Chatham House exhibition - In conversation with the future

Bronwen Maddox

The last few people coming in. Sorry for starting a few minutes late. We were dragging people out of the exhibition upstairs, and I was taking a peek myself. A very warm welcome. I’m Bronwen Maddox. I’m Director of Chatham House. This is really exciting. I was absolutely delighted to be giving the first introduction to this discussion and then, the exhibition upstairs. We’re gathered here for what is for us a special occasion, this discussion and exhibition around one of the most important issues of our time, one of the most important issues for Chatham House, which is reinventing the world for a more sustainable future.

And at Chatham House, you can see the word “sustainability, sustainable” on many of our walls up there as part of our mission. It’s not just a buzzword for us, it’s not just a trend, one of the many trends we analyse. It is one of our goals, it is a necessity, in our view, to help societies create the conditions for a more secure, prosperous and just world for future generations, those words taken from our mission. And that’s why we created the Sustainability Accelerator. The team was put together back in 2021, headed by Ana with a fantastic team, made possible by a generous grant from the Hoffman family and their MAVA Foundation.

And the goal of this Accelerator team – and I was fascinated when I came here just back in September to start learning about it, I felt absolutely intrigued by their processes and by their events. Their goal is to shorten the policy cycle between the moment of the inception of an idea and its implementation, and obviously, to improve the success rate of the many great ideas that don’t always make it to implementation. The Accelerator sets out to act as a springboard for the ideas and the solutions that are going to accelerate us towards a more sustainable future. And how do they do this? Well, they bring together lots of people. They bring together changemakers, they bring together people like the entrepreneurs and the experts we have today, who can challenge and creatively disrupt all the assumptions we’ve had that have given rise to our patterns of consumption and production to date.

And so, today we’ve got a discussion, followed by the exhibition upstairs, bringing together the work of the Reinventing series. This is a series that looks at new designs, new technologies, new products, new practical solutions that can better meet our future social and environmental needs. And we’ve got this wonderful panel who are going to set the scene for all of this, giving us a sense of where we’re at, what the problems are, where we need to get to, what we might do about all that, and then we’re really excited to welcome you to our first interactive exhibition upstairs. I did have a peek, as I’ve said. There’s a whole array of iPads and bananas and plastics and whatever, where – and you can come and explore some of the innovative and experimental ideas that we’re discussing here today. And I think there are – they’re described as “edible cocktails” and “sustainable canopies.” I hope that doesn’t sound too indigestible. They’re not part of the exhibits, they’re offered separately.

We’re really grateful to all of our donors who’ve supported us in this journey, and we’re really delighted to have many of you here today, and we hope that this event is going to serve, itself, as a springboard for more of the conversations and the collaborations that we really rely on in our work and inspire us all to take more action towards a sustainable future. So, thank you again, from me for joining us, and we look forward to a fruitful discussion. Ana, thanks very much indeed, and team, for putting it all together.

Ana Yang

Thank you, Bronwen, thank you [applause]. Thank you. So, we launched the Reinventing Dialogue series about three years ago, and I was telling the story that it was – I think we were quite lucky with the timing. We launched it – well, the first serie – the first event was called “Reinventing the Plastic Bottle,” and the timing was when David Attenborough’s Blue Planet came out. And the event was wildly success because it was a one-hour conversation around all the complexities of producing, distributing, and also, managing the waste of plastic bottle. And then, we had an exhibition upstairs which was art installation made from plastic waste collected in Hawaii and Delta.

And the whole process of the Reinventing series is that we unpack a really complex issue, we embrace all the unknowns around it, as well, but also, we look into glimpse of the solution and glimpse of the future. And so, we’re always dabbing between the challenge between, like, I get a sense of stress for the amount of challenge that we have at us – ahead of us, but also tap into a sense of optimism. And so, when we bring our panel of experts into the conversation, we will go through that journey, and we will go through the journey of, you know, intellectually understanding the challenge, but also emotionally stepping into that place and then to say, what does it mean individually for me, today, in that journey of transformation? Also, what does it mean for the next generation? I always want to bring the conversation of next generation, and also the others who are not represented in the decision-making fora, and I would imagine that Nama will say more on that.

So with that, I’m going to hand over to a group – a panel, of amazing speakers, so we have, in order, we will have Professor John Barrett, he’s a Professor of Energy and Climate Policy at University of Leeds, and then we have Maya de Souza, Director of Impact from Circular – the Circular Economy Director from Business in the Community, then we have Pierre Pasler – Paslier, pardon, Co-Founder and CEO of NotPla, and Namrata Chowdhary, Nama, Head of Public Engagement of 350.org. Actually, just as a fangirl, 3 – I love 350’s work, so – but you’ll – you know why. So, with that, I’m going to hand over to John. Thank you.

Professor John Barrett

Great, well, thank you very much, and thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today. I’m just going to, sort of, set the scene as a – sort of, an IPCC author, to try and give a sense of the climate challenge that we’re facing and how the issue of consumption fits in with that. Most of all, some of you may be aware that, obviously, in 2015, the Paris Agreement was signed by 196 countries, including the UK, which was really set out to stabilise climate, to limit global temperature rises to two degrees, if not significantly less, 1.5 degrees, in as short a time as possible.

From a sort of, science perspective, we’re able to understand that that gives us under 500 gigatons of C02 now to emit to not exceed these targets, to avoid significant climate breakdown, and if we keep going at the rate we are, we’ve used that up within ten years. So, the constant framing of the climate crisis as a long-term agenda, to me, is completely incorrect. This is now a short-term crisis, a ten-year plan, to, in essence, move us away from a fossil fuel dominant paradigm to one which is a low-carbon society.

And the problem we have with that is that, while we’re gradually growing the, sort of, the new economy, this new low-carbon economy, and hopefully, that will gradually take over the dominant fossil fuel economy, the timescales of which that happens in simply won’t happen at normal stages and – of normal speeds of development and innovation. So therefore, we have to make a more disruptive change in the system to allow, I suppose, the new innovators, the companies which are part of that future, to have a significant head start. And it’s not just good enough for us to, in essence, try and promote these companies. We’ve also got to question how we stop doing the bad stuff that we shouldn’t be doing anymore. And that’s why, to really drive that innovation forward, what we’re looking for is not just policies that support businesses. We’re looking to actually foreclose the options which we don’t want to drive that innovation, and it’s very difficult for a business that wants to create a change to operate in an economy where it’s also perfectly okay to behave in completely the wrong way.

The problem with this whole agenda is that this really challenges the vested interests of the ruling classes. It questions how capital is distributed, it questions whether we can actually keep going and sweat the assets that we have now and, in essence, gain the value out of them, and this really means strong government intervention to make that happen. Without it, it’s almost impossible for the businesses who want to create the change to be part of that change in the future. That’s the, sort of, bad bit, I suppose.

The good bit is that we actually have all the social and technological innovations that we need to deliver it. Of course, we’re looking for new innovations all the time, but we have them at our fingertips, we know what works, we’ve had done detailed assessments. We know that we can use products for longer, we know there’s huge benefits in material substitution, in a new circular economy. We know that we can electrify lots of, sort of, energy demand services in households, which means they can be provided by renewables. So it’s all there for the taking, but as I say, it’s not going to happen unless we intervene.

So, I suppose, finally, just to, sort of, frame it, as well, is that there’s a real danger if we frame this around individual choice and ask them just to make the change, course people understand the importance of climate change, but to ask someone for every single decision-making process in their life to be evaluating whether this is a good or bad thing to do, simply is just not realistic. Therefore, this is a structural problem, it’s a problem that needs serious intervention and it needs government to bring about those solutions to help create that new sustainable economy in as short a time as possible. So, thank you.

Ana Yang

Amazing, John.

Professor John Barrett

Thank you very much.

Ana Yang

Thank you.

Professor John Barrett

Yeah.

Ana Yang

Maya.

Maya de Souza

Okay, thank you. Well, it’s interesting to follow on from John because I’m going to now talk about how businesses can really drive that transformational change. And I’m going to suggest that businesses can really do quite a lot on their own without policy, but that doesn’t mean that policy isn’t critical, but there’s still quite a lot that businesses can really do.

So, I work in Business in the Community with a lot of different, you know, businesses from the retail sector, to manufacturers, to the waste sector, and we work with them on how they do create this change. So, my work is primarily on the demand side, on changing patterns of consumption and – as a result – and patterns of production, as well. I’m not going to suggest it’s all driven by consumers. Businesses can drive that demand and change what people are interested in buying. But making this transformational shift can seem quite a challenge, quite daunting to businesses. We’ve got a system where we’ve got, sort of, low – high turnover, low margins. Businesses aren’t, sort of, all feeling hugely comfortable with where they are, and in this situation to say, let’s, sort of, change things totally can be something that, you know, Boards, CEOs, don’t really want to think about at the moment.

But what I’d say is that change does happen, and it happens much faster than people realise. We’ve seen things like, say, even the famous story of, sort of, Kodak not quite keeping up with the transformation to digital cameras and falling out of the picture completely. So, businesses do need to try and change, and what we see this shift from a linear economy to a circular economy is a lot of things happening already.

So, I see James here, I think, from Deloitte over there, who just published a report on the fact that the economy isn’t very secular as yet, around 7.8%, if I’ve got it right, but that’s not a reason for businesses to drag their heels, because, in fact, what we’re already seeing is quite a lot of change. So, companies like eBay selling second-hand things are now huge. We have companies refurbishing and selling you second-hand furniture as if it was new, or electronics, so all sorts of new businesses coming into the market, but how do you make that happen? I’m going to suggest that there are a few key things that need to be done, and we’ve just published a circular economy route map and we’ve also got something which is called Responsible Business – I can’t remember what it is, the six catalysts that we have in our organisation.

But the four things I’d like to really emphasise are, one, really, going back to the data and looking for those, sort of, hotspots in terms of what is significant in your business for carbon emissions. So, you know, sometimes it may be plastics, but sometimes it may not be. You may have to be doing something totally different, changing your business model entirely. So, looking at the evidence and try – and then making small steps for change. So, you don’t have to change everything. The circular economy model gives you a number of different things you can do, whether it’s businesses as a service, or whether it’s very different materials.

The second is really around metrics, I’m going to stress metrics, because if businesses don’t have that clarity of what they’re really aiming for and they don’t have KPIs, things don’t really change, either. The third, for me, is around collaboration, and this is an area that we work in quite a lot, and not all businesses are very used to the idea of working with their competitors or working with their value chains, maybe the latter more so than their competitors. But I’d say this is a world – a part of the world that is changing quite considerably, and businesses need to be coming to the table and agreeing quite significant changes.

We were talking earlier about vehicle sizes, the vehicle sizes seem to be getting bigger and bigger. Even a Mini is not really a Mini anymore, but do comp – can companies come to the table and say, “Well, we’re not going to just get bigger and bigger, we can actually sell cars that people want, which are of a much smaller size”? But collaboration is in so many different ways, and another is along a value chain, and this is something that we think is particularly important in terms of a transition to a more circular economy.

So, if you just look at something like electronics, unless things are designed correctly, unless you’ve got people who are going to collect things at end of life and take them to somebody, maybe refurbishing them, if you don’t have the recycling sector, you have to really try and have all these different facets of a system in order for it to work. You have to think about what the impact is of change to have a just – so you don’t have some elements of your value chain really getting, I suppose, hurt by the transition. And then the last – and on that, also, collaboration and policy is important.

But finally, I’d like to emphasise working with all the people within an organisation and really fully utilising their, sort of, creativity. Everybody, from a procurer and a Supply Chain Manager to a Strategist has huge potential. So, I’m going to leave it at that and…

Ana Yang

So…

Maya de Souza

…pass on to the next person.

Ana Yang

Thank you, Maya.

Maya de Souza

Thank you.

Ana Yang

Pierre.

Pierre Paslier

Hi, so, I’m Pierre, Co-Founder of NotPla. In a nutshell, we develop alternatives to plastic using seaweed, so we do things like films. We’ve heard about edible cocktails, so you can try that later, and we replace plastic with something that is so natural, nature based, that you can literally eat it, and that, kind of like, shows that it’s not going to create any long-lasting waste. And luckily, we were one of the winners of this year’s Earthshot Prize. This prize, organised by Prince William, comes with a £1 million cheque, which is very helpful to, kind of like, keep on doing some R&D and so on.

And it’s often, kind of like, easy to fall for, like, the doom and gloom of the news and so on. But one thing that I think resonated with me being part of this, kind of like, really exciting, kind of like, prize that highlights what is happening, is that there are, kind of like, five winners every year, but there’s 1,000 people who apply with projects all around the world that are doing incredible things in their community, working on, like, technologies, working on solutions that are just about, kind of like, using fast, kind of like, solutions, about just transforming the way they’re doing things.

And so, I think, thinking about the future, in a way, is just that, like, we don’t talk about those thousand applicants per year, but they are all doing things everywhere. So, for that reason, I’m a urgent optimist. We don’t have much time, we really need to, kind of like, get our – get a grip on this situation, but at the same time, we’d be fooling ourselves to think that we don’t have solutions. I think what you said is absolutely right. We have nature-based technologies that can, kind of like, perform, like, solutions that still enable our, kind of like, lifestyle and our, kind of like, comfortable ways of being and working, but we have to stop using the, kind of like – those worst-case scenarios that we’ve, kind of like, picked for the past century.

So, I think that’s one of the, kind of like, hard things when you’re working in something that is really trying to bring it the next level, is that you’re in a market that is not, kind of like, fair at all, typically plastic. I think it was, like, Deloitte, kind of like, report with, like, WWF, that the true cost of plastic is actually about ten times the market price. It’s just that we’re paying a deposit of 10% right now, but we’re leaving a bill of 90% of that cost for future generations.

This is the situation that we are, kind of like, continuing to do every day with our, kind of like, choices, and the same goes with so many other, kind of like, products and services that we use. So, we have to stop now, and I think that, like, one of the big challenges that we’re maybe, kind of like, having some good intentions in some of the legislations that are popping up, but we are far from, kind of like, having the level of, kind of like – the high bar that is necessary for actually delivering on those things.

And the UK is falling short of a lot of those opportunities to create watertight, kind of like, aspirational vision of what we could do with plastic out of the equation. It’s still built in with lots of, kind of like, loopholes for continuing to have some of those solutions on the market, kind of like, missing the opportunity of plugging some of the quick, kind of like, alternatives that people are using instead of plastic that are falling out of the strict definition of plastic.

So, we’re really, kind of like, not helping ourselves by, kind of like, making this a confusing space that keeps on, kind of like, enabling all of the greenwashing that we are seeing. So, I think that this is really, like – this situation where we have so many great solutions, we have great opportunities to bring them to the scale that we’ve brought plastic in a matter of 50 years, from, like, zero almost, to, kind of like, the worldwide, kind of like, material, we can do this with nature based solutions, but we just have to, kind of like, put some weight behind it.

Ana Yang

Thank you, Pierre. Nama.

Namrata Chowdhary

Thank you. My name is Namrata, and I go by Nama. I work with 350.org, which is a campaigning and organising group. We work with climate activities all around the world, and the reason we are called 350.org is because we are so rooted in the science that we need to be the 350 parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere. We are at about 442 right now. 350 is the safe limit that was set a few years ago.

I grew up in India, and have been working as an activist campaigner for very, very long. As I like to tell some of my colleagues, “I have t-shirts that are older than you are” with slogans that are actually now outdated, thankfully, because they belong to campaigns that are now – that have now been won. And from the time that I’ve been a campaigner, we’ve long insisted, as civil society, “Another world is possible.” And we kept signing up to that dream, so many of us, and thinking that largescale change was around the corner.

Pierre has talked about how change is happening all around us, and this year, for 350, as well, we’ve gone through a period of intense consultation with our allies in the movement. And building on the strategic use of our resources and our movement generosity, we are recognising it’s time to reframe that call to action, and it’s time to change that and say, “Another world is not just possible, it’s ours to make, and it’s for us to step up to this moment and to acknowledge the role that we play, each of us.”

But when we think about climate justice, and we’re in the climate justice movement now, not in the climate change movement, or the climate crisis, as it was. When we think about climate justice, we are in what I like to think of as a Goldilocks moment. If we leave it to individual behaviour change, it’s too little. If we wait for governments to change, we’ll be too late. But if we turn to communities and we invest in our power that comes from building people power and rooted in communities and harnessing the kind of innovation that we’re seeing already, that’s when we’ll be able to drive change at the level and the pace of incremental change that’s required today in order to reach climate justice.

I really liked what Bronwen was saying earlier about how the Accelerator is fou – you know, is founded in the change in the pace, because pace is so important when you’re talking about reinventing the future. We must reconcile that pace of progress that we want with the Sustainability Goals which are going all the way to 2030, with the urgency that is felt by climate – the urgency that’s felt by those at the frontlines of climate change right now. There are people whose homes are being drowned out and are, you know, rising in response and saying, “We are not just going to be fighting this, we want to be building the future instead.”

We, right now, in 2023 – I was saying earlier to the others on the panel, the reason I’m going to have to refer to my notes quite often is that this is my first live event in three years. I’m coming out of the pandemic, where we were entirely working online and behind our screens, and I have my notes up there, I can refer to them, go off mute. But, you know, this moment, we need to recognise it for what it is. It’s a particularly precarious moment, as the IPCC reports are telling us, but it’s also a particularly powerful movement, because we have felt so much. It has been a defining era of human history, and it is for us to recognise the power of that moment and to see what we can do with it, to see what – how can we channel the despair, the anger, the rage that we felt into something more hopeful? And that can only happen when we start to see the solutions that exist and really start to mobilise our communities towards scaling up the solutions.

Maya talked about how companies are beginning to do that, and it’s for us to think about how communities need to increase the pressure on those companies, and to think about how communities will provide both the impetus for that change, but also the momentum that was going to force companies to make the changes that are required, and force governments to make the changes that are required. As the others on the panel have been saying, until we stop something, we cannot actually force the alternatives to flourish.

And stopping fossil fuels, so for the longest time, 350 has been in the business of campaigning to stop the fossil fuel industry, and, you know, dismantling the pillars of support, making – revoking the social licence of fossil fuels. Now is the time for us, when we’re stopping and thinking – we’ve been saying “no” to so many things for so long, what are we saying “yes” to, and what are we saying “yes” to as community power, as people power? What are we putting our collective weight behind? And that’s what we’re hoping very much, and hence the reframing, also, of our work, not just about the climate crisis, but around justice, because justice is at the heart of all our Sustainability Goals.

When we talk about any of the 17 SDGs that we’ve signed up to in 2015, we’ll recognise that none of those goals can be achieved without justice. And even for climate, when we think about making change, there can be no climate justice without gender justice, racial justice, economic or class justice, justice over land ownership and community rights, and there’s 100 others that come into the picture when we think about how we want to keep justice at the centre. If it’s not fair, it’s not going to work.

And unless – even as we’re making this transition to renewable energy solutions, and here’s where I think it becomes a little unpopular, right, because unless we apply a justice filter, even as we scale up renewable energy solutions, we will end up falling into the same traps. Because unless we put – unless we apply justice as a filter, we’ll go right back to being in that same old playbook of extractive capitalism, of exploitation, of land use, of communities being denied their rights, and all of the monopolies that come with energy capitalism, just around a larger scale renewables instead, right? So, this is the challenge that we face, as humanity, right now.

And those of us with what I call – as I was laughing with Ana when we spoke, of “Those of us that have a limited lens on our personal future, as opposed to the youth who have a much longer lens,” right? The youth activists have a much longer future to plan towards, and they come to this with a lot more enthusiasm because it’s the urgency that they feel is necessary. And those of us with the experience that we’ve had need to both learn from them and share what we’ve learnt across the past few decades to power this scaling up required. As Maya was saying, we need to change the nature of business, right? We need to change how we’re going to focus on community-centred renewable energy solutions, so that we’re achieving climate – we’re solving climate change and achieving justice at the same time.

I think I’m at time, so I’m going to just start by – end by coming back to that another world is ours to make and inviting everyone to commit to that today and saying that, you know, it’s that we need to commit to. The world we envision, the world we put our people power behind and really commit to scaling up the solutions to the pace that’s required to solve the problems that we’re in today. So, thank you…

Ana Yang

Thank you.

Namrata Chowdhary

…for having us here.

Ana Yang

Thank you, thank you. First, a round of applause to all the amazing speakers [applause].

Ana Yang

So, I have so many questions, but before answering my questions, can we turn on the lights so that we can then – you know, for the audience. I see some familiar faces, very nice to see some of you. Just please raise your hand and please tell me your name, organisation. So, there’s a lady here, hi. So, yes – so lady – sorry, not doing a good job of…

Alex Cameron

Hi, my name’s Alex Cameron, I’m Director of CHIPS, a peacebuilding NGO. My question is around how to better do that collaboration. So, how can NGOs collaborate better with businesses, governments, civil society, to ensure that the voices of the communities we’re working with are being heard within these discussions?

Ana Yang

Hmmm, thank you. Yes, you.

David Pollock

Thank you, I’m David Pollock. A question for Pierre. Please give us your insights as to, you know, three things that you really want to see happen, the ones you can control and the ones that you need others to do, in order to accelerate your business to the scale it really needs to make an impact.

Ana Yang

Nice, and the gentleman here.

Pete Henderson

Hi, I don’t know if it’s turned on. I’m Pete Henderson. I’m an Impact Investor focusing on renewable energy, food security and carbon capture. So, I’ve just invested in a business making microalgae, high protein food replacement bars. Very excited, got it to production, and they said, “We’re going to wrap it up in plastic.” I said, “But that’s three and a half million bars a day going into the bush in Africa full of plastic.” “Ah, there’s nothing else that’ll do it better than plastic.” I found a company, luckily, in Italy, Polymateria, who do a biodegradable plastic that actually has no micronutrients at all, but it’s cost me a lot more money. So, I guess the question I have, maybe for Maya, is, as a businessperson who’s got to look at sustainability of the business as much as the sustainability as the world, is there data, is there research, that says somebody’s going to pay a little bit extra for yours because it’s biodegradable, therefore invest in it because it’s going to make a difference?

Ana Yang

Thank you. So, I think we have a question on collaboration, one for Pierre and then one for Maya. Let’s do that first round. I would imagine that collaboration…

Maya de Souza

The collaboration one…

Ana Yang

…will go for Nama, but maybe if you want to also answer the collaboration element.

Maya de Souza

John?

Professor John Barrett

Yeah, I don’t mind which order I go in, though. I – okay. Yes, so, I think the collaboration one, I feel – I’ve been involved directly in the big, sort of, project, the Citizens’ Assembly in the UK for climate change, and we’re also now seeking funding for a new Citizens’ Panel. And these deliberative democratic processes I think offer incredible insights into how we can work collectively together to find solutions.

I’m slightly fed up with hearing a Politician say, “Oh, the people think,” and that has absolutely no evidence behind it. It’s simply, “I think and I’m now going to pretend that that’s a view of one constituent member who came to see me last Tuesday.” And I would actually like to see these more deliberative democratic processes become the norm in the way that we can function and work together.

I also feel there’s a lack of honesty in the debates. I think we need a better appreciation of the vested interests that come to the table and recognise that not all businesses want change, and there is a vested interest for them not to get that change, and I think we need to be more open about those relationships. We can’t keep pretending that everybody wants to see this low-carbon future at the speed that we need it, yeah.

Namrata Chowdhary

To which I’d just add, I think that that’s right, you know, the deliberate democratic processes, they exist, we’re just not using them enough. And part of the reason it’s important to – why I stressed community so much in – when I was speaking, it’s us combining the power of community and these processes and these frameworks that do exist and challenging in a way that’s constructive now, and starting to show that there is weight and there is appetite for an alternative, as well. And just speaking, also, to the question that Pete, if I got your…

Pete Henderson

Yes.

Namrata Chowdhary

…name right, Pete was saying, you know, it ends up falling to consumers being willing to pay the price. And unless we’ve got that collaboration, but as Pierre was saying, the bill being just pushed down generations rather than being paid upfront here, there’s a false cost there, when we’re talking about it.

So, collaboration, for me, sits in that space of use what we’ve got, use the frameworks we’ve got, we’re just not doing it often enough and consistently enough. We’re not holding their feet to the fire and saying that this is the cost you’re passing down to generations to come, and if we get better at using what opportunities and what avenues we have, we have to build on the levers that industry is beginning to recognise.

They need to change. They’re much less resistant to change than they were even 15 years ago, hence my referring to the campaigns – the t-shirts that are now redundant, because in – you know, Apple has changed. Apple was one of the campaigns I worked on a long time ago, and it’s changes like this that we need to leverage and build further on, and there is now greater collaboration. Even in a panel like this, if you think about how this panel comes together, it’s not what I would have expected even ten years ago.

Ana Yang

I actually want to do a reflection on a collaboration, because I think a lot of – sort of, by design, the Accelerator is supposed to help collaboration, but collaboration’s hard. Like, it’s a word that we use easily, but it’s hard, right, because people have to step out of their comfort zone. They will have to leave a lot of stuff behind, ‘cause of – not stuff behind, as in, like, they will have to step into a space where they don’t have complete control of the outcome, right? And that’s the problem, is, like, if you don’t have a complete control of the outcome and you’re – everybody’s stepping into that place, and a lot of what we’re trying to do here is to create that space. But it’s hard, because people need to have the trust and need to have the honesty, and also to say, like – you know, so it’s a very – it’s easy word to say, it’s incredibly difficult thing to do, but that’s the only way. So, my – so – and we just have to keep on trying, I think. Sorry, this is my two cents on collaboration. Pierre, there was a question for you, and then Maya.

Pierre Paslier

Yeah. So, three things that I could change and I would accelerate transition to seaweed-based, like, materials. I think the first thing is that there is a lack of attribution to plastic in the market, to all of the, kind of like, externalities that it has. For example, one of the things that, like, drives me crazy is that often you hear, “Plastic is lighter than glass so it’s better for climate change.” That is missing an enormous part of the footprint of plastic because at end of life, microplastics in the ocean are messing with some of our biggest mitigation, kind of like, carbon sequestration, systems like plankton. So, we’re, basically, having, like, a material that, like, has 1,000 times more, kind of like, carbon footprint than we – what – the life cycle analysis say today, but we are not spending any, kind of like, efforts trying to measure that and reattribute back to the materials. So, that allows the big companies to continue to say, “I’m continuing with plastic because that’s how I, kind of like, achieve my climate change targets.”

So, I think just investing in, kind of like, understanding the externalities and making sure we are, kind of like, accounting this right, it’s a bit – same thing with the true cost of plastic. If we know that this material actually costs, kind of like, 20/30, kind of like, pounds per kilogram, rather than two, three pound per kilogram, that changes the market, but, like, until we reattribute that, that’s not going to happen.

The second thing is I think in terms of, like, policies, too often, policymakers will cha – they will choose their winner, and, like, too often that winner has been recycling. We see it again and again, and, like, EPR is about to, kind of like, come out again and, like, the number one choice is, like, “Ah, we need to, kind of like, emphasise more on, like, recyclable and so on.” But, like, today, we are what, what, 9% of, kind of like, plastics recycled worldwide? We’ve invested hundreds of billions over the last 50 years, that solution alone is not going to get us out of it.

Do we have a moral, kind of like, impetus to recycle? Yes, but we have to be, kind of like, wider in terms of, kind of like, the solutions that we support, and today, you look at, like, EU or UK legislations, there’s a big focus on recycling and reuse, which are great, but they’re never going to solve everything. And big surprise, recycling and reuse, they are fuelled by plastic, so they are leading to more plastic, and who is, kind of like, having the biggest incentive there? It’s obviously the plastic companies. So, there’s a need to, kind of like, building the future legislation, that, kind of like, innovation part that is, kind of like, still not as represented in the market as it should be.

And I think the last thing is just in terms of, like, the amount of greenwashing that is happening in this space, and things are changing, like, the – like, Green Claim Codes in the UK, our Green Claim, kind of like, Directive in EU, are making it easier for NGOs to sue companies who are, kind of like, stretching reality a little bit too much, and the fines are starting to be, kind of like, a bit more threatening, 10% of your, kind of like, revenues. But still, I think we are far from having the level of, kind of like, enforcement and, like, the implementation of these is still a little bit loose.

So, it means that, like, today we are facing materials that are literally plastic, that are written “plastic-free” all over. There’s a new thing called aqueous coatings on, like, takeaway boxes. It’s literally a thin layer of, like, polystyrene microplastics, and it’s written “plastic-free” all over, and this is the solution to removing plastic everywhere. So, I think that those things will continue to be cheaper and easy for, like, brands to be confused and switch to those, kind of like, half-baked solutions, and that’s a bit like what prevents truly, kind of like, sustainable materials to have their, kind of like, chance of competing in the market.

Obviously, like, it’s a complex situation. I think that, as I said, like, the same way the policies shouldn’t choose, kind of like, their winners, I think that, like, we need a diversity of solutions, and seaweed is going to replace some plastic but not all plastic. The world is full of lots of very different fruits and vegetables, and we need that diversity of materials and application that are, like, location-specific to really solve the problem.

Ana Yang

Thank you, Pierre. I think there was a question for you, right, Maya?

Maya de Souza

Yeah, so the question…

Member

For Maya specifically, is there data that shows companies who have to make the decision of whether to be biodegradable plastic that says invest in biodegradable socioeconomics, so in the long-term, will it would be beneficial to the company?

Maya de Souza

So you said data that suggests that from…?

Member

I guess case studies, the evidence.

Maya de Souza

Case studies.

Member

When a CEO makes the decision of spending a million or 500,000, how does the Board convince them to spend a million because it’s better for the planet?

Maya de Souza

Okay, well I’m not so sure there is really that – you know, always hard data, but the case can be made for, you know, spending more, as – and I think Pierre has talked about some of this, sort of, factoring in the externalities. And companies ought to be doing this, very often, sometimes because they’ve made commitments to reduce their carbon emissions, so at times, it may be relevant to their carbon emissions. A lot of companies have made commitments now, and we need to, sort of, hold them to it, but also with the taskforce on nature-related financial disclosures, they should also be taking into account the impact on the natural environment. So, the plastics that could end up – you know, you’ve exported the seaweed into some bit of rural Africa with no recycling, then you should, I think, be able to make the case that it would be much better for that organic matter to go back into the soil than have something that could be recycled.

On a slightly related matter, there is a bit of a challenge, I’d say, in innovation, where the companies that are innovating may not have enough demand for their products because the price is higher, and they then can’t scale up to bring the price down, so you end up in this difficult situation. And one of the things we’re, sort of, experimenting, really, I’d say, at – with at the moment at BITC is creating what we call joint statements of demand, so getting a number of different companies and others together to say, “This is what we’ll want to buy in a couple of years’ time,” so that companies or innovators can, sort of, comfortably go away and innovate and invest. And we think that sort of thing may help take us out of that, sort of, innovation trap.

Pierre Paslier

Hmmm, and if I can add, like, a couple of, like, points. I think the first one is when the process of becoming a B Corp, I don’t think that, like, it’s the absolute, kind of like, standard, but it’s an interesting, kind of like, process to go through because it aligns with a lot of the reasons why we do business. And one of the thing that, like, is suggested is that you change your – kind of like, the governance of your company to say that, like, you’re not just responding to the shareholders, but you’re responding to all the stakeholders, and the business has a responsibility not just to maximise the profit of the shareholders, but it also has a responsibility for its community. And I think that, like, when you have that, kind of like, written in your articles of association of a company, that helps to have those conversations about what is right for the long-term, not for, like, necessarily the short-term.

And I think what you said is absolutely right, and, like, funny story, so we are based in Hackney Wick in East London, and about, like, 100 metre from our warehouse is where plastics was invented by Alexander Parkes, I think in 1865 or something like this. And recently, I went on a little, kind of like, walking tour of Hackney Wick, and the person was, kind of like, telling some anecdotes, that he was this, kind of like, crazy Scientist trying to turn some of that petroleum into, kind of like, a plastic. And he was completely unsuccessful his whole life. He started to, kind of like, extrude thin filaments that he was using for making artificial wigs, and, like, the material was still, like, so undeveloped that some of his wigs would literally catch on fire autonomously.

And it took that long for plastic to go from, like, kind of like, fringe innovation to something that the whole world was like, “Okay, let’s really invest to make this efficient,” and eventually, we are all reaping the benefits of a very efficient material today. So, it always takes that first wave of, kind of like, running bigger and bigger, kind of like, trials on the bigger machines to get to the point where you actually have those economies of scale, and I think that’s where, like, each business have a choice to make on, like, do I want to be, kind of like, an early adopter and support that, kind of like, journey, or be on the late majority and benefit from, like, others investing? And it’s a hard choice, because not everyone has the financial stability to make those choices, but I think that it should be seen as taking part in this bigger movement of making these things happen.

Ana Yang

Thank you. Well, I live in Hackney, so good to know that it’s, like, here in cool area of London. So, yeah, we have a lady here, over there, a gentleman here. Do we have anybody here on this side who want to ask questions? Maybe next round.

Gillian Mosely

Gillian Mosely, Filmmaker. Thank you all. I now have great faith that the people, the businesses, the inventors, are all able to do the right thing. I have less faith in our governments turning the ship around, not least because this is something that needs to be worked through on a longer-term scale than our political scale. How do you see this changing? Because surely, the government could help with early issues of making sustainable plastic workable in the business market, or in, you know, subsidising train travel, taking away tax and subsidy from oil. I could go on.

Ana Yang

Thank you. I’ll – we’ll do the – it was the gentleman there, yeah.

James Pennington

Thank you. James Pennington, I lead on Circular Economy at Deloitte. Yeah, I have a question. We’ve spoken quite a lot about plastic, which is obviously incredibly important from a circular economy perspective, but when we’re also looking at the, kind of, the broader materials and climate agenda, I mean, and looking at industry emissions. Big chunks of those are cement, steel, I mean, plastics comes into it, ammonia production, you know, some of these harder to abate sectors. So, just wondering from the panel if there’s any interesting examples, whether from the policy, business start-up, civil society perspectives, you’ve seen around some of those, you know, very heavily emitting and hard to abate sectors?

Ana Yang

Anyone…?

Professor John Barrett

I’ll take the…

Ana Yang

Yeah.

Professor John Barrett

Yeah.

Ana Yang

John, please.

Professor John Barrett

I’ll happily go first, ‘cause I entirely agree that governments are failing to address the problem with the speed that they need to. A couple of areas where we’ve seen some improvement is at least the recognition that significant investment from the public sector needs to happen. We’ve seen that with the US, with the Inflation Reduction Act, it’s not enough, it’s not as broad as it should be, etc. etc., but it is fundamentally changing the debate. The EU will be coming up with another response. It probably breaks international trade laws at some level, but who cares? Everyone breaks international trade laws all the time, so that’s – they’re never going to be pulled up on that. The UK is going to have to respond, as well, now that it wouldn’t be in – part of a broader EU package on this. So, this is billions and billions of investment needed to turn this round.

The other area, in essence, it has two tools to try, in essence, stop the bad stuff happening. One is, sort of, discussed, which The Economist would pick, which is including internalising the externalities, so all the costs associated with it are internalised, everything that’s outside is internalised into the price of the product. The biggest problem with that, though, is that that can have huge distributional effects. Low-income people simply can’t afford products, and what we know about this agenda, as well, is that it’s a very small group in a global population that’s causing the majority of the problem, so they may not be touched by that.

So, therefore, the only real way to do this is regulation and it’s to have an actual phaseout date for key product groups. You can either do that at the production source, you have a phaseout date for fossil fuels and that would do that, or you phase out individual products for alternatives, and that’s when – and we constantly hear about the importance of business and innovation to the economy, which I’m not questioning. So, if we really want to see that innovation, we foreclose the options and then, we’ll see what innovation is like.

Things really come home when you say, “You’ve got one year and you’re not doing that anymore,” then you really do find solutions, so – and that’s, kind of, consistent with the scale of change identified by the IPCC. If we’re not willing to do that, then we’re not really willing to address the problem.

Pierre Paslier

And on that front, looking at, like, a recent announcement by the, kind of like, UK to ban certain single use plastics, it’s, kind of like, doing the opposite of that. It’s saying, like, it’s going to come up in October and no-one has the time to, kind of like, come up with anything. So, I think that you need to be very ambitious with the target that you set, you need to set enough time for, like, the industry to come up together and solve that, and I think that that’s a much more, kind of like, efficient way of doing this. And certainly, if there’s anyone in DEFRA in the audience, I would love to, kind of like, have a word, but I think there’s lots of, kind of like, opportunities to do a lot better with, kind of like, those kind of legislations.

I also think that you’re absolutely right that I think in the UK, there is this constant, kind of like, back and forth on some of these issues because of the unstability of, kind of like, the politics, but the reality is, like, a lot of this, as much as, like, people might not want to hear this, is going to be standardisation with the rest of EU and the world. We see it with, like, the UK taking almost word for word the definition of plastic from the single-use plastic directive. So, I think that even if things are a little bit on the loose here, they are going to be following what others are, kind of like, setting up, and I think that hopefully that stabilise a little bit some of those, kind of like, initiatives.

Ana Yang

Did anybody…?

Maya de Souza

I’ll just come in on, well, two things. One is James’ question on the circular economy more broadly, because I know we often do talk a lot about plastic and plastic is really important, and it probably shows the power of things like movies or documentaries. So, the David Attenborough movie I think had a huge impact, whereas when you talk about cement or steel or somehow or other, it doesn’t really excite the ordinary person. But there is quite a lot of innovation, of course, going on, and some of them are, again, seemingly not so exciting, like reuse of steel, but there are small companies who can now sell you reusable steel, and there are testing and assurance schemes that enable you to do that. So sometimes, that’s what innovation is. It’s not necessarily the new material, it’s actually a testing and innovation scheme.

And the – even with cement, I think, as you say, steel, cement, fertilisers, are really important, and even in the fertiliser field, there are some important innovations, and using ammonia from anaerobic digestion at the end of that stage can be turned into fertiliser again. I mean, I’m very keen seeing that holistic picture where we then get the demand side to go and buy these things. I think that’s really important, that you get the innovation and people are very creative, but you don’t necessarily get the big companies then saying, “Well, we’re going to buy it.” So, I think that is really critical, to have both the different sides, the supply and the demand side.

But just one little point on policy, ‘cause I used to be at DEFRA, I had to say that, but I think government does do…

Ana Yang

You are best to answer that, actually, ‘cause you’re not wearing…

Maya de Souza

Yeah.

Ana Yang

…the DEFRA hat.

Maya de Souza

So I’m actually not going to comment on DEFRA policy, but I thought…

Ana Yang

Okay.

Maya de Souza

…I’d comment on, say, Innovate UK, because they do actually have these competitions where they are funding, sort of, you know, new materials and things like that, and there is a fund at the moment that’s live for new materials. But I al – sometimes wonder whether those will work on their own, and I think the key thing is having a number of different policies at the same time. So, you may then have to have the carbon price being high enough, you may have to have, I don’t know, local authorities doing some collections, so that holistic picture is, again, really key.

Pierre Paslier

And maybe just to add on the, kind of like, carbon sequestration on cement, looking at some fellow Earthshot Prize finalists. Another UK company, Lower Carbon Material [means Low Carbon Materials], they’re developing, kind of like, alternative to cement that is really lowering, kind of like, the footprint. And I think one of the challenge that they face too often is the same, is that when you’re going into construction where things are built for the long run, there is so much, kind of like, experience with the known materials, that there is a huge, kind of like, risk aversion for testing and, kind of like, giving some of that market to the new innovators.

So, I think that’s one of the things that, hopefully, in packaging it’s much easier to, kind of like, give it – like, run a trial, building a whole, kind of like, tower with a new, kind of like, type of cement is something that takes a longer run to, kind of like, get right. But at the same time, I think that this is where we need some of that acceleration from legislation, from businesses, to say, “Let’s try to buy into the future that you want, because otherwise, it’s not going to happen.”

Ana Yang

Nama.

Namrata Chowdhary

Yeah, I just wanted to offer a slightly – perhaps a romanticised alternative, right? But speaking as someone who grew up in a country recovering from colonialism, some of this is artificially created demand, and it’s not – the need is not innovation so much as a return to more traditional, sustainable materials. We’ve seen how building materials have started incorporating more – you talked about cement and hence, my brain went off into, you know, the traditional mudbrick fired kiln that’s incredibly earthquake resistant. And we saw how those materials are [audio cuts out – 66:21] innovation in the next [audio cuts out – 66:29] what used to be [audio cuts out – 66:33] demanded [audio cuts out – 66:38].

Ana Yang

[Pause] Like to offer a minute [audio cuts out – 66:49] outrage, optimism, like, with – you know, angry with governments, and collaboration’s hard, and all of that. So, where would you land – where would you want to land, this one minute, in terms of for us to reflect and leave a little bit intrigued? Let’s go that way.

Professor John Barrett

Oh, okay. Yeah, so I suppose last year, we undertook a incredibly large project with, like, 17 modellers from about six different universities to create a complete vision on what a low-energy future might look like in the UK, while improving the quality of life of UK citizens. And I think we showed, with quite detailed modelling, that we could halve the UK’s energy demand while actually really improving the quality of life for everyone in this country.

And so, while I – maybe I sound a bit heavy sometimes in the way I describe things, but at the same time, we know what’s possible, and I think that’s a really exciting future, and I think it’s important for us to have a vision of what that can be, and not just saying what’s wrong. And that project really tried to do that, and I think it’s that positive vision of the future that we need to hold on to, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t hold governments to account and we don’t call out vested interests, and we don’t challenge ruling classes on their role and responsibility in doing this.

Ana Yang

Amazing. Maya.

Maya de Souza

Okay. Well, perhaps where I’ll go to is in terms of thinking about this low-carbon future, not only thinking about energy usage, but thinking about how we consume what is produced, and everything from, you know, going – what may seem, going back a few generations, to be reusing and keeping things for longer and refurbishing them, using different materials, and to see this as being incredibly creative. There’s a lot of potential here for everybody to take part in that, sort of, creative exercise, but then, we have to support each other. We have to be the buyers of these products and not only the producers. But I think together, with our thinking in that way and being creative, we can get to John’s positive future, maybe.

Ana Yang

Thank you.

Pierre Paslier

One thing that has, like, struck me in the eight years that we’ve been running, kind of like, the – this start-up is that every significant, kind of like, moment of acceleration of change was down to an internal champion. There was someone in an organisation who just somehow, kind of like, decided that this was going to happen, and they were going to open doors and take it on themselves. And so, I would just, kind of like, ask everyone to think what kind of championing they can do in their own networks.

I think that the networks that are represented in this room are incredible, I’m sure that everyone knows incredibly, kind of like, influential people that can really make a significant change, and at the end, everyone – like, governments and businesses, it’s all just, kind of like, people and they have, kind of like, children, and they have, kind of like, thoughts about their future, and, like, the next generation, and so on. So, I think if we can bring it back to the human level, and, like, think what we can champion internally within our networks, that can be a huge agent for change. So, I would just say that.

Ana Yang

Amazing. Nama.

Namrata Chowdhary

I was actually – should have gone before you, Pierre, because I was going to say look for or create [audio cuts out – 70:25] communities that will allow you to stay focused on that optimism, the urgency, and yeah, maybe, you know [audio cuts out – 70:37], unlock the communities around us. So, yeah, create them, if they aren’t around you already.

Ana Yang

Amazing. I wish we had more time, but I think we have an amaz – we also have in [audio cuts out – 70:55] – I want to say thank you to [audio cuts out – 71:00]. This is an amazing thing, and also for all of you for joining, and for the amazing panel of experts [applause]. Yeah, do – we will host…