Welcome to the Interior Design Podcast. I'm Hayley Roy. I'm a commercial interior designer
with a passion for creating beautiful functional spaces. Over the years, I've had the pleasure
of working on a variety of projects and I've accumulated a lot of knowledge to share. To
create this podcast for you, on most episodes I've teamed up with my good friend, interior
designer and architectural designer, Cheryl Sutton. She's not here today, but on other
episodes when we do team up together, we have very opposing views and it does make for some
lively discussion, so check out those other episodes. I started this podcast because I
feel strongly about interior design and the importance of educating designers. A lot of
what you'll hear from us, you won't learn in a course. As designers, there's so much
we need to know to do our jobs well and we want to give you a forum where you can access
the information you need wherever you are. Whether you're an aspiring designer, someone
designing your own home or a seasoned professional working in residential or commercial design,
this podcast is here to help you improve and thrive. We're not about ego-stroking interviews
with big names. Instead, we focus on practical advice that you can apply directly to your
work. You'll learn about different products, their applications and sustainability practices.
Our goal is to equip you with the knowledge you need to excel in your projects. Remember,
if it's not fun, we're not going to do it, so expect a bit of humor, a few swear words
and a few innuendos. Now, a quick note on production. We are interior designers, not
sound producers. I am handling the editing myself, so please don't judge. Please be patient
with me. I'm improving my production skills as the podcast progresses, but if there are
any sound editors out there who would like to offer their services in the temporary mention,
please reach out. Thanks for tuning into the Interior Design Podcast. Today, our guest
is Hannah Temple. I met Hannah recently on a yoga retreat. She inspired the hell out
of me, and I want you guys to have a little piece of that. She's really, really passionate.
She's a sustainable guru. I have learned so much from her already, and I hope to learn
a little bit more about her on the podcast that we're going to do. Hannah is the founder
of the Teal Collective, and she's also a member of the Green Party. So I really just wanted
to share with you guys who Hannah is, what she does, and what she's got to say, because
what she's got to say is really important. I hope you enjoy.
Hello. Hello. Hi. This is Hannah Temple, the amazing Hannah Temple. And this is Harvey,
who is exposing himself a little bit more than I'd like. He's joining us for the podcast
today. I'm very excited about our conversation. Anyone who's listening and not looking needs
to go onto YouTube and see Harvey. Harvey is making his debut on the Interior Design
Podcast today. And what a debut. Oh, he's beautiful, isn't he? Today, I'm joined by
the lovely, amazing, beautiful Hannah Temple, who I recently met on a yoga retreat, the
most amazing yoga retreat. Hannah is the founder of the Teal Collective. I am indeed. I am
just... Tell us about the Teal Collective, Hannah.
Oh, well, I also just, before we start, want to say how lovely it is to be with you, having
met you in a woodland near Bath not long ago, and just, yeah, a wonderful kind of serendipitous
meeting. But also how wonderful it is to be here with you and with Harvey, who's lying
here next to us in a very relaxed position. So as you say, I'm the founder of an organization
called the Teal Collective. And the Teal Collective is a collective consultancy. We specialize
in helping organizations to learn from nature and to become really regenerative forces in
the world. And I can say more later about why Teal, if that's interesting, but maybe
just as some other context in terms of some other hats that I wear that may or may not
weave their way into our conversation today. So I recently had the honor and the privilege
of being the Green Party's parliamentary candidate for the area where I live.
I'm converted. I'm converted. I am.
Excellent. Excellent. Well, as much of that as I can do, the better. Yeah. And I would
love to stand again if I'm selected. And I host a podcast too. So I host a podcast called
A Thriving Future, which is where people can encounter other organizations who are also
on the path to regenerative. And the intention of that podcast is so people can hear their
stories, learn about what they're doing, what's working, what's not. And finally, I'm part
of and helped initiate an organization, an initiative called the Earth Funding Lab. So
I know an amazing woman called Florence Miller, who is the director of the Environmental Funders
Network. And so as the name suggests, it's a network of funders, big philanthropic institutions,
or individuals, a real mix of people within the philanthropic space who want to see more action
around the environment. And what she really noticed was that there was a real kind of,
well, a lot of issues with the efficacy of a lot of the money going into environmental
protection and that lots of funders were working kind of in silos, not really connecting to one
another, not working collaboratively, and also not working at a systems level, tending to kind of
look at little symptoms, rather than actually using their money and their resource to sort of
try and shift the underlying systemic issues. And so we created a lab, a kind of program and
a community for funders to come together to learn and unlearn about, well, the guiding star within
the lab is around how do we create an economy that serves life? How do we create an economy where
that is the real priority? And so we brought together a group of funders who are curious
about working towards that question, who want to work together. And so we've, yeah, the program is
a space to sort of learn about what an economy that serves life might look like, and also how to do
philanthropy and funding differently so that they can kind of be part of a solution or a move
towards something different. Yeah. So it's really exciting. And actually, if anyone is curious to
join, if you're, anyone listening is in a funding position or role or curious about that world, then
we're starting what we call the base camp training, which is kind of the on-ramp for the lab,
if anyone is curious. Exciting. So after all that, you now know why Hannah is sitting with me,
because she's amazing. And she's got so much experience in the whole sustainability,
regenerative area that I really wanted Hannah to come on onto the Interior Design Podcast to teach
us a thing or two about how we can be more sustainable and regenerative in what we do
as interior designers or anyone who's aspiring to be a designer. So thank you so much for coming on.
Oh, not at all. Such a pleasure. So first of all,
what advice have you got for interior designers? Oh my goodness. Well, I think probably,
probably a lot. And I think, and I tend to kind of avoid saying advice or, but I mean, lots of,
lots of thoughts, I suppose, around kind of the connection between interior design and the idea
of being more regenerative. But maybe it's helpful just briefly explain what I mean by regenerative
as a start point. So because the word regenerative is something which has really exploded in use,
we're seeing it in lots of different sectors. It's really kind of a bit of a buzzword, but there is
no kind of one uniform definition of what regenerative is or what a regenerative business is. So
my definition, what I use, what I think is the simplest and clearest definition of it is
something that is regenerative is something that creates conditions for the greater thriving of
life. And I think there are three key things about that definition, which are really important to
notice. One is that we're talking about thriving. We're not just talking about the survival of life.
We're talking about it's true flourishing, the optimizing of life's potential. So we're not just
aiming for like a mediocre goal. We really want thriving. This is an ambitious thing.
Secondly, when we talk about life, that's a really holistic understanding of life. So we're not just
talking about humans. Obviously we are talking about humans and all humans, but we're not just
talking about humans. We're talking about all life on this planet, all of the animals, all of the
plants, all of the bacteria, mycelium viruses, all of the life on this planet. We want to see,
we're talking about life thriving. And crucially, we're not just talking about life thriving now.
We're looking at what is the greater thrive? What can we do to support the greater thriving of life
into the long-term future generations of life on this planet and that holistic balance of
interconnecting life. And the final thing, the final third thing about the definition is that
talking about the greater thriving of life. So being regenerative is not a destination. It's not,
okay, we as an organization or as an initiative, we've done X, Y, and Z, done. We're regenerative.
Tick. We can pat ourselves on the back and applaud ourselves. No. Being regenerative is kind of,
it's a more fundamental shift. We're not just kind of replacing maybe what's been there for
sustainability or various other different kinds of certifications and things that are in place
with a new sort of set of checklists. Being regenerative is about a different way of being
in the world. It's like a fundamental shift at not only a head level, but really at a heart level as
well. And so when we talk about it being the greater thriving of life, it's a recognition
that this is not a destination. This is a constant way of being, a constant process of evolution.
Cause in the same way that in nature, nothing is ever still, nothing is still, everything is
always adapting, evolving, changing. And that is what we mean by regenerative is something that is
constantly seeking the greater thriving of life. So that's kind of what I mean by regenerative. And
there's a whole world of what I could say about how that translates to business and organizations,
but I wonder. I mean, I think that was something you just said there was really hit home because I,
as a designer, I really struggle to choose the most sustainable products. I want to do that all
the time and I try and do that all the time, but how do I, like, how do I know? And actually,
I think by you saying, you know, it's a constant thing. It is about working with people to try and
get that, you know, that shift, isn't it? It's about working with supply because suppliers aren't
going to just change from cradle into cradle to cradle with. That's not what they've been doing
before, for example. So if you are working with the suppliers and you know that you're kind of,
you're looking for sustainable stuff and you do choose sustainable stuff when you can,
I feel like I don't feel so bad. Do you know what I mean? I constantly go, I don't know if I'm doing
this right in terms of sustainability, you know? Yeah. And I think the issue, like I say, is it's
more of a systemic problem because it should, in the same way as I don't think it's right that
any individual when they go to the supermarket is like, do I buy the organic apples or the local
ones or the fair trade ones? You know, you're going, what's the right call? And really what
I think should happen is that, you know, at a systemic level, we should only be offering products
in stores that meet minimum criteria and that it shouldn't be down to the individual to have to do
10 hours of research to decide what carpet to buy. You know, it should be, there should be minimum
standards legislated. That's not where we are now. And so I know one of the things that we talked
about a bit when we met and that maybe sparked a little bit of how we ended up here was, you know,
you were sharing that frustration with me of, you know, I have to make choices about who I buy things
from. I have to make choices about what suppliers I work with. And I just feel a bit in the dark
about how to do that in the best way. And yeah, I mean, I suppose from where I sit, so I spent a lot
of my career working in sustainability and human rights, so a lot of time in supply chains, on
factories, in farms, in offices around the world. And there's a lot of very unpleasant stuff that
happens environmentally and socially, but there are also, I think a lot of, it's really important
to remember that there are human beings at every stage of those supply chains. And I think what I
ended up talking to you about in terms of the, I think one of the strongest ways to navigate,
you know, trying to have more sustainable, more ethical supply chains is trying to build trusting,
open human relationships with your suppliers. Because if you're a supplier, often you're squeezed
between a rock and a hard place in many different scenarios and contracts. You often have very
short-term contracts, or you have very long lead times for when you get paid. And you often are,
you know, someone else's customer. So they'll be buying things from another supplier and another
supplier and another supplier. And their degree of visibility on ultimately where things come from
is often really compromised. So when they have their ultimate customer say to us, well, look,
I'm only going to, you know, I'm only going to give you this size order and I'm not going to pay
you for another eight months, but can you make sure that you tick all these boxes, please, and
jump through all these hoops? What that does is that overly incentivizes supplier to go, yeah,
yeah, sure. I meet all of that. Absolutely. Because that's the answer that they know you're
looking for. They know that you as the customer just want them to say, yes, I meet all those
criteria. Please, can we now get on and do the business? And so what that tends to mean is that
all of the damaging effects in supply chains, most customers never even hear about, never mind can
be in a position where they can be actually supporting, you know, when we can actually be
changing the situation. The best thing that we can really be aiming for our relationships with
suppliers where there is trust, where there's openness, where someone could possibly say to you,
I know you want, you know, this carbon neutral material, or I know you want this wood that comes
from these sustainable forests. But the truth of the matter is that I'm buying it from these guys,
and they tell me these things, but then I've also heard this. And so I need your help customer to
figure out what we do here. That's the place you want to be where you actually have some idea of
the scenario, because I'm telling you now, whatever you are buying, there are issues. There is, unless
you are buying something that is like made by your neighbor from, you know, materials that they are
growing, there are social and environmental issues associated with whatever the things are, whether
it's furniture, whether it's paint, there are issues. And so the most crucial thing is that we
try and encourage a state where there's actually the trust and the openness to talk about those
issues and to be able to try and navigate ways forward together. I think it's really interesting.
While you were saying that, I was thinking about supply, some of the suppliers that I've worked
with, with massive corporations, one of my suppliers actually went bust because of one of
the big supermarkets didn't pay them for a few months or a lot more than a few months. And,
you know, it's the big corporations, isn't it? That are doing the worst damage. But yeah,
it's, yeah, we need some regulation, don't we? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I do think regulation is a
massive thing, you know, and certainly, you know, that's why the kind of Green Party and
my work in regenerative business and regenerative organizations comes together is because so often
I see so many organizations who are like, I want to do all these things, but a I don't really,
means I have to kind of go away and get a degree in whatever the particular thing is to be able
to feel like I'm making a good decision. And it's putting me at a competitive disadvantage often,
because I have no guarantee that other organizations are doing it either. And so that's
why we absolutely need to see and you know, there's a myth out there in particularly in government,
that businesses don't want regulation. And in my experience, I've having worked with organizations
for 13 years, they absolutely say, I would like a level playing field. I want to know that my
competitors have to jump through the same hoops that I do. I want to know that we're all working
towards the same thing. And most organizations recognize that we want a future where our
environment isn't destroyed, where we do still have soils that can produce crops, where we do
have healthy air pollution, so air, healthy air and less pollution, where we don't have people who
are so impoverished that they do desperate things. That's not good for anyone's business. So they
really recognize that actually we do need these minimum standards so that they don't feel like
there's a disincentive from kind of protecting their own future as a business. Yeah. I mean,
having worked in business for a long time, one of the things that I really try and do is understand
that everyone has to make a profit. You know, you're not in business to not make a profit. You're
there to make money and everyone has to make money. So, and when you get a client who understands
that, everything becomes more fair, you know? And one of the things that in my younger years,
I had people influencing me where, you know, you got to screw down to the best price and, you know,
all the supply chain things that the brutal supply chain things that happen a lot. I was taught in
that world and I didn't like it. I stepped out of it because I was just like, I'm not doing this.
I'm not going to screw somebody because they'll screw me back. And that's exactly what happened.
You know, I ended up screwing someone down on price and the quality was affected. Yeah. And
that, that doesn't help anyone, you know? And so if you work together, and this is what happens
when I manage a project, if you work together as a team and you wreck and you respect each other,
then you get a better product out of it. At the end, you get a better service. And that's the same
thing with the environment, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. You know, and as you say, the kind
of the cost savings that you get through that kind of approach tend to be very short-sighted or even,
maybe not even there at all. Because as you say, there've been certainly organizations that I've
worked with before who've had a similar approach, you know, really, really pushed their sales teams
to be aggressive at cost cutting and so on. And then there's ended up with a huge scandal of,
you know, a child's labor has been found in one of their factories. And you're going, well,
you kind of this, you kind of, yeah, exactly. What other option did they have? Or, you know,
huge long hours being worked because they've placed a huge order at very limited timeframe.
You know, it's like, you can, this is not quantum physics. You can see that these are connected. And
yeah. And so then you then pay the cost of the reputational scandal. You pay the cost of the
fact that, yeah, children, if you're having children in your factory, I have to tell you,
as someone who's visited a lot of factories, if there is a factory where that kind of thing
is happening, that is not the factory that has great quality. That is not the factory that is
producing you really reliable, high quality products. You are paying that cost in a whole
load of different ways. So it's really, really short-sighted. And I do want to kind of shout out,
you know, a number of organizations are doing things differently. And there is a furniture
manufacturer called VITSO, who I think do a lot of really fantastic things in this space,
I think are relevant to lots of other areas of kind of interior design. So, and the thing that's
directly connected to what we're just talking about is that they do not incentivize their sales
teams by sales. They incentivize them by selling the right amount of product. And it's designed
for the really long-term. So they say, we're not trying to do newer, we're trying to do better.
Their sales teams are encouraged to directly undersell, to say, if you're not sure, have less
and you can always have more, you know, you can always get more of it. You can always add more
things on if you want, please have less. Make sure that you only take what you really need so that
we minimize consumerism, we minimize waste. And they also, their products are designed in a kind
of modular fashion so that you can, if you buy this armchair, you can extend it to become a sofa.
If you buy this shelving unit, you can mix it around and add other things to it. It's modular,
it adapts so that when, because another way in which I think this idea of kind of supporting
more regenerative thinking around interior design is interior design has become a bit more like
fashion, right? Has become very like fast, lots of different seasons. People are like, oh my goodness,
we haven't redesigned our bedroom for two years. Oh my God, we've got to redo it. And, you know,
that can be extremely damaging in terms of waste if we're chucking things out and beginning from
scratch each time. What if our interior design was really built around, how can we create spaces
that are really adaptable? That mean that, okay, with just a few tweaks, you can get a completely
different look. Okay, if we, you know, like in the same way as this manufacturer has done,
how can I offer you a piece of furniture or whatever, a soft furnishing that has a whole
load of different uses, has a whole load of different ways in which it can be updated in
terms of the color or the look without you needing to have a whole new set of resources and materials.
And this business has demonstrated that that works economically for them because the people,
the word of mouth that they now have, because the quality of their products is so phenomenal. And
people just love experiencing their furniture because it's so well designed. Where is this
company? Vitzo. They're actually now based in the UK, but their background, the main designer,
who's amazing. He's got these fantastic principles for design. I think he was German. Don't quote me
on that. I will have to, I can send you a link. Yeah. I think there are so many ways in which
kind of being regenerative really links into interior design. And yeah, and sales is a massive
thing, making sure that we're not just saying push it, push it, get as much out as we can.
One of the core principles of nature that I kind of weave into a lot of my work is optimization.
Our societies and our businesses and our organizations are often geared towards
maximization. How can we squeeze as much profit, product, whatever, out of this thing as possible?
That tends to be extremely short-sighted because that tends to push things to places where they
become stressed and break. We've seen that again and again and again in financial crises, in what
we can see in the natural world around us. Whereas nature operates by the principle of optimization.
How can as many parts of the system be thriving at the same time as possible? How can we have that
holistic balance? How can people be well? How can they be operating in really lovely spaces? How can
the people who work in their supply chains be well? How can the overall system be strong,
resilient and able to carry on for an indefinite future rather than a minute, squeeze as much out
of it for five minutes and then suffer the consequences afterwards? It's crazy.
One of the things that you said there about kind of saying, you know, only have what you need.
I tend to be a bit like that with my clients when I go in, you know, go in with a full interior
design proposal. And I quite often go, if you don't need all of this, don't have it. Like,
I don't want you to have anything you don't want, you know? And I think when you,
when you behave like that, it actually builds trust because I'm busy enough. I don't need
all of this work. If you've got a massive project for me, great. But if you haven't,
I'll find one somewhere else, you know? So when, when you have that attitude, people tend to be a
bit more trusting. Whereas if you're kind of desperate to get the sale kind of thing, people
tend to be like, Ooh, you know, yeah, what do they want out of me? Whereas if you kind of go, well,
there's my, there's my proposal. Don't have it if you don't want it. You only have what you need.
Actually that tends to build a better relationship from the beginning. And that's the same thing,
isn't it? Well, I think you're demonstrating there that you have their interests at heart. You know,
you are actually serving them rather than just trying to extract from them. And yeah. And then
I think that we would always say that, right? If ever you've, if anyone treats us in a way that
feels extractive, you're like, Oh my goodness. Whereas if someone's clearly there trying to
support you, inquire about what you really want, then that's, that's the kind of conversation you
want to continue. Yeah, definitely. So what else are we going to talk about today?
Well, I would love to talk about the idea of regenerative in interior design and in kind of
design in spaces, if that's. Absolutely. Yeah. What are your thoughts on? So how do we designers do
it better in terms of regenerative and sustainable? So I think there are, so I have a framework for
what it means to be a regenerative organization. I think part of how you do design work better is
also about how you operate as an organization yourself. And that kind of links to the framework
that I use for regenerative organizations is in the form of a tree, a tree metaphor.
So, and what that does is kind of just try and help people see all of the different ways in all
of the different aspects of organizational activity that relate to the idea of creating
conditions for the greater thriving of life. So the soil represents the organization's fundamental
legal structure, fundamental financing, origin story. It's like the fundamental groundings of
the organization are those structures that fundamentally prioritize the greater thriving
of life or do they prioritize profit? Those things can make a massive difference to the
freedom that an organization has to really be able to put the thriving of life first.
Second thing is your root network, which is all of your relationships. That's what we've been
talking about with the supplier relationships. What's the quality and the nature of those
relationships? When you talk about a tree, you want that tree to have lots of roots for those
roots to be deep, for there to be a reciprocal relationship. There's materials coming from the
soil. There's also energy coming down from the leaves. You have this balanced reciprocity,
but those relationships are deep and strong. So that's in your team, but also with your
suppliers, with your customers, exactly what you were talking about, the trust you're building
with your customers, that root network is key. Your trunk is everything internal to your
organization. And I break that down into three sections. The bark, which is probably where we
can go in a second, is around what's the physical environment like in which the operations are
happening? What's the nature of your factory? What's the nature of your office, et cetera,
et cetera. Your SAP word is all of your processes, your policies, your KPIs, your governance
structures, your internal workings. And the heartwood at the center of your trunk are the
values, the beliefs, the worldviews that inhabit your organization. Then you have the fruits,
flowers, and foliage, which is what you put out into the world. So as an interior design business,
it's your services, but it's also your waste. It's your messaging. It's your reporting. It's
everything that you're putting out into the world. What's the nature and quality of those things?
What do they do and add to the world? And the final thing is materials. Materials is what is
flowing through your organization. Yes, in terms of raw materials, like maybe you buy a whole lot
of computers and what happens to them afterwards, but it's also things like money. How is money
flowing through your organization? How is it operating like a nutrient, like a material?
How do you make sure you have enough, but not so much that it's unhelpful? How is it flowing
easily from where you make it to where it can be put to good use? So there's one way I would answer
a question that would be to say by being an example of a regenerative business yourself,
by incorporating kind of nature's wisdom across those different areas. But I think to speak to
the bark specifically, the kind of the nature of the environments that you create in your work,
there's a lot that I kind of look to as sort of examples of more regenerative design.
One of those things is, okay, are the spaces that you're creating allowing people greater
connection to the natural world? Are there spaces for natural light, connection to natural materials,
natural sounds? There is so much data which demonstrates that when people have access to
the outside or to natural light, so in hospitals, for example, they require less pain medication,
they recover quicker. When any of us spend time in a forest rather than in an urban environment,
our blood pressure decreases, our cortisol levels decrease. There are huge kind of well-being
benefits to being in connection with natural materials. That can be a cork floor, that can be
plants in the space, that can be just big open spaces, that can be a water feature, you know,
just natural, those things that actually connect us with the fact that we are nature, that is a
core thing in terms of well-being. And also making sure that those spaces are really kind of biophilic,
they encourage, and that means like a love of nature, they support and encourage that creativity,
that focus. That's another thing that happens when you spend time in with natural environments,
is you get greater focus, greater memory. All of these things are amazing. And often if you're
designing spaces where people want to be at work, you're at an office or a home office or whatever
it is, like there are lots of benefits.
I think biophilic has been in fashion for a while and it's not going anywhere. And I mean,
we've just put some plants in our office, which are rubber wood plants, and they give out loads
of oxygen and they just feel really nice as well. So, you know, if the more, you know, if you
haven't got great ventilation in your office, having plants, real plants that are going to
pull in the carbon dioxide and kick out the oxygen is actually going to make you feel much better.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Biophilic, I love biophilic.
If you know me and my website, you'll know. You'll know that I love a bit of a plant.
I actually put it in my proposals now, plant plan. And I'm like, people are like, why do I need a
plan for plants? Cause I'm going to put a lot in there. If you let me.
Oh yeah. Gorgeous.
So in terms of, there was a couple of things I was thinking about then as an interior designer,
I mean, we've heard in a previous podcast, Cradle to Cradle Sustainability, when we were
talking to Lewis Pullen about how 50% of the waste that goes into landfill comes from construction.
And I, ever since I heard that, I have been on a bit of a mission to not have,
not put anything into landfill unnecessarily. So that is why there's an enormous pile of furniture
over there. Which I've got on Facebook marketplace and I keep going, you know, do you want some desks?
And I'm trying to repurpose it all and sell it for a five or a tenner or give it away for free
if I have to. But you know, and try and just move that because it came out of an office where the
guy was going to put it in the skit. And I was like, no, you can't do that. Deliver it to my
warehouse. I'll get rid of it somehow. So there's that. The other thing as well is what about waste?
So as a designer, I have a lot of cardboard waste and things like that. So I recycle cardboard and
plastic. And then I've got another bin, which is everything else. But in a corporate environment,
we don't have a food bin like you would at home and stuff like that. So in terms of recycling,
how do I do that better? Is there any organizations that will recycle more than just because I'm
I'm worried. I think it's Fiona. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And you're talking
about specifically like within your office, your like immediate operations. Yeah. Rubbish.
Where do you know, how do we better recycle as a business? Cause you know, these guys are like,
oh, that's all we do. We don't recycle and we don't recycle food. Yeah. And most people won't
have a choice over the kind of local authorities, you know, choice of a contractor for the, for your
waste disposal and things. So there will always be limitations to that. But I would say two things.
So firstly, it's about the choices that you make initially, you know, so obviously trying to prevent
anything because ultimately what we want to get to, and certainly again, if we look at nature,
there's no such thing as waste. Everything that's produced forms part of a new cycle.
And I know the idea of kind of circular economics and cradle to cradle like these are, have become
very, very popular and much more kind of more widespread, but absolutely the idea of waste
should become redundant. You have resources that change, you know, okay, so there was a desk. Now
what does it become? What are the different phases of the life cycle? Because there should be no
waste. There is no waste in nature. Things just form part of different cycles. That's really what
we want to aim for where we are now is so yes, so doing what we can initially to think about the
things that we bring into our organizations to sort of think, well, is this something that's
immediately going to create a load of redundant waste? Is this going to be something that's yeah,
like there's going to be a load of packaging on it. They're not going to know what to do with,
or this is designed to only last for two years. And so in two years, I'm going to have to have this
challenge or whatever. The second thing is yes, there are organizations who are set up to help
you recycle things that are not traditionally recycled by major waste providers. So TerraCycle
is terrible name, but TerraCycle is an amazing initiative. They tend to work at a kind of
community level. So like where I live, we have in various different parts of kind of the town,
there'll be places where you can take the things that yeah, you can't normally recycle. So things
like toothpaste tubes or your batteries, although you can do them elsewhere when it comes to things
like your blister packs for your tablets and things, there are like different points,
crisp packets, all these different things that typically can't be recycled. You can take them
there. So I think depending on the nature of the waste, again, waste in inverted commas, but of the
nature of the materials, the resources that you find yourself kind of not knowing what to do with,
it would be interesting maybe within your industry to see whether there are specific places,
like if there are things like, because again, furniture must be a massive thing where there
will be outlets, avenues for that. And I think more and more people and organizations are
recognizing the need for that, need for that support and more and more people are interested
in upcycling, second life, pre-loved. It's become a major thing. And I think as an organization,
the first thing you want to do is prevent that in the first place, try and make sure that you're not
choosing things that are going to not last you for a really, really, really long time. But secondly,
if you do have things that you can't make use of anymore to really, really try and make sure that
they have an opportunity to just form, enter a different phase of their life cycle rather than
just being shoved in the ground. Yeah. I think this is the thing is the thing about construction
and interior design is you are kind of ripping it out and starting again a lot of the time.
And I always look at everything from a, you know, how can I recycle that? Can I reuse that? And
then clients like, no, I've had that for 20 years. You can't reuse that. And I'm like, yes, you can.
It's made of wood. Yeah. And it's fine. I just need to fix it up and it'll be, you know, put a
new upholstery pad on it. And you know, that kind of thing. I think having that attitude with
everything, because I'm a bit of an eco, eco warrior when it comes to that, but it doesn't,
you know, it doesn't, if we, if you were a designer who was making an awful lot of money out of
selling furniture, then you're going to be less likely to behave like that.
Well, yes, I know. As I say, like examples like VITSO are proving that no, it really does,
you know, that is a short sighted aim. And if you have a board of trustees, if you have a CEO
whose fiduciary duty is to make sure that you have, you're protecting, stewarding the interest of
that business, acting in that way is not in the business's long-term interests, because look around,
look around at what's happening to our forest, look around at what's happening to our oceans,
look around what's happening to our societies. This is a really short-term ambition. And yeah,
the kind of like, okay, yeah, we also have a duty to maximize profits for our shareholders.
Yeah, you do, but that's completely in contradiction often to your motive to steward
the interest of the organization for the long-term. And so I would say that is the motivation that you
need to make sure if you want to be a business at all, nevermind a thriving business in 10 years,
20 years, 30 years beyond, you need to be shifting this perspective to say, okay, it's not just about
maximizing profit now, it's about thinking about how we can be a legitimate valid business that's
really offering a service that people want and need. And hey, look, if you're doing your job,
you're looking around at these trends. Oh, look at how well-vinted the organization is doing,
that's selling secondhand clothes. Look at how, and there's a vintage for furniture, I believe,
venti-rears, is that right? Oh my God, I did not know about this, venti-rears. Venti-rears, that
might be a place to get rid of your desks. Thank you for that. Yeah, you know, like if you are a
sensible business person, you are conscious of what's happening in the pulse in the trends around
you. And this is only growing. People are saying, I don't want the things that I'm buying to make me
feel terrible, to make me think that I am hurting people in other parts of the world, that I am
contributing a whole lot of pollution. I don't want to buy goods that I'm going to need to throw away
and that's going to leach toxic chemicals into the ground. I don't want that. My children are
looking at me and going, why aren't you doing things better, mommy, daddy? You know, everyone
I'm speaking to is feeling that pressure, is recognizing that there is a responsibility for
all of us, no matter what job we do, no matter what sector we work in, to be doing everything
we can to try and support the greater thriving of our planet and all the life on it, the people who
we know and love and all the people who we have yet to meet. Well said. I love that. I love you so much.
Oh, likewise. This is why I brought Hannah on board. She's so passionate about what you know,
you are, you're so passionate about what you do and you just live it. It's great.
When Hannah and I met, we met and we were like, oh, hello. Sat next to each other at having dinner,
eating our vegan food in our yoga retreat. And we were both like, oh, you know, I've got a podcast.
I've got a podcast. Oh my God. But yeah, no, we were chatting all night that night where we were
like, trying to put the world to rights about sustainability. And I was like, oh my God,
you're amazing. Oh, well, likewise, that was just such an amazing, amazing retreat full of awesome,
awesome people. And yeah, it was just a delight always to kind of meet people that you can just
geek out with. We did yoga last night. Hannah was like, I'm coming up to Essex. Can we do yoga or
do a podcast? I'm like, yes, definitely. So what else have we got to talk about? So you are one of
the initiators of the Earth Funding Lab. Can you tell us a bit more about that?
Yeah. Yeah. So the Earth Funding Lab comes from an amazing person I know called Florence Miller,
is currently the director of the Environmental Funders Network. And as the name suggests,
that's a network of funders who are passionate about trying to support environmental causes.
But what Florence and many others have noticed is that the philanthropic space, despite the huge
resource and capability that that sector has, that even though a lot more money has gone into
environmental causes, we haven't seen a kind of comparable impact. And there are lots of reasons
for that. Partly it's because funders have been working in little silos, on their own little pet
projects and not connecting to each other. Partly it's because environmentally people tend to have
been focusing on kind of symptoms rather than systemic causes, not really kind of working with
the overall system. And so what she and a gentleman called Andres from an organization
called the BioLeadership Project, we came together to sort of say, well, can we create a space to
allow funders to operate differently? And the kind of guiding star of the lab, the Earth Funding Lab,
is to create economies that serve life. So it's a space where we're bringing together funders of all
different kind of colors and stripes to come together to say, well, how can we sort of learn
and unlearn about what it means to have an economy that serves life and about what it means for our
own practice as funders to be able to try and bring that about? So yeah, so I kind of lead one
of the three work streams in that lab. What does your day-to-day role in that look like?
What are you doing? Well, so in that, I mean, it's a relatively small part of my day-to-day life.
The majority of my day-to-day life is spent on the Teal Collective and the clients that we have there.
But within the Earth Funding Lab, primarily I'm leading one of our three work streams. So the
work stream that I lead is specifically looking at how might our tax system evolve to support
the greater thriving of life. At the moment in the UK, we have a very unfair tax system and also a
tax system which incentivizes a lot of the behaviors that we don't want to see and
disincentivizes some of the good stuff. So in direct relationship to what we were talking about
earlier, for example, there is VAT on repair and restoration of properties, but there's not VAT on
kind of starting from scratch. So it's cheaper for people to build a new home than to restore an old
one, for example. Oh my God, yeah. I was talking to someone about this yesterday. They were saying
they were buying a property, but they didn't want to renovate. They didn't want to renovate it. They
wanted to knock it down and start again because they wouldn't have to pay VAT then. Yeah, exactly.
So that's like, that's a perfect example. I was just talking about that yesterday. I mean, yeah.
And it's completely crazy. And everyone who looks at it from the outside goes, well, that's mad
because why wouldn't we make use of it? And often people are like, oh, there's lovely features to
older homes that I'd like to keep and have homes with more character or yeah. And it's often much
cheaper. Well, like you would think as an individual to be like, well, I'd rather kind of keep some of
these things. It's certainly much cheaper environmentally to not use a whole load of new
resources and so on. But yeah, at the moment, our tax system is completely skewed away from a lot of
the things that we want to see. So the work stream that I lead is about helping these organizations
to identify where are those little acupuncture points? IE, where are the little interventions
that we could maybe support as funders that could have bigger ripple effects into the broader tax
ecosystem? So that's how would you get that funded? So the people in this, in the lab are funders,
they're representing philanthropic organizations with, with money to give away. So we are identifying
the initiatives that they might want to put their money into that will have ripple effects.
So if you were, for example, right. So you're talking about the tax system. Yeah.
And the VAT, how would somebody fund that? What were you talking about funders who want to make
a profit? No, no, no, no. Giving away money for charitable. Yeah. Yeah. For philanthropic causes.
Yes. So philanthropic charitable. Yes. Philanthropic means yeah, like for good,
no profit expected. You know, they often also have investment arms, which will expect a return of
some kind, but often they can do that in a more patient way. IE, they can expect a lower level
of return or over a longer time period. So they can invest in things different to say a venture
capitalist firm or would do. So these people would fund you to do more research about VAT or to
influence that. So the way it's been working at the minute is so in my work stream, we collectively
did some research. We invited a whole lot of speakers in, we did interviews to kind of give
us a bit more of a connection to the field of organizations who were already working in the
space of tax justice in different ways. And that allowed us to develop the kind of a picture of,
well, here are a few ideas of things that might need more support. Like, oh, there's this amazing
initiative that's happening, but it's tiny. You know, it needs something to really help it launch
to the next level. Or we identified a theme where there's a whole load of fantastic kind of pockets
of work, but they're not well connected to each other. So what if we helped to either bring them
together through an event or hired someone specifically to be what we call the ecosystem
weaver to connect those spaces, to help them to meet and know one another. How can we also help
the amazing work that they're doing to meet, to connect with policy makers, whether they're
kind of within government, but also kind of people in the media who massively influence the agenda.
How can we be engaging with them? And so how can we develop round tables to sort of help?
Because there's so much data which demonstrates that actually the majority of people in the UK
are happy for there to be higher taxes provided they're fair, i.e. overwhelming young people who
are much richer. So the majority of people wouldn't pay more, but the wealthy people and institutions
pay more tax in order to fund the stuff that we collectively want, that we do want good public
services and we do want a just transition. We don't want our future to be completely trashed
by climate change. We would like our children, our grandchildren to have some kind of feasible future.
So people are saying, actually, yeah, when I listen to some evidence, I would really like that,
but there's again, there's this narrative in government that goes, oh, and we heard that
play out in the recent election massively. We can't possibly talk about increasing taxes because
people freak out. We go, actually, if you increase the taxes on people with over one million pounds
worth of assets, for example, by 1% and you increase people who have over one billion pounds
of assets by 2%, you get over 50 billion pounds of income every year into the government, which
more than resolves the restoration of the NHS. If you make sensible choices with tax, you can really
dramatically transform society. But there is an absolute cowardice in our current leadership to
actually be able to talk about this topic because they're just afraid people will go, oh, I'll run
away from that. And it was just devastating, I think, to see the really damaging rhetoric in
the recent election where it was just like, taxes are evil. And it's like, it really depends on what
tax you're talking about and on who. I think most people would agree that fossil fuel companies
should pay more tax. I think most people would agree that Google should pay more tax. I think
most people would agree that Rishi Sunak should pay more tax. It really, really depends what you're
talking about. And it's been used as a massive excuse to not make some really important decisions
that would benefit all of us. That was a nice little break. We just started going off on a
tangent there and we were like, well, we need to press record. Cross my legs. I'm getting comfy
now. Harvey's having a right cuddle with Hannah. He likes you. He knows that you're a super person.
Thank you, Harvey. So just to summarize, as a designer, if I was to say, make a point of
every time I have a supplier meeting to talk about what are you doing to be regenerative,
what are you doing to be more sustainable? How are your products adaptable and built to last?
Is that a good thing to start doing? I think asking questions is a massive thing. I think
starting with that it's really important to you and that it's a key part of how you want to do
business, whether you're talking to a supplier or a customer is key. I think it completely then
just sets the frame. And I think it's often really surprising people have an assumption about what
won't be important to people. They're like, oh, if I mentioned this customer's going to think I'm
barking up the wrong tree. No, it's been really interesting to me in so many spheres of life,
when you've just gone in and been honest and said, this is something that I really care about,
how many people have been relieved to have the permission to say, me too. And I'm so glad that
we can now talk about that. So be honest about it being a priority for you if it is. And I'd say,
secondly, I would say be upfront about wanting to build long-term trusting relationships to say,
look, I want to build a relationship with you, no matter what that context is, that is not just
about the transaction, that I want us to be able to be honest with you about the challenges that
I have in my business and for you to have in yours. And you may not be able to say it like that in
each meeting, but like you said earlier, to be cultivating intentionally relationships with
customers where you can say to them, look, I obviously need to make a return on this.
And that understanding is there and where your supplier could say the same thing to you and go,
if we do that, then we're going to have to cut this corner. And how do you feel about that?
So I think that's a massive thing is trying to build relationships with that trust and vulnerability
and honesty in. So what if a designer wasn't in a position that I am where I can say no to something
if I don't want to do it and they needed the work, would you have any advice for someone like that?
Yeah, I think that's a really important question because I think there might well be lots of people
thinking, oh, this is all very well and good if you've got enough money coming in. And I think
that is a really crucial question because as with the tree framework I mentioned earlier,
when you think about money as a nutrient, you don't want too much, no organism out there wants
too much, but you also need enough. It's absolutely crucial that this is not about sacrificing
yourself. This is about making sure that you have enough to do the work that you want to do well.
So it absolutely is crucial that you have that. I would say that from the experience of setting up
the Teal Collective, when I set up the Teal Collective, what I did intentionally was to try
and make it really lean, really low overhead so that I'm never in a position of having to compromise
our values, our principles, what we're here to do, because I need to get that job in.
Because there might be a scenario where that happens at some point where whatever I fall
on hard times and things change, but the intention of the business is to try and reduce those overheads
as much as possible so that I'm not in the place of going, oh my God, I have to pay 10 salaries at
the end of this month, so we have to take this job even though it's totally not in line with our
values. I want to avoid that possibility as much as possible. So I would say that you can never,
I'm certainly not going to sit here and say that person out there, if you're in a position where
you have to take a job because you need to survive, you have to. I'm certainly not going to tell you
not to do that. But I am going to say that you can try and design your own organization from the
beginning to give you as great a chance as possible of being able to prioritize the values that you
care about. And so maybe it's about making it a lean organization that means that you can really
adapt and respond to the scenario and not have to compromise. It's also about some of those
fundamental questions, like I mentioned earlier, like setting yourself up organizationally legally
as an organization that can prioritize the greater thriving of life over profit.
If you set yourself up as a shareholder and organization with a company, a limited liability
company, the overwhelming legal leaning, you are immediately setting yourself up in the direction
of prioritizing short-term profit. The organization that I run is an organization limited by guarantee,
which is a legal structure available in the UK, which means that legally my organization can
only ever use the money that it gains for its purpose. It can never be something that I sell
and make millions of pounds from. It means the legal structure guarantees that the money that
comes into this organization is used to further its mission. So there are lots of things that you can
do as an organization to make making the regenerative choice more easy, make it more natural. The sort
of general direction the organization is pointed in, but absolutely you will all, you need to make
sure that you have enough nutrients. But often the answer to that is by reducing, asking yourself,
do I really need to have 10 offices? Do I really need to have X, Y, and Z? Or can we do things
lighter in a way that means that we can actually prioritize the quality of what we do?
Yeah. Just while you're saying that, I was thinking in COVID, we got a lot smaller,
our business completely restructured and we're now a much smaller business in terms of people.
But I subcontract out when I need to and we're a lot more profitable and we're a lot less wasteful
in terms of the way that we work because we've restructured and made it smaller.
And that has put me into a position where I can say no to things. If I've got a client who's
behaving badly or saying that they don't care about the environment, for example, not that
no one's ever said that to me, but I can say no to things and stuff like that.
Yeah. And I think that's priceless, isn't it? Like that ability to be able to say we can act in
congruence with our values. That's something that's-
How free is that?
Yeah. And the kind of amount of wellbeing that brings is really hard to put a price on.
I wouldn't be doing this podcast if that happened.
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. I was curious about having had this chat and thought about things
in the way that you clearly have. I wonder, do you have thoughts for yourself, like experiments
you're going to put in place in your own business or things that you are interested to maybe try
another time? Yeah.
I came up with an idea a minute ago when we were chatting, when we were supposed to be recording,
where I think with the library that we've got quite a large library with all different samples
in, which I love as if anyone has heard, listened to this podcast, they'll know I love my library.
And I've decided to put a corner of the library to a sustainable corner. So anything that,
any supplier that comes in and we have a material that is recycled and recyclable,
goes into one bit and maybe have a secondary one that's recycled, but not recyclable.
One that's recyclable, that's not so recycled. You could go, but I think maybe having a corner
of the library where it is our go-to, that's the first place we go to, which has got all of the
recycled material, I think would be a really nice start. I know a lot of them anyway, and I do go
to them, but I also write one of the things I already do, which may or may not appeal, is I've
got a permanent marker on my desk and whenever I have a supplier come in who's got a recycled
product, I write recycled on it. So you can clearly see it. So in a year's time when I've
forgotten all about what that person had just said to me, I can go to that book and go,
that's all recycled, that's good. So that kind of thing I think is really important.
But yeah, that's my take on it.
Lovely. Yeah. And one other organization I haven't bigged up yet, which I'd just love to just throw
in as we come to the end, was Interface Carpets. So Interface have done amazing things in terms of
trying to reduce waste. So carpets, you'll know much better than I do, can sometimes be quite
difficult to remove and also often use like quite toxic glues to hold them down. And they have
developed, they used those little lizards called geckos that can shimmy up glass and...
Oh yeah.
Yeah. They've got like incredibly sticky feet that means that they can climb on all these kind of
amazing surfaces, but it's not, obviously they don't use any kind of glue. It's like this amazing,
I don't know, texture to their feet, which means that it can grip.
Really?
Like a sucker.
Yeah. But also can release really easily. And so be removed really easily.
And Interface examined this, the way they do it. And they've now developed a version that they use
on their carpet so that their carpet never has to, it's really easy to take up bits of it and
replace it so that you don't have to replace the whole lot. It's really easy to remove it. There's
no use of any toxic glues and it's really easy to reuse it because you lift it up, you cut it into
a different shape, you put it down somewhere else. It's, there's none of that kind of, oh,
in order to pull it up, we have to rip it into pieces and it becomes completely unusable.
So they have done some amazing things, amazing things in their design, which have been totally
about looking at how does nature operate? How can we use more of that inspiration in what we do?
And I would just encourage any designer out there to just be thinking to yourself.
And like I'd say the ultimate practice, and I do this in my own business, whenever there's like any
different challenge that comes up or a new question I'm grappling with, my first thing is,
what does nature do? Go outside, have a walk around and be like, when nature has this problem,
whatever it is, what does it do? What happens? There's actually an amazing website called Ask
Nature, which you can actually type your question in and it will tell you like, oh, this is how
nature responds to this if there's a precedent. Yeah, that is just the ultimate source of
inspiration. When I talk about what it means to be regenerative, creating conditions for the greater
thriving of life, the great news is we already have the world's best teacher because nature
has been creating conditions for the greater thriving of life for 3.8 billion years.
We have all the wisdom, all the answers that we could ever need. We just need to learn to listen
and to use it. So it's, yeah, I think it's actually a really reassuring thing to remember that when
you're grappling with something and it's, oh, how on earth am I going to do this? So often the answer
is just like under our nose as if we learn to look. Well said. I just want to say thank you so
much for coming in. I really appreciate it and respect your time for coming in and doing this
because I know you were a very busy lady doing all the things that you do. And yeah, no, I really
appreciate how you've taken the time to want to educate designers as well. So thank you from our
community because I'm sure everyone will have a take home from this and yeah, thank you for coming
on. Oh no. And the temple. Oh, thank you so much for having me. I feel like I want to make a round
of applause. It'd be amazing to have a temple. Oh, I'd be bowing to those of you not watching,
but yeah, thank you so much. Such a joy to be here with you, with a friend. So lovely. And I've
actually just remembered one last shout out, which is just on the point of designers. I'm part of
something called the Life Centre Design School, which is run by someone else. I just ship in as
a contributor, but it's a beautiful initiative. I'd really recommend anyone checking it out.
Life Centre Design School. So I'll put all of this in the notes and your contact details in
the notes as well. Of course, please be in touch. Yeah. And seriously, the green party, I never
thought that I would be there, but meeting you and listening to all of the things that you said,
I actually am totally in and I really wish I'd voted now because I didn't vote because I was
just like, I'm not voting for them lot. And now I'm like, I wish I'd voted for Hannah. Oh, that's
green. That's just amazing to hear. I really, I do think things are really changing and yeah,
I certainly had never had any interest in being a politician ever growing up, but I just,
like we talked about earlier, legislation and regulation has such a massive impact on our lives
and our jobs and every aspect. And it just seems to be pointed in just the wrong direction. And
I think I just got really sick of waiting for better politicians to come along and just felt
like if we want things to be different, we need to use every channel available to us. And so if you
are curious out there, get involved, find your local parties, get involved in it. I would just
really recommend it and make up your own mind about what's right for you. Just so you know,
the day after I met Hannah, I told her that I think she should be the prime minister.
And I genuinely think that I think she would be amazing. Just saying.
It's on the record now. See you next time.