45 ideas to inspire you to reduce your impact on the environment

Don’t know where to start in cleaning up your own personal impact on earth? We hope this helps.

Welcome to Susanna Hasenoehrl - The Sustainability Speaker, Tim Wade - who speaks about winning through change, Michelle Mouille - founder of the Sustainable Mai Khao Foundation, Joanne Flinn, The Strategic Sustainability Lady, and myself, as we discuss the many ways we can all contribute individually and collectively, to reduce our impact on earth. This is how we can all contribute to ensure we do not face the worst possible outcomes of the climate crisis, and it starts with each of us. 

We can all make a difference – in our actions and in sharing the message to our communities. We must reduce, reduce, reduce, in all areas of life.  

This is the second in a series of podcasts on this topic. We're starting with how we can each make a difference, then we’ll move onto business, and finally, I will gather some experts to talk travel and tourism. 

Don’t forget to share your feedback and ideas, and if you feel like giving the podcast a star rating or a comment, I’d be super grateful. 

You can connect with my guests:

Susanna Hasenoehrl - https://thesustainabilityspeaker.com/ 

Michelle Mouille - https://www.facebook.com/sustainablemaikhaofoundation/ 

Tim Wade - https://www.timwade.com/ 

Joanne Flinn https://jflinn.com/ 

And me, Andrea Edwards https://uncommon-courage.com/ and https://andreatedwards.com/ 

To get in touch with me, all of my contact details are here https://linktr.ee/andreatedwards

My book Uncommon Courage, an invitation, is here https://mybook.to/UncommonCourage

My book 18 Steps to an All-Star LinkedIn Profile, is here https://mybook.to/18stepstoanallstar

Transcript

Unknown: 0:10

Hi, it's Andrea Edwards. Welcome to uncommon courage. This is part two of what we can all do to contribute to a better world. Super excited to have the original team plus an extra and I'm gonna hand it over to Michelle to kick off the introductions. Hi, everyone. Thanks for joining us again. This is Michelle from sustainable Miko as you know from the past podcast, I'm all about recycling, reusing, and especially reducing and managing our waste. So I'll be giving some tips about that again today, Jim? Yeah, my name is Tim Wade, I speak about change. Organizations hire me to come in to speak to the teams about leading them through change, lowering the resistance and getting results faster. I'm passionate about climate positive action. And so I'm just here to talk about that with everybody to Suzanna. Hello, I'm Susanna has a neural and I'm the sustainability speaker. I work with business leaders and their teams, helping them to embrace sustainability as part of the strategic agenda. Super excited to be here again. And this week, we have Joanne Flynn, also known as Anna, and maybe you could give us a little bit more of an introduction to your background and why you're here and why you want to be part of this. Okay, so I started way back in the day, thanks to my dad, who was a scientist in the Green Revolution. Like it's so funny because the science hasn't changed. Since I was a kid. The data has just gotten reinforced and reinforced it. So I work with CEOs and boards around questions of strategic sustainability. What are they really doing? And basically, in support of Andrea, do they have the guts and the courage to take the actions they actually need to take hashtag create more profit be stay out of jail? See how a sustainable planet is one? I don't know if you've seen recently the escalation around the concept of bringing eco siding is the fifth universal crime against humanity, or is that how you say it the university side, because I bet it's one of the fifth laws against crime against humanity. Yeah. So the fifth crime against humanity after all the other genocide for now. It's been in the making for a really, really, really long time. But I think we're getting very, very close. So my name is Andrea Edwards, I am the author of uncommon courage, also the name of the podcast. And I work with businesses, to empower employees to own their voice on social media and get out there and make a difference. So I'm here to represent humanity in a better future for humanity. So there you go. That's how you've got here today. So we just want to make the really, really strong point that businesses if they don't change, don't change what they're doing really deep systemic change. And Susanna will definitely talk about that a lot, we don't actually have a chance of creating the change we want. But we do also believe that the responsibility also lays with all of us to change how we live, how we travel, how we do everything, because our individual impact collectively, you know, we're looking at it all around the Earth. So we need to change businesses need to change. And the more we can change, the more we're going to impact business's bottom lines, which will then encourage them to change. So we've got cop 26. Coming out, I think a lot of people aren't feeling very hopeful that it's actually going to make a difference. But let's see. So we've all got our part to play, but especially those of us who are wealthy nations, and these ideas that we're going to share with you today are all about individual change that we hope you can share with your community so becomes collective change. And then before we know it, we might have a global movement on our hands. So we're going to kick off we're going to try and keep it shorter and sweeter than we did the first time around. I'm going to pass it over to Michelle to kick us off with ID number one. Number one, cut your containers, all the containers that we use in our house, whether it's the toothpaste to the soap dishwashing liquid, whenever we use, there's always a little bit left at the bottom. So what we do every time is just cut off the top so that you can also put that little piece back on again, if you don't use it all and then use what you can from inside and you'll be amazed you can continue using toothpaste, face wash for another two weeks easily because there's so much at the bottom. Okay, another reason for cutting the containers is as I said, I'm into recycling. So if you throw out a container that still has a bit of toothpaste or face wash or soap, people are not going to want to recycle it because it could mess up their machines. So this is part of the process of using the whole lot and then washing it out and then making sure you recycle it. It also goes for things like those refillable bags, you can pour into another bottle, things like soap or dishwashing liquid cut up at the top, put a little bit of water, shake it around and you can continue using it for like I'd say about two weeks or so just about reducing the soap and the products that are going down the drain eventually into the water table. And also making sure that you don't have to buy so many products because you're using them until the end. Save your money too, right? Yes, it's brilliant. I mean, I do the squeezy out on The toothpaste piece, and it's amazing. How are you saying thank you extra week to choose. But it's true. Imagine if everybody was doing that how many products we would reduce how many plastic containers would go to the landfill? How many chemicals would go into the water table in the land? Can you imagine the huge impact, I've seen it in my own house. Now imagine if we try that, and, you know, encourage our friends to do the same, it saves them money, which is something people are trying to do right now and saves the environment, a win win. Yeah, I'm gonna jump in there to add to that one, because I really like the idea of reducing the packaging that we're bringing in. But sometimes we feel like, it's a bit tough to do that, because I need the new thing. And of course, while supermarkets have got refillable packaging, it's still another piece of plastic, usually, I would encourage everyone to hop into their search engine, and look for companies that sell bulk wholesale bulk goods or have a green element to their bulk goods. And the example of that one is a company called so this is here in Singapore company called unpacked un PACKT, I think or D unpacked. And what they do is they buy in bulk. And you go with your own containers, and you fill up cereal, rice, liquid shampoos, and soaps and all these and they sell all these other bits and pieces that are sustainable. But what the idea is that they're reusing containers. And if you bring in extra containers, because you've got a shampoo bottle is something you don't use anymore, you finish with you take it in, you wash it and take it and give it to them, they will wash it again and put it on the shelf for somebody else to just use, they don't sell it, they'll you can use that bottle to fill up your stuff. So what the way it works is that they weigh the bottle, they write the weight underneath. And then when you put the stuff in, they charge you by the weight of the stuff you put in, which I just think is so clever. And I was just thinking there's no way there's gonna be a place like that in Singapore, there's lots of them. So there's probably lots of them near you. And at some point, I'll work out what the actual Google search is to make it a little bit easier for you. But that's that's one of the things that we did. And it's cool. I mean it's it's just it's great to go into a shop like that and just go wow, I you know, people are doing this, this is great and be part of it. Just to say there is something like that in Phuket, it's at Blue tree Waterpark, and it's called steps to zero waste. And the great thing is next door, they actually have a training center for children who have learning disabilities. So these children work in this refill station, you bring your own bottle the same as Tim said they weigh it, so they're doing mathematics that may have to add it up and charge you a certain amount per gram or per liter, etc. So I think it would be called a refillable station or refill station. And it's something that I would really recommend if anyone has access to that. I just jumped into Google and typed when you said zero waste, I typed in zero waste groceries. And that's what came up with unpacked and came up with a bunch of other ones. So wherever you are, you can type in zero waste groceries and just see what happens. That's awesome. It wouldn't be expensive because one of the problems with people with low incomes is they can't buy in bulk because can't afford to. They live by week, right. So that's one of the problems. We've been sustainable for a lot of people around the world, especially in developed countries. But if they could do that pretty much accessible to anyone that sounds really promising. So here's the challenge though Andrea, some of the stuff they have in there is organic production quality of the stuff is also eco friendly, which can make some of the items a little bit more expensive. And then you can go to some dollar shop and full of plastic and buy some chemically written shampoo for sort of $1.50 and that's part of the challenge I guess is that the production makes it so cheap to produce the crappy stuff and whack it in a plastic bottle that on mass that can still be happening. But if we're asking people who are listening to this to start making a difference and making that difference themselves and getting involved, looking for those Zero Waste places, the good thing about the zero waste places though is you don't have to buy a liter bottle of something if that's all that there is at the shop you can buy 150 mils because you're using your own container. So that's the flip side of it from that bigger perspective of we need to make thing sustainable, affordable. And that's always been one of the biggest issues right and you know, and I think when we do the business podcast talking about like, every time I walk into a supermarket I'm shocked that they haven't completely transformed the design of supermarkets so that we can all go into their containers and fill it out with cereal and fill it out with shampoos and stuff. They still haven't done it you go to the expensive shops there's one in Singapore in tanglin I've been to beautiful but it's not affordable for the majority of people if they want to create real change that there is a spa here where I can go take the milk bottles in it I get it filled up with liquid handwash so i'm not buying the plastic bottles of hand washing it's it's affordable for me people to be able to do that. Right. So, but affordability is an important thing. So talking about affordability. This week, I was attending a conference where Boston Consulting Group was, was quoted. And apparently, they have calculated that in average, it would only cause two to 4% more to produce consumer durables in a carbon neutral way. So they actually presented the example of a car like middle class Volkswagen car, a mobile phone, and a pair of jeans. And this rule of additional two to 4% applied for all these three products. So in the case of the mobile phone, they said, additional $4 or $6, or something like that, one, or $2, for a pair of jeans, and something like $600 for $50,000 car to produce it carbon free. So font is quite interesting. I haven't checked through all their calculations, but I'm sure they put a lot of effort and knowledge into that, I'll extend on that one. Because as points really powerful, apparently, it costs a bit more to do this, which is why people are over two to 4%, that's my you know, that slice out of my profit margin. So here's the deal. If you've got a supply chain that feeds into Europe, or you are an organization that feeds into a supply chain that feeds into Europe, you're going to be facing a 4% cost in a what's called a carbon border adjustment, mega really exciting name. But basically, that platform percent is going to be a levy on top of your court, whatever your cost of sales are. And the only way to deal with it is to actually be carbon neutral. So one way or the other, when when you may as well do it. Because that way, at least you still are in business of being able to sell and be in a business ecosystem. We're meant to be focusing on like people, but it's just both Susanna and I see that the reality that the argument that it's cost is like the world has shifted, businesses really are that stage we're getting heads around it. And taking concrete action now is where then our voices as individuals also start showing up saying on the other side, we're buying evaluate yet so you know, both parts of the ecosystem need to be in play really interesting, because the main, the bigger point is what got us here, you know, cheap TVs, cheap everything we've from the time that we were all children to today, you know, we used to have televisions for 20 years, and those they still lasted today were a brand new television, if it makes the three year warranty, you're lucky. And so that's the whole point right with Andrea, that there's a difference in there. What happened was that they, I use the word day, but there was a deliberate choice to create products that would break built in design redundancy. To do it, I mean, engineers were taught to go and build things and design things that would last had to be re brainwashed into deliberately create things that will fail and build it. So that will fail so that people would have to buy replacements, yes, because you can repair many things either. Today, right? You're at once again, is leading the way there for that return to the quality right. All right, Tim, let's move on to point two. Okay, I'm going to stick with the packaging at this point. And I'm going to talk about plastic bottles banned for cans as an idea. And so Suzanna, is that a good idea? Or is that a terrible idea? Because I thought cans could be recycled better than plastic bottles, could I my understanding is that cans indeed can be recycled very well, because they are a high quality material. So you can you know, molded and welded many, many times. And it's quite the different thing for plastic bottles. because ever since China stopped accepting plastic waste from rest of the world, many big countries These include also the European countries, the US don't know what to do with their plastic waste, because China look no longer recycles it. So as a result, lots of lots of plastic ways have ended up in Thailand, Malaysia and other countries where it's fairly certain that at least most of that isn't actually recycled in any way. And in terms of technologies, you know, plastics recycling, reusing them is still a fairly young industry whereas cans can be recycled very well. Yep, cans and bottles. I looked at some research on that where I was trying to work out because we focus on cans, but then there's a thin film of plastic inside every can which stops the drink being messed with right so they're not perfect. The good thing about Kansas they can be squashed into a smaller space that the rings can be used for things but basically it turned out that from the whole creation of the product, so making up the cans, bottles, glass as well as plastic all the way through. They measure the entire emission so cans were the were not the best but they were the best. The best is none of it. So bottles second and Then plastic bottles way down the bottom so cans Yes, I'll add one end on that one because the thing with elementium it's also energy wise seriously intensive to process so it's it's got an impact somewhere else but the net net is Andrew says come out but when I was a kid where we lived if you wanted to go buy soft drinks for example you have to have a crate of empties you have to have a crate of empty bottles. So you could swap them to go and get new ones. I mean it was closed loops it literally closed it was the toughest thing when we moved because we had to go and fight and if we couldn't get started in the system, but I mean those bottles, you know what, yeah, we're loved and Neo dented again a little tiny this but they look at 2030 times around before that the meltdown redone. So that kind of system has existed before it can exist again. And in the olden days, it would have soda fountains, and you'd go into shops, and you'd grab your drink, and you drink it from a cup and you'd return the cup. And that would be a can of Coke, so to speak. But the other thing I wrote adding on to that Anna is the I wrote a blog called bring back the milkman. And the idea behind that was when I was growing up we had I mean, not in Malaysia so much. But in Australia, we had the milkman deliver milk in the morning, and we'll be sitting there and we'd pick it up and would wash the bottles out and put them back and he'd pick them up and recycle them. The only thing I see happening today with that is beer bottles at food courts, they do collect the beer bottles and the beer bottles, go back to the beer company who then rinse it out and tidy it up and then send them out again, which is good. That's the one good thing to be accompanied to doing. And presumably it saves the money from buying new bottles that the cleaning is better. There's no reason why we can't bring back the milkman because we have home delivery of all our groceries now. So there's no reason why we couldn't put in redmart. In Singapore, when they deliver stuff, they say put your boxes in your bags or whatever it is back out and we'll take them back. So they'll do that. But there's no reason why we can't if the same people are coming in collecting it, they can't collect the empty bottles and take them away and refill them. So the infrastructure and the cycle is there. The milkman lost out because we would we all got cars and could easily go to the shops and buy it. That's why the milkman went out of business, and we'd go to the supermarket and the supermarket would set up and we'd bring it all back with us, but now and refrigeration helped as well. So once all of that became commonplace, the milkman died out, but there's no reason why we can't use that sort of thing again Now, just to ask Michelle so the other drink package that's becoming more common is the cardboard package with the wax covering which often has a sort of a plastic sort of screw on top. And to me that doesn't look good either. And I'm sure that the cardboard with the waxy packaging will take a long time to break down plus it's got the the additional plastic but on top. Michelle, what are your views on that one because that's like the fourth in the mix now. Okay, I think it's, it can be recycled along with cardboard and paper, even though it has a kind of aluminum layer inside. Okay, which is interesting, but we put it all together with our newspapers, boxes, cereal boxes, and it all goes to the same place to be recycled, we cut off the plastic or we take off the plastic, the lid and the actual thing as you've seen in my videos, so always make sure you do remove the plastic bit from those tetra packs, flatten them or actually cut them open wash them well and then put them with the rest of your your paper and cardboard. So I think that's not a bad option because we can recycle it. Going back to Tim and the cans I think cans are a better option than bottles because as we collect rubbish on the beach quite regularly, we find many plastic bottles, there's actually an overload of plastic bottles, even though they can be recycled, but the aluminum cans we do not find because people can sell that for a very high price. That's probably the most expensive thing to buy. So people get a lot of money from that. And as you mentioned Andrea, you can take off the the pool ring and use that for prosthetic legs and use the can for recycling. So I would say that in the future if we can do away with the plastic bottles use glass bottles, as Tim suggested for certain things, we can wash it and return them to the factory, which shouldn't be so difficult. If you think about places like Coke, Santa, all those big companies, they should reintroduce that and then for milks and fruit juices we could either stick with glass bottles or go with the tetra pack. I think that would be a better way moving forward but get rid of the P e t plastic bottles because they also can't be reused. The inside of the bottle tends to break up into little particles. So if you use a two or three times you'll notice the water has a strange taste. You know that's definitely a single use product that we need to do away with. The only good thing about it are the caps which we use the HDPE plastic caps, which we melt down in a precious plastic machine and make things like skateboards can earrings all kinds of turtles and toys, so that's a good way to reuse it. In terms of packaging mixed materials are really problematic. Let's take an example. ample chips you might be aware of with the brand Pringles, you know, it comes in a tube like tennis balls. So that is actually very problematic to recycle because it has so many different materials. So my tip for this is, if you fancy chips, rather buy them in a normal back to one, I'll emphasize that some companies advertise that it's recyclable. But having worked with organizations in this field, they say the technical capacity to go and split off paper, plastic and metal, which is your plastic three layer thing is incredibly difficult. And it really from a practical point of view isn't solved. So technically, each of those three elements can be but in practice, it's really tough. So Suzanna suggestion of like, if you want the chippies, hashtag sustainable lifestyle, maybe not so great for the waistline, you know, pick the packaging, that's going to have less impact as well as the thing that's going to, you know, taste good. So there's more than absolutely, there's more than two things combined in packaging, but it should be a sign that that's not a good choice, because it's more complicated. And we're not recycling it yet. Right. So great tip. All right. And I do want to do have you got your first one. Yeah. Okay. So my first one is an incredibly wonderful one, but very, very old fashioned full disclaimer on that. One is the habit, we have these days of having clothes, or sheets or other sorts of things in the house that once a button falls off, or there's a little bit of a terror that we just check it out, out back in the good old days, I fortunately had an old fashioned grandmother who thought that one of the things that was necessary for me to learn was how to Dorne. And I actually done some sheets the other week, what's darning, it's when you get niederlande spread out, and you reconnect the pieces of fabric, and you can put layers on it, so it holds together. And then you can continue to go and use that object. It's a bit like you know how you have buttons on shirts, and you can resell button on it, darling is like re stitching the the fabric. So either technique works really well for keeping things in play instead of turning them into trash. So in addition to what you've just said, right, so I actually think one of the revolutions that we're going to see is that every single shopping center mall, how Community Center is going to have a place where the people who got the skills to so to Dan, to fix shoes to fix bags, I think we're going to have community sort of CO ops where people can come in and just get things mended. You know, so one of my favorite linen dresses, the something rip in the shoulder of it just recently, right, I was looking at it, it's too bad for it to be repaired. But if that was a place here, and it's a little bit easier in Thailand to find those sort of things, you got to work for it, but they're here. But if there was a place like that in every community where people could just go and just get everything repaired, so that they can keep things going for as long as possible, or learn how to do the basic things themselves. But then the other thing is look at so that dress, right, what do I do with it, and I don't want to put it into a landfill, I could chop it up and we can use it as a cloth in the house for cleaning. I could find a local mechanic and give it to them so they can chop it up and use it in their work. Because the old thing called rag trade, yeah, donate it to places like, especially hotels, places like dog homes or animal shelters, because they need fabric in the bedding and stuff like that. So it's just about saying, you know, I've got this dress, classic example, I've got this dress and I don't want to put it in the rubbish. I want to make sure it goes somewhere and has more life so that I'm not contributing more to the environment. So sort of expand on what you were just saying. But I do think you're saying to my husband this morning, I think it's a business opportunity or potentially a charity opportunity where we could set up, you know, a co op sort of model across, you know, across the towns and the cities that we live in where we can get people who probably don't have jobs at the moment set him up with sewing machines and, and if you've got something that's broken, that can be fixed, get it in there, get your tote bag, cotton tote bag, you need to use 150 times take the extra fabric and it becomes the patches and you know, sort of start thinking that way. I love it. We can call them mend markets. I think we can work on the name a bit. Maybe men market is awesome. But that's the sort of thing that I think we'll start to see. So if anyone wants to take it as an idea, take it we need it first. Or downmarket. Yeah, in addition, just in addition, I think that's a great idea. And I think we have to start making that trendy you know, to reuse them get things get out the old pair of jeans that has a hole and put a patch on it with something cool. And perhaps we can start to already donate clothes to the same stresses in our village. You know, there are many ladies who do that and they earn a little bit of money from doing someone's ham or putting on buttons or things like that. So we could discuss it with them and give them a pack of clothes that we no longer use and see if they can fix it make it into something else. And they can even sell it as secondhand clothes. There are many little shops in my village to do that they they take their clothes they don't want anymore and sell it for a small price, you know, but at least it's better than nothing. It gives it a new life a second life and nothing goes into the landfill. That's always the goal right? So my first addition to I think we're at five probably about 10 vinegar is your best friend is the title so rather than buying chemicals to clean your home Many of which have poisons that are permanently in our environment and not good for anyone self especially elderly and children use vinegar. The most important thing is don't buy the little bottles of vinegar by the really really really big chunky bottles of vinegar and you can use them to clean absolutely everything and yes it is a bit stinky, but it works and you don't want to Yeah, right okay good I didn't know that that's better than the chemical you usually use another great use for being a bit of rubbing that's what we're supposed to be doing right What did NSA I didn't quite get it silver use it for silver as well. But then it goes a slide acid but yeah, so we use it for everything we've got a new spray bottle onto a bench surfaces, I mean obviously you need to buy some chemicals for sort of deeper cleaning but just for the average keeping your house clean, it's perfect. The other thing is if you mix a little bit of essential oils into some vinegar, it can replace your soft now so it reduces the need to have those the software packages that everyone's got the refills so any way that we can get that sort of stuff and you just put it in your washing machine and the great thing about the vinegar is that our clothes especially our towels have human skin fat in them right so over time you tell so yeah, no it's not very pretty but over time it's towel sort of stopped being absorbent because they've got so much of us in them right so if you're using the vinegar with the essential oils, you'll only smell the essential oils. It comes out beautiful and soft and smells nice and the essential oils as a tip from a friend AJ. It's really great so the wholesalers buy the biggest bottles you can find when you use it take it back to the wholesaler and insisted that you fill it up put the responsibility on them by returning the bottle to them. You will clear out so many excessive uses of plastic just if you bring really good into your life. So go do some research. It's awesome. It's completely transformed how we clean and wash our clothes just to add to that and it also cleans very well so it will be cleaning out your washing machine at the same time. We can also use it to clean toilets, clean sinks, put it in a small bowl in your fridge to take away odors it can be used for so many things even for washing that has oil on it when we were doing this big oil spill cleanup a few months back before Paquette opened a lot of our clothes were just like full of oil so we use the the vinegar with dishwashing liquid and that really helps to get out the oily side of it. Vinegar is a good one and old remedy but definitely worth using worth continuing to use cheap. Yeah, it is it is really really cheap. You can buy very expensive vinegar of course but you don't need that to clean your home. Expensive vinegar you know is the the balsamic bow type use that for your salad and your insides Exactly. bonus tips to other vinegars for different purposes. Alright, Michelle, what's your next one, my next one is called soap your shower with sponge. Okay, you know the shower was sponges you can buy it's either a natural one or the synthetic one. Basically, the reason why I love it is because it makes your soap last and last. And last. It doesn't matter if you're using a so far. Or if you're using liquid soap, you really just need to use a little bit on the shower sponge. And you can wash your whole body with just one pump. For example of the shower gel, I see the difference between my husband and I, he uses it directly on his hands and he goes through a bottle probably three times as fast as I do with the shower sponge. So once again, like I said before, catch your containers and also pour that soap onto your child's sponge, you will use less soap pollute the water a lot less and therefore less packaging, we would probably encourage the natural sponges right rather than the ones that you can buy. And they break up into little pieces. So you go with natural always better. But a natural sponge in this case being a not being a sea sponge, because that's got other issues being like an old Kpop or like a loofa with the looper lather enough because what I find with a synthetic one, I know it's not good for the environment. And but it does last pretty long. You can use one for easily six months, when you put a little bit of soap on it. You can really lather the circus so it can go a long way. I'm not sure if we'll have that same reaction with a loofa. I'm just slightly sensitive to the idea of 5 billion people taking sea sponges out of the sea. No wouldn't be alive sea sponge. I think Michelle Yeah. Are you talking about those, those ones that they look like they've been tied together in the middle and they're like a flower? That's little holes in them? Yeah, buy one that's made of recycled bottles or something. I think we're never going to be 100% natural unfortunately. So we just have to weigh up the pros and cons. You know, that's the shower sponge. I know it's not good because you can't recycle it afterwards. But I feel like you can use it for six months and you can reduce the soak that you're using by it. So it's just you know, a question of which one which one is better for the environment or let's say worse for the environment. That makes total sense. My next one, I'll stay in the bathroom. And what we do in our bathroom is we use a 20 liter water container made out of high density plastic, it has a lid on it. It's got a little tap, you can dispense like a water dispenser, I suppose. And so what we do is we have there's a on our shower, tap when we turn it on We're waiting for the hot water to come through. And we lose about five liters of water waiting for the hot water to come through. So we have that there and we flick it to the tap mechanism and the five liters of water go into this tub and we take it out to our garden and that's what we water all our plants with. And so we've got one in the guest bathroom, one in our bathroom and one that sits out at the in the garden. And so we've always got one to rotate or we fill up the one in the garden and bring this one back but you'll be amazed you'll be amazed how much water when you do this you'll be an all I do is I just stand and wait for it to get hot. And then I switch it to shower mode. So it's in tap mode while I'm waiting for it to get hot shower mode. I'm not kicking it with my foot, it never gets in the way it's completely out of the way and it basically all the water in the garden is reused. I absolutely love that idea. It's such a simple idea and it's all it's about just managing excess right perfect. That was a really good one Tim I really like that one a lot. Tim I'd like to add to that one about the shower container here in Thailand, it's very popular to have a bucket in your shower, it's actually the Thai method of showering so they'll have a little bucket probably a little bit bigger than the one you have with a lid and a small bowl inside. So when you're warming up your shot where you can fill up this bucket or you can just fill it up anytime it helps for when the electricity goes out and your pumps not working so at least you always have water and the Thai way of showering is to actually take a bowl and pour that water over your head and over your whole body it's super refreshing in the morning on a cold morning especially and it's a very good way to to wake up and wash and also keep the water you know instead of just letting it go down the drain when you're warming up your showers so yes definitely we need to save on the excess water always have containers ready to collect whatever water is running down the drain. I love that and so much of the developed world in India the same right same sort of showering system, whereas the western showers is just so much waste but then you go to countries like Australia where they've got what's it called is grey water right so their their plumbing is sort of set up for it to be going into the gray water but with droughts, water shortages coming I think all of these sort of tips is absolutely critical look at all of your water how you're using it and where you can capture it so you can save it and use it in other ways. So I mean just with the bucket with Michelle's bucket idea even if you're never use that for a shower in a bazillion years you can use it for filling up your bucket for mopping your floor you can use it for filling up your I mean even if you don't have a garden you know if you really want to do instead of flushing the toilet you can pour it down the toilet and get rid of stuff but I guess most people aren't going to do that but there's just think of the ways that you use water at the moment and what you could use that normal cool water for well we're going to be facing was for water so let's be more conscious of our own waste with water. Alright Susanna you ready for your next one? So my next one is is a biggie reject guilt. And with this I don't mean that you know we should get a free ride to do anything anywhere we want. But everyone should be aware that there are companies out there that are actually trying to push the guilt on consumers alone while kind of trying to hide their own activities. And the fossil fuel industry in particular has known about climate change since the 70s. But for decades, they've first of all denied it and they've invested into people who've you know, spread misinformation but now their strategies are changing so actually a fact that the personal carbon footprint calculators were panel brought to the market by the PR agency of BP you know, so I'm not saying that you know, do whatever you want, let's be conscious and aware of our footprint but in areas where companies are pushing, you know all the culpability to us as consumers alone while they themselves aren't doing enough things to reduce their emissions and to change the products and the services and the policies and the frameworks let's not accept that guilt. I totally agree and guilt just doesn't help I mean if we all looked at our footprint for our live stuff which I know Anna has actually done you know there's deep shame right? All of us know for me it's not actually about shame, it's about owning the data because it gives me a different capacity to to Suzanne's point to actually look at and go where was x, y and Zed? But I think we've got to say right we talked about this for put a line in the sand is the line we all know No, no more ignorance. We forward the best way we can. But as Suzanna said, the companies who actually creating the problem, they also need to stop put their line in the sand and move forward to understand Suzanna posted up about greenwashing on LinkedIn recently when she was an attending an event and people were saying oh, you should we shouldn't shame companies for not doing the right thing. And I think we are at the point where the line has been drawn. We all know it if you don't change now. Then time is going to come and it has to come because I don't know what more people need to wake up to the crisis that we're facing as a global society. So totally with this, I'm also very happy to see that in a number of countries, advertising watchdogs, flagging these things and picking up companies. So for instance, in the Netherlands shell was running this campaign tried carbon free. So consumers could kind of do something against that by offsetting option at one cent euro per liter, which, theoretically, if you have a super high efficient carbon offsetting program, you could maybe get there at that price. But shell was not able to provide the information that they would actually be doing this. And of course, the mechanism is again like hey, me, company, I do whatever I do, and you consumer, you bad boy, you better pay to relieve yourself from the guilt. I'm innocent. Yeah. And I love the way the narrative behind the scenes in some of the corporate environments is shifting to say you, as a company director have civil and criminal liability for these actions. And it's absolutely I mean, I just go Hallelujah, because it's one of those ones where no one ought to have known negligence 101 you can't wash your hands of it. There's some amazing stories where the fossil fuel industry businesses are taking taking countries to court over business losses, he kind of like, we live in a crazy time, I think looking towards the EU, even though as far as actions go, like think they are on track for 3.2 degrees global warming, right, as a united effort. But the laws the EU are coming out with like just recently, they've said basically, it's not a final law yet, but they're trying to get standardization of mobile phone charges. I mean, the amount of waste of just phone accessories, all of us, the average person has three charges, or uses only two. But we've all got boxes and boxes and boxes, plugs and charges. Because every time you buy a technology device, it's got every single possible option of a charging point, depending on which country you're in, versus manufacturing it. So when it arrives in France, the plug in the boxes for France, and when you arrive in Singapore, it's for Singapore, you know, you've got every country there, obviously cutting corners, making it cheap, but all it's resulting in is boxes of these technology ways that it's just all plastic that will never be used, it's got no use, right, we've got to clean it out, we've got to clean it out of the system, and businesses have got a job to do. Sure, and you want to go through your next one. My next one super, super practical. I was reminded of this one. The other day, when I was speaking at a sustainability event guy from Siemens was pointing out that how often we leave devices just sitting on standby, you know, our computer overnight, our printer, all sorts of things that are just there. things, even lights that are on power boards. And they were saying that the measurements they've done it that takes you know, 10 to 15% of your household energy usage is just stuff sitting on standby. And so even practical things like you know, turning things off at the wall, I mean, I so I feel myself feeling like my grandmother and my father, even saying it, but the turning off the wall really has a huge impact. And for anyone who's got battery based devices, you may be noticing, like your computers aren't lasting as long because we're often leaving our laptops full time plugged in at home, whereas back in the day when we actually went to offices would unplug them and stick them in a drawer or in a locker overnight. And so the second consequence of leaving things plugged in is not just the battery, the power usage that's unnecessary there, which of course has its own impact. But what it's doing is it's increasing the probability that your battery is going to do that little old, I've over eaten on power explode thing. And so you're ending up with more digital waste as well. So you know, turning things off at the wall has a nice household type level, but also actually turning them off and disconnecting them overnight yourself as a nice impact on anything that's battery based for its lasting. So you kind of get a couple of wins out of that one pocket book and environment. And I'd like to add on to that one, because that was one of my points as well. And I think it's a really great one also, that it makes you feel like your grandparents comment is really funny. Because when we were growing up, it was like, Oh my god, they're so tight. You know, they're so they're always I mean, you know, they're trying to save money, you know, that was so the way we were brought up, but he's actually a behavior that became ingrained in our societies. It's incredibly wasteful, you know, like, sending emails is he has emissions, you know, we don't even think about it. The amount of people are sending emails and they're replying all so when you reply all to 40 people, you're sending 40 emails, which, you know, that's like driving a kilometer in your car, just sending an email, but understanding energy across the board and how we wasted i think is a really critical thing. Like you said, you know, last time we in the last podcast, we talked about the whole energy cycle from farm to the table. So for food from farm to the table, and any wasted energy is wasted energy. So we've got to really look at it at all its forms. It's time for heating, cooling your environment, the energy to create clothes all through all the way through the washing them and hanging them out to dry. Rather than using a dryer, which is something I've been always really committed to even when I've lived in really tropical environments turn off electricity at home when it's not being used, you know, the power boards, like you said, upgrade to renewable energy if you're upgrading your home. And it's a possibility, especially if the government's giving grants, let's hope the government's get efficient at these grants rather than the disasters we've looked at in the past with things like fix leaking, tap, take shorter showers, put a timer on your shower, especially the teenage kids who like to be in there for an hour, which we're currently dealing with. But really looking at your whole life. And just really auditing your personal energy use and your family energy use in every way possible. Any waste, any excess is not good for the environment. And if enough people did it, it would make a difference. And you know, cheaper electricity bills, and more bills. Also, that was the thing. So when I went and did that work out how much power I'd used in my life calculation, it was really eye opening, you know, I could have had somebody you don't do the math for me. But the eye opening piece was by the time I actually looked at all the different devices, I had actually gone and checked it out. This took me like one evening, it wasn't actually that big of time investment. But it gave me a much bigger appreciation of the choices I had made in the past or not, because I just blindly gone down the path on particularly and realize where I could actually make differences. And how much power my IT equipment was using my laptops and computers and the lights around that it was like, Oh my gosh, this was a significant change that have just happened has happened over time. And I don't know of anyone else, that's this thing here. But I suspect most of us have more than one computer, I'd like to jump in on that one, though, there's something you can buy, which is, well, it's a power consumption meter. And you can plug it into the wall. And then you can plug your device or your power board or whatever, your kettle, or your fridge or whatever it is into that. And this little digital meter will calculate how much power is going through it to power the thing at the other side. And you can actually get some real data. And so you can so if you don't believe that the power boards are, are in standby mode, eating anything up, you can measure it, if you want to, you could just get one and try it in different parts of the house, actually, couldn't you? Yeah, so well, I bought a few and I and I had them in different parts of the house, and then ran it for a month or two and sort of set a date in my calendar to go and check it out. And then sort of write everything down, and then move them around. And then I moved around to another device. And then I found that the fridge the dryer. And the I couldn't get one to fit my air con socket because it's this big giant thing. But I know the icons, I mean, you can calculate it based on their wattage on the box. But yeah, so I did that. So what I was trying to avoid was the sticker on the box, greenwashing, what the thing actually does, I wanted to measure it, to see what I was actually paying for. Yeah, exactly. And once you buy those devices, make sure that you then pass them on to somebody in your family or in your community. So they can do a month's worth, and you can pass them around. So we don't all go out and buy those devices and the E waste in the world. I was just wondering, Tim, when, you know, doing these, these measurements at your house, were there any surprises, positive or negative ones, any new discoveries, apart from these big household appliances? My reason for doing it is I didn't want to do that, turn the thing off at the wall standby mode thing, I didn't want to do that. And so I got this thing to show to prove that it was a pointless waste of time. And you might as well pay the extra dollar, you know, instead of running around every night, being sort of militant turning everything off. While it did kind of show that it kind of proved my point to a degree. When you multiply that out by the millions of people, it starts to be a really big impact. And so if it's about leading by example, and all that sort of stuff, then what it does is it leads you into analyzing and being aware of other things that you're doing. So what changed in me was more the realization of what some of these things are actually sucking out of the wall. And now the thing I'm most militant about is shutting the fridge and freezer door when Zoey My daughter is in there and she's just like looking in there for hours and playing with shut the door. And so I become this, you know, grandparent style person with keeping the door of the freezer and the fridge shut. Go in there, get what you want and shut the door. What about the standby bill was that $1 a month or more in your case? So my data was skewed to reflect what I wanted it to reflect in my arguments about but it was it Look, it was there, but it wasn't the truth is it wasn't gigantic. We got things on standby. But we have things charging overnight that's probably bigger, where we can overcharge stuff, and we tend to charge overnight which means the thing is actually charging for eight hours where it might only need four and it's not necessary. Drawing, but it's all plugged in and on for that job. The other thing is our laptops do their updates at nighttime, so they kind of need to be plugged in. Unless you just turn them on in the morning and it doesn't, then when you wander off and make your coffee, some of these products are made, assuming that you're going to have the thing plugged in? Well, my answer was, for me, it wasn't big enough to spend 15 minutes every night wandering around, turning everything off and keeping that top of mind. But I don't want to diminish that you can cut this out if you want, I don't want to diminish the usefulness of doing that multiplied by 7 billion people. But if you are going to focus on the big ticket items, there are some big ticket items to focus on if you want to get it, get those things down. And we also have to remember the 78% of the world don't have fridges, right. So it's only 22% of us that actually have fridges, and they take an extraordinary amount of energy. And most people in sort of wealthier countries, you know, have three, four or five features, not just one for each, right. So with the bigger messages reduce wherever you can, wherever it makes sense, it collectively matters. That's the point. But I'm with you. So my next point is a new idea that I've been brewing and sort of trying to get in place and it's called return to the circular economy department. That's not easy to say. Alright, so something I've recently started doing, and we bought a new printer recently, I'm going to do a video on it. And the printer brand is irrelevant. But every time you buy a new printer very quickly, the first print cartridges run out of juice, and you have to buy the next round. If you guys notice that anytime you buy a new printer. Yeah, they're kind of designed that way. But when you actually look at a printer cartridge, it's phenomenal amount of technology. And no, I think in countries like Australia, you can go and take it back to the technology shop, and it will go back to where somewhere. But I think people have control over where it actually goes. But I know that the majority of the stuff doesn't go back where it needs to go, which is to the manufacturer. So what I've decided to do is package up all of the print cartridges, and I'm going to send it to the circular economy department at brother in Thailand. This is a department that doesn't exist yet. But I think that if everyone did this, we'd have the manufacturer is going oh my god. But basically what what I'm trying to do is put it back in their hands, right? There's too many steps in the process that we're not even aware of the most of the waste isn't getting where it needs to go. So the waste collection process is a shambles. It's the most one of the most corrupt industries, it always has been. It's mafia driven industry. That's why like, even though China said you can dump your waste, it's getting dumped all over the place because they know how to do it. And most of that waste is going to the poorest countries on Earth, right? So what we're doing now is we're collecting up, if you look at like a bottle of shampoo, or a tin of deodorant or something like that, it's very difficult to see the address on the tin on the bottle. Because they make it so small to you're going to get a magnifying glass out, send it back to the circular economy department, if enough of us do it, we might actually getting these guys committed to the creation of a circular economy because that is what we need. Whatever is created needs to be continuously existing versus ending up in landfill or trash or an incinerator ruination. So that's my plan, it goes in, I like that idea, I think you should all do it on that specific day, like on the first of every month, or the 10th of every month, because it's got a zero, it's an i o in the input output as of the 10th of every month, so that so that you send it around about the eighth or something like that. And all of these things descend upon them at one. And then they just like, we don't even have a circulated economy department, you know, and then also white goods as well. Like there's a story in Melbourne, this guy was fined a whole bunch of money for throwing a fridge off a cliff. Because it was too expensive to take the fridge to the rubbish tip. So in Australia, you have to pay online, why don't we just take our fridges back to the manufacturer, which will be in the country somewhere. It's a bit of effort on all the all the effort is on the consumer now, and we need to change that. But while we're getting there, let's dump it on them put on their front door, don't have to deal with it. And just add to that one. I think it's also us as I'm going to say consumers and citizens because there's a difference a slightly bigger thinking I find for myself when I'm thinking of myself as a citizen as opposed to just to consumer were basically a walking dollar sign to think that I'm more than just a walking dollar sign is that when we're buying any of these sorts of products, like what is the returns practice so my washing machine sadly passed away last week I had to go through the whole replacement process but it was really clear I needed to get it from somewhere who would go and take the old one away and was be equipped to doing something that would help resolve what would happen to it after you know it's after life. And there was something that they would do or would they gonna just dump it in a landfill. The provider starts taking back or creating a process to take back Okay, so I mean that in itself I'll just celebrate because so little of that exists, and we need that one. Then the next one is the when things start coming back they start coming back Enough consolidated volume, that it makes it more economically viable for somebody to do something about it. When it's just one piece, one piece that won't be stacked, it's tough for business to say, Hey, you know what, what is that guy's a lot of metal in that thing. I can strip the metals out of that, I'll strip the copper out of that, oh, my god, there's, so some circuit boards will go, that's what's the money associated with that, and they'll start pulling it apart, it was just one machine, there's not a lot of value. But if there's if they create that take back process, then you start getting 100 machines. And you can start getting the next layer of the circular economy, we're talking about that. I don't know if this offering actually exists currently. But I heard about that, I think it was in Europe, the Netherland, possibly, again, that a washing machine producer was providing or is providing washing machines as a service. So you don't actually buy the thing. But you subscribe to a service of X dollars or euros a month, and they give you a functioning washing machine. And obviously, if that stops working, they'll do whatever is needed to repair it, or I mean, they figure out the most economic way to deal with that, because it's on them not on you. Right? Yeah, and extend extending on that one on the washing machine. One, because I hadn't realized you could do it for washing machines. But what you'll find if you start looking for it in tech, there's a bunch of tech companies are making that commitment where it is hardware as a service. So they are take full responsibility for what's necessary. So you have you have the physical stuff that you need to do your stuff. There's quite a few businesses that are seriously going that way. And as you say, Suzanne, it means that there's for the business Who's crying, the economic flow has full responsibility for the second half of the flow, ie, how do we clean up? What do we do afterwards. So it's, not only were we as citizens, and consumers can also take action. And if we happen to be an executive in a company, it's a business opportunity Go for it, sunshine. Yeah, I love the answer service concept, especially on washing machines. But they're on the hardware side, it sounds like it's just replacing the word leasing with as a service, but I'll take it anyway of sort of reducing stuff in the environment. And they will make it last longer, because it will make the business more profitable, and all that sort of stuff. And the as a service side is often being driven like this with the tech companies that I'm in conversations with and working with. with them, it's actually coming in, we have full because we have to take responsibility for the second half of it for the waste cycle. And therefore the best way for us to do that is this way, because we have visibility, I think landlords would be really interested in the white goods as a service model. Because they don't want to have to buy the new washing machine for the tenant, they just want to give them the whatever else is there. And they can fix their costs across the contract. And all of that sort of stuff be quite, quite cool. And then you can just extend that to facilities in organisations quite easily, which again, becomes a leasing model, I suppose. Well, like just you know, while we're joking about how things get remarketed. I mean, cloud is just basically a mainframe with a pretty front end. I don't think Microsoft can agree with that. Because you know, it's Microsoft, and that's IBM and the mainframe is not exactly theirs. But yeah, I kind of get your point. Check it, Telstra is joke. I thought it was a good one. Alright, Michelle, do a start again. Have you got another one? Yes. But I'd like to just add to that washing machine story. And it basically all boils down to us taking responsibility of where our waste ends up. Whatever it is. So as consumers, we need to investigate everything that we have and find out what happens to it, what is the afterlife for everything that we buy, and make sure that we can either give it to the right person who's going to recycle it and reuse it to make something useful, or send it back to the companies and what she was saying about the circular economy, sending back your ink cartridges, washing machines, all these difficult to recycle things, we need to really look at that as consumers. And it's all right, you know, and it's something we should be looking at. Because obviously in the world that's not being handled the way we would like it to be. So we need to take this responsibility upon ourselves, rather than expecting someone else to do it. Because that someone else hasn't done it yet, right? We need to get on this and make it work make it happen. I think another huge part of this is trust, right? So for some reason, as a global society, who we don't trust, we don't trust the groups that should be trusted. But we trust the people that shouldn't be trusted. In this case. It's anything to do with the waste collection. Right? So this is not an industry that has high morals and it never has been. So you know, I've been speaking to friends in Australia and are using them as an example because it's a developed country that has all of the systems in place where you can put your stuff in boxes, baskets outside of shops and stuff and then therefore people feel good that it's recycled. And I know it's not being recycled because it's landing in piles in countries that are living and people in those local communities is dying because well The chemicals and stuff is leaching out into the waterways, it's not going where you think it's going. So and it's difficult because people will be going well, how can I follow this path to, from one end to the other. And I think it's one of these things, we come together as community and have eyes on it, find the people that can do it, find the people that are interested, not everyone's going to be interested in saying, if I put my printer cartridge in this basket outside of this technology shop, I'm going to follow it to the point where it goes, it gets reused, or in a circular economy, or I'm going to find to the point where gets into a shipping container that lands in the Philippines and ends up going into somebody's environment. So not everyone's gonna want to follow that path. But there will be somebody in the community that does, and it's about finding those people. And it's potentially a dangerous path to, it's a corrupt industry that I want people poking around in their processes, right. But we have to, you know, corruption and corruption and greed is a big part of the problem that we face as a global society. So we've got to get rid of that, too. So anyway, it's not an easy one, right? There is technology to trace things. So there was a company I was looking at must have been half a dozen years ago. And what they specialized in was paint for cars. And in the paint, they had these little scannable, like nano dots. And so they would paint the car, and you would just look at the car and the car is the car. But the scannable nanodots were you could go up to the current scan it, and you would know information that was in that nano.in the paint. So if somebody was coming in paint over the car and steal it and resell it, you could tell that that was the stolen car. Now given that we've got the technology to have scannable nanodots, what if that technology was in a plastic bottle, or a printer cartridge, or, or in anything, and when you discover it in the middle of the sort of Atlantic Oceans swirling around in the in the big trash heap, or in some landfill or some river in Thailand or something like that, and you scan it and you go, Well, this came from Australia, and it's their responsibility, or this came from here, and it's, you know, the fine goes to them, they've got to pay for the cleanup for one square kilometer, or something like that. I mean, so the technology's there, you know, my guess then is that you go well, the technology's there, let's do it. And then and Nobody puts their hand up, because at the moment, there's no culpability. So it's gonna come down to a lawmaker going, let's legislate this fine people when when they break that law, because most people should go, yep, that's fair. The counter argument will go, Well, we can't control where it ends up. It's complicated. There's a lot of forensic work that needs to happen. But that messy period, we'll get the rules set up. Once we go through the mess, we'll come out the other side with something that seems to make some sense. But if we don't do anything, because it's messy, then we're going to stay in the mess. One of the key concepts in this context is the so called extended producer responsibility, becoming embraced by more and more regulators around the world. And it's all really a question of bringing back this responsibilities for the entire lifecycle of products to the producer. A lot of progress still needs to be made. But if you hear anything about this E RP, support it, I think it's the only way to really deal with it. And to make those parties pay for the negative externalities, the negative costs that arise in the context of the usage of a company's products or services. I mean, of course, at the end of the day, as consumers, if we use those services, we will have to pay, but at least it gets channeled into the right industries and product categories. I think the business of making everything faster, cheaper, is gone. That has to go because it's part of the problem that we've created for ourselves, right. But But the other side is that supply chain ownership, as you noticed, is something I'm super passionate about. And it's beyond time. And Coca Cola to this day had said Oh, but the customers still want plastic bottles. And it's like, Yeah, but there is no industry leadership, they have not changed their behavior. You know, they've got all these greenwashing initiatives and all these nice marketing, but they have not changed their behavior. And you look at the advertising in developing countries versus Western countries. It's just absolutely mind boggling what's going on. It's absolutely mind boggling. There's so much bullshit out there and I'm beyond time. It's beyond time that we did something about it, but we just need to do our best within the context of what we've got right? And then coke prints on on the bottle or on the can recycle me and that gets applauded or aggressive stepped towards sustainability. Sorry, but that only makes me laugh. I think my favorite is going to the movies in Thailand and you sit there and this is beautiful Coca Cola advertising, everybody's drinking out of glass bottles, right? Pepsi is the same, beautiful, and then you go to the local soft drink makers and they're still doing their advertising with plastic bottles, so they haven't got quite got the message that you market nicely with the glass. But you still sell the plastic, you know, it's just yeah, so much bullshit. All right, Michelle. Okay, so hang clothes in the sun, we can call it sun wash your clothes. Okay? Instead of using a dryer you mentioned, Andrea, we could always dry our clothes in the sun. But how about dirty clothes or clothes you've worn for maybe one day or one workout that didn't get too sweaty? Well, I used to always put it in the wash because I thought I've wanted once Let's wash it, I'm a clean person. But actually, you can wear it two or three times. So what I've been doing is hanging it on hangers in the sun in a place where there's a great airflow, and even exercise clothes can be worn a second or third time. So that is something really amazing. It kind of refreshes your clothes, you don't have the smell anymore, and it can be worn. Think about it next time son wash your clothes and think Can you wear it for one more day? Tim? Andrew, you mentioned earlier about solar lights at home, I wanted to extend that a little bit two facilities, people or people in charge in the office to take some responsibility for ensuring solar power in their facilities, particularly if they're about to move offices. And this idea came from my wife whose office is relocating. And they were asking, What do you need in the new office. And one of the things she said was, I want it to be solar powered, she asked for the office to have solar panels installed on the building to help offset the power consumption from the office. And you wouldn't do it if somebody didn't ask for it to be done. And then they went Ah, okay. So ask your government or corporate facilities, or ask your office that if you're about to move offices, ask your facilities department to look into at least some sort of solar, solar panels on new government buildings, etc, new office buildings, conference centers and things like that. Just ask us what's happening? And what are we doing about it? Be that advocate for green within the office? Nice. She's gonna, I'm going to try to get my next three points into one. Is there kind of interrelated? So it is a question about what happens with your money. Now, whether this is a money your pension fund, invests on your behalf or some other investments you might do are actually a question of who do you bank? So in average, about 7% of all pension fund money is invested in fossil fuels. So what I would like to add 7% 7%. Right, but that's that's lower than I thought. So that's, that's a good thing. Maybe there's some other numbers as well, this is something I've come across. So my advice to you is, ask your pension fund, what's their policy with regards to investing in coal? Also, other types of fossil fuel businesses, you know, ask them to make this transparent to you? And we'll have a look at that answer. If that doesn't quite pleased you, I'm sure you can find other people that doesn't quite please. So you can take collective action. And we're seeing this kind of activities happening around the world. Many people are telling to their pension funds that they no longer want to fund fossil fuels. Actually. Suzanna, can I ask you a question that about that. So in managed funds, organizations, ethical funds have been around for a while and ethical funds will be funds that don't invest in alcohol, tobacco, things like that they will be funds that that will invest in organizations that don't do anything that seems to be damaging to health? Do you know if ethical funds are now putting fossil fuel industry on their nogo list? Well, I think you're touching on the very, very big topic of ESG investing, which is kind of blowing up right now. For instance, a German Asset Management house is currently being investigated for greenwashing their products for for claiming that is to be more ethical and responsible than what they've potentially have been. So there are funds that exclude sectors, you know, tobacco, arms, things like that are the classical ones. And I think if people are excluding fossil fuels, then these tend to be marketed as some kind of ESG funds, but it's really a wild wild west out there as to what qualifies actually as risk responsible or ethical in my views, the the European Union taxonomy on finance is kind of the most advanced one in terms of saying, is this actually environmentally friendly, or not as an investment product or as a financial product, although there are certain controversies around that as well. In other countries, such taxonomies have not quite been implemented yet. But they should definitely follow in the next years so that it becomes easier for us as retail investors as anyone putting our money into any type of font to note, whether that actually will help the planet in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions or not actually, the core focus area in my keynote, climate positive investing. Yeah, no, it's a fascinating area. I've been reading loads on it lately. And there's, yeah, there's a lot of nonsense going on. So it's very confusing. So I'm looking forward to listening to the keynote. All right. And I, I know we're gonna get another finance conversation. So I will move on to a separate topic on that one, because it's a lot on the responsible investing side of things. The one here is to extend on an idea that was touched on is that every time we do any kind of maintenance or upgrade around the house is what can we do, where we can actually make a choice that will make it a little bit more sustainable. So like a classic one, we don't necessarily think of in sustainability terms. But when we put double glazing on Windows, even in a tropical climate, what that does is insulates the pool that you have in the room versus outside, we usually think of insulating glass in cold climates stop heat flowing out. But likewise, it also creates something here in warmer climates, looking at what's the carbon consumption and the carbon, the carbon sequestering that's happening in the concrete that's in your building, and what other sorts of choices you might be able to have. Because if you are in a place to be able to be involved at any level of the design, there's really much smarter design structures that are out there, that can do a huge difference. And from an economics point of view, you take like the full lifecycle of your time and a place and its resale value, give you some really, really good payback for making some of these choices. So that'd be a point of view of the home space, and other space to look at a good one. I like that. I have started a new hobby, which is in support of my new project of building a netzero house. So I'm taking a bit of a deep dive into heat bombs and solar and geothermal, Passive House design and whatnot. So stay tuned for more insights to come from that corner. Oh, that sounds really cool. All right, I'm going to change tack a bit. This is all about reducing our waste and really rethinking the festive season. And obviously the festive season means different things for different people. All of us are based in Asia and all of the different religious celebrations around the world part of our lives here right but you know, it's coming up. This is the time of year we've got duallie coming up in November. And about that, that's that shows an increase of about 30% in waste you all you have to do is look at some Christmas and big is around the world. And there's so much excess at that time of year when I go into a shopping mall, especially if I if I'm in Australia or the UK I feel actually quite sick at Christmas time watching the frenzy that people still chase the Christmas spirit with. It doesn't look very happy or festive. But it's all it's on all of us. We've really got to rethink these things like Chinese New Year as well. It's like 30% excess basically ends up as food waste. So it's all about reducing less stuff, focus on experiences, you know, people are gonna start looking for where they can buy wrapping paper type by wrapping paper, don't buy new stuff. Use newspapers start collecting newspapers and or brown paper that you get, you know, inside the packaging of boxes, there's all the stuff inside these boxes now, flatten that out and use that as your wrapping paper, it doesn't have to look pretty, that's just an idea. That's a marketing idea, right? The annual Christmas tree update. You know, one year it's red, the next year, it's white, the next year, it's blue people are out there buying these brand new decorations for every single Christmas tree every single year. And it's just out of control. Just focus on one, just have the same staff year after year, buy good quality, and we buy what you need, and make it a family conversation. So my husband and I have agreed, you know, we're not going to buy anything, but our kids still need something but they'll get one good big thing, only on the grounds that they then donate another good thing that they don't want anymore to to a charity or to somebody who needs it. So buy things that last and let's just sort of get our foot off this consumption. There's these factories all over China that is pumping out these cheap, nasty plastic decorations that are being shipped all around the world for all of the different plastic seasons that don't last, they end up in landfills and we can do something to change that every single one of us. I'd like to jump in on that one. So in our storeroom, we've got a bunch of boxes. One of them is our Christmas decorations box. One of them is our national day box. One of them is our Chinese New Year box, the three main ones, the Christmas decoration boxes, the big box. And it's the same stuff that goes up every year. And we might buy something new. But more often than not, there's so much stuff in that box. We're certainly not buying everything new. So the the tree, the plastic tree, but it gets dismantled and put back in the box. But actually, it's mainly metal. But anyway, it gets dismantle and put back in the box and then re assembled again every year. And it's completely fine. I mean, and I and I was like yeah, but I really would love the pine smell. I love that. So I bought some essential oil, just burn that. So it's great. And in for me, it's really easy. It's just like, Alright, let's grab the box. I mean, it's a very practical thing. Okay, last point, it's to do with the plastics that we have at our house that unfortunately we have, for some reason, because nothing is plastic free. So I'd like to speak about your plastic bags. I call this one white plastic bags and reuse when you get a plastic bag. For example, if you buy fruit at macro, or wherever you go and buy a brooch, you always end up with these plastic bags. So what we do is we just wipe it with a wet cloth and hang it somewhere to dry. And once it's dry, we fold it up like a samosa I'm sure you've all seen that way of folding bags, and then you can at least store it for another time. Another thing about plastic is use less cling wrap, cling wrap has made our lives very convenient. But it's definitely a single use piece of plastic that can't really be recycled. So instead of using cling wrap, cover your dishes with another plate, if you're going to be serving it pretty soon, or invest in Tupperware or some kind of glass containers with the lid. They also look beautiful to serve your fruit in so you could just put it in there, cut it up. And when your friends come around, just take off the lid, I think it will also be a good statement to show them as well that you're trying to avoid cling wrap and use other options. There are also these silicone lid sets that you can buy. I've seen them on lazada for about 189 bucks for a set of six. And they have different sizes. So you can cover your juice glass, your salad bowl or whatever you're doing, and then not use the cling wrap. So you know it's just about finding other things that you could use instead of cling wrap. And if you do have plastic bags, we use them. We've got the silicon covers, and they're great. Yeah, so they stretch out over anything. Yeah, also Ziploc bags like that used to be something that we used to use a lot. And now we've still got them, but we wash them out and we reuse them until they basically fall apart. So just a lot of people will have cupboards full of this stuff. So just start getting into the habit of washing and reusing. I think that's a really important one. My final one is cars. And so we don't have a car. But we use we use a couple of different things here. But one of them is blue car, which is 100% electric car that they've got dotted all around Singapore, that you can just use an app to book a car you go in and grab the car and you drive around and you wherever you park it at one of their stations everywhere. You plug it back in again and it's using its electric powered car that you it's cost sharing for electric cars. And they're also services were so that was blue SG and there's also services like Dr. La, Dr. la.com.sg I think it's and Dr. Lara is it car sharing, it's basically Airbnb for cars. So if you own a car, you can rent out your car to other people to to drive it and it's all insured and everything else so that not everybody needs to have a car and obviously if you can choose electric cars and things like that, that's better Oh hybrid cars, that's better. I can hire a little Honda Jazz for for you know, 40 bucks a day whereas if it was a rental car in Singapore, it might be 80 or$90. And, and the owner of the car at offset, there's their expenses, I don't need the car, I could book it for five days if I wanted it, I could do that. I can have a merch for 120 bucks a day instead of paying $170,000 for the thing and probably less cars on the road because I'm not going and buying one and it's less car sitting in car park so we don't have to kill a park to make a car park we can just be sharing cars and the final one on that one is better than all of that is depending on where you live with depending on the public transport and everything else. Right your council about making sure that we've got green buses in Singapore is pretty good with that. So there are a lot of their buses now our green buses that the new ones that they're replacing their old fleets with our green or hybrid, which is great, or one of them is some green diesel, which if Suzanna was still here, she would probably say that's nonsense. But anyway, there's some green buses which is also good. And the final thing is I invested in my first video Call for it since I've been in Singapore, I think and it's a scooter. It's not electric. It's just a scooter. It's push it with my foot. I've progressed to that Flintstones technology, but it is so much fun. And Zoe's on her scooter. Lydia has got a scooter, I've got a scooter, we bought one new scooter and two secondhand scooters, we bought the new scooter first. And then we decided Actually, we could probably find these secondhand, we did for 115 bucks less. So it was it great. And so now we're all scootering everywhere, which is awesome fun, they collapse up and you can hop on the bus. So that trip too, I'm too far from this, or I'm too far from that that's gone out the window, or I parked the electric car way over there. And it's too far from the shop that I want to go to. That's nonsense, you just hop on your scooter, from the electric car to the shop. But the whole point about car ownership. To me, it's like music ownership. Like just this week, I have done that in my entire CD collection that I've had for years that I've been dragging around the world with me, because I feel such deep love for my music, right. But I've been digital for years a decade. But it's crazy. But I just feel like I need to own it. And I think people are still got this sort of ownership mindset around cars. And we don't need to anymore. The sooner we accept that this whole idea of owning a car, taking it somewhere, parking it all day. So you can just drive at home and be sitting in traffic. The only good benefit these days is listening to podcast. There's no other benefits. So we've got to rethink it all. And I think that's a big part of it. So my final one is fashion. So last time we did the podcast, I talked about fast fashion. And I think this is a really critical piece that all of us contribute can contribute to so we all must buy less and buy better quality. And you know, I know that people will say from an affordability perspective, you can buy secondhand, as well. And if you don't already have a community set up a fashion swap community where you live, take advantage of each other's you know, so that you were always wearing feeling like you're wearing the latest stuff, learn how to sell and repair, or find someone who can like we were talking about before, and never throw your old clothes in the rubbish. There are so many ways that you can use the fabric, whether it's in your own home or outside your home, dynamic sewing circles community of ladies who are making a quilt, turn it into shopping bags. Rather than buying more shopping bags, we need to wear our clothes for longer. So last week, I said if you're using cotton, you need to use at least 150 times before you break even on its missions focus on natural fibers. Because when we're using like all the gym gear, everyone's wearing the T shirts everyone wearing, it's all microplastics going into our waterways. And we've really got to start moving away from the latest fashion shaming of celebrities for wearing the same thing twice. All that stuff's got to go. the fashion industry is contributing 10% of all of humanity's carbon emissions, and it's on us, we're the ones buying it. It's also the second largest consumer of the world's water. And not to mention at a local level, because most of the stuff that we buy, especially the cheap stuff is mainly in developing countries. So they're flushing toxins into the rivers and the land in those local communities. So let's get the whole fashion thing sorted out. So that's my final. Yeah, I love that one, Andrea, I think parents out there need to be leaders in this one in a really big way. Because we've been through, we've been sucked into the fashion thing before. And our kids are being sucked into it, if we can give them the sense of self esteem, that they're powerful without changing their outfit, that they're unique, without having to look different every time and how to shop sensibly with stuff that mixes and matches in a variety of ways that creates that diversity of look without which is usually going for the bit more conservative or easy to match colors, and not things that stand out because it's something that super stands out, you will remember that they wore that. But the little black dress, for example, is that it from Coco Chanel was the one that could be used again and again and again, as a statement and looked amazing and, and just a small addition changed everything. I love that. But I think parents have a really big responsibility to help their kids be strong enough from a self esteem perspective, to be able to stand up to the criticism or the teasing at any age that may come from not having the latest thing or wearing a hand me down. And also for parents to be aware that sometimes that experience even if it is going to happen for the kids is more character building than having a child that gets everything and has no resources to deal with it in a situation in life where they no longer are getting everything. And just to jump in there. I think a lot of clothing that we have or we maybe feel it's not fashionable or we bored with it because we've wanted so much. We should put it aside maybe on the left side of your wardrobe and leave it there for a few months and then revisit that side later and mix and match it with other clothes. And always remember the expression. It's not what you wear, it's how you wear it. So we need to become creative in what we wear and mix and match and add a little bit of different accessories or swap with a friend. And you'll be amazed that those clothes which you thought were not fashionable can actually look really great again with something else. Alright, so we're going to wrap it up, I hope everyone took away something we're gonna put this into a blog will probably be broken up into multiple blogs, but we're just trying to help with ideas. We're all trying our hardest to change our lifestyle. None of us are doing perfect job, right? None of us can. So that's what Suzanna, we said. Don't feel guilty. Just try hard to Tim did you want to just jump in? Yeah, I just want to just read one little tiny piece, which really goes with your comment of how each one of us is to make a little bit of a ripple. And how don't think of that ripple being pointless givers and takers exists in this world. One creates a ripple while the other holds pebbles, for a better world, be a giver, and create a ripple take action that expands beyond you and makes a positive impact somewhere else in the world, then encourage others to create a ripple too, because ripples dissipate unless supported. And support creates waves. And making positive waves gets noticed and motivates positive change. And positive change creates a better world. And that starts or continues with your ripple. And to do that, you'll need to throw in some of your pebbles. Yeah, I love that. I just launched this little video which talks about how we all need to be ripple makers. If billions of us do that, then we can really start to see a difference. And then you wrote that right? Yeah, I read that. Because I've also got a chapter in common courage about givers and takers, which is another take on that dude, it's so important that every single one of us believes in our ability to make a difference that it doesn't feel like our single action does, but it does, if enough of us do it right. So one of the great ways to sort of really create those ripples is to share your successes and failures. So I asked my community on Facebook a question about a problem I couldn't solve. And all of these different people came back and gave me their different solutions. So share your successes and failures. So you can learn from your community, create conversations, wherever you can, it's not just digital ones face to face. Obviously, when we can see each other again, people are looking for where to start. And this is often the biggest struggle that most people have, they don't know where to start, this podcast is about showing you some of the ways that you can start but when you find the place that you're comfortable with, share it with your community. And that's how we start to create ripples of change, because other people learn, they become inspired. So you grow community impact, and you grow national impact. And then it becomes a global movement of massive change. And that's what we're all working towards. I believe that it's the best hope that we have if we want to reduce the impact of the crisis that's ahead of us, where it's not just on all of us. But if we all change how we buy, how we live, how we shop, it changes the way businesses are run, which changes the way that they operate, which changes the trajectory that we're currently on at the moment. So there's lots of multiple ways that we have to approach this. But I think this is the contribution that we can make. And we can feel empowered, that we're going to make a difference. So that's the real really big message. And I really want people to believe out there in the world. All right, he goes agree, totally agree, it is up to all of us, we must not think it's someone else's job or someone else's responsibility. We're all in this world together. We all buying things and consuming things and wasting things. So we all need to take responsibility and make sure that it's all handled in an effective way. If we want humanity to continue and everyone to be healthy and happy. Sounds idealistic. But it is that way. So we need to get on with it be the change you're waiting for. I mean, that saying is now it's now and something that Andrea posted lately about a man in Singapore collecting rubbish in the park, I loved it because the tagline was lead the world in a better condition than when you we can all do that with whatever we do, whether it's the way we speak to someone, whether it's the rubbish we pick up, whatever we do, whether it's straightening the cushions or straightening the mat, try and leave something a little bit better. And look at it afterwards and know that you've done something, you've made a difference, and somebody will notice it. So there you go, there's the second one, I'm sure there's going to be many more we're definitely going to do a business one. Next I want to do a traveling tourism one as well. So we might look at bringing some new people in as well. Thank you so much for spending this time with us. And we will see you soon. So thanks, guys really appreciate you being part of this and supporting it. Thank you. It's been fun. Goodbye. Thanks. Bye. Thank you so much for listening to the second installment of how we can all contribute to making the world a better place and we can and if we all put the energy into cleaning up our own lives that will roll out and have a bigger impact in the world directly with our communities, our families and the needs of the world world as businesses have to Adjust to how we change our behavior. There's 45 ideas in this podcast 22 in the in the first podcast, have a listen to that if you haven't already, the thing that people always say to me is they struggle where to start. And so that was the idea behind this. We're going to do more podcasts. We're going to look at business we're going to look at travel and tourism. And I just want to say huge thanks to Tim, Michelle, Susanna and Anna for joining me on this ride. I don't want to do this by myself. So I'm really appreciate you guys joining the road. Samantha geiko, who is transcribing our rambles into fantastic blogs, we publish two we've got another one coming. And this should be another two or three out of this. Priscilla Joseph, who's been my assistant for quite a few years now. And she's taking on the role of podcast editing and Priscilla, you're doing a great job man. I really really really appreciate it. Gary Kraus from legend, music Phuket he's composed all of the original music and I absolutely adore it. So thank you, Gary, if you want an introduction, I'm happy to make it and I just wanted to say a final thank you to my husband and my two boys, Lex and Jax. They give me the space to do this work. They support me they believe in me they believe in the mission. And if they didn't, it would be very difficult for me to do it. So my three loves Thank you so much. Thank you everyone for listening. If you like the podcast and what I'm doing, please do rate and review it it's going to help if you like the content, the best thing you can do is share it with your community so that we can get the message out wider. That's called being part of the giving economy. Don't ask permission to share great content, just get on it and do it. So thanks and we'll be back soon with more. Let's talk about the stock to say all of this stuff. Common common