John Coldham: Hello and welcome to our annual London Design Festival podcast. I am JohnColdham and I am head of brands and designs here at the law firm Gowling WLG. I am proud to say that it is now ten years since we were first asked by the London Design Festival to put on an event as part of the festival, and we have covered so many different topics from how to protect your designs and asking whether it is ever good to be copied through to exploring 3D printing and looking at multi-generational living to name but a few.
We are a leading law firm in intellectual property and particularly in design law, in fact I am honoured to say that we have won the award for the best design law firm in the UK for the past four years running. We have always believed that it is really important for designers to understand how to protect their designs, it is one of the main reasons that the London Design Festival got us involved in the first place and so instead of talking about the law today I just want to mention that we have produced a newly updated guide on design law for non-lawyers, which introduces a lot of the concepts and ideas behind how to protect your innovation in what we hope is a user-friendly guide. This and podcasts from previous years of this event are all available on our website.
As I have said already this podcast is not about us or about the law. It is about gathering together a panel of people who work in the world of design and asking them to share their experiences. This year for our tenth anniversary of running this event we are focusing on perhaps the most important issue of them all.
How can you reconcile the love of getting new things with the increasingly urgent need to take better care of our planet? By coincidence, we are recording this podcast as the COP27 conference draws to a close and the focus on the importance of living more sustainably is stronger than ever. It is time to be bold and make changes to the world we live in. It is my view that design is at the core of that. To explore this we have assembled together a wonderful panel of guests so without further ado please let me introduce them to you.
First of all we have Minnie Moll who is chief executive of the Design Council. Soon after joining the Design Council Minnie launched their design for planet mission to help address the climate crisis. Minnie has spent numerous years working in innovation, design, advertising and brand consulting and was voted the Vestige UK Business Leader of the Year in 2020. Minnie has been the ambassador for responsible business in the east of England for Prince Charles as he then was and since joining the Design Council has been at the inner sanctum, the so-called blue zone where all the world leaders are allowed to go at COP26 in Glasgow. Minnie has an excellent oversight of the whole world of design but we are also joined by some other wonderful speakers who operate in the different parts of that world.
Part of the problem with design is that new products generally need packaging particularly in a world of ecommerce. Representing big business that historically has used a lot of plastic we have Trystan Farnworth who until recently was Sustainability Director for Britvic PLC, where he produced and implemented the company's sustainability strategy both in the UK and internationally and he is now focused on Britvic's beyond the bottle business unit which is looking at creating a future for soft drinks that does not require so much plastic. Trystan will talk to us about their Aqua Libra business and its pioneering products.
Natalie Davies is Managing Director of EGI, a company that specialises in the design and manufacturing of sustainable packaging solutions. Natalie will talk you through what these products are but the particular reason I am delighted that Natalie is on our panel today is that her company is living proof that you can make sustainable products that are better than the plastic alternatives, are still affordable and they actually open doors that you cannot open with less sustainable solutions. So much so that Natalie's product was ripped off by a competitor and so the reason I know Natalie is that we helped her through a hard fought design infringement case earlier this year.
Challenging the notion of whether we need new products at all I am delighted to welcome Gemma Perry who is the founder and owner of the design studio House of Solus situated in the Jewellery Quarter in Birmingham. Gemma is a bespoke jeweller with a specialism in the redesign of quality pieces and upcycling jewellery, making products from waste material. Gemma's company has been a finalist at the National Wedding Awards for the best wedding jewellers in the country which is no mean feat.
So let us go round the room and if I could just ask each of you just to explain where you are coming at the issue of sustainability and what it means for you. Minnie shall we start with you?
Minnie Moll: Yes, so to really zoom out for a second I think I would say that everyone in the design community needs to have a combination of urgency and hope. The point you made about this is the biggest challenge of our lifetimes, it is very very real. The science is saying we are running out of time and designers and innovation, they are different but they are very interlinked, as being part of what got us here, you know. It has been us encouraging excessive consumption, the way that that has impacted and we have used the finite resources of the planet and the impact that it has now had. So design has been a huge part of the problem and it has to be part of the solution, hence the design for planet mission and so really the mission is actually about equipping designers and anyone who is commissioning design to really put planet at the heart of what they do. There is a lot of very technical stuff about circularity, modularity, upcycling, you know, thinking about waste in totally different ways. So there is a lot of quite technical stuff but there is an enormous amount as well which is about urgency and attitude and the final thing I will say at this point is design has huge power and with power comes responsibility. So I think there is a real responsibility for anyone designing or commissioning design to put planet at the heart of it.
John: I think that is right and we will come back to a bit more about what that means and what you have been doing in a bit, but Trystan why don't you tell us a bit about you?
Trystan Farnworth: Yes, so I work for obviously a company called Aqua Libra which is owned by Britvic soft drinks who are a kind of FTSE 250 business in the UK. I guess the brands you will know us for will be brands like Pepsi, 7 Up, Robinsons, J2O etc. so I suppose on the sort of front page headlines of Britvic every day will be the conversation around packaging because that is almost like the poster child for sustainability in the world of soft drinks but I guess it is clearly a lot more than that and that is only one part of it. So the other elements that are really key to us are obviously carbon, especially and also water which sounds a bit strange but obviously to make a litre of soft drinks takes more than one litre of water to make it, so we do use a lot of water in our production as well.
So I guess where we are is working on all those things, investing significantly behind all of them. I think from our point of view I think what is interesting is (i) is the science sort of keeps moving around, so keeping pace with what is genuinely right to do long term and not is a bit of a moving feast. The other bit is obviously the constant attention between wanting to do the right thing and being able to afford to do the right thing and what consumers are willing to pay for us to do the right thing because I guess what consumers sometimes say they are willing to pay for and then what they do pay for are two different things.
I think where all this nuts out though for us is I think we are probably not that many years away from getting to a place where on our current business infrastructure you might get to a place where you feel like you are kind of doing all you can within what you have got so a good example of that would be the implementation of deposit return schemes for example, so that obviously gets a lot more recycled content in the system etc. I guess the big, big question for us which kind of goes beyond maybe the ten year horizon is kind of where do soft drinks go beyond that because the soft drinks model has been pretty fixed ever since soft drinks were invented which is, you know, drinks are made in factories, they are then shipped around and then they are consumed and they are all transported in a form of packaging, so I guess the kind of more revolutionary aspect that we are looking at is kind of what is that world beyond packaging altogether, so looking at what we would call a world beyond the bottle where in effect the soft drinks factory can be, you know, if we can get soft drinks manufacturing technology to a size and equality where it can be made on the premises, be it a pub, or a restaurant, or a shop, or a home that clearly takes out a lot of transport, a lot of water, etc. etc. so I guess that is the ultimate jump for us, is to move to a future which is truly beyond the bottle where actually the quantity of carbon, water and resources that we use would fundamentally step change but I think we have got to work on that because all the current solutions that we are kind of adopting will only get us so far and I think the job is then to go and do something completely different, which obviously means essentially completely dismantling the infrastructure of an industry and rebuilding a new one. I guess that is the challenge that we have got but I think that is the exciting bit, whether it takes 25, 50, 75, 100 years to get there we absolutely fee the future going beyond the bottle, so soft drinks will be I think a very, very different industry in 50 years' time to what it is now.
John: That is fascinating, that is fascinating. Well we will find out more about that in a minute as well. Natalie you transport bottles as part of your job so, tell us a bit about your position.
Natalie Davies: Yes but not plastic ones, generally. Most of our packaging is of course for glass and liquid and tins in fact. Our business started really right down at the fundamentals of sustainability. It was to create a product that replaced plastic and the product needed to be using recycled material and fully recyclable and that is what we do. We have moulded fibre which is effectively waste cardboard which is what we mainly use, but it is newspapers, newsprint, magazines, paper that everyone throws away. It is pulped and moulded into new products.
Now it is known to most people as egg boxes because they are really in everyone's supermarket shopping basket. And then we have taken it a step further to be protective packaging. It is being used a lot more now but mainly what it replaced when we started was polystyrene. One of our initial customers was actually using another type of foam that was a known carcinogen, was toxic and we said this is madness, you cannot use that, it is dangerous (i) in your warehouses, but (ii) how does the customer get rid of it. All of us as consumers we hate it when we get a box that is full of polystyrene, it takes up our black bin, that only gets emptied quite rightly ever two weeks, so we went down the lines of moulded fibre.
We already had created a product of moulded fibre and made it recyclable, made it reusable, made it waterproof and everything that it needed to be, so we knew there was scope to be able to do it and we designed and initially implemented our paint tin packaging so for the transit of paint online to the consumer and then have gone on to create more specialist packaging for drinks. So we do a whole plethora of packaging from small cans like we have here and small bottles, up to your big magnum bottles and several magnum bottles of champagne in a box.
It is quite challenging at times, especially when you have got customers, obviously design now people have the difference of, there are so many different gins, of having a different bottle and we know that they have got a very heavy gold top in it which obviously changes the dynamics of the bottle in its packaging to which way it would drop and fall if it was dropped. And because people are designing different bottles and things to make their products stand out our packaging has to encompass all of that, but whilst not having to make lots of different tooling which again, is not sustainable if you are making new tooling for every different product someone comes out with. So there are challenges to that but it is great because at the end of the day our product is made from waste, it can be recycled, it can be reused, it can be composted, it can be used for lots of different things and we also encourage our customers, some of ours will send a product, say a paint tin out to a customer and then they want to return it. You can reuse our packaging very simply to return it and we do often say to our customers if it is not torn or broken reuse it. It can be reused a number of times before it needs to be either recycled or composted.
So another product, another business of ours again was replacing plastic and it is always where possible for the same price or less than plastic because when we started the other business it was back in 2013 that we launched it, sustainability was not like it is now. People were not aware of it. It has taken us a long time to get to the forefront and people are now chasing for the product, but that again, it is a tree guard and when anyone plants new trees, or we put in new motorways or we put in new train lines, we plant lots of trees and we wrapped them in plastic and then we leave the plastic there and it stays there for millions of years. So we recreated a tree guard that basically will biodegrade depending whether it is a hedge or tree between two and three years or four and five years and it will just disappear and go completely back to nature. So again, being sustainable right from the start all the way through in everything that we do.
John: I love that product, I love it, I think it is brilliant. I wish I was planting a forest to need it.
Natalie: I have some with me.
John: Thank you. Well I will bear it in mind. Gemma.
Gemma Perry: Hello. Yes so I am Gemma, so I literally have a jewellery company in the Jewellery Quarter in Birmingham. Obviously years ago the Jewellery Quarter was a very industrial area and that is how jewellery was made, big, big machinery and I have got to admit sustainability was not even a thing until probably about 11 years ago when we, well, fair trade gold came into play. And people actually did not necessarily want to think about fair trade gold, they were just thinking, whatever, it is going to go away, and we will not need to deal with that, because we did not know what was actually happening kind of in the world or what was going to happen in future.
I obviously came to the jewellery industry about six or seven years ago when I was doing fine jewellery and I identified that actually there was other things that we can do when jewellery has already been made and everything like that to actually work with customers and clients and actually produce pieces of jewellery that actually have already been made and redesigned with something else. So I am not necessarily having to go down the route of having very core or raw metal, precious metals, gold, platinum, whatever and I can actually utilise those to produce things and make my clients happy producing and designing and everything like that with their pieces that they did not necessarily want.
So I think it is a really good thing in jewellery and I am really quite passionate about it that I think is the thing that we do need to go down in the industry and I suppose that is what brings me here today, talking about it. So yes that is what I do really, so I do redesign for clients, 65-70% of my work that I do now is down that route of redesigning so I am not necessarily going and buying brand new gold and things like that.
John: And presumably it is not, presumably sustainability might be part of the message or what customers want but partly presumably it is, and we were talking about this before the podcast recording started, of how actually it has more connection with people bringing their parents' rings in or things like that, so that actually there is more sentimental value in the product, if you have made something old like that into a new thing, rather than starting from scratch.
Gemma: Yes.
John: Presumably it is actually more attractive. The sustainability might be driving the business model but actually you are making a product that is better than it would have been otherwise.
Gemma: Yes exactly. So yes it is sentimental especially, obviously, we have just come out of Covid, unfortunately, you know, people did lose people in Covid so I am having a lot of people come with literally loads, I mean ridiculous amounts of jewellery that go actually I want to make this, or want to make this into a variety of pieces, so I can pass them down to my children and things like that. Yes, so it brings more, it has got a bigger story to tell than just me going well you can have that diamond, I can put it into that mount, I can cast it and it can be done within two weeks. So it actually has a whole story to tell, and yes that is what I really enjoy.
John: Yes, for me I mean that is what part of what, sustainability has had a difficult journey over the years because, I remember from being a kid of the 80s and 90s there has always been a pressure on the environment. I remember working out whether a can was steel or aluminium so whether it could be recycled and all that. There has always been a drive to help the environment but it is how that translates into real life and actually people making more sustainable choices and for me the language about that until more recently has always been about compromise. It is either going to be more expensive or not as good or something else but the stories around this table even already are it is better and it does not necessarily have to be more expensive, in fact it may even be cheaper. But it is moving, that is how you move the world beyond, you know, dialogue to actually real change and I suppose, well my next question on my sheet in front of me, is what challenges do you see in getting the public to actually do what they want to do? If you do poles it seems to be that people want to make more sustainable choices but then when they are standing in the supermarket or the business is choosing which packaging to use for their mail order company, they are not necessarily always making those choices because actually you know we are in an economic squeeze at the moment. There are realities that go beyond the lovely theories of doing the right thing. So maybe Natalie you can go first, what problems have you seen, have you seen any or is it just a universal love of your product? But are there any challenges competing with less sustainable options that you have seen?
Natalie: There are, it does always come down to price and I was having this conversation with Trystan earlier that people have to look at the bigger picture and this has been going on for years from other packaging that we have done prior to the liquid packaging, is that whilst sometimes at the point of purchase the item might be slightly more expensive, when you look at the bigger picture so our products are very quick to pack compared to a lot of the competition, an example being something that you would fill with air, that you have got the process of creating that by filling it with air, you need the machines and everything else that go along with it, ours you simply need the inserts. So whilst the plastic filled with air is cheaper as an item, actually when you put in all the other parts of it and especially the labour time it is actually more expensive than our product so that is our biggest challenge with the large companies, is that getting them to look at the bigger picture.
We had it a long time ago with another big customer, that it was going to save them £5million as a business but the one person buying it, it was going to affect his bonus, so he did not want to do it. And it is really getting everyone on board to say now actually for a business this is the right thing to do, not only is it sustainable but it is saving a lot of money, but we need to, you know, support this person on their bonus. They are still going to get their bonus even though they are not going to hit their targets moneywise and that is the biggest thing that we come up against.
John: And actually Trystan, that brings us quite nicely back to you because you are trying to create a revolution within an industry that has been, I am going to use my own words, stuck in its ways for a very long time and you are trying to create a short term evolution and a longer term revolution if I can put it like that, but you must be, I am not asking you to name names or anything, but you must be seeing some resistance, not necessarily within your enlightened company but maybe within the industry that actually, you know, keep doing what we do, change is expensive, and indeed you might have characters, people within their own business. How are you incentivising people or encouraging the industry that they have got to change?
Trystan: Yes, yes. So I think I have not come across anybody in the industry who does not want to change I think, but I think obviously the questions particularly when you are making things on a big scale, obviously there is a big infrastructure down in place already so there is big capital spends of tens or millions of pounds and obviously that infrastructure is design to last for a long time and therefore sometimes the question is, you know, we have made that investment two years ago, it was meant to see us through for 20 years and now are suggesting that we should do something different with that infrastructure. That is obviously the tricky bit but I think from an incentive point of view I mean certainly we as a company, and this is quite common in most big companies, now is that there would be BSG targets in people's bonus now which has become an increasingly chunkier part of remuneration packages, so you know, but if you do not do the right thing you do not get your full remuneration, so that has become increasingly common.
I guess from a consumer point of view, I think as I was going to mention, was and you mentioned it well it the set up was this consumers do not want to compromise so I think certainly as a brand owner we have got to do everything possible to bring solutions to consumers, and to the trade where they do not have to compromise because, if you ask people to compromise something naturally the take up is going to be less. So if you can remove the element of compromise it makes it very easy, it is like well if this costs the same as that and it is better why would I not and as soon as you are in that place that is good, as soon as you put a barrier clearly it is harder. So I think that is just something we have got to get through.
I think the other bit is consumer habit though and I think this is the element of where sometimes change and I think you mentioned Natalie, sometimes change can take years to come but then all of a sudden it can come really, really quickly and I guess certainly in the world where I am spending a lot of time now in hospitality, actually you know going back a few years ago and staying in an expensive hotel and being willing to not have your sheets changed every day or have your towels changed every day, and, and, and, would have seemed quite strange and unacceptable but now it is totally acceptable because it just becomes normal so I think there is a lot of consumer habits and I think consumer habits can sometimes change faster than we give consumers credit for.
And then the final bit on costs would be, for me it is never just about cost. Cost is always relative to something else. So I guess one of the good things about inflation is that it forces businesses to think very differently about resource use because part of the problem with plastic was it was incredibly cheap for a very very long period of time. So you know, that is what it was. As soon as you get movements in resources, particularly sharp upward movements it makes everybody think about everything again and we are seeing that, for example, in glass at the moment as well, so glass has advantages but it is incredibly carbon heavy so I think, you know, as soon as you get big jobs in in costs relative to something else that forces businesses to think differently in a way they have not previously before, so yes, I think do not get to a place where we have to compromise, make getting into habits easy and have the foresight and bravery to sometimes bank on the fact that if you take the raw facts of populations growing and resources are fixed ultimately then inevitably resources get more expensive over time so quite often if you take a look at a long term view on something the ROI is usually better than you would bank on.
John: That is a good insight. Minnie how about you, you have got a sort of, a more of a helicopter view I suppose. So tell us a bit more about your programme because presumably part of that is moving people into wanting to make those sustainable choices a reality.
Minnie: So I absolutely echo the kind of three things of affordable, easy and attractive. You know you have to do those things. And actually one zoomed-out view is actually sort of three levels at which people need to be operating. And one is at the sort of governmental legislation level where we need to remove obstacles and blockers that are not making it a level playing field. So there are some blockers there where people, certainly some of the smaller organisations, and larger, that are trying to do the right thing. There are blockers that make it not a level playing field which means that their products seem disproportionately really expensive. So there is the policy work that needs to happen, then I… this is a very personal view, I do think businesses and brands are the really, really important piece in the middle. Because businesses and brands are, you know, that is where things are created, you know, products, services, places we live and so the drive there has absolutely got to be key.
And then there is that third piece which is the people power. The behaviour thing and I think that I really agree with Trystan that actually behaviour can change quite quickly and that is where we do need, and I mean this in the old sense of the word, influencers, leaders, people who inspire others and educate others and it is where we all have to be the change we want to see in the world. And keep reminding our friends, our family, and ourselves doing our best. So you know, it is not all governments' and businesses' job there is a very real personal responsibility as well.
The one other thing I just wanted to pick up on and this is an example of infrastructure, fantastic designer called Phoebe English who spoke at our Designs for Plant event last week, and she is doing really amazing work where all of her material is deadstock. Lots of it is really quite small off-cuts and what have you. And she is doing amazing work but there is no infrastructure to be able to get hold of deadstock and off-cuts, so she has had to kind of create her own which has taken ages, you know, phoning people up; can we have all your scraps? Rather than them going in landfill. But she is getting it kind of going. But if there was an actual infrastructure to be able to make deadstock and scraps accessible, you know, it was just one example that that is… goodness she had to be determined to make that happen. There is lots and lots and lots of examples where systems and infrastructure have been the same for decades and we need to change them.
John: You are right, I mean reusing materials, you must find this as well sometimes if it is not a customer who has brought something in, reusing materials can be a more expensive way of buying.
Gemma: Yes. So the infrastructure is really. That hits the nail on the head with enjoy as well so, sometimes we will have a client come in and wants you know, four or five pieces, and then I find that actually I have not got as much gold when I melt it down so as to be able to meet that. So it is actually finding do I, or making the decision, do I go and get some clean gold, it is classed as clean gold, it is obviously not dirty but it is obviously reused gold. But it is either do I go and get a bit of clean gold and I melt it in with the bits that I have melted down just because I need some more gold to make what I am doing? Or do I go and get some scrap from the bullion; so we have bullion dealers and everything like that. But actually that is not a thing that people go and do. So me to go to a bullion dealer who is actually buying the bullion in to make the money and there is me going can I have some of your scrap, it does not make sense. Well to them it would not make sense but to me it does. And so the infrastructure I think is really, really, a really important thing and definitely does need to be developed in jewellery I think. So yes I do have slight issues.
John: That is your expansion plan.
Gemma: Yes that is the expansion but straightaway I am like that is definitely something that I really, really like and it is something that I do come across quite a lot. Because people do want to keep that sentimental, they do want to keep… there is no point sort of trying to do half-half because it kind of defeats the whole object of me trying to be sustainable in what I am doing. You know, doing… reducing the amount of machinery that I am using and yet I am about to go and buy something that has just gone through a whole big machinery under the whole big process that is creating a lot of waste or environmental waste. So yes.
And also like time as well. So time I sometimes think is a big issue with it because it takes longer for me to make a piece. But people like the experience and I feel like actually society as in general, people like experiences and things. They are liking education. They like to be educated about what is going on. So I do spend a lot of my time educating how things are done, what I am about to do with their pieces and things like that and I do feel like that is something that we need to kind of promote as well. Because I think the more that people know the more that they will want to do good to sort of sustainable things.
John: I think that goes into the point about how you bring consumers along on the journey and you see this sort of a bit in the food industry with, you know, where your cabbage has come from, you know, if it has been flown around the world versus if it has come from another farm in Hertfordshire or whatever. And I think you are right, if people see that on the wall in the shop they are more likely to be engaged with it than if it just happens to be from Hertfordshire. You know, if you have taken them on the journey there I think that is good.
Gemma: Can I just add something because I wrote this down, this is something someone said at our event last week, it's of course what happens when things are changing and whole systems need to change: opportunity. And lovely language that was used last week about right now the opportunity for waste entrepreneurs. So I love this idea of people now being really smart to become waste entrepreneurs, better language or contemporary alchemists. Is not that a lovely phrase? So I am a contemporary alchemist as in I am just seeing all this waste and how to use it in different ways.
John: Yes amazing. It is amazing how you can sell things through branding. Going back to your roots there. So we talked about how sustainable products can be better. Natalie your product is arguably better than a lot of the less sustainable alternatives. So I like to think that people listening to this podcast are designers and they may be designers who are in an industry where, you know, eco is what they do. In which case it is easier to make sustainable choices. But they may be not in an industry that is that and they are just designing something more every day. You know, you have seen this in the past, you have seen the eco businesses and then you got your what I would call, probably an historical anachronism now, ordinary businesses and it is harder to make the eco choices when that is breaking the mould. Like Trystan was saying, in your industry it has not historically been like that.
What would you say, each of you, to designers who are trying to make more sustainable choices in a world where there may be not in that industry?
Natalie: I would say look, because, I mean, speaking earlier Minnie when you said about, was it Phoebe English who is finding scraps so I think traditionally I guess people do not use scraps but she is now looking for an alternative and I think that was exactly what we did. The first reason we came up with the tree guard was because my parents happen to have bought a load of hedges, hedge plants, and they got supplied with plastic spirals and we got them and we thought why on earth are we planting a hedge and then wrapping it with plastic and to add to that, oh we are going to cut down another tree to make a stake to support the tree we are planting. This just seems completely mad. So that was when we already had the experience obviously of pulp and recycled material and said could we do this, let us have a go. And I think it is that. We now use bamboo. Bamboo is commonly used, thin bamboo poles for hedge plants. But we then found a much heavier duty grade of bamboo. It is a grass. It gets harvested every three to five years and it keeps growing so instead of cutting down a tree we use a heavy duty bamboo to support the trees. And it is that, it is looking and researching and going out there. If it is not the norm it does not mean to say it is not possible. So I think it is thinking outside the box.
John: Trystan what would you have to say on that?
Trystan: Yes it is a difficult question to answer is it not because I think every circumstance is different. But I think yes, I think it is kind of thinking, definitely thinking outside the box. I think sometimes it is just kind of thinking inside the box as well in terms of, sometimes the stuff is really obviously and I kind of, because I think if you take the fundamentals of the population is going to keep growing, resources are finite, stuff is going to get more expensive and therefore a lot of sustainability is how can we use less in a way which does not mean the consumers have to compromise. So I think sometimes the answers are really easy it is just that they are not immediately obvious to us.
So certainly on the Aqua Libra brand which I am kind of working on at the moment you know the idea of saying, you know, can the way that we make soft drinks be compressed and shrunk effectively so it takes less space. You know, do big offices have a square metre to be able to put a mini soft drinks factorable in, yes they have. And do Britvic want to enter the water market in a big way, in a different way, yes we do. Well it is fairly easy is it not? That leads us to the immediate conclusion of we should do what we are doing. That is all dead logical and easy and straightforward but it is just that, it is not the most obvious thing. The most obvious thing is if you want to enter the water brand we have to go and buy another plastic line and then you have to go and source a spring water or a mineral water, that is the obvious thing to do. So I think sometimes this stuff is dead straightforward and logical it is just not immediately obvious. And I think sometimes it is just about stepping back and thinking hard about what, you know, just trying to think logically sometimes.
John: And you talked about how your business is going through sort of the revolution in the longer term but the sort of, you are doing the little things that you can do in the shorter term, how are you encouraging your designers to make those changes now or to think more sustainably even in the very short term?
Trystan: So I think in terms it is almost like, you know, the hygiene factors are the minimum standards that you would want from suppliers generally, including designers. Obviously we have, like, increasing strict stances around what we will and will not tolerate. So I think, you know, in terms of sustainability that probably goes without saying. I think the, what we are finding is on the more game changing solutions, again, we often have to work with suppliers that we have not worked with before so often the more innovative solutions will not be in the traditional big suppliers it will be in the smaller, more innovative suppliers who are kind of dabbling at things, for want of a better word. So I think cultivating partnerships and contact networks in typically smaller businesses outside your core business is often where we kind of get the best ideas.
John: And presumably that is encouraging everybody to think a bit more along those lines because competition is what makes the world go round and if you are, as a big company, using your influence to go to smaller companies who are doing a better job of it, it is going to make some of the bigger suppliers think again.
Trystan: Definitely you know, designers are highly, highly great creative but also from fragmented industries so I think the opportunity for designers to help big companies make a big difference is enormous and probably hugely untapped.
John: Minnie how do we, how does the designer listening to this make more sustainable choices on the sort of day-to-day while still keeping joyful products coming to us?
Minnie: So I think that, you know, language is so important and having worked in an innovation company for quite some time, I actually think that for year's innovation has been really driven by new. You know, it is the faster, smaller, new, new, new, new, new, new. And I actually think we really need to sort of rethink innovation, and I think it should be better not new. Because, actually some of the most interesting innovation right now is really novel things like, weighing something out and putting it into a paper bag. Some of the stuff that we need to be doing now is really old school. It is really, really old school. And the circularity and designing with nature and sort of, guess what, it is what we used to do and it is what indigenous populations have continued to do. In the most ingenious way, in harmony with nature. So I think there is a, I think there is a piece for designers to really actually stop and think because if you had virtually nothing to do this with and you really were trying to design with nature, what might that look like. And here is, I have just remembered, here is a quote from an amazing designer at our event last week, I thought this was really provocative and he said, he said that designers actually need to think more about people and the impact on the planet than about their own creative experience. And this thing that I thought was so deep in that was like, not just doing something that is new and excites you, you actually need to put planet and people before your own kind of own personal kick, which I was like woah. Quite an interesting thought for a designer. So really stopping to think about how if planet was at the table. If planet was at the briefing session what would planet be saying about this brief you are about to get stuck in on.
John: Do you think there is a way of making it work where obviously, you know, that, some would say that is all very well and good but you have still got to be able to sell it and get it past those who may be wrongly do not care about the planet so much? There are, you know, the bean counters who care about the profit margin. There are the people, you have got, we talked about individual people's bonuses earlier. You have got a lot of people who may agree with the macro but not when it is actually their decision on that day in order for it to approve of it, or indeed what the consumer wants. It may be, you know, we talked a minute ago about it being, still needing to be joyful. So how do you keep planet at the table while still, while still making sure that it gets past all those hurdles?
Minnie: And I so get that. I know that loads and loads of designers in the design economy in the UK are working on their own or in very small SMEs, most of designers, and they have bills to pay. I get that. But I think that you have to push at the brief stage. 80% of the environmental impact of any new product is determined in the design stage. 80%. You have really got to challenge the brief as much as you can. You know, a lot of people are not in the position to turn the brief away. You have got to challenge it.
But increasingly back to this point about business, increasingly any decent business these days has got to be thinking about their own footprint. Has got to be thinking about their reputation. Has got to be thinking about the impact that they are having. So increasingly it should not be so much pushing water uphill but, you know, you have to make the changes you can. I am not naïve enough to think that, you know, everyone can just turn briefs away if the client does not have a strong enough sustainability agenda. And then I think that is where some of the new organisations are most exciting because they have not got legacy. They have not got a legacy and they have not got a huge investment in an infrastructure. You know, that is just, a very real challenge in an organisation. So they are starting from scratch and that is where it is, in some respects, easier to just go straight in to something that has got real sustainability at the heart of it.
John: And Gemma as the designer here what inspired you to go down this road as opposed to what presumably would have been an easier road of just buying your clean gold and making stuff to order? What was the, you know, what was the prompt?
Gemma: I think it is just being, maybe my age, being, growing up with actually, you know, talking about climate change. Talking about all that kind of thing. That thing being on the news and me wanting a business that is, I want to be at the forefront of that. Because, it is actually something that I will admit is, unfortunately, in the jewellery industry, is still very, sometimes, is put to one side because it is a little bit hard. Because we are not, we have not done, sort of, all the research of what we need to do. We are definitely going down the right route but we are not there yet. So when you start talking to, sort of, the older, sort of, businesses or the bigger businesses, they are a bit like, yeah, yeah we are doing this, you know, we do fair trade, we do this, we do that. We have got like a, you know, if we go right back to like single mining and things like that. But actually how much are they doing, and I think for me I want to be at the forefront to be like okay, we need to push boundaries. And I think that is what keeps me going and be like, well, I could do the easy option but actually I want to go down this route because in the future and sort of longevity this is the way that we need to go.
John: And that is a great point actually. The is about the fact that actually we do not have to encourage these designers because lots of designers they want, that is the way they want to go and I think increasingly that, I am glad to say, that is, that is the way it is. You know, Natalie, you were shocked by the plastic that arrived and that is what prompted you guys to go down that road. It was not any motivation other than doing the right thing.
Natalie: It is really rewarding as well, which I realised right at the start. I have always been a big fan of the seas and I saw islands, I mean, it is quite well known about the Maldives that there is one island that is literally just a big garbage tip. It is shocking to see and that is all created by us and then over there is an island that is full of dead birds and you could see that where their bodies had decomposed inside was plastic bottle tops and plastic clips and things because they consumed them and I think it has been widely advertised the turtle with the straw, plastic straw up its nose. I mean luckily we ban those now but I saw all of that and thought this is ridiculous, we cannot continue this. We are destroying what we have got. We are destroying ourselves because that all ends up back in our watercourses and back in our bodies so if we do not do something at the start at the source to stop it getting there then to be fair we are all doomed. So it is really exciting actually and rewarding doing something that is not hurting everything else.
John: Absolutely right. Absolutely right. It is almost like Gemma saw my sheet of questions when she just covered a topic a moment ago and that topic is you guys are all doing the right thing and pushing the agenda and that is why you are sat round this table today recording this podcast but there are lots of companies that have jumped on the sustainability bandwagon. We as a law firm have seen it through sometimes acting for the good guys and sometimes less so where people have been accused of greenwashing. You know they are saying they are doing the right thing and in fact, well they might be doing a little bit but they are exaggerating at best or maybe making it up at worst or implying that their product, which may be very environmentally friendly, is saving the planet in a way that it is not saving the planet it is just not harming it as badly. And what that made me reflect for you was, does that undermine the good work you are doing if other people are sort of pretending to do what you are doing?
Gemma how are you finding that on your industry where, you know, you mentioned a moment ago, which is why I am coming straight to you because you have basically obviously read this! You know, you say people say, oh yes we are doing all these things and the question is how much. And there you are mostly doing this, you know, as much as you possibly can and how do you feel about that?
John: I think yes, it is quite a hard one to, I do not know how, it makes you… I am quite a strong kind of minded person, well I will do it no matter what, and I think that, kind of, it comes across in when I am designing or anything like that. So if I am passionate about something I go through with it. But it is one of those things when you do see the bigger companies, you know, promoting things and I see things, you know, I am listening to podcasts and things like that. And it is one of those where I am like, yes but are you? How much are you actually doing? And it does get to you a little bit, but if I made that really get to me, it is about making like, obviously, so many of us, sort of, push forward to these big companies and be like, no, like, you need to definitely do something rather than just, kind of, doing a small amount, going forward. Yes, it is a quite hard one that one is because I know that we are not there in, kind of, our industry at the moment. But yes.
John: Trystan anything on this one?
Trystan: Yes listen mate this is kind of greenwashing everywhere. I tend not to, there is a lot of talk about greenwashing I am kind of not that troubled by it because, I think our job is kind of focusing on what we can do ourselves rather than criticise other people for what they are doing but I think, I think, especially from a corporate perspective, especially if you are a corporate who, you know, especially a branded corporate. I think being very, very clear about where you sit on the spectrum, all the way through from, I genuinely do not care and, that is what I think, right through to, we are completely obsessed about this and our entire business model is going to be built on this and we are absolute cutting edge. I think where, you know, you can read through a lot of corporate reports on sustainability and they are broadly copy and paste, yes let us be candid about it, but I think a business making a very, very conscious choice in terms of where do we want to sit on that spectrum and then choosing, that is where I want to sit and this is what I want to do and then being authentic in a way that you represent that, is a better route, yes. So do not present that you are trying to be something which you are not or you are not committed to resourcing. So I think just being authentic about where you sit on the debate and the degree of action would go down far better because at least everybody knows kind of where they stand then. I think that would be my perspective on it.
John: Lots of people are trying to do the right thing and some are being very open about how far they have still got to go, on this issue and many others, and other people are trying to make out they have already got there. And actually, you know, in a world of social media and it is very hard for corporates to, it is very hard for corporates now to sort of whitewash or greenwash in a way that maybe they were able to do before because it is not just the corporate report that people read anymore. It is, your actions are out there, and people can commentate on them whoever they are.
Trystan: I think actually the bit that, what bothers me more than greenwashing is committing to targets that you just do not have a plan to get to and I know you could say that is ambition and that is good in a way, in another way though it is a way of hiding progress so I think for a, you know, especially again for the bigger corporates going out and say this is my goal and then not hit it and then five years later change the goal because it is looking a bit hard, that undermines things a lot as well so I think again that is about being realistic about where you sit on the spectrum and saying for our business based on where we are and what we are about that is our realistic goal and we are going to do it, I think knocking over those goals drives far more momentum than setting huge goals which actually turn out to be unobtainable and then you have to keep rewriting the rule book. Because in effect what you are doing then is disguising progress and that is definitely unhelpful I think. That is probably worse and more damaging than greenwashing itself I think.
John: Natalie have you seen other companies trying to claim that their products are more sustainable than they are or is it so obvious in your industry because yours is one thing and theirs is the other?
Natalie: In our industry now, yes it is, it is obvious generally what the material is. Actually in the tree industry, not the case at all because people claim they are biodegradable but they have got a plastic coating on it, but yes it goes down to very tiny molecules, well it is still there. It is still there. It can still be ingested by animals but they say it is eco and it is green. So there is still a bit of that. I think there is much less paying lip service, just paying lip service to stuff now than when I started in sustainability back in 2008 in my first business when it was a lot, people had an agreeing range, or an eco range, just to, you know. We are doing our bit here. Now I do not think people as you say can get away with it, with social media and things it is just not possible. People say, well you say that but actually around here you are doing that and vice versa. I mean we did … have found it as Minnie was mentioning with the government organisations coming down, we had a charity say we are not going to use plastic on this site. They filled it full of plastic tea cups. Then they said there was no alternative. Yes there was, and we have been knocking on your door for years but it was changed, it was too difficult. I think people are more receptive to change and I think Covid has caused that to a certain extent because we had to change and people realised actually it is not quite so scary and actually, it can be for the better. But I think there is less greenwashing now because it is not possible. It still happens in places but …
John: It happens quite a lot actually.
Natalie: Does it?
John: We see it a lot and that is why the government have had to make rules and they are very, very tight on greenwashing for exactly this reason and they are being, you all will be pleased to hear, they are being particularly aggressive in enforcing those rules for exactly this reason because otherwise there is a danger that progress does get masked by people setting targets they have absolutely … you were talking about targets, you were very kindly talking about people setting targets that they may not actually be able to achieve because they are too hard. I think there are people out there who are making targets that they know they are not even going to try but it is a good piece of marketing because it is 20 years away by which time everybody has forgotten they said it 20 years ago, and there is a bit of that as well I am afraid.
Minnie what have you got to say on this one? Anything?
Minnie: I think this has been really well covered, it has been really well covered. The only thing I would say that we have to also be sympathetic to some extent building on what Trystan said is this is really complex. Two scientists will sit at a table and not agree, you know you have got the thing and it is made of this but it has got a very thin coating. It is complex, it is really complex stuff and it does come around to authenticity and truly people trying to make the change that is within their power to make and we must try not … and people who you feel are genuinely trying to do that, we must try to be supportive not critical. So just as a kind of last point.
John: I think that is a very good point and it is very difficult sometimes to work out who is trying to do the right thing but not necessarily quite achieving it versus, those who are trying to pretend they are doing the right thing and I think, that is fair but I think we have just got to keep our eye out for the people who are not because we need to make sure we do not buy their products I suppose.
Minnie: Indeed.
John: So, I mean we are running out of time now so maybe if we will just have a last word from each of you on something, anything, on what we have talked about if there is any last messages for our audience as to anything to do with sustainability or design. Minnie we have just come to you so why do we not go back to you first.
Minnie: Yes and this is something that the lovely Phoebe English who I have mentioned, when she was inspiring everyone with her work there was one point when she said sometimes it does feel overwhelming, you know I feel my little business, I just feel like we are a little drop and it reminded me of a quote I love from the Dalai Lama, my message to every designer listening, his quote which is "if you think you are too small to make difference try sleeping with a mosquito". So every person making whatever difference they can matters.
John: Trystan.
Trystan: Ooh tough question to finish. I just would echo the point that was made around you know if you are sat around a table or you are sat in a design studio or whatever, imagine Planet Earth was sat in one of the chairs. I think that is brilliant, that forces you to think what Planet Earth would say about this decision, I think there is a lot in that. I have not heard that before but I think that is excellent so I will be taking that away.
John: You will be mentioning that to your tailor.
Trystan: Yes.
John: Gemma.
Gemma: Yes I think both of you said two very good things, that one just and saying about overwhelming and feeling like a little … that is me, I feel like that sometimes when I am trying to be like this is what we have got to be doing, this is what we got to be doing. But I think it is very much we are going the right way and I feel like even sitting here doing a podcast, talking about sustainability, I think it is going the right way because a few years ago, not even about five years ago, would we have been doing this, so it shows that actually we are, as a world, is doing something but we just need to keep doing that.
John: You might feel overwhelmed but you are making a success of it so you are living proof that you can feel overwhelmed but still make a difference.
Gemma: Yes exactly and yes I definitely try to promote everything about sustainability in what I do, so yes.
John: Good for you. Last word Natalie.
Natalie: I would quite simply... I would say believe in what you do because if you believe in it, you believe you can make a difference then you can.
John: Excellent, wise words to finish with. Thank you very much to all of you for joining me today on this podcast and thanks to you for listening.