much as I could from watching companies like Seventh generation and Patagonia and seeing what they were doing. And after a few months, I started hosting these networking events, which took off because we were, we ended up in the New York Times, somehow, I don't know. I don't know who called them, it was not me. But before I knew it, like companies were asking me to consult them back then it was called going green. So, you know, getting my first paying client, of course, is a bit more of a story. Because it's always easy to do free work as a consultant. But eventually, I think, yeah, it was a colleague who told me about an association that her company or company was a member in, and they ended up hiring me to write a sustainability report. Well, of course, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. And it was definitely like flying a plane by Well, you know, trying to build it. But they renewed for a second term of the contract. So I couldn't have done such a bad job. And that was kind of how I got started.
Katherine Ann Byam 7:31
That's an incredible story. And I think that a lot of us think like this. So we have this, this moment where things become clearer, like my clarity moment was actually reading a book called Jugaad Innovation to get innovation stories of India and how they innovate solutions from cheap from from the natural environment to make things work, like building incubators for kids, or building fridges so that they can keep their food fresher for longer from clean water and stuff like this. And there's always a moment when there's cognition, you know, something sparks, something opens up. And then the next question is, how do you do something? It's, it's kind of like, you know, you listen to the knees and something happens, and you're like, how do I get involved? How do I participate? How do I make an impact? And I think what's great about your story is that you didn't come from a traditional environmental background, if you want to talk a little bit about the kind of skills you brought to the table, and you started.
Heather Burns 8:29
So at the time, I was working in the publishing industry, I was working as an editor and a freelance writer. So my skills were basically you know, revolved around research and interviewing questions, asking really good questions, thinking deeply about a topic and kind of being able to peel away the layers to get to what's really going on behind that I think was sort of, and then being able to communicate in a compelling, you know, way that made people want to get involved. I think those were sort of the core skills that I started with. And I'd add to that of deep interest and passion for learning, and really just wanting to, you know, expand my skill set.
Katherine Ann Byam 9:17
That's really interesting. And I want to take us a little bit now to what are some of the shifts that you've seen happen in your tenure in this space? So you've kind of been doing this work now for more than 10 years? What sort of shifts have happened? And how do you sort of compare this to what's happening right now? And what's really made the big difference in your view?
Heather Burns 9:42
Yeah, so I think there have been two significant shifts that have shaped the industry and created what is now this unprecedented demand for ESG and sustainability consulting services. And the first was the shift from thinking about everything In terms of green, right, which really means all things environmental, to the idea that people, planet and profit, which was referred to as the triple bottom line, are actually connected. And that really led to this idea that sustainability is the goal, and that you have to have those three pieces in order to achieve true sustainability and business. So that was the shift that was really the precursor to ESG. And to companies understanding, you know, this idea that triple bottom line meant that they could actually, you know, prosper as a company. So around that same time, seventh generation, which makes non toxic consumer products was acquired by Unilever for $700 million.
Heather Burns 10:53
And that was like that made people kind of pause like, whoa, Unilever's interested in a company like that, because until that point, those types of companies have really been in this very specialty type of market, right. And of course today, Unilever's sustainable living brands has a 50% faster growth than the rest of their portfolio. So certainly proven now.
But the second trend is more recent. And this is that critical move from, you know, the sidelines to mainstream. And people ask me all the time, you know, how do you know that this is shifted to the mainstream when so many companies are still oblivious, or in denial or whatever it is? And you know, how do we know that things won't just go back to business as usual, when there's a next change in government leadership or something. And I tell them that, you know, it's because it's at this point, it's coming from all directions, and every stakeholder group, right? So it really started with this consumer demand, there was the emergence of what was called a low hos sector, which was lifestyles of health and sustainability. And these were folks that were, you know, vocal about the fact that they were willing to pay more for environmentally or sustainable products environmentally friendly. And today course that Mark is on track to hit 150 billion in the US alone, and 90% of millennials are willing to 90% of millennials are willing to pay more for products that are environmentally friendly, or sustainable. So those people actually happen to work, right, they have jobs, so their employees.
So then you have this shift into the employee stakeholder group, where you've got 80% of millennials wanting to work for a company that's strong on ESG. So companies obviously want top talent. And their top talent is telling them this is what we're looking for. So they're getting it now from employees, and then you layer on the supply chain. And you've got all these disruptions that are, you know, started off kind of in the fashion industry and saw a lot of terrible fires in Bangladesh, and people died. And, you know, this led to really like, you know, this outcry around the supply chain, right. And now you've got COVID and a pandemic, which just elevated everything and really put a microscope on and the fact that our supply chains are completely broken.
So all of this uncertainty is really seen as risk, particularly when you're looking at it from the perspective of investors. So, you know, last but certainly not least, are a stakeholder group of investors. Right? And so, last year, in his annual letter to CEOs, Larry Fink, who's the CEO of Blackrock, which is an investment firm with over $9 trillion of assets under their management, proclaimed CEOs, right, that climate risk is investment risk, and that companies need to get serious about it. Well, everyone thought, well, that's really interesting, right? Well, and then the pandemic hit, and they thought, ah, that is just, you know, that will kind of fizzle. Well, instead, it didn't fizzle. In fact, it took hold. And then in his next year, which was this year, a letter to CEOs, not only did he reiterate that, but he basically said that companies that are not Net Zero, by 2050, are going to be, you know, ops become obsolete. So this is really now sending complete shockwaves through the global markets. And not to mention, it's led to companies like Amazon and Unilever and Microsoft are now making these netzero claims. And they can't get there without their suppliers because 80% of a company's greenhouse gas emissions is actually embedded in their supply chain. So now you've finally got this pressure that's being put on more of the midsize companies and so that's why I say it's here to stay
Katherine Ann Byam 15:00
Yeah, no, I totally hear you with that. And I want to slightly shift and challenge you a little bit. And it is, is ESG the same as CSR? And therefore, is it just another form of greenwashing. Now, I think I understand a bit more about it than that. But for my listeners, they want you to debunk this idea that the ESG sort of framework is not just another effort of companies to cleanse their past?
Heather Burns 15:31
It's a fantastic question. And, you know, I'd say that the answer is quite complicated, really. And there are certainly experts out there who I respect, and who are actually very vocal right now and criticising ESG. And they're not wrong. But my pushback really is always that we need to do what we can when we can. And, you know, I will directly address that in just a minute. But I think, you know, everything about this industry is evolving. And we really need to evolve very, very quickly. And we need to keep that in mind. Companies are not designed to be able to evolve quickly. They're designed to get really good at their core deliverables and what they do and what they provide, right. And so, change is difficult, even on the individual level, you try to take that to the whole corporate culture level, and you're talking about it, it's going to take some time.
So that's certainly not an excuse, by any stretch of the imagination for companies to take advantage of that. And I think what I really do like about ESG, is that it is, you know, what is measured gets managed, and along with ESG, is this component of reporting, and becoming very transparent, and publicly open about whatever your environmental, social and governance performance is. And then setting goals that you're comfortable with. And this is usually where the most criticism comes in is, you know, companies are setting goals that they're comfortable with. They're not necessarily setting goals that place planetary benefit at the core of that goal, or even what's called, you know, planetary context. So for example, you know, if a company makes a commitment to reduce its water usage by 10%, over the course of whatever, that could sound like a great or 20, even 20, or 50%, whatever that number is, because it sounds like an amazing number.
But then if you really look at that particular company, you have to look at what watershed is it actually in? And what does that watershed require? Not the company what, but what does that actual watershed require to become more sustainable? So there's certainly some weak spots. And then as far as greenwashing goes, I mean, it's always a risk, and it and it will continue to be a risk. But I think that this idea that transparency, and supporting and backing up with data is becoming much, much more than expected, right, it's expected from investors. I mean, you can't really pull the wool over an investor size. I mean, if you do, there's serious consequences to that, you know, you're gonna be held to a much higher level of accountability around investors than you are consumers, unfortunately. But that's kind of just the truth. So I think that this idea that this newest kind of wave of investor involvement is, is critical to stem the spread of greenwashing.
Katherine Ann Byam 18:51
Yeah, I, I really get this. And I think there's a lot of pushback also on how companies are solving the problems. So things like, you know, should we be doing offsets? Or should we be really innovating from within? Should we really be getting all the things out? And I think you've kind of answered that already, in terms of how difficult it is to make change happen. And we actually need the companies that are dedicated to the offsetting to kind of get something for their effort, right. So companies that are trying to build solutions that are specific to that, you know, you kind of want to support those even if they are interim solutions, but we need every solution. Right. But I don't know if you have a different thought than that.
Heather Burns 19:32
No, I agree with that. 100%. We need our solution. And new solutions will also come online, right? I mean, we're not thank goodness, we're not operating in a bubble. And now the companies see a very strong business case for incorporating these things. I think that's going to lead to more R & D than it already is. It's leading to more R & D, more investments and more innovation, innovative solutions for the marketplace. So we'll continue to see more of those as we go along.
Katherine Ann Byam 20:07
That's interesting. I want to tap into that, because what do you anticipate as the sort of future of the next five years of this ESG framework, etc. Because, for me, what I'd probably like to see is that it really becomes more integrated and embedded in everything in all the reporting that we do in everything that comes out of a company. But what are your thoughts on where you see this going in the next five years? Well, it's
Heather Burns 20:32
definitely going to become more integrated. And I think that certainly has pros and cons to it. And the way that we get there is a little bit concerning because there's not a lot of standardisation, particularly when you're talking about, you know, consulting, and providing advice in this space. And in some ways, that's a good thing. Because I truly believe that there's a place for every single consultant who wants to get involved in this can have a positive impact doing so. But at the same time, there's very little, you know, academic programmes that are sort of all over the map, in terms of what they cover. Most of them are highly theoretical and methodology based or not practice based. So it's really a nascent industry sector that needs more. Yeah, more, you know, consistency across the board. But sort of from an industry wide perspective, I think one of the things that I see that's kind of exciting, actually, on the horizon is this idea of carbon pricing. And, you know, there are lots of different models out there and each other has pros and cons for sure, as far as climate change goes, but putting a price on carbon will really help us to realise the true cost of our emissions. And so for too long, you know, companies have externalised environmental costs, and basically borrowed from our future and future generations, to keep prices as low as possible for Chris consumers, you know, and we, as consumers have benefitted from that, so there's sort of no innocent bystanders here. But what's interesting is that many companies actually see carbon pricing as a necessary shift that they need to make to get to a carbon neutral economy. And many of them are already using an internal price on carbon to make really important business decisions. So yeah, I think, I think that's really exciting in terms of like, getting everyone on the same page, and starting to really understand the cost of the things that we use,
Katherine Ann Byam 23:03
So true. And I also think that, you know, it's like your analogy about borrowing from the future, like, one of my guests once said, and I always remember it, that we have that we have this inheritance, right? It's like your great grandfather's left your big, big inheritance, and we decided to do it on the first party, right? Instead of sort of leaving it for What's tomorrow. And, and essentially, that's, that's where we're at in it's like, you know, what we see going on with Russia and Ukraine and all the situations that we have going on in the world at the moment, a lot of it is a land grab for resources, right? That's a land grab for things that are scarce. And I can't see that changing until we change until we start thinking about things differently. So it seems, and I don't want to see anything as inevitable because that's scary language. But if we don't, if we don't embrace this, we will have other consequences that we will need to embrace. So we need to, I really think we should choose the lesser of the evils. I don't know if it's,
Heather Burns 24:10
yeah, I mean, Change is inevitable, and adaptation is necessary at this point, you know, and, and the science is evolving, right. So as we learn more about the impacts and the CO impacts, and the long tail impacts, you know, I mean, the things that we're missing today are not what we're experiencing today, right? It's what our kids will experience. So it's, this is a long game. And I think that's another sort of mindset shift that's necessary if we're so instant gratification, you know, programmed and we've really have to start to think more in seven generations, right? Like think about those seven generations. Yeah, I think that's an important mindset shift to have for sure.
Katherine Ann Byam 25:05
I want to ask a few questions now for the people who are listening to this who may be interested in dipping into consulting in this space. And I know that many of my younger listeners, people in that sort of millennials, slash Gen Gen Z categories, are really thinking about what they can do to make an impact, and what advice would you give them?
Heather Burns 25:28
Well, it's a super exciting time. And I said it before, but I'm gonna say it again, I honestly believe that there's a place for everyone. And it really is a blue ocean opportunity for consultants who want to help or people who want to help companies prepare for what's ahead and become a part of the solution. So I certainly think that that's, you know, the time is now if you've been thinking about it, like, dive in. Because when you think about it, and everything we've talked about today, right, there's just enormous, the floodgates have opened. And I actually have friends who own a company that helps pair companies looking for consultants and ESG consultants, and there's just such overwhelming demand, even the consultants, these firms that are out there that are doing this kind of work, they don't have enough people. So there's just this unprecedented demand.
And I think that's first, the second thing is that there really is this myth, and it's starting to weaken, but it's still really very much there. And that is that, you know, you have to be science oriented or tech, not, you know, very technical in your expertise. But that's really not true. I mean, like you said earlier, I did not come from, you know, in a traditional environmental background, many of us don't. And in fact, companies certainly are utilising, you know, subject matter experts and technical experts for their, you know, their footprinting, or their life cycle analysis. But they also really need more of the overarching consultants who can help them navigate all of this change that's required to embed a strategy, you know, create a strategy and embed it, and then communicate it. And so you know, as for more specific skills, and experience, I think there's probably like three things to keep in mind.
The first is that surveys have shown that the most sought after criteria that companies are looking for when they're hiring people, is that they have industry specific experience. So if you can find a way to start, within an industry that you already have experience in, you're definitely going to have a leg up.
The second is that strong communication skills are very important, right. So the ability to make a compelling case for change. Whether that's through written internal kind of communications, or external branding, kind of communications, or verbal presentations, its communications is definitely something that everyone involved in ESG. And sustainability really needs to be good at. Because you're trying to get a lot of different people onto the same page and rowing in the same direction. So I'd also say, really close to that is that there's relationship building. And, you know, companies are really often very nervous about like, you know, pulling back the curtain, and, you know, they fear judgement. And let's face it, no company is doing everything. 100%, right. And lots of them have been contributors to the problem. But it's a learning curve. And so the ability to create trust and relationships and rapport with companies, I think is really important.
And then third is kind of like a bonus, I'd call it and it's maybe a bit more of like a superpower. But it can certainly be learned. And that is whole system's thinking. So I really like the ability to draw connections to sustainability from all sorts of angles. And this helps you not only come up with innovative solutions for your clients, but it also makes it easier to see, kind of down the road, what's coming next in the industry. And that is something that companies will definitely like to pay a premium for.
Katherine Ann Byam 29:49
That's really great and a slightly different tack on this question. And it's something that I've been kind of receiving and I want to validate if it's actually true, but I think this is probably The first corporate role maybe other than HR, that could be female? What are your thoughts on that?
Heather Burns 30:06
Well, I think certainly there is a shift. However, you know, if you're looking at business and industry, I mean, it's predominantly male. Right? So I mean, we have that. But I think as far as the potential, it's, it's certainly there. And I would, I would definitely say that it's gotten better or a little bit easier to be female led, because, you know, in the early days, the denial was just so like, in your face, and I mean, I've had men really kind of get in my face about it, you know, back in the 2000 10s, kind of, you know, looking at me and like, Yeah, this is never going to be a thing. Like, we, you know, what are you even doing? This is just not even gonna be a thing. And it is a thing, to those of you who said that, to me, it is a thing. So, yeah, I do, I do think and I think women are also very well positioned in terms of like, they're typically good communicators. Right. So I think there's some, definitely some alignment there
Katherine Ann Byam 31:19
any closing remarks that you want to share with my listeners, and maybe how they can connect with your work?
Heather Burns 31:26
Well, I'd say there's two ways. First, is through a digital course that I developed called ESG, consulting foundations, and that teaches how to build a successful ESG and sustainability consulting practice. What makes it different is really, you know, we go well beyond theory into the practice of being an ESG, and sustainability consultant. And, you know, how do you find your first clients? How do you make a strong business case? And how do you build credibility quickly, things like that. And second, I don't even know if you know this yet, but you have inspired me to start a podcast. So it's called consulting 9.0. And we look at what it's like to build a successful consulting practice on a warming planet. Season One is going to be interviews with seven pioneers of sustainability business. I think six of those seven are actually meant. So there's some equity work necessary there. But the 9.0 really is a play off of the nine planetary boundaries that are required for humans to be supported on the planet. I love
Katherine Ann Byam 32:41
This is because I love that word. You recommended it to me actually, you recommended that I read donut economics and, and get into that space and and I really like how she has sort of centred this idea that we need to live in balance with these nine boundaries. But we also need to make sure no one falls through the hole. And when we say no one, it's like, it's biodiversity, right? Life itself doesn't fall through that hole. So I really love that you've embraced that in your work. And I'm really looking forward to when you bring that podcast out. Thank you. So Heather, it's been really a pleasure to have you ever learn so much in the session, and I'm sure many listeners have to thank you so much for joining the show.
068 Breaking Gender Bias Thread by Thread
About this Episode
Sally Dear is the founder of Ducky Zebra, a childrenswear brand that challenges the outdated gender stereotypes found in high-street kids’ clothing.
She was frustrated by the impact of gender stereotypes on her children. The language they were hearing, TV they were watching, games they were playing, and the clothes they were wearing, so she decided to tackle one of these areas, clothing, as a means to changing the narrative.
During her early research she discovered the negative impact of the fashion industry on the world around us. It accounts for 10% of global carbon emissions and nearly 20% of wastewater. In the UK an estimated 350,000 tonnes of clothing ends up in landfill every year.
She decided to run a different sort of clothing brand. Ducky Zebra supports slow fashion; and are passionate about reducing their environmental impact, being ethical and transparent.
She’s won competitions, and features, and is working to build this revolutionary brand into a household name.
Katherine Ann Byam 0:03 Sally, welcome to where Ideas Launch.
Sally Dear 1:33 Thank you so much for having me. I'm delighted to be here.
Katherine Ann Byam 1:36 Really great to have you. I'm going to start with the big question, why gender stereotypes such a burning issue for you. Can you share that with our listeners today?
Sally Dear 1:45 Well, I think for me, it became a burning issue after I saw the negative impact it was having on my two children. And after that point, I did quite a lot of research. And I discovered that between the ages of two and five children become avid gender detectives. So they're looking for clues to make sense of the world around them. And they're like sponges, so they absorb things at lightning speed.
And that might include the colour code of pink for girls and blue for boys, the toy rules of dolls and parents for girls, and sports and cars for boys and the behaviour rules of kind, sweet and pretty girls, and strong, brave and confident boys. And research shows that by the time children are as young as six, they've already made sense of the world around them, and their place within it. And this can then go on to influence future choices and decisions, such as the subjects they choose their career paths, their salary, mental health, and behaviour.
So not only do these stereotypes influence their decisions, and limit their opportunities, but also, for those children that don't fit within a stereotype, it can be very stressful. So as an example, if a boy really likes to colour pink, in our world of pink for girls, and blue for boys, that boy might feel very confused and isolated. And sadly, they might be teased by other children for not following the gender rules that they've learned. So with that research on top of the the impact I see it was having on my children, I became very passionate about trying to remove those restrictive stereotypes.
Katherine Ann Byam 3:37 It's incredible how powerful children develop these skills at such young ages. And you don't actually realise it until you hear something when they can actually verbalise what they were they're thinking and perceiving. And then you're like, Well, where did this come from?
Sally Dear 3:52 completely agree. Sometimes we're almost blind to it, because we've grown up without ourselves.
Katherine Ann Byam 3:59 Yeah, you're right. So you decided to start with clothing. But you don't necessarily have a background in fashion. So tell us a bit about Ducky Zebra, and the sort of conceptualization of the brand the products and why they matter.
Sally Dear 4:12 But you're right, so my background isn't in fashion. It's a marketing and predominantly for the automotive and rail sectors. Why Ducky Zebra? Well, at the age of four, my daughter mentioned she couldn't be a taxi driver when she was older because she was a girl. And it made me stop and see the world through her eyes. And I decided I wanted to do something about it.
And originally, I wanted to do something that would help her and other girls be whoever and whatever they wanted to be. But during my research, I discovered things were just as bad if not worse for boys. And at that point, I decided I wanted to do something that would help girls and boys equally.
Why clothes? Well, clothes are often seen as an expression Have our identity. And yet from the point that we're born, our gender often dictates what we wear. With girls often wearing clothes that are pink, and pastel in colour with cute pretty images, magic, fairies focus on looks and beauty and messages of kindness but not necessarily confidence, while the clothes for boys are often blue sludgy, and colour with ferocious teeth bearing predators, messages of bravery and heroism.
And while there might be a focus on confidence, there's not necessarily a focus on kindness. So with Ducky Zebra, we've created unisex clothes that celebrate both kindness and confidence equally for girls and boys alike. And they're suitable for babies and children up to six years old. And we've had children involved with the designs themselves, which means they're really bright, colourful, and good fun. So we know the children wants to wear them. And we've also tried our very hardest to design the clothes and manufacture them in a way that is as sustainable as possible.
Katherine Ann Byam 6:11 That's great. I remember when I was three or four years old, my mom dressed me up in this pink outfit, and I was like, I do not want to wear this I cried, cried and cried and cried until she switched me to the blue one. lasting memory!
So we hear and speak a lot about business models on this podcast in particular, because I like to explore something that I like to call the parallel of the business model and the impact model. So I'd like to ask a bit about your impact model as well. How have you set up your business to touch on the various sustainability interests that you have?
Sally Dear 6:48 This is such a good question. And sustainability has been important for Ducky Zebra from the very start, and it's one of our six core values. And I think maybe in order to answer your question, it makes sense to first look at what the business models like for the fashion industry typically. So it's one of multiple seasons, regular new shiny collections, fast production and low prices. And this forces pressure down onto the factories, onto the workers and onto the quality of the clothes. And it also creates a throwaway culture.
This isn't kind and it's not sustainable for the planet. So for Ducky Zebra we wanted to set up our business model differently. We do, of course, want to make money because we need to survive, and we want to grow. But it doesn't take priority over being kind to the people that make our clothes or to the planets. For us, we use the rethink, reuse, recycle and reduce framework. And that has really helped us. So by way of example, when we were looking at the fabric we wanted to use, we decided to use certified organic cotton to reduce our carbon emissions and our water waste. So the grown organic cotton requires up to 91% Less water compared to conventional cotton, and it admits up to 46% less emissions.
We also took a long time to carefully select our manufacturing partner. Now they're based in the south of India, and our values are really closely aligned. And they're continually looking for ways to rethink their processes in order to reduce that impact. As an example, currently, 50% of their power comes from solar energy, and soon as will be 85%. They also do things like harvest rainwater, which helps to say save the groundwater levels, and they recycle all wastewater. And then in terms of the clothes themselves and the designs we've used, we've really tried to prioritise longevity. And so they meet they're made from high quality fabric, they're designed to last and pass on to siblings and friends for reuse. And deciding is generous.
And we have little features like roll up and roll down cuffs so that they can grow as the child grows. And by ensuring that they're durable. Their lifecycle can be extended, which again helps us to reduce our carbon water and waste footprints. We've also tried to ensure that our designs are timeless and unisex. So rather than adopting the latest trends or seasonal gimmicks, we're rethinking fashion for children. So we create small volumes of colourful unisex designs that can be reused regardless of the season or the agenda. If you don't have anyone to pass your old stock is ever close onto.
We have a pre loved programme which allows you to recycle your clothes by returning them to us and We then pass them on to the Oxford baby bank where they can be reused. We also work with a fantastic organisation called rap Cline's, who help upcycle any clothes that perhaps we can't pass on to somebody else, or were unable to sell. And they upcycle those into small little drawstring gift bags, which we can either pass on to customers or sell. So there are so many things that I could talk about. But I genuinely believe by being sustainable and trying to reduce our waste and impact, it opens up so many opportunities, and so many possibilities for being creative.
Katherine Ann Byam 10:39 And this is cool. And I want to tap into that a little bit if you can share a bit about the opportunities you've had, because of this lens that you've taken, but also some of the challenges you've faced in growing this business.
Sally Dear 10:52 So I mean, in terms of the opportunities, I touched upon wrap kinds, who are fantastic organisation, but they could see that with every and fashion industry, there is fabric waste. And together, we've looked at how we can reduce that waste by turning something that is ready to go into the bin into something that someone's going to really enjoy and love. And actually, so I've got a little pop up shop at the moment, and I sell these wrap kind bags. And they're fantastic size to keep like little distractions, if you're going out for a meal with your child, and you want to put a few activities into the bag to keep the child entertained, they're a great size for that. And the kids loved them. So it could have ended up in the bin.
But instead, it's been loved and enjoyed in terms of the challenges. Well, I developed and launched ducky zebra, during the pandemic. And I would say without a doubt, that's been one of the biggest challenges. So like working on the designs while freelancing to raise funds, while homeschooling my two kids, and I was the manufacturing was delayed by around six months. And I had a very good relationship with the factory, and I wanted to remain loyal to them.
But I would say the fact that we were on opposite sides of the world at that point was definitely a challenge. And when we were coming out of lockdowns, they were going into them, the pandemic has definitely thrown a few challenges away. And then I'd say since launching, I have two kind of key daily challenges, which is raising awareness on a limited budget. And then I'm sure you experienced this yourself the constant juggling of competing priorities, and wearing multiple hats from one minute to the next. And particularly because a purpose led brands was sustainability at the heart, there is always more that we could be doing.
Katherine Ann Byam 13:05 Well, that's definitely takes a toll on you emotionally as well, the decision fatigue, because we have to review so many details. And you know, sometimes you have to to compensate to sacrifice some things that you really care about other things that you care about more. And it takes its toll. Right.
Sally Dear 13:25 I completely agree with you. There is that emotional drain? And because we're passionate about what we do, sometimes it is hard to make those compromises like you said, as well.
Katherine Ann Byam 13:36 Yeah, absolutely. So what would you say have been the keys to your success in this venture so far?
Sally Dear 13:45 I'd say. At the very beginning, before I started to do anything, I conducted research, and I managed to speak to over 1000, carers and parents. And I think that was invaluable. It highlighted a number of common problems and themes, which I was then able to start to address with my clothing and with the business. And I think doing that research before I created a solution has really helped. And the research also helped to crystallise my six core values.
So before I did anything, I had a good idea of the problem and the themes and trends. And I also have my six values. And that's helps to guide the products, our content and articles, our marketing and social media, and also the audience that I'm trying to reach. So I'd say that's been really valuable. And then I would also say being flexible and adapting to change and being open to trying new things and collaborating with new people, especially during the pandemic when there have been so many unknowns has really helps with our success as well.
Katherine Ann Byam 15:02 And well done for persevering through through it all and getting to this point. Thank you. How has the journey impacted your children? Oh,
Sally Dear 15:10 well, sadly, my daughter is now too big for our clothes. So it took me too long to launch and when she's upset about, but I really hope that I'm being a positive role model to her. And as for my son, Eli, he loves the clothes, he proudly wears them. And inside each of the pockets, there's a little embroidered splash motif, which acts as a physical reminder for children to splash kindness and confidence.
And he loves rubbing the little embroidery and he doesn't have to wear a school uniform. So he loves to wear his duckies every trousers so that he can rub that at school. And I think he for him, the values of kindness and confidence really appeal. So aside from having a very busy and slightly stressed Mum, I'm hoping that it's had a positive impact on them.
Katherine Ann Byam 16:03 I get that, as a woman running a sustainable business, what advice do you have for people getting started today or thinking about it?
Sally Dear 16:11 I think it's great being a woman running and starting a sustainable business. I've been amazed at the fantastic network of people, yourself included that I've come across, and people are so open to collaborating and supporting one another. In terms of advice, I'd say Believe in yourself. Know what your purpose is, or the problem that you're solving.
And stay true to that collaborate and connect with other like minded people, and in particular, other people that are at a similar stage in their business journey to you. And so I've been really fortunate and finding a number of people that I can speak to and share ideas with and learn from as well. Get used to working outside of your comfort zone because you can do it. And finally, have fun and enjoy yourself because you're going to be spending a lot of your day doing it. So you need to love it as well.
Katherine Ann Byam 17:12 Great advice. How can my listeners reach out and connect with your brand?
Unknown Speaker 17:17 Thank you so much for asking. I'd love to connect with you on our website, which is duckyzebra.com. Or through social media. Our handle is @duckyzebra. And we're active on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
Katherine Ann Byam 17:34 Really lovely to have you here and best wishes for the rest of 2022.
Sally Dear 17:38 Thank you so much Katherine.
067 Systemic and Sustainable Mobility
About this Episode
Today, my guest is Tillman Vahle. Before Joining SYSTEMIQ, Tilmann worked with EY sustainability consulting and auditing - working for several globally leading corporations, smaller companies, and the German Government to support better transparency and trust in sustainability reporting.
Previously he worked at Volkswagen Corporate Foresight, where he developed a Master Thesis on autonomous mobility for his masters degree. He also had experiences with German Development Association GIZ supporting a review of national parks Management of the Philippines and the DESERTEC Foundation. He holds degrees with distinction from University College Maastricht and IIIEE, Lund University.
So tell us a little bit about systemic and what you guys are doing to help us redesign and decarbonize?
Tilmann Vahle 1:38
Yeah, so systemic was founded five years ago, after the Paris Accords, by the then leaders of the sustainability branch of McKinsey, Germany opened home and Martin stata and the original mission and still is, it's really to double down on environmental sustainability. And basically across the board, right, so we look really at high impact stuff. And across natural systems, the rain forest regeneration, for example, on materials management of the circular economy, through plastics, recycling, on our sustainable battery value chains, in the mobility system, and in the energy system as well, where we run especially work on harder to bed sectors.
So that is, you know, the foundational industries of our economy like chemicals, steel, concrete, aviation, shipping, the stuff that is very hard to decarbonize and more sustainable. And that's what systemics mission is, we work globally, we were now 300 peoples, and since we started 2015 16, and we work with, you know, governments, top corporates, innovators, banks, and you know, large organisations like the WWF, or the World Economic Forum to make that happen. Yeah, and that's, that's what we do.
We try to take assistance angles, not only advising one company, but we, when we advise work with companies, we want to look at how they can be part of a better future system? So the system is our client, if you will, and then we run a lot of consultant analytics to underpin these consults. Yeah. And then that is what where we think we are USP lies where you're putting the right players and the right brands together to really put the accelerate the decarbonisation fundamentally,
Katherine Ann Byam 3:25
How did you come to work in sustainability? And was it always in your role since you started working?
Tilmann Vahle 3:30
Yeah, so I mean, ever since starting studies, basically, I had the goal to look at the largest challenge, large challenges of our time and decarbonisation are climate, climate change and the loss of biodiversity they appear to me like the big existential crisis of humanity. And so, you know, with all the modesty of the young student went right into that.
And the way that I that what caught my attention in the beginning, and what brought me on my path that I'm on now is, I read an amazing book by the founders of the Rocky Mountain Institute, which is called Natural Capitalism, which is all about, if you look at systems from a fundamental angle, I could go back to the physical principles go back to like a proper, deep dive refurbishment of the system. And you can make dramatic improvements with actual cost savings.
You know, when I started there was this belief that sustainability is always more expensive, right? It's a trade off between our wealth to our well being. And that book basically just says, now that's just not true, right? If you do it right, actually, things improved dramatically in all directions, including for economics and for social welfare. And the more I'm in this space, the more you know, we find it's true, right?
Like nowadays, electric cars are cheaper over their lifetime and conventional renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels in almost every place in the world. And so, this is what kind of excites me and which has brought me along over the years. It's like, well, the decade now. And yeah, so it was always in sustainability that I worked. And I think it's a great, great path now, right, and a great journey, because it's really accelerating all around, but you start looking.
Katherine Ann Byam 5:16
Yeah, I don't know, if it's accelerating, you know, but it is definitely several years you worked with EY in sustainability, you know, what a thing.
What is the role of reporting to improve the whole corporate sustainability performance in your view?
Tilmann Vahle 5:31
And so it was kind of two sided. For one, I think it's important to, you know, it kept coming back to this adage, that you what you can't measure you can't manage. I mean, that's the foundation that, of course, you need data, you need the transparency about what happens in industry, what happens in companies actions. And so corporate reporting on ESG topics is super important, like reporting on their financial matters is super important. So like, you know, you can invest into them and have transparency in and can make investment decisions the same for all sustainability topics.
And equally, like the data that you see, or the info that you get from corporates, in the sustainability reports, for example, they, we need to be looking out carefully for what's audited, and what is driving, I think that's, for me, the key takeaway from my time at EY auditing is so crucial. So you can trust the data that you get, right. At the same time, the ESG reports, you know, they have they came from ESG papers from a marketing. And so they aren't a reflection of the strategy of the company, right? So we need to also like, be careful on how to interpret them, and exactly is what you read is what you get.
But it doesn't change the impact of the company fundamentally, right? So there's a limit to what you get out of it. And it doesn't reflect the relative size of the impact to the problem, right? Like, if X amount of co2 is emitted by a company, what does that mean? It doesn't give you a rating, like a framing of it. And so what you need to do is using the data you need to go read and requesting the strategies and the business models fundamentally, like an oil company can never be fully sustainable, like, inherently. And so going back and going to the fundamentals goes way beyond reporting.
And that's where I'm so excited to work at systemic where, you know, we use reporting, but we go through and beyond it, to help these companies improve more and more fundamentally.
Katherine Ann Byam 7:31
So you also worked for Volkswagen, can you share your thoughts and how that company has recovered from the diesel scandal and how it performs now, in terms of facing climate targets?
Tilmann Vahle 7:43
Yeah, when I was at Fox learn, and it was in 2012, and 14 for say, one and a half years or so it was an interesting timing, because it was around the time of the IPO of Tesla. And back in the day, when I talked about Tesla and electric mobility, even with a relatively senior management, it was all Miami, they refurbish these, you know, small convertibles, but know that you could never scale.
This is not for volume, you know, who cares, basically. And I mean, of course, many people had realised that it's fundamentally luminous to where to go, but they didn't see a path for volume manufacture for autos, to actually go there. And so this has changed. So fundamentally, and so the diesel crisis in 2015, I think, was a catalytic event in a way, right, because for one focus on was was sentence in the US, for example, to invest heavily into electric charging infrastructure, which is now coming back as a boon to them, where they're rolling out electric cars, right, because now there's charges where you can actually use them. And so, for one, I think it's helped tilt the perspective and also, of course, unveil the corruption that had happened.
Yeah. And I mean, I'm, I don't want to talk more about that. I mean, it's all in the press and all that. But what's the fact is that folks that are in right now are the largest investor in electric mobility globally. It's like, I think half or something of all the investments that go it's like way beyond 100 billion euros that invest in electric and smart mobility. And so that's a huge, huge drive. And so after Tesla, they're probably runner up in that transition, and of course, being this huge, huge corporation, they have a huge leverage, also, right.
And so they're that strategy, I think right now is probably the most ambitious in the entire Old automotive industry, which is very plausible. It's going to be a hard one, but I think it's quite amazing what they do, and they have a very good comprehensive view. And so it's, it's good to see that, you know, even large incumbent companies can turn around and become really frontrunners in these kinds of talks.
Katherine Ann Byam 9:52
Yeah, no, that's a positive story and I think I had not realised how big they were in that space at this moment. So thank you for sharing that. Sustainability by nature is complex. And there are many angles to examine before we can read something as sustainable. And for example, there has been a report showing that shared Micro Mobility solutions are not nearly as sustainable as we think. So can you share why that is? And what can we do?
Tilmann Vahle 10:19
Yeah, that is a tricky topic, right? I mean, on the one hand, I'm, I'm all for moving away from like, a pure car based mobility system. I mean, it's quite well known, right? That cars have been, I mean, combustion cars particularly have a terrible environmental footprint, not only in the co2, right, I mean, also just a really, waste of space in a crowded city, right? And you move around like several tonnes of material to generally just move one person on average. And that's it.
I mean, we're gonna always use cars to an extent, right, and so electrifying, and I think that's to start off with, like, moving to electric cars is so so important. It must happen very, very fast. Yeah, they're a lot better and the only decarbonization option really on in the mobility system that we have. So that said, like, for cities, cars aren't really in most cities, not that not really the optimal solution, right. And so how to, to have an alternative is, of course, other modes of transport, like the so-called modal shift, moving away from cars to other modes.
And public transport is something that is very institutional and takes a long time to build, to operate, it also tends to have to be subsidised. And, and so there's always going to be gaps that can't be filled with conventional traditional public transit. And so there is this hope that micro mobility, like the scooters, and scooter, shares, and rentals can fill that gap. And so therefore, help people move away from cars to other modes, yeah, and get around cities without that. And so that's great.
The challenges empirically, that's not really what happens. But these scooters and micro mobility options, they tend to be used by people that don't have a car anyway, and would have taken the tram or something. And so it's not really shifting, yeah, it's just changing from a normal car mode to another mode. And that becomes problematic, because these micro scooters, I mean, they've not been around for variables. And they don't, you know, they're not perfect products. Yeah, so they don't last very long.
And I think one data point that I read from one of the large consultancies was that these kick scooters last on average two to three months. And so that's two months, and then you scrap them. And so you have a few kilometres that you take, and then you scrap them. And so that's a lot of battery materials, a lot of steel that you just like, they don't have a lot of use for a long time. And so all that footprint that you had in production, is just wasted after a very short time.
So that is bad. Secondly, to put them in a city, you know, they offer their suppliers and need to drive around and basically relocate, right, and sometimes you see them with a van coming, picking them up and charging them and putting them back out. And these vans around diesel, and you need quite a lot of these to drive around. And so right now, because they are not electrified, there's actually a massive co2 footprint attached to these just from making the system work. And so it's gonna take a while until they improve and actually become a sustainable quote-unquote, mobility option.
Katherine Ann Byam 13:24
I want to challenge you and something, please. You said that we got to use cars, we have to use guys that have to move to electric cars. But do we really need cars?
Tilmann Vahle 13:37
Very good. depends on the location where you're at. Right? Right now 70% of people in Europe live in cities. If you've tried to look at the definition of a city, it's very tricky, like what constitutes a city? Because it's basically always just a matter of local demarcation. Yeah, like what is the city boundary, there's, there's, like a city can just draw a boundary wherever they want, you know, historically.
And so that could be that, you know, a city contains regions where there's really just, you know, the odd dispersed house somewhere where it's really far distances, where you don't have a Buddhist connection. We don't have a tram, let alone a metro. Were really other options. But individual mobility doesn't work. Yeah. And then of course, if you have to say, I want to live in the city flat and generally bike everywhere, but if I need to go to IKEA, whatever, and buy a bookshelf, you know, I do need a car.
I can't put it on my bike. So there will have to be cars. Of course, we will have citizen urban centres, particularly right now. Our use of cars in the western world is obscene and like providing mobility in other parts of the world, like say, India or capital cities and an African in many African countries would just not be feasible. The amount of people putting them in cars like you would probably grow the city tenfold. So that wouldn't work. So yeah, we can use a lot of fewer cars in many, many locations.
And the great thing is that the EU has just passed a legislative package, where they will ask the top 450 cities in the EU to create sustainable urban mobility plans. So basically plans how they can improve their mobility. So everybody will have to reflect Okay, country, you know, improve road infrastructure, bike infrastructure, trams, and Reno improves the options to move away.
That said, we will still have cars all over the place, ultimately for in the long run. So yeah, electrification is priority number one, because you know, what happens now, but ultimately, it's, you know, think President Obama said, former President Obama is like, you know, isn't all of the above options like, yeah, we need to do everything at the same time. So that's not an either or.
Katherine Ann Byam 15:55
So I interviewed Yanis production IQ earlier in this podcast, and one of the things he was talking about is that the minute you purchase a car, you have already spent, I don't know, roughly two thirds of the carbon outlay, just by purchasing it, because of the resources it takes to make it I know, electric cars will be slightly different, because they probably made in electric factories. So it's a little bit less in terms of the carbon way, but it's still extraction of resources.
And that's still a problem. I guess why I'm pushing this is that it's really about, we should be embracing what's happened with the pandemic, and really encouraging less people going to work, which is already creating big savings and teams. I mean, I've used my car probably, I don't know, 12 times for the year 2021?
I don't know, it's not. Right. And I think that there's a real argument here for us to make our next transition. One that is, you know, really using more public transport, it could include things like Ubers, right, because they're just as efficient or, you know, other providers, it's just as efficient as having your own car, because you get them within two minutes, they take you where you want to go, you potentially have the entire coffee yourself. And it's, it's a solution, that means that the car isn't parked up, you know, just sitting around waiting for you. Right, which is one of the biggest problems that we have. So that's why I'm pushing it. I mean, what are your thoughts?
Tilmann Vahle 17:24
Um, yes, no, I work closely with Ganesh and all behind the analyses and messages of the UN International resource panel, right, like half of global co2 emissions come from extraction and manufacturing of materials, and 90% of the biodiversity impacts, it's like immensely important that we lower our resource consumption, right. Doesn't matter if we decarbonize or not, we need to go down with our consumption.
So yeah, 100% and there's also a great opportunity in reducing our travel through I mean, you know, we're on a what is it zoom call now. And that means that the work world has changed fundamentally and permanently, because three years ago, barely a company was using Zoom, and all these hassles, who was allowed to use what and all that, and that's changed, and it's here for good. And so we don't need to travel quite as much anymore, we won't have to fly to work with clients so much anymore. And I mean, systemic has been operating virtually for, for the pandemic, of course, as so many have, and it's been going great.
We do need more people to contact, right. I mean, mentally, like for mental well being. And that's a huge, huge challenge everybody's having. And so we will have to see each other a little bit more right, again, but of course, it's a good change to travel less.
That said, there's these fun rebounds, like, well, then we're all sitting at home, right? And so basically, in the long run, We'll all meet in another room. Additionally, in our flats we have a home office, right? And then you have kids, maybe and your partner's also working.
So you need larger flats. So how do you do that? And then, like, is it really more sustainable, like generally looking at needing to be somewhere you need to heat your place and you have lighting and eating and I don't know, for myself, my heating bill has gone up by a third, just because I'm so much at home. And so I don't know whether that is in the long run really more sustainable that you know, it's going to have to be analysed. But that said, it's great to have better utilisation of spaces and have officers on our vehicles and we definitely need to go there.
Katherine Ann Byam 19:32
Yeah, I mean, I mean, what we can do is instead of working wherever your offices you go down to the neighbourhood office that's now weekend and you use that as a co-working space but I'm gonna let you off the hook on this one I know a lot more analysis than we have time to do on this podcast but
Tilmann Vahle 19:48
but I love by that point let me just jump in what I love that idea Katherine like the decentralised you know, co working spaces. And we have a bunch of colleagues that do this. You know that that works in And then permanently and you know, we just meet occasionally. It's great to decentralise it that way. Yeah, very good.
Katherine Ann Byam 20:05
It's a great solution that I think we need to be thinking more broadly about. But as you say, You guys are the ones doing the analytics. So looking forward to hearing your summaries, what are the current projects you're working on? And what impact are they likely to have on decarbonisation? This year? 2022?
Tilmann Vahle 20:22
Yeah, so one of the large ones that we are currently developing and that will go live in April, hopefully, is the battery passport. That's something that the EU has put in regulation. Last year, that every battery every large battery, so not the, you know, the mobile phone batteries, but like stop storage batteries and car batteries that come onto the market starting 2026 We'll have to have a better passport, basically a little database, and that you could access online, that tells you that so the consumer but also b2b manufacturers and to government, what's the co2 footprint?
Where's the material from? So if there is critical cobalt in it, for example, what share of it is recycled? what chemicals are in there, so you can recycle them better? What's the state of health of the battery? So you can use it for a second life application, for example, after it's not good enough for the car anymore? So very important information for both business and sustainability. And the thing is, it doesn't exist yet. And so the question is, which data in what form? How do you get it there?
So there's a lot of questions that still need to be debated by industry and politics, technically, but also content wise. And so we've put together a consortium of like a dozen leading automotive companies, material companies and science institutes with the Fraunhofer Institute like top researchers, and the World Economic Forum to answer some of these questions and contribute to that.
That's one of the big projects that we're starting. But we're also working with an economic forum on a study on circular economy policy between the EU and China. That's going to come up mid-year and hopefully start a great discussion. And working with a bunch of corporates also on Yeah, taking their perspective on living in that future urban mobility world and improving the full lifecycle impact.
So it's going to be a very, very, very exciting year and wait, yeah, we're growing very fast. We're doubling our team this year. So looking forward to applications as well, we're looking for colleagues.
Katherine Ann Byam 22:20
Right. I'm going to talk to you about that as soon as we finish this. So what are your thoughts on how the battery materials and rare crisis can be resolved? Because I think that this is the growing concern.
Tilmann Vahle 22:33
Yeah. No, and thanks for pointing that out. Right. Because it is definitely and to be honest, it's a matter that isn't only relevant to electric cars but to the whole decarbonisation well pathway overall, right. I mean, if you move from coal power plants to distributed solar, for example, we need a lot more IT infrastructure, a lot more electric motors and a lot more chips everywhere.
And so that's where the wires come in. Right? And just for the foundations that it's often misconceived that electric cars have reversed and the batteries have reversed and it's not really the case like rare earth are in electronics and in electric motors. Yeah. And so they're, like in very small amounts, you have them in very crucial batteries. You have cobalt, nickel, lithium, manganese sometimes depending on the chemistry. And none of these is rare. So like also chemically part of the rare earth group but they're also not chemically rare.
The challenge is that they have sustainability issues. And they're not there's not enough around right now. No, cobalt, infamously comes a lot from Congo and child lemons human rights concerns, lithium comes partly from southern America with concerns about water use. And nickel is really expanding. For example, in Indonesia, where there are some impacts on or dramatic impacts on rainforest and oceans. And so that needs to be fixed.
Thing is, right now we like what we're looking at right now. The batteries right now. They're basically what engines were, like 80 90 100 years ago. Yeah, so very primitive, if you will, and right now the innovation is oh, so fast that every like three months, there's new announcements of new chemicals, new new ways of manufacturing, and that we need less and less material to get the same performance.
And, they're getting less and less harmful. And so for example, Tesla's announced that for the big things like the module, model, three, the volume model, they're moving to lithium iron phosphate batteries altogether. And that's important because we talk about cobalt and nickel as the key problem materials. Well, you know, Tesla's already moving away from them, half of the batteries in the cars in China this year already, like 2021.
We already have lithium iron phosphate batteries that don't have any cobalt and nickel in them. So that's a challenge that is real, but it's also that for one limited cost, and for another, not going to be a problem for cars, predominantly in the long run. Yeah, and so it shouldn't be something that blocks this innovation. It's something that we should manage as well as we can. But in the medium term, you know, clean that up and limit and recycle everything that we have. But it's not a fundamental challenge to electrifying cars. So that's very important to keep in mind.
Katherine Ann Byam 25:19
For someone interested in a career in sustainability, what advice would you give them?
Tilmann Vahle 25:23
That is a great question. And to be honest, as I've looked back many times, I am now looking forward. Also, what could I do? What can I do? What can I apply myself to, but the thing is, at least since 2018, with the new IPCC report on the 1.5 degree goal, I think everybody's realised that climate change is real, it's happening, we need to act super fast. I also mentioned, technology has changed so much, like you know, solar is now cheaper than fossil electric cars basically, in two, three years time.
If you can't buy an electric car, that's your problem. But you want to buy one right this way here. So now it's shifted right? In the past, it was a lot about convincing people that we need to act, then it was a lot about okay, convincing people that it's possible to act now. It's really a question of okay, getting it done. And so if you want to move into sustainability, well, yeah, definitely educate, take a systems perspective, and you know, ask twice, like, what rebound effects? What's the complex value chain behind things? And who really has the power to change the system?
Fundamentally, is it me eating a little bit less meat, or, or using a bit less plastic bags? Or is it really, you know, the heating system where I don't have an impact on - Half of our emissions are basically from heating and lighting our homes. So whether you use a plastic bag or not, in the grand scheme of things, is really not important. Sorry to say. So I like learning to look through what are really the big challenges.
And then actually, you know, learn the skills that you need to grow businesses to legislate to contact and reach out to people to communicate, like basically business skills, normal still like to change stuff. You need to have the skills to change stuff not to be smart on sustainability. So I think that that's changed. Yeah. And so going to strategic consultancy, to bank to invest into politics, that's all opportunities to make a change, wherever in which whatever position you are.
Katherine Ann Byam 27:26
And that's great. How can my listeners get involved and support your work as well as possibly join systemic?
Tilmann Vahle 27:33
Yeah, I mean, we're, our goal this year is to grow by 50%, from 300 to over 400. And in all our locations, that's London, Amsterdam, Paris, Brussels, Jakarta, Jo Paulo, Paris. So yeah, please do apply, reach out, I mean, through LinkedIn, right, we are easy to find. I'm looking at our website, I think people will find a lot of interesting projects. So that's systemic dot earth and have a look there.
Katherine Ann Byam 28:06
Perfect. Thank you so much for joining the show today.
065 Green Cloud Nine
About this Episode
Today, my guest is Lola Fernandez. Lola was born in Spain, but considers herself a citizen of the world as she's lived in Word outside of her home country for more than half her life. As a girl, she always had a love for nature and grew up with anxiety about the future of the planet. And she became an activist at an early age.
During the nearly 25 years, she built a corporate career, she had a sense that she was meant to do something more, she started toying with the idea of her own business where she could set the values to align to what she really believed in, she left the corporate world to embark on the biggest adventure of life founding GREEN CLOUD NINE.
It's such a pleasure to have you on Where Ideas Launch, you are one of my best friends in the sustainability space. And it's such a pleasure for me to host you. So welcome.
Lola Fernandez 1:29
Thank you. Thank you very much, Katherine, it's my pleasure to be here. Because as you know, I'm a great fan of your work.
Katherine Ann Byam 1:36
Thank you so much. And I wanted to start off with where you grew up. And, you know, I know there's, there's a bit of a story there. But how did that sort of impact your activism work? And how did that influence who you are today?
Lola Fernandez 1:49
Yeah, well, I grew up in Spain, and pretty much between the South and the North, my family came from the south by the sea. And then because of work, we move up to the north, very close to the Pyrenees, to the mountains. So I have always had a very close relationship with nature, I love both the sea, I love the mountains, I love animals, I, I started developing that passion as well as, as a Girl Scout. Very, very early in my life.
And basically as I was growing up, I started learning as well about the damage and the things that we were doing to our environment. And for me, it was very shocking, to see that sometimes trying to spend some time by a river where we were having picnics as a family, we couldn't do that anymore, because they have the streaming. So it started causing me anxiety.
So I started trying to learn a little bit more. And somehow inside of me, something reacted. So I couldn't just stay put. And I think when I was 13, or 14 is when I had very clear that I needed to do something, and that something started with very little changes at home. And it slowly grew a little bit bigger, and I started joining organisations, I started going to demonstrations, etc.
Katherine Ann Byam 3:12
That's amazing. So you have worked in, I think it's four important spaces, NGOs, big corporate sustainable ventures as well, which is within the big corporate space. And now as an intrapreneur, can you possibly reflect on what were the sort of lessons you took from each of those phases? to sort of give you the grounding you have now?
Lola Fernandez 3:34
Yeah, well, I think from every area, I have picked different things, probably from NGOs, what I learned was more about values, things like integrity and the passion to do something that you believe in. But the thing there were also the important things like commitment and engagement, because normally we join NGO NGOs out of conviction, but you need to keep that mission and that passion alive and for that you need to keep the feet on the ground, it is very easy to get lost in idealistic principles, but you really want to achieve change, you need to roll up your sleeves and work right. So I think that being realistic has been very important there. I mean, from the big corporate time, I mean, nearly 25 years there I have taken so many lessons.
And of course, many of them have been on the business side like learning to project manage, learning business development, how to how important is to focus on customers, but they think a very important part of the learnings has been on the leadership side. I mean, they all around leadership skills, like how to deal with people how to communicate, understanding notions of setting up an organisation. All of that has been very, very useful and Till now.
Now on the intrapreneurship adventure, I would say that the biggest lesson I've learned is humility. Because no matter how much I knew from before, for those 25 years experience, I have realised that there is still much more that I need, I need to learn. So I need to approach everything with a very open mind. And so that that together with greed and determination, I think is what I'm learning the most now from being an intrapreneur.
Katherine Ann Byam 5:30
Yeah, no, these are really powerful lessons. I mean, tell everyone about what Green Cloud Nine is so that they have a perspective before we get into some of the challenges, like just explain the concept.
Lola Fernandez 5:42
Yeah. So basically, Green Cloud Nine is a digital marketplace. And probably the best way that people envision it is Amazon. So it is pretty much like Amazon marketplace where people can find everything that they need, from clothing, up to cosmetics, food, etc. but focus on the niche sustainability. So that's the biggest difference. In our case, only sustainable and ethical brands are going to be allowed in the platform, and to make sure that they are ethical and sustainable. We make them go through an assessment process, and only those who pass the assessment will be able to sell on the platform.
Katherine Ann Byam 6:27
And the assessment process. Is this something created by you guys? Or is it something that you're collaborating with other organisations to do?
Lola Fernandez 6:35
Yeah, so well, we have our sustainability team in green cloud nine. And what we decided to do, I think, in the future, this will probably evolve. But what we decided to do is to create a simplified version of what the big certifying bodies are doing, which is a very expensive and lengthy process. And we have simplified that, keeping the spirit of it but making it very easy. Also, for small companies who cannot afford to spend 3000 euros a year or up to 5000 euros sometimes, on that kind of process, we are giving them the opportunity to demonstrate that they are sustainable with this simplified process that we have developed ourselves.
Katherine Ann Byam 7:21
Okay, and are you getting some sort of approval for your process as well? Is that something that you have in your work so that your process can become a certification as well?
Lola Fernandez 7:30
Exactly. So that's the idea. In the long term we ourselves want to get certified by one of the best renowned certification bodies out there and turn our little process into a certification on its own. Yeah, that we need to learn on what we have created so far, and see how that develops?
Katherine Ann Byam 7:51
Yeah, perfect. No, that sounds really great and exciting. What are some of the biggest challenges you've faced in building? What do you have today in green cloud nine?
Lola Fernandez 8:01
Well, I think there are many, many, but I think that the fact that it is a very complex project, I mean, everybody thinks, oh, yeah, Minnesota is just a marketplace, what can be complex there, but now everything is complex about it. And the fact that we are looking at a European scope, so we want to have sellers, we want to give sustainable sellers overall in Europe, the opportunity to reach more customers. And that adds complexity in terms of languages in terms of legal regulations in terms of taxes. So there is a lot there. Of course the capital, the budget itself. This is a massive project, you are always gonna need a lot of capital right now.
I'm funding everything myself as a single founder. But very soon we are going to be looking at investment. And of course, trying to build a team without a proper budget has also been a big challenge, which I think considering the complexities and the restrictions I'm, I'm solving relatively well. I have right now an amazing team of volunteers from all over the world. And another thing we are doing is setting a better tone. Considering that a year ago, this was just an ad on paper. So it's slowly we are facing our challenges as we are working through them. And of course, now there are some new challenges coming, especially on the funding side.
Katherine Ann Byam 9:38
Yeah, no, definitely. What is it like working with volunteers and tell me about this experience for you? Because I know there are two sides to this experience.
Lola Fernandez 9:48
Sure. Sure. I mean, it is amazing because we have very motivated people so normally all the people that are joining us, they are people they've been Leaving what we do, right is otherwise they would not be working for us for free. And, and they are, they are convinced about our mission and our vision and they're very creative, they are motivated. Yeah, they bring lots of ideas. And because the team is all over the world as well, we are having an amazing diversity, cultural diversity backgrounds.
So that's that, that makes the team very, very dynamic. Of course, on the downside, let's say it's, we are having to manage an already complex organisation also just using volunteers. And that's considering that most of the volunteers are only working part time. There are organisation challenges, time restrictions, sometimes people need to leave the team before the time. And of course there is on the personal side, people that they think that because it's volunteers, it means that they, they don't have to work. So there is always a bit of a challenge there, keeping people engaged and making sure that they understand the commitment behind what you're doing.
Katherine Ann Byam 11:17
And I guess I guess there's also an internal side for you. Because when you have so many people giving their time, giving their creativity, giving their role, you must also feel a sense of deep obligation.
Lola Fernandez 11:29
Yes, it is. It is a lot of work. And as I say, we are even starting to build sub teams. So on one hand is very good as well, because we're IC talent, I'm able to develop that talent and into team leaders. And we do have a lot of talent in the team. But of course it is. Right now we are about 35 people, we have been up to nearly 50 At some point. And to have that coordinated, and it's a lot of time, a lot of engagement, a lot of commitment. So yeah, not so easy to manage.
Katherine Ann Byam 12:12
So tell us a little bit about the intended business model, what's it going to look like? What's it going to feel like if you're a customer, if you're a supplier? Tell us about it.
Lola Fernandez 12:21
Yeah, so if basically, as we said, so we are a digital marketplace. Basically, if you are a sustainable seller, what you can do is to create a little shop on our platform, we are making, we are streamlining the process a lot. So everything can pretty much be done. Online, we are also simplifying lots of the complexities of taxes, for example, I mean, trying to sell the VAT within Europe is a nightmare. And what we are doing is we are coding lots of this stuff in the backend of the platform.
So it is a lot easier for the sellers. And the idea is to have sellers across industries pretty much on every consumer area and products but in the future also services. So we want now for later and also consultancy, marketing etc. And, yeah, so then through the platform, the sellers will be able to reach customers in other countries that they normally operate. So many of the companies that we are approaching are really small, they are usually selling within their country.
And we want to give them the opportunity also to reach customers internationally for now within the EU but later on in other regions as well. And if you're a customer, the experience should be, as we said, very similar. If you're shopping in Amazon, we want customers to save time and to be able to buy with trust and transparency that we don't want them to have to think Oh Are these brands really sustainable. So that's why we are doing the work for them with the assessment right so when you land on our platform as a customer you need to have that peace of mind that what you're buying is sustainable. Yeah. And we want to offer, as we said earlier, pretty much every everyday products that you may want to find such as food, your toothpaste, your cosmetics, clothing, etc. Perfect.
Katherine Ann Byam 14:31
And what's it been like as a woman leading such a big venture? And especially in the tech space?
Lola Fernandez 14:39
Yeah, I mean, it is challenging, I think because first there are not many women intrapreneur out there so we are still facing some challenges on that fence that if you come as a woman with such a big project, they look at you funny, like, Oh, you're sure what you're doing there. And, and you need to start pulling that, look, this is my CV, I have 20 years experience, I have worked in many areas and so that's still a little bit of an issue. But there are also I think there are also benefits, like I'm having the opportunity, being a woman running this, this show, I'm having the opportunity as well to help other women.
And I'm a great believer in empowering everybody, but especially women, because we know our own shortcomings when it comes to step forward and show our potential. So I'm using the opportunity now also to help women, so we actually have the majority of women in our team. And I'm also personally coaching and mentoring several of them that are showing interest in growing personally and developing to see where we can bring them.
Katherine Ann Byam 16:03
So that's really fantastic. I think it's something that's, I think, a big part of the sell for the volunteer right to get that sort of coaching and support.
Lola Fernandez 16:12
Absolutely, absolutely.
Katherine Ann Byam 16:15
And what would you say to someone wanting to begin a sort of green first intrapreneurial journey? What would you recommend?
Lola Fernandez 16:22
Yeah, I would say that the first step would be to look at yourself internally and understand your purpose. Why, why you want to do that, and what is driving you because this is a long and hard path. There are good days, but there are many nightmares, very many dark times and sleepless nights. So you really need to be very convinced why you want to do this. If you want to just do it for money, you can forget it, you need to have something a lot deeper, that that is driving you.
And that's what is gonna keep you that's why they were disconnected, especially when those dark times come that you say no, no, okay? Today has been bad, but they know tomorrow's gonna be better. And you can, you can continue. And apart from that, keep going and don't give up. Many startups fail because they give up too soon. If they continue for two more months or six more months, they could be successful. But mainly they add, they go through frustrating times, and they give up and are too early. So determination and purpose, I think, are two key elements. Perfect.
Katherine Ann Byam 17:35
How can my listeners get involved and support green cloud nine, I love what you're doing. And I'm very keen to you know, shouted from all my platforms.
Lola Fernandez 17:44
Thank you. Thank you, Catherine. Yeah, well, so as you know, we're going to be launching very soon. So I guess we would like to invite everyone to visit our website first, to bring cloud nine.com and have a little bit of a better time learning a little bit about what our vision and our mission is. Right now, as we are preparing for the launch, specifically, and specifically regarding sellers, we are looking for a limited number of sustainable companies that want to partner with us.
So we can develop and grow together, because we know how hard it is to find your place, not just in the market in general, but in the sustainability market in particular. So we think that by partnering and helping each other we have much better chances to succeed. So if anybody's running a sustainable business in Europe, Raoul later, we will expand. But please visit our website, sign up for our green pioneer programme. And then we can start talking and see how this can develop. And of course, on the customer side, we would love people also to subscribe to our newsletter to keep up to date with what's happening when our launches come in. Also, if people would like to spread the word, find us some work connections. That's always very good. And when we launch, of course, to visit our platform and see what kinds of sustainable products they can find there.
Katherine Ann Byam 19:15
Thank you so much for coming to the show for sharing all of this insight and for the exciting project that you're building. I know it can't be easy taking on Amazon. But it's really a pleasure to see that such a platform is happening and it's so purpose driven. So thank you and congratulations.
Lola Fernandez 19:34
Thanks. Thanks for having me. Thank you.
064 Share More, Waste Less
About this Episode
Today my guest is Tessa Clarke. Tessa is the co-founder and CEO of Olio, a free app tackling the problem of waste by connecting neighbours with each other, and volunteers with local businesses so that surplus food and other household items can be given away and not thrown away. While Olio has grown to 5 million users in just over five years, and its impact has been widely recognised, most notably by the United Nations who highlighted OLIO as a beacon for the world. And by Viva tech, sorry, who awarded Olio the next European unicorn. Prior to OLIO, Tessa had a 15 year corporate career as a digital managing director in the media, retail and financial services sectors. And she met her co-founder Sasha, whilst they were studying for the MBAs at Stanford University. Tessa is passionate about sharing about the sharing economy as a solution for a Sustainable World, and about profit with purpose as the next business paradigm.
What an amazing mission you have Tessa, welcome to the show.
Tessa Clarke 1:21
Thank you, great to be with you.
Katherine Ann Byam 1:23
Olio clearly hits a nerve with people and has become such a trending brand name and the sustainability space. What prompted you to really begin this OLIO journey.
Tessa Clarke 1:33
So the earlier journey started, really in my childhood, my parents are farmers up in North Yorkshire in the northeast of the UK. And when you grow up on a farm, you learn firsthand just how much hard work goes into producing the food that we all eat every day. And as a result of that, I grew up with a pathological hatred of food waste. Now, I didn't think anything in particular about that, and went off and pursued as you've touched on a fairly classic corporate career. But everything changed through a seemingly inconsequential moment in my life. Just over five years ago, now, I was living outside of the UK moving back and a moving day, that movement told me that I had to throw away all of our uneaten food. Now, obviously, given how much I hate food waste, I was not prepared to do that. So instead, I set out to the streets clutching this food, hoping to find someone to give it to and cut a long story short, I failed miserably. But I wasn't to be defeated, so I went back to my apartment. And when the movement we're looking at smuggled the non perishable food at the bottom of my packing boxes, and I remember that moment so vividly, I thought, Wow, I'm probably performing a criminal offence right now. But to me, it felt even more criminal to put perfectly good food in the bed, when I knew there was someone probably within 100 metres of me who would like it. And so that was how the whole idea of OLIO came about.
Katherine Ann Byam 2:53
It's incredible. Because I think you know, growing up on a farm in Yorkshire, I grew up on a farm in the Caribbean, and the community was always important, right, so nothing would ever go to waste, you would always share.
Tessa Clarke 3:04
Exactly. And actually, that's one of the things we've discovered, since launching OLIO, is that nobody enjoys throwing away food. And the reason why we throw it away is because we're no longer connected with our local community, we no longer have someone to give that food to. And that's actually what earlier is trying to counter. We're trying to harness the powers of modern technology to make it simple, safe, fast and fun for you to be reconnected to your local community. So you do have someone to give that food away to
Katherine Ann Byam 3:34
powerful message. Which of your past skills would you consider most transferable to the OLIO journey? And why?
Tessa Clarke 3:42
That's a really interesting question. Because both Sasha and I, between us we'd had a 40 year corporate career before we became entrepreneurs. And so we definitely felt that we were going to grate against the grain a little bit. I think the stereotype of an entrepreneur is some kind of couple of young guys who have dropped out of college wearing hoodies right at the beginning of their careers. And we were definitely not that we were sort of two mums in the middle of their life.
But what we've realised, actually, is that all of those skills that we acquired through our corporate careers have been incredibly helpful and valuable for us. And I think it's fair to say that we have kept probably half of the things that we learned from our corporate background, and we've ditched the other half that we think is a waste of time. So the stuff that we've kept, is everything around recruiting, retaining, managing people, leading teams, communications strategy, the importance of customer insight, data, analytics, all that good stuff is absolutely critical, no matter what size of organisation you're working in, the stuff that we jettisoned.
And then we got the opportunity. I think it was a lot of that bureaucracy, just the timescales on which things happened when You're an entrepreneur with very limited resources. And time is money, you have to move extremely quickly. You have to test and experiment the whole time. And so very early on, we read a book called The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. And that book above all others, I think, really transformed our mental mindset and changed it to something very new which prioritised as I say that constant test, measure, learn test, measure learn process.
Katherine Ann Byam 5:28
Yeah, I think there are a couple of books in this category of startup that are really powerful. I think Alex Osterwalder is one of those authors that I think is really pivotal in this space, right? Yeah. So what are some of the challenges you faced when you started as well.
Tessa Clarke 5:47
So many challenges every day is a new challenge. And the important thing to recognise is that that comes with the territory. And you've got to learn to be at ease with that, we had a couple of very significant early challenges. So one of the first early challenges was that our early adopters loved olio. But they hated food waste, and so they had no food to give away. And then we had, somewhat naively I think, hoped that local businesses would use the owner app at the end of the day, to bring extra customers into the store, etc. And they were too busy, you to run in their core businesses to be messing around sort of messaging with members of the community in an app. So we had a food sharing app that had no food on it, which I'm sure you'll agree was pretty useless. So how we solve that conundrum was, we said, why don't we take the people who hate food waste, don't have any, but have plenty of time, and match them with the businesses that have lots of food waste in no time. And that resulted in our food waste heroes programme, which today has over 35,000 trained volunteers. These are members of the audio community who we match with the local business. And then at the end of the day, for that business, the volunteer will show up, they'll take all of their unsold food, they'll take it home and add it to the app within minutes, the neighbours requesting it and minutes later, they'll pop around and pick it up. So that helped us overcome the problem of a fish sharing app with no food. Another early challenge was how to grow the community with very close to no marketing budget, because again earlier is a product that depends upon there being lots of other people using it for it to actually work and be useful. And so how we managed to get around that was we developed our ambassador programme. And we now have over 50,000 ambassadors. So these are people who are really passionate about our mission. And they recognise that for them to be able to use OLIO, their neighbours need to be on earlier as well. And so we give our ambassadors both digital content to enable them to spread the word. But we also give them old school letters and posters and flyers, so they can do that sort of hyper local guerilla marketing on our behalf. And that's been a really, really cost-effective way for us to grow rapidly.
Katherine Ann Byam 7:58
Really powerful story. I'm really curious about the topic of the business model because I read in your summary that this is a free app. So I guess my question is, how are you actually making money?
Tessa Clarke 8:12
Great question. So we are firm believers in profit with purpose. So Elio is absolutely not a charity, we believe that business can and should do good. But in order to survive and thrive, you've got to have a sustainable business model. So we generate revenues through the service that we provide to the businesses that I just outlined with our food waste heroes. So at the moment, businesses have to pay a waste contractor to take their surplus food away. Instead, they are now paying us to ensure that that food is taken away but redistributed to the local community so it's eaten, not thrown away. And our largest clients are Tesco, pret Aman, Shea, Booker, the wholesaler, and many, many more.
Katherine Ann Byam 9:02
Wow, that is brilliant. It's really a great way to solve two problems, right? It's really turning waste into a product. It's a circular economy. It's everything. That's good, and what we're transforming in the world today. So really, kudos to coming up with what a great model.
Tessa Clarke 9:19
Thank you. Yeah, we love it, too.
Katherine Ann Byam 9:22
So what's it been like as a woman leading in a global trending brand, and in this new space of sustainability? Tell me a bit about that.
Tessa Clarke 9:31
You Yeah, so I think that being a female co-founder business, so I should say it's not just me, it's my co-founder Sasha as well, is nothing but an advantage and a benefit. I think we've been able to build a brilliantly inclusive and diverse team. We have a phenomenal culture and we measure our culture regularly and we're really, really proud of that. There is only one way In which being a woman is a disadvantage, and it is a crippling disadvantage. And this is when it comes to the topic of fundraising. So female-founded businesses receive just 1% of all venture capital investment. Male founded businesses receive 89%. And mixed teams receive 10%. And when you are fundraising, and facing those incredibly depressing odds, it is extremely challenging. And I should say that this is a problem that afflicts not only female founders, but diverse founders of all types as well. And it infuriates me because when I look at the world, and when I see who is really stepping up and solving some of the world's largest problems, like the climate crisis, light, social inequality, etc, it is diverse founders who are doing that. And the fact that they receive just spare crumbs of investment capital means that we are short, ultimately shortchanging humanity due to a lack of investment in those diverse founders. That is the only thing that has been challenging as a female leader.
Katherine Ann Byam 11:15
Yeah, no, that's really a powerful message. Because I think I've spoken to many, quite a variety of people on this podcast. And you're absolutely right, the people who will go getting who are really making game changing moves in their local environments in the nation states. I spoke to a young lady in Namibia the other day, who's trying to change how they do agriculture there and she can't get the funding. And this is such a problem. It's a crisis.
Tessa Clarke 11:41
Yeah, it is. And it's not like this is sort of nice to have topics that we're talking about, you know, that lady you mentioned, she's literally trying to feed local communities and feed the world. And we are shortchanging all of us by not investing properly in these diverse founders. And the flip side of that is I find it infuriating. Seeing all the capital flowing into areas that argue if you kind of to step back and look at what humanity really needs to be investing in at this point in time, you might say that we perhaps shouldn't be spending billions on getting people's groceries delivered within 15 minutes, right. So yeah, it's a topic that I'm very passionate about.
Katherine Ann Byam 12:24
What surprised you the most about this journey, if anything?
Tessa Clarke 12:30
surprised me the most well, every day is a surprise. Quite literally, I think one of the things that I learned very early on, I think, is because you listen to lots of stories of successful startups, and you hear about Airbnb and people like that. And often when the story is told retrospectively, it's told as if there was this sort of silver bullet or this moment in time, which resulted in this massive inflection point. And what we have learned early on, I think many entrepreneurs quickly realise is that there isn't a single silver bullet. You know, for a long time, we lived in hope that the next feature, the next marketing campaign, the next initiative would be the one that propelled us into the stratosphere. But the reality is that actually is just about showing up every single day, and just testing and improving and testing and improving. And cumulatively, that adds up. And that's what takes you the distance.
Katherine Ann Byam 13:28
You know, pretty much an overnight success takes about five years to build. Yeah, like,
Tessa Clarke 13:32
Which part of those 10,000 nights was the overnight?
Katherine Ann Byam 13:39
So what would you say to someone who's wanting to begin on a green first sort of intrapreneurial journey, and it could be green first, Digital First, whatever the idea
Tessa Clarke 13:51
I have several pieces of advice. So the first one is to make sure that you are solving a real problem. And a problem that you are really, really passionate about is this, your life's calling life is far too short to be working on something that isn't sort of your life's calling. And there are so many massive problems out there that need solving yesterday, that I think we all need to kind of stand up and kind of get going. The other thing I would say is very much linked to that is to stay focused on the problem that you're trying to solve. And do not allow yourself to fall in love with your particular solution.
Because it is almost inevitable that your solution will not be perfect when you first launched into the market. And it might actually be completely incorrect for the problem that you're trying to solve. And if you just stay really, really focused on the problem you're trying to solve, then you will be able to test and iterate your way to a product that will solve that. The other thing as I've already touched on, I recommend that everybody reads the book The Lean Startup by Eric Ries and also a book called the Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick, which is all about how to do that kind of early market research.
And then I think the other thing I would say is to reach out and build a peer group, connect with other people who are going through the same journey, it can be extremely lonely. Unless people are kind of going through it themselves, it's really hard to understand what the entrepreneurial journey is like. And also, it's much quicker learning from the experience of others than necessarily having to experience every single mistake yourself. Absolutely. Yeah, the final thing is to enjoy it. Right? Like, make sure you enjoy the journey because you will never reach your destination. That's something else that I've realised. So enjoy it while you're doing it. And sort of what's next for olio?
Katherine Ann Byam 15:39
What's on the horizon? What's happening now? What are you excited about?
Tessa Clarke 15:43
So we have set ourselves an enormous and terrifying goal of 1 billion OLIO is by 2030. And the reason for that is really, really simple. If humanity is to stand any chance whatsoever of living in a 1.5 degree warmed world, then that is what we need to achieve. So we're super clear on the end goal. And we are busy plotting the right path in between where we are now.
And that goal, which I'm kind of really excited about, but I'm really excited that businesses are finally waking up to the fact that food waste is wrong. And so we have lots and lots and lots of businesses, from supermarkets, to the quick commerce companies to quick service restaurants, to corporate canteens, they're all wanting to work with us, to enable them to have zero food waste locations. And that's what's changed. You know, we've been sort of slogging away at this for a couple of years. And definitely this year, there's been a real mindset shift as businesses are realising that time is up for food waste.
The other thing I'm super excited about is we've recently launched a section in the app called borrow, which connects people to their neighbours, so you can lend and borrow everyday household items. And we're super passionate about that, because we are sort of currently in the midst of a resource depletion crisis, basically, and that's best exemplified by the concept of Earth Overshoot Day. So Earth Overshoot Day is the day in the year in which humanity has used all the resources that can be replenished in a year. And when it was first measured in 1969, Earth Overshoot Day was 31st December.
So humanity, using a year that the planet could replenish in a year, fast forward to this year, Earth Overshoot Day was the 29th of July. And so what that means is that every single thing that every single one of the seven half billion people are consuming after the 29th of July, is net net depleted to the planet. And this is a very long, roundabout way of explaining why I'm so excited by this new Baro section. Because what we have, you know, we're consuming collectively as if we have 1.75 planets.
And by 2030, we're on track to be consuming as if we have three planets. And by 2050, we're on track to be consuming as if we have five planets. Clearly, we only have one planet. And so we've got to reinvent how we consume. And so we really want people to when they want to consume, to first and foremost, utilise the resources that already exist in our local community.
And so instead of you going out to buy a cat carrier, or buy a fancy dress costume, or buy a drill, why don't you just borrow one that is sitting gathering dust in a neighbour's home. And if we can borrow instead of buying, if we can give stuff away, instead of throwing stuff away, then we really can help solve the climate crisis at scale.
Katherine Ann Byam 18:31
Absolutely. Listen, thank you so much for this. How can my listeners follow your work and get involved in what you're doing? I guess, go download the Oliwa.
Tessa Clarke 18:39
Download the earlier app. Yes, absolutely. So earlier, we spelt out li O. And you can find it in the app store in Google Play, and then on our website, as well. So you don't have to have a smartphone to use olio. You can access it via the website. And then we're very active on social media as well. So it's at OLIO dot app. And if you're interested in learning more about sort of sustainability and sustainable living, then please do follow me. I'm on medium. I'm at Tessa Clark.
Katherine Ann Byam 19:10
Perfect, thank you so much for joining us today.
062 The Sustainability Puzzle
About this Episode
Hello, everyone, and welcome to today's show. This is the sustainability puzzle. And my guest is Alice Schmidt. We are streaming live for the courageous career club and on LinkedIn. We're also recording this for my podcast where Ideas Launch, the podcast for the sustainable innovator. Thank you all for joining us.
And we're gonna get into the session. So let me introduce a bit about Alice.
Alice is an advisor and an advocate and an author on global sustainability and social transformation, and she's passionate about gathering, collating and distilling deep insights on global systemic challenges and solutions regarding environmental and economic sustainability, as well as social justice.
So she has a big agenda. And in her latest book, The sustainability puzzle, which she co authored, together with her friend, Claudia Winkler, she discusses how systems thinking circularity and climate action, as well as social transformation can improve health, wealth and wellbeing for all.
This is a big challenge. We've, we've now just come out of cop 26. And we've had all of these challenges going back and forth on those countries that are struggling. And it's really interesting what you're doing. So Alice, welcome. Welcome to the show.
Alice Schmidt 2:01
Well, thank you. Hi, Katherine. Really good to speak to you today.
Katherine Ann Byam 2:04
I wanted to start by sort of acknowledging the breadth and depth of your experiences across cultures and across geographies. And having started your academic life in business and Communication Studies, what first prompted your interest in social impact work? First of all, of all the things that you're interested in?
Alice Schmidt 2:23
Yeah, so a great question, let me go really far back, because it's actually affected the first, you know, children always asked what they want to become right when they grew up. And for me, when I said, I want to become an author, and I want to write a book to save the world. And I'm clearly not saying I've reached it, but just as this is to demonstrate that this has been within me. So you know, as a child, I found clubs to save the environment and to protect the environment and to help sort of socially disadvantaged people. And, um, you know, I was, I was part of the scouts movement. And I do think now with hindsight, that this kind of influenced my values. And my thinking is sort of, you know, this cherishing nature and all of that and taking responsibility for your actions.
But professionally, it came when I was working with Coca Cola and also Henkel, another fast moving consumer goods company, at the time, based in Vienna, but focusing on the Central and Eastern European markets. And it was a long time ago, that was about 20 years ago, I just came out of University and finished my business degree. And I remember thinking when I worked at Coke, no kind of dream for a lot of young marketers thinking, do I really want to focus on helping one company sell more of an unhealthy, carbonated soft drink? or would I rather use his energy, my skills to sell something that you know, is actually perhaps, you know, saving the wild, I had a similar experience with the launch of a dishwasher, dishwashing detergent in Central Eastern Europe, which at the time was quite poor, and a lot of people didn't even have enough money to buy, you know, sort of detergent at all right? They had to make soap by themselves.
And that really then drove me into this direction of social impact, sustainable development, initially, more on the social side, and then bringing back the business sort of link as well as engaging with climate issues because I really think it's this bigger picture for me sustainability is really people planet and profits.
Katherine Ann Byam 4:35
Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think my experiences in life have taken me on a quite similar journey for two years so I worked in internal audit for a huge multinational in a controversial industry. And I had the opportunity to travel the world as well and experience deeply and firsthand the plight of many societies of many communities, and how innovative they are. Coming up with solutions that are frugal. And, you know, I, I've also seen how the crisis of geopolitics has sort of ravaged the environment. Right? And how has that work across cultures and disciplines benefited your work on understanding and, and sort of tackling complex and integrated system challenges?
Alice Schmidt 5:23
Yeah so I mean, I have indeed written in about 30 countries on four different continents. And that was very much my choice. At the time, there wasn't this trade off that we discussed earlier about climate at least, you know, your carbon footprint in terms of flying around so that I neglected at the time blissfully, I was blissfully ignorant of it. And, I was clearly driven by this insert that the more I see, the more I understand, but also the more I know what I don't know. Yeah. And, I quickly recognise that solutions or sort of activities, actions, programmes projects that seem like solutions can actually make things much worse, if they're not sort of embedded in a bigger picture kind of frame just to give an example.
And students because I use this because students of mine brought this up yesterday. And you know, the famous brands toms, right, the shoes, right? That don't donate a pair for each pair that you buy. And, and if you sort of just parachute into a developing country, and you see oh, there's a few children without shoes, you might think, Okay, I have a solution, right. But then if you see him out and somehow look a bit, sort of deeper and more broad, broadly, you find that actually, it's not the shoes, perhaps at MIT. And actually, if you give away shoes, you might destroy local industry, right? And this is not to bash Tom's as a company. To their credit, they actually think about these issues and do research to understand the impact.
But I mentioned this also, because we see, you know, a lot of talk about electric mobility at the moment. But as long as this electricity, the power that you power your car with does not come from renewable sources, it's not particularly sustainable. And that let you know, leaving aside all the issues around batteries, etc. And so yes, this, this, this, for me, also, on a personal level, these trips to a lot of developing countries, other cultures more broadly, have always been very eye opening, very humbling. And they've been very, extremely useful reminders of how lucky I am, how privileged I am. And have been there for allowing me to really focus on what matters, rather than you know, winching about this and whining about that. So absolutely important in this experience. Yeah.
Katherine Ann Byam 7:58
Yeah, it's interesting, you touched on something that I'd love to explore a little bit, if you don't mean. So it's, it's around this topic of transitioning to electric cars. There's so much baggage behind this transition for me, because at the moment, I'm driving a car that's not fit for the future. I know this. But at the same time, I don't want to commit another act of criminal injustice against the climate, by purchasing a car that's going to extract more materials, rather than taking my existing car and converting it. Because if I were to sell my car, someone else is going to drive it. So I haven't solved the problem, I have not solved the problem of climate change by selling my car. So if I scrap my car and waste the asset, right, so for me, I wish the solution that people would be coming up with and I do hope to hear from BMW soon about this. But I want them to retrofit my old car. You know, and I guess the question is, how do we tackle that?
Alice Schmidt 9:00
So I mean, I think you're touching on a lot of different things. And some go into direction of circularity. And actually, if you resold your car to someone who would otherwise buy a new one, right? Yeah, that would help given that you as long as you didn't buy a new car, and perhaps went into car sharing, right? Because I think it's not so much about the car, it's about mobility, again, sort of this need to zoom out right, but we also stress in the book a lot. And look at this bigger picture. And in this case, it's mobility and seeing how we can create Win win wins, right for ourselves, for the planet. So for the environment, the natural environment, and for people and cars are a great example because of course they pollute right? Some people love them and think of them as very beautiful but you know, having tons of cars sitting on our sidewalks on our roads, right?
Instead of having greenery and forests in our urban environments is Not particularly appealing, we've just become so used to it that we don't question this. And it's, of course, what I think is interesting in terms of the electric mobility movement is that, by and large, this is something where we have policy and agreement. It's become a political force. Yeah. So it's not one of these things. And so giving people an alternative, still being able to sort of own a car, if they must, is already an achievement, I think, yeah, but it definitely does matter where this comes from for your car personally. And I mean, yeah, if you could go without a car or car sharing, I think that would be a deal. If your car is sort of not too old, it might actually be much more economical, and also better for the environment to continue driving it right for a while, if it's too old, I have this super old car. And I'm told actually, that it's, it would be better to go electric to actually, you know, sell it, but driving. For me, it's really bad. Do I need this car? And I hope the answer is no.
Katherine Ann Byam 11:12
Yeah, no, I think that's a good way to reflect on it. But I do still want the manufacturers of these vehicles that are more polluting, to take some sort of circular action to sort of help us write help. I would much prefer to have my car retrofitted and pay for that, than to extract materials again.
Alice Schmidt 11:32
Yeah. And that's true. I mean, with cars at the moment, you can't really retrofit right with buildings, you can do that in an economical way. Yeah. But of course, some of the big car firms like BMW are actually also jumping on the sharing bandwagon. Yeah. And I think this is perhaps their biggest contribution they can make.
Katherine Ann Byam 11:50
Yeah, so I'm going to take a quick pivot to the comments and just flash them through. So we have some good wishes from Sean. Thank you very much, Sean. And we have Isabel saying hello to both of us. Hi, Great that you joined us. And Mary Lou is asking me a question. So I'm facing the same mobility dilemma. Katherine, I sold my car and for now, I am managing without, but at some point in the future, I may need a new one. And I'm not convinced about electric vehicles yet.
Alice Schmidt 12:20
Go for car sharing. That would be my current really going without occurring.
Katherine Ann Byam 12:26
Right. Yeah, exactly. And, you know,
Alice Schmidt 12:29
also a trend we're seeing I mean, cities and mayors around the world. But that's not the end of the world. But some cities are really going this direction. And it's also about making cities more pleasant, more sustainable, more livable for the 50%. Right of the world population that's already living in them.
Katherine Ann Byam 12:48
Yes, exactly. And, look, I think there's so many important things that I think people need a space to kind of ask questions as well, because as your book indicates, it's a puzzle and it's complex. And we need support, we need support to make the right decisions, instead of everyone going off doing what they think is best, which might actually be causing more problems. Right. So it's an interesting debate for sure. Yeah, so let's, let's talk.
Alice Schmidt 13:16
A lot of there's a lot of well-intentioned projects and companies out there and players out there, but you know, well, meaning well-intentioned doesn't always mean good.
Katherine Ann Byam 13:28
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So let's move to a few concepts in your book that I think listeners will find fascinating. So I wanted to start with this happiness beyond GDP. And I've been following what's happening in the Greek reshuffle and the Greek pause as some, some people call it, post-COVID. And there's definitely a heightened level of interest for many, for many people to design more holistic, healthy lives and get more from their careers, more purpose from their careers. So tell us about your thoughts on how to facilitate change in the direction of happiness beyond GDP.
Alice Schmidt 14:06
Yeah, so first of all, it's true that people care and they don't want to go back to life before COVID. Right. I mean, there were quite a lot of studies on this last year, I think about 80%. So it's zero, they said that they actually wanted to go back to a more sort of sustainable life. Right. And I think this is partly a reflection of the pandemic, having forced us to think about what makes us happy. What does wellbeing mean for us as individuals, but also what does progress mean for us as societies as countries, right, and there have been, I mean, this is not completely new, and there have been a lot of very sort of big, well recognised institutions, global institutions, but also individual mayors again, yes, city governments trying to shape the target setting and policies in a way that don't just maximise the GDP, right?
Because the GDP has been the main indicator that is used around the world, to sort of indicating progress. Yeah, that's the measure we have. I mean, it doesn't actually measure progress. It measures economic output, right. And it misses all the voluntary work that our societies depend on. And it goes up when we see disasters, floods, Harrigan forest fires, right. So it's not a measure of progress. And even you know, the guy, that cannot be Simon Kuznets, who invented it, almost 100 years ago, basically said, This is not about measuring societal progress, but somehow our mindsets are so adapted to this thinking that, that it's very hard for us to move up. Having said that, a lot is happening.
And I think a lot of people start to, to value what matters to appreciate what matters companies and NGOs, but particularly as of companies are still are starting to track the social impact, the environmental footprint, and what sort of the newest, and to me, also most exciting trend is that we're getting towards a system, we're tiptoeing towards a system, where we account for costs, as they truly are, which means we valuing the services the ecosystem is providing for us, right through wood, or food or natural medicine, fibres, whatever. But also, services like climate regulation, or water filtration, maybe we never think about this, but I'm not saying I'm definitely not saying give these things a price. But I'm saying let's value these things. Let's value clean air, air pollution kills 20,000 people a day.
That's a sort of a tragedy, right for individuals, for families, for societies, but it also comes with an economic cost. Yeah. And I think it's really important that we start talking about these costs more and more. And because that's just how we think right in our world, we think in monetary terms, and that's why I think translating negative impacts into what I call the cost of unsustainability is really helpful. But of course, we don't want to communicate negatively, right? In fact, a book is very much about optimism, and about picking people up where they are, yeah. Not really killing anyone, because they have ignored sustainability. You know, until recently, I'm not laughing at any questions, obviously, but also taking seriously the efforts they are making and trying to work with them to see how they can make more efforts.
How could they perhaps, you know, increase their impact. And, and and, yeah, so I think that this is partly also for people to really appreciate what they have and what they haven't thought about before such as clean air. Right? I mean, our mental health and again, this is measurable, our measurable, our mental health improves significantly, if we live in areas where there are sufficient trees. Yeah, it's the same trees that sort of decrease this famous heat island effect, and make people die from excessive heat, right. But it's also a mental health benefit. That's really important, particularly now in these times, right when a lot of people are suffering through the pandemic. Yeah, no,
Katherine Ann Byam 18:55
That's absolutely true. And I wanted to touch on something and I didn't tell you about this before, but we'll talk about it anyway. Which is this idea of donut economics. So I recently discovered Kate Raworths' work. I hadn't heard about it before. Remarkably, even though I've been in this space for a while, and there's a lot of I'm following her Twitter account where you know, she's building communities around trying to bring these ideas of living within the doughnut to life if you want to perhaps talk a bit about that maybe explain the concept to my listeners as well and talk about your perspective on how we can do that.
Alice Schmidt 19:32
Yeah, so I fully agree can she has done great work and I think it's encouraging that her book is also really, and her ideas and her thinking have really sort of gathered very widespread attention. So the doughnut essentially tries to reconcile both the environmental and to social, the global social injustice, aspects of sustainability. Yeah, bookkeeping within the donut hole, we all know what a donut looks like.
And make sure that we don't overstretch our sort of planet services. Yeah, then that is the natural environment, but we still provide a sufficient standard of living for all people in the world, right? I mean, that's also why we wait for us, this is really important, because we also talk about our book where the subtitle is health, wealth and wellbeing for all. I think this is so important, right? People like you, and me, you've been to a lot of places to see this, these enormous disparities, right, even within one country within one city.
Right. And I think we'll understand this, but not everyone has had the chance to understand this. And so. And I, what I like about the donut economics is that it's also a concept that's now being used by governments, including city governments. I don't know, for some reason we keep coming back to urbanism and cities today, and like Berlin, or Amsterdam, right, that are really trying to use this sort of framework, because it resonates with people. Yeah.
Katherine Ann Byam 21:10
Yeah. It is easier to grasp for sure.
Alice Schmidt 21:14
And so just one thing that comes to mind here, is this, this idea, or this insight, that there are only developing countries out there that are not any developed countries that are economically developed countries, but there aren't any countries that are where we need to be environmentally in terms of environmental protection. Yeah. Or providing a sort of social justice to everyone.
Yeah. And, I think David Attenborough also said this in his famous cop speech recently, which was brilliant, by the way, so I recommend everyone out there to watch it for seven minutes, definitely worth your time. And it's also about sort of, you know, learning from that inverted commas developing world, right, because a lot of what people in these places do is exactly what we need today. Think about circularity, you know, you repair things, sharing things, not throwing them away. And that to come full circle with Acade worth, she also said, on a finite planet, there is no way you can throw things away. And that's another one I love.
Katherine Ann Byam 22:34
Yes, absolutely. Now, yes. All right. And I think the more that we have examples of countries embracing this, you're right, it's going to set a new trend as to what it really means to be an evolved society. And of course, we have other competing things that are coming into the sort of forefront now with digital transformation. And, you know, Facebook and Electabuzz, I'm not going to ask you to answer questions about that, don't worry, but it's one of the things that is now part of the whole complexity of how we redesign better for the future.
So I want to pivot now to cop 26. And there have been some commitments made around me being around reforestation, etc. But there have also been some sort of COP outs, so to speak, forgive the pun. But you know, talking about reducing coal, as opposed to eliminating the use of coal, and things like that. So I guess which agreements have been the most encouraging for you? And how has caught 26 done enough, in your view, to solve the problems that we face?
Alice Schmidt 23:48
Yeah, so um, I guess I won't give you the short or the long answer, but something in the middle. I mean, one thing I think we need to consider is that before the cup after the cup is before the cup, yes, there's going to be another one next year, and it's going to be in Africa, which is great. I think Egypt if I'm not mistaken. And I do think that it has served to really get a lot of global attention. I don't think that's just me, you know, because I'm in my little bit saving the world kind of bubble. I do think there's been more attention to the cop and awareness, pressure also from civil society, I think is key.
Yeah. What it hasn't done is really come out with this new big agreement that everybody subscribed to. Yeah, there's a text, a communique that came out at the end and which included some very encouraging text around phasing out fossil fuels. There was this debate about phasing out fossil fuels. And there was also the, the, what was it there? Yeah, phasing out fossil fuels. And then the coal that you mentioned specifically, right? Because coal is the worst, the most polluting fossil fuel. And but what we've seen from a governance perspective is little blocks emerging, right?
So a few countries, you know, going for methane are now this another few countries for forest, etc. And I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, right? Because it could become very easy now for countries to say, well, actually, you know, China didn't sign up. So why would I need to? And that brings me Of course, another really important point. I mean, I think one of the face savers, if that's the word for COP, was this quiet last minute agreement between or at least Joint Declaration between America the United States and China? Yes. Because in the end, it will come down to that. Right. Are they going to work together? And so I think there's a, you know, there are some promising signs. But, yeah, we're not there yet.
And finally, perhaps, because one of the celebrated achievements, I think, was Brazil, among others agreeing to help defer deforestation relatively soon. And that is bread and butter, it's not going to help us that much in terms of climate change. Right. I mean, forests are important for biodiversity, for livelihoods for you know, we talked about trees already before trees in urban areas anyway. And I think, and, yeah, so we need to, we need to take everything that's come out of the cup with a pinch of salt.
And keep in mind that these are just commitments. Yeah. So this is not implemented yet, and the most beautiful policy is worth nothing if it's not implemented, actually. Yeah, so just to finish, I think we might actually need to focus more. And we see this as a trend right to resort to climate litigation. And that brings me back to Brazil and now, right, there's some action against him. And companies are starting to fear that and I think this is an act for which my activist heart tells me this is a really good sign as well.
Katherine Ann Byam 27:24
Yeah, yeah. Now this is great. So I want to close with the final question, which is, actions we can all take. So what are the sort of first steps that you would recommend people take at the household level? I mean, before we actually went live, we had a conversation about, about the whole topic of travel.
So I'm gonna let you take the floor in this one, because, for me, particularly travel is one of the one I would call the guilty pleasures that I'd love to still have. I haven't travelled since the pandemic began. But it's something that for me has transformed my understanding of complexity. It's transformed my approach to the world, and therefore it has been hugely beneficial. At the same time, it's wrapped up in a huge carbon footprint bet.
Alice Schmidt 28:11
I hear you, I find that really hard as well, myself. I try to be principled, but I don't think I will always be able to write. And, I mean, again, travelling with mobility personally, I love long train ride, so I don't mind going between Ghana and Brussels for 13 hours. You know, I like how this soul travels with me and my soul travels with me. And I'm not sort of parachuting into a new place. But of course, there aren't the trains that are a thing in itself in Europe, and there needs to be a much more improvement but do but still do take trains.
Yeah, I think a very important message is to use public transport. eat less meat or no meat, and insulate your home. Yeah, that's another sort of big lever lever. And particularly also buy only what you love. Yeah. Even if it's more expensive, invest money, invest in quality, buy something you really love, and you're gonna be wanting to repair in case it breaks and that you will want to refurbish and that you will want to perhaps trade against something else as a friend Sir.
So this circularity I think is also really something can be with and I'd like to mention also that in the book, the sustainability pamphlet, we really we deliberately included sketch notes for each chapter there which summarise the main sort of the main puzzle piece like circularity, climate action, which we're not talking about. And in each of these sort of puzzle pieces, we tell people what they can do as individuals, what they can do, you know, as representatives, companies, and what they can do as governments because I think it's really important and it's also important to, for people to understand That no matter what they do, it can have an impact.
Yeah. And it's not just about what you buy and what you do and which services you access or consume. It's very much also about how you take others with you, right? Your friends, your peers, but also your colleagues influence you at an organisational level. Yeah. So lots you can do and I hope you find more inspiration in the book. I
Katherine Ann Byam 30:28
I loved your tips, particularly about buying something that you really love, even if it's expensive, and making sure it's something that you want to repay. I think that's my main one. Huge takeaway. So thank you so much for joining me today, Alice. And thanks to all of you who've listened and do give us your comments and feedback. And do get a copy of the sustainability puzzle if you haven't already. Thanks so much for joining us today.
Alice Schmidt 30:51
Wonderful, thank you so much, Catherine and to everyone else here and keep in touch, stay in touch, get in touch.
Katherine Ann Byam 30:58
Absolutely. Season Four of where radius launch was brought to you today by Katherine Ann Byam business resilience and strategy consulting services. Catherine provides business assessments and strategic support to help guide your business toward a netzero future. Get in touch with Katherine Ann Byam on LinkedIn
