ANTHROPY25: Andy Jasper - Why We Need Regeneration Instead Of Sustainability

So actually, you think that sort of human existence needs to be an act of creation, not just of sustaining?

I think we have— we do so much to destroy, and we could do equal amount of effort and absolutely make.

Welcome to a special Anthropocene miniseries of Sustainability Solved, recorded live at the Eden Project.

Recorded live from a rainforest. Which was amazing. And we were down there for 2 and a half days, and one of the things we managed to do was actually track down the CEO of the Eden Project itself, a lovely man called Andrew Jasper, who's actually someone I've been working with over the last sort of 3 years in his life before becoming CEO of Eden. And I'm hoping to carry on working with him now he's the CEO of Eden on some various things. But he's just a really wonderful, positive guy.

Can I just, can I just jump in, because if anyone's been listening to this, we've had Andy Middleton, who you introduced as a friend of mine. You've just said that Andy Jasper is a friend of yours. I would like to point out that, A, it was a coincidence that Andy Middleton was there, and wasn't a coincidence that Andy Jasper was there. That would be— that'd be a strange coincidence. But we're not just interviewing our friends. I just thought— I would just thought I'd put that out there.

That's absolutely true. We, we only interviewed 2 of our friends, other 3, but, um, there But then everyone became off. I'd like to think so. I'd like to think so. That's a very sweet sentiment there. But Andy's amazing because he has this wonderful positivity. He, I mean, he'll tell you about his life journey, but what he really said and what I really took away from it, and I think this is something that I really actually held to my heart having worked with him for a while, is seeing sustainability as an act of regeneration. and not just maintenance. And I think that's where we haven't sold this enough. It's like, actually, we can use sustainability as a way of making this a better place, a better world, not just stopping some sense of decline. And I think for me, if there's one thing that you get out of this conversation, it's that. Use sustainability as this transformation for regeneration for good.

Almost bringing— it's mitigation, isn't it? It's bringing mitigation as opposed to adaptation into the mix.

Well, I think it's about— no, it's about restoration, because mitigation still has this position of, you know, stopping something being negative. I actually think that true sustainability, like the true interconnected regenerative role that we're talking about, sustainability for both society and planet, because we're not going to be kinder to each other until we're kinder to the planet. Let's just be clear about that. We need a You know, we need a better relationship amongst humans before we are gonna have a better relationship to nature. That actually this could be about getting things better, not just stopping decline.

And actually, do you remember at the end of the podcast he started asking us questions as well?

He wants that. Yeah, he turned the tables. Let's just put it that way. Suddenly I felt like we had the, like we were being interviewed.

I know.

Which was great. You know, we love to chat.

So it was all fine.

It was a lovely setting.

It was a lovely setting.

It was a lovely chat. do stick around because, uh, actually I think it was, uh, it's a good listen. Good morning, Andy Jasper. It's lovely to have you here. Could you tell us who you are and a little bit about yourself?

Yeah, well, I'm Andy Jasper. I'm the CEO here at the Eden Project, and I've literally had my, probably the, what I think is one of the best careers in the world, working in gardens, traveling around the world, um, helping make botanic gardens a more beautiful and greener place.

And now you two Know each other from before, don't you?

We do, we do. Well, we know each other from now still. All right, all right.

But context-wise, I think it's really—

Yeah, we've been scheming on a project, haven't we, Andy, for a few years, um, trying to, trying to build a, a wild park, um, at an undisclosed location to encourage the connection between people and nature, um, and tap into the wildness inside everybody. Yeah.

Which is as important a part of rewilding as anything else.

Yeah, exactly. So we're scheming, and then Andy got this wonderful job. But before, where were you before here?

I was Director of Gardens and Parklands for the National Trust, and before that I was Director of the Investment Programme for the RHS, Royal Horticultural Society.

So amazing sort of varied career.

Yeah.

And how have you found Anthropy? Because this is your first Anthropy.

Oh my God, it's so amazing. I mean, all the people are just kind of all aligning. You've got people from business, politicians, opinion formers, green organizations, NGOs, I mean, young emerging leaders. I'm hoping you'll get to see some of them. There's 250 emerging leaders and they are seriously bright. I mean, out of all the talks that I've moderated, every single emerging leader comes well researched, they've done thinking before they come, they've got notes, they Talk, back everything up with facts. It's absolutely fantastic.

The young woman that you introduced me yesterday to that started a business at 16.

Oh yeah.

She's brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.

Literally, they're going to be running the country and company as well.

What is the one thing about sustainability that really energizes you at the moment?

Okay, I've got a bit of an issue about sustainability. Yeah. And the issue is that I don't believe you should be sustaining everything. You know, it implies that everything should be sustained at a certain level. I like the principles of ensuring zero waste and zero carbon and all that sort of stuff, but actually I'm a real believer in regenerative processes before sustainability. Once you've regenerated it, then you can sustain it. But actually so much of the world needs a massive sort of boost and an acceleration before you can sustain it at that level. And I know that's a bit of a literal phrase, take on the phrase sustainability, but I truly believe it. If you look at Eden Project, a completely barren landscape, the most inert substance known to man is china clay, can't grow anything in it. And actually, if we wanted to sustain it as it was, it would just very slowly— nature would come back. But what we've done is really accelerated, and look at it. Global garden.

So actually you think that the sort of human existence needs to be an act of creation, not just of sustaining?

I think we have, um, we do so much to destroy and we could do equal amount of effort and absolutely make.

And that's veering into degrowth, aren't you? And post-growth or whatever you want to call it.

Possibly, possibly.

Yeah, you are. And I think it's an interesting transition that you're talking about. And with that's come up a few times in conversations with people around how can we carry on just extracting, extracting, extracting when actually we should be evolving.

Yeah, yeah. If you think of it, nature has no waste. All nature design, there's no waste at all. Everything we do, we create all these byproducts and things like that we don't need to. And I think, um, you know, looking carefully at the processes and looking at how you can regenerate things. Start with the soil. It's absolutely incredible. And that's, yeah, that's a belief of mine. I'm not sure if it's controversial or not, but—

Well, no, I don't think it is because, I mean, growth has been, you know, growth has been talked about relentlessly at this event and is being talked about relentlessly by the government. I mean, while we've been here, huge announcements about pushing growth because growth is down. But actually there is a massive tension between growth and sustaining or regenerating. And I, and, and, and I think quite a few people sat in the chair where you are now have pointed at the inherent contradiction there. And are we doing enough to actually address that?

I'm not anti-growth actually.

No, no.

Regeneration is accelerating growth, and, uh, but you do it in the right areas to ensure that you're benefiting as much as you possibly can— society, the economy, uh, ecology.

Yeah, and there lies the problem with the word degrowth and post—

yeah, well, it's a negative thing, isn't it?

That's why people don't like the word, because what you're saying is true.

And anyway, maybe it's regrowth.

Oh man, I don't want to be in another conversation about what we call bloody regrowth, to be honest with you. I'm so sick and tired of it.

But language matters and stories matter, you know, and, uh, you know, really it does matter.

Leave that to the experts.

Isn't that the theme of here?

Yeah, stories really matter. And obviously Eden's a storytelling, um, You know, really in one way it's a storytelling venture on one, on one level. Could you tell us a little bit where Eden is? I know you've only been in post for about 6 months. Yeah. Where is Eden at?

Yeah. Before I went overseas and did my work, I used to work at the Eden Project as head of research and evaluation. Um, so I know this place really well and, um, I understood, or we developed a series of metrics to help understand who comes, where they come from, what they think of the place. Also look at everything from the carbon reporting. We did very early sort of, you know, full triple bottom line reporting in those days. And we also— every product or everything that was developed was tested against the market. And then also looking at the economic and social regeneration that comes from a place like Eden all around. So all of those things are always in my mind when I'm looking at where we are right now. And Eden Project is now 24 years old. It's still the 5th most visited admission-charging garden visitor attraction— that's a bit of a mouthful— but in the country. So it's incredibly successful, but at the same time, it used to be a huge market leader. It used to be drawing so many millions of people to holiday in Cornwall, and it still draws some, but not anywhere near what it used to. So right now we're, um, sort of tapping into the market in Cornwall rather than actually still—

Driving the market in Cornwall.

And for me, that's a real ambition, to get us back as this absolute market leader. And we're going to do that because we've also got all of these things that we've been doing around the world. We've got an Eden Project in China that's going to open on the 28th of June this, this year. We've got a huge restoration project in Costa Rica which is Just off the charts amazing. It's 65,000 hectares. Now, it's hard to imagine how large a piece of land that is, but think of Truro and then go left. That's 65,000 hectares.

What, the whole— all the way to Land's End?

All the way to Land's End.

Wow.

And what's happened is that there's a restoration project where they had slash-and-burn farming, very sort of instant cash crop type farming, which has now moved to a much more sustainable agricultural system. Getting rid of the boundaries between each of the ranches. There's about 58 ranches across that, so animals can roam and that sort of stuff. Focusing on crops that are things like cacao, so chocolate, fantastic, grows very well in Costa Rica. But it actually allows for deciduous forests to grow around it. And then what that brings is all the nature that comes with it, not just the, you know, beautiful toucans and macaws and things that you You always imagine, you know, close your eyes, you imagine Costa Rica, that's what it's full of. But now you've got the pumas, the apex predators, and you've also got the, um, uh, you know, the insect life, the, um, you know, it all comes. The most amazing and beautiful romantic thing is that the rivers are now running in that area where they were— most of them were dried up. So that kind of project for me is just incredible. How long we still do it in the Eden Project, You know, should we still be running that? I don't think so. I think we should be giving that to the community and find another one to do.

But I mean, what's the economic— what's the economics underpinning that extraordinary regeneration? And just if you don't know your geography, that's Truro down to Land's End is what, about 30, 40, 30 miles? Yeah, 30 miles of a peninsula on the edge of Britain is— that's the sort of scale of thing we're talking about.

Precisely. And it's in Costa Rica, it's the Nicoya Peninsula, and it's a very similar sort of piece of land.

So what's the economics underpinning that transformation?

Yeah, so the economics was that Eden Project and some donors front-loaded that with cash, and then the idea is that it becomes self-sustaining with a crop that's very valuable like cacao. There's— yeah, it's an interesting one actually, and it'll probably end up being given to another NGO to operate in that area, but we're so proud of that. So you've got that, and then you've got projects up in the north. You've got Morecambe, a beautiful Eden project. It's not going to be just a sort of biome full of plants. There's a whole connection to the Morecambe Bay with the rhythms of life, the— what, you know, the tide goes out, the tide comes in, the incredible biodiversity that's there just in that sort of, you know, few miles there. Um, there's— and then the fact that actually the thing that controls all of that are the celestial influences of the moon and that sort of thing. So it's a very interesting thing. That will regenerate Morecambe like crazy. So that's going to open in 2024.

This is big business, big expenditures.

Oh yeah, £100 million project, that one.

Are you sleeping at night?

I might not look like I am. And then we've got one in Scotland as well.

Dundee, is that right?

Yeah, in Dundee, and it's Eden Project Scotland, and that'll be delivered.

I'm very excited. I live just north of Edinburgh. I'm very excited about that.

Yeah, so we've got all of these amazing things, but my core focus is actually focus on the core product, that Cornwall. And then, so, you know, I guess it's like breathing. You breathe out and you breathe in. And at the moment we need to breathe in a bit just to stabilise the business and allow us to deliver those incredible projects.

So what skill or expertise—

Yeah, sorry.

I'm trying not to hit the table, Jaz, but we did.

Was I doing that with my elbow?

No, your hand.

Oh, okay.

It's fine, don't worry, it's fine. It wasn't too bad. I think they would have. He would savage.

I'm watching. Savage would come for you if you dare. I might just sit like this.

No, no, no, no, no.

They'll tell you off for that as well.

Come on, Jasper. I thought you'd had training for this stuff.

Okay. Right.

What skill expertise will be the most valuable for business in the coming decade?

Oh, confidence and optimism. Literally, those two things are traits. that I often see, you know, you need all the business skills, the analytics, and all that sort of stuff. But what you really need is the confidence to actually make decisions and an optimistic outlook, which will allow you to make those decisions confidently. That's the—

I mean, I think I've learned something working with you is your optimism and confidence is off the charts.

Is there a scale? Yeah, there is a scale.

You've blown it, unfortunately.

Jaspersian scale.

And that's— and, and so you think this is absolutely cool, and do you think that then spins into a positivity about the way you frame problems, the way you talk about problems, communicate problems, and then solve problems?

It allows you to make decisions quickly, which means that you can actually move past something that is really not going to deliver anything, and you then focus on the things that actually allow, allow you to align the team to deliver something that's— and, you know, 80% of the time you'll get it right, 20% of the time you probably won't. Most of the time you'll have only 80% of the information that you need to make that decision. So don't spend loads of time finding that last 20%. Just if instinctively you know if it's right or wrong. Speed is everything.

Be prepared to make some mistakes.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Failure is okay. Yeah, it really is. That's how you learn.

Yeah, there's an amazing project to try and make a circular economy in Amsterdam, right? They're trying to make a circular city and they've massively reduced their use of raw new virgin building materials and emissions and all this. And one of the things they did early on is started 200 projects, circular economy projects, just funded them. Yeah. And half of them were absolute garbage and fell over. Yeah. You know, a chunk of them did all right, some of them are pretty good, and some of them are actually gangbusters. It's like, that's what we need. That's how nature solves it.

It's also how innovation is like natural selection. Yes, exactly.

Yeah, natural selection and innovation.

Yeah.

So you talk about confidence as a super skill. How do you get that?

Oh God, it's a difficult one. But I mean, I, having met 250 emerging leaders, I would actually get them involved with a lot of the decision-making and help give them the confidence with your experience. It's the whole thing of diversity on your board and diversity in the workforce.

And a bit of naivety as well, isn't it? Like, you know, you know, as in like genuinely eyes-open naivety of like, I know this is a slightly stupid question, but can't we do X?

Yes.

You know, why don't we try Y? Oh, there's never such a thing as a stupid question. Yeah, honestly. Yeah.

In one word, what's the biggest barrier to progress?

Oh, lethargy. Lethargy. Absolutely. I get it.

It drives me nuts.

Absolutely drives me nuts.

And what do you think the big mistakes the sustainability movement have made over the last 20 years?

It's a really difficult question because everybody wants to do the right thing. Honestly, they really do. And it's hard to pinpoint mistakes because what you want— I mean, I could carry on in the theme and just say, you know, they're not making confident decisions, they're slowing things down.

But maybe we've got plenty of other questions. Don't worry about this. We don't use that one.

Fine. I actually am really looking forward to asking the young leaders that question.

Oh yeah, please. Yeah, because they will say it's all to do with politics and not enough politicians. I guarantee it.

Okay, but here we go, here's a good one. Because how big is like your turnover, your organization?

Oh yeah, it's a £25 million business.

£25 million business, excluding or including what's going on in the other parts?

Oh no, all the capital stuff is separate. Yeah, so £25 million. Yeah, and it costs about that to run.

But what 3 things are you and your organization doing at the moment to further reduce your emissions?

Oh yeah, brilliant. Oh well, thank you, because we're doing quite a lot. We've Geothermal. We sunk a hole 5 kilometers deep to create— well, in fact, the place we're sitting in is heated by geothermal energy. And we're very lucky because we've got decomposing granite beneath our feet, and that heats up when it decomposes. So it's one of those very lucky places where you can, you know, tap into that. So what I want though from that is limitless hot water. What I want is like an innovation park just focusing on businesses that need and require heat. So maybe Cornish sea salt, or maybe seaweed drying, or seed drying, or— in fact, one of the ones that we're just working on right now is a rum distillery, which I think is going to be quite cool. And we could have a great display in the sugar plantation that we've got in that part of the biome.

And some rum.

How very Cornish as well.

But I remember coming here and talking I spoke to Tim Smit about 10, 12 years, 15 years ago.

Yeah.

And they were— he was— they just starting to think about getting that hole in the ground. They're about to get going. How big is the energy production out of that?

Well, it produces— I don't know the exact kilowatt hours. You have to ask somebody else that question. But what it does, it produces about 75 degrees Celsius water. And what that has done is rapidly reduce our carbon emissions from heating these biomes, heating the offices, heating, you know.

So you have a district heating loop and you can just heat the whole thing. It just goes back down, warms up.

Just like the Russian heating situation, but Russia burns all that coal and stuff. We have a beautiful, you know, the earth is just giving us this heat, which is amazing. So that's one thing. We've got loads of solar PV. All of our vehicles in our fleet are electric as well. We've got all of our computers are recycled computers. We have a very green cloud storage thing with our IT systems. But actually, probably the biggest impact that we can have though, and the most positive thing we do for carbon, is to influence people to go home and do something different at home. Have a PV panel, buy an electric car, you know, those sorts of things.

And I was listening to you talking about that, and I was trying to rack my brains. We used to go every summer to a place in Machynlleth in West Wales.

Oh yeah.

the Renewable Energy Centre, but it's not called the Renewable Energy Centre.

CAT, Centre for Alternative Technology.

Of course it was. And they've just recently closed down.

I know, I can't believe it.

But there is obviously an appetite for it. But bringing that into the Eden Project and that education piece could really be really, really important, particularly with Morecambe. Yeah, because you're scattered around the UK as well.

And for me, it's also doing all of that stuff with a smile on your face and a bit of fun and just helping people see Actually, it's easy and it also makes your life better and it just makes you feel happier.

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And you know, obviously Eden does loads of great things. This is a sort of a counter-question to that. What are some of the most harmful things that your business does? That's a great question.

Really great question. Okay, the real difficult thing for us is, you know, I said influencing visitors is probably the most positive. It's equally one of the most negatives because influencing people to come here, that's what they need to do. They come and they produce carbon when they do it. And actually, it's one of the most difficult things to tackle, to try and influence for somebody to come by public transport or walk or run or horse or skateboard or whatever they want to do. Um, because when they're on—

skateboarding is gone, funny enough.

When people are on, on holiday, um, the great thing is they actually fill the car because it's usually a family. It's like 4 or 5 people in the car and things like that. But it really is the number one top, um, most difficult thing.

And what do you— and obviously Morecambe is a, is a large development. you know, 100 million, you said. I mean, that's going to produce an enormous amount of carbon in building. I mean, how do you square the embodied carbon? Yeah, sort of versus that, you know, the need to, you know, deploy the message. Is there a real tension there, isn't there?

Well, the great thing is, um, there are— so we, you know, when this place was being built, there were technologies that we have now that weren't available at that point. So with the new, um, one, we can really push the boundaries. Uh, we've an aspiration for BREEAM Excellent, which is actually incredibly expensive to deliver, but it's really, really important. And then for Eden Project, it's exactly where we should be going. I could give you the carbon calculation at some point, but we're also in, in REBA Stage 2 right now. We're about to go into REBA Stage 3. So as we go into that detailed design, more information will come out of that. And of course, as Chief Exec, I'll be pushing and pushing and pushing on behalf of the visitors and the people of Morecambe to make sure it's as green as it possibly can be.

Yeah, I was with the senior partner of London office talking about— we talked about Eden in Morecambe, and I was there talking about circular economy and introducing him to some of the circular economy providers that we're starting to talk to. And he was— I think I saw a spark in his eye. Yeah. And I think you as a client need to tell them what you're expecting from the circular economy.

Oh, great.

Yeah, you need to say it.

I mean, it is—

you need to know that you need to push them.

Yeah, right. Okay.

You need to set the ambitions and the than the targets, because you could do all of your washrooms completely secondhand. Yeah, without even breaking a sweat. I could get on the phone now, I could get you all your washrooms next week, all secondhand.

Mr. Luxon, thank you very much.

You know, because the problem is unless people do it, it doesn't happen, you know. So, you know, brilliant.

And that's part of the education piece as well, because that means more and more people will start to do it.

Yeah, there's also a thing with the site at Morecambe where there's a huge amount of, um, uh, sort of retention concrete retention walls and things. And I know that they're absolutely trying to incorporate that into the design of the foundations of the biome.

Get one thing to do 2 things.

Yeah, in the same way that Eden Project Scotland has got this huge old gasometer, you know, these big circular drums basically. We're effectively going to put a lid on the top, big biome over the top, fill it with plants, and it's going to be super beautiful. But that is absolutely a fundamental part of the reason why we like the, the site, so we can adapt and reuse that building.

Brilliant.

Building for good, projects for good in the widest possible sense.

Yes. If we were to significantly reduce climate emissions as a nation or globally, what would be the number one thing that you would do?

God, um, being a horticulturalist, I'd say plant more gardens, honestly.

Brilliant.

Fix the soil.

Fix the soil.

Focus on your soil. There's so much you can do just keeping the carbon in the soil. It really is incredible. Um, yeah, and I'm very interested in algae. I don't know if you know about that.

Algae is amazing.

They can read these fossil— um, um, the— not fossil, the, um, coral.

Yeah, absolutely.

So we are using in one of our projects, we are using tiles in all the bathrooms that are grown in 60 hours. You put aggregate You put ammonia and you put bacteria and, and it grows tiles.

Okay, brilliant.

Completely unheated, 95% reduction in carbon emissions over porcelain flooring tiles, cost about £80-90 a square meter. It's happening. Like, that stuff—

I get really excited about that. And I think for me, this— there's a role at the Eden Project to display that sort of stuff.

Absolutely.

Because a lot of it's very innovative, but people won't know about it unless you start to use it. showing it off here, you know, if you've got it, flaunt it. We should be—

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Making electricity and energy through algae.

Yeah.

It's amazing.

Well, it's the sequestering of carbon that's absolutely off the charts and making protein and omega oils and all those sorts of things. It's absolutely amazing.

The other one is hemp.

Yep.

But I can't believe how much hemp comes up in so many random places. They make electricity out of hemp. How that works, I don't know.

You can grow your own buildings now. It's incredible. But the thing I have to say, um, I don't know if I should say this out loud, but I'm going to say it. One of the things I was disappointed to see gone from the Eden Project was our cannabis plantation. And you probably know that there's about 22,000 uses of hemp and one of them is illegal.

Yes.

And it was just a great way of helping people understand that just by seeing it planted here.

So that might be coming back.

Bring it back, because I just can't believe how versatile that plant is. It is the most versatile plant in the the world.

Hemel Hempstead, that's what it's named after. Oh my God, because they used to grow huge amounts of it for ropes. Yeah, Royal Navy. Yeah, yeah, huge amounts of hemp for rope making.

Wow.

So that's all gone.

Uh, right, what I would like to ask you though is you've been talking to so many businesses and you've been the center of Anthropologie, haven't you, as CEO? You've— look, what is your take from businesses? How do you feel they are from a scale of 1 to 10 with regards to, um, you know, sustainability?

Okay, I've got that. Um, there are 2 answers actually. One, the businesses that are here and the people that are here, I would say are about 8.5 to 10 because they are literally— um, we're preaching to the choir. Yeah, a lot of these businesses are here because they actually believe in growth and sustainable growth and regenerative growth, regenerative governance, and all of those sorts of things. They literally are the right people in the right place to have those conversations. If I talk about all businesses, yeah, 2.5, 3.

How did you feel about having Kemi Badenoch here yesterday, given her recent comments around net zero and, you know, Yeah, rightly or wrongly, you know, it's an interesting, it's an interesting position, isn't it?

Well, on the one hand, I was absolutely flattered because, um, I thought, okay, she's got a very controversial position, not a position that I share at all or anyone at the Eden Project shares. Um, the fact that she wants to be at a place like this with this kind of debate going on in the background and, um, and wants to have that conversation I was actually slightly impressed because I thought, you know, if if we ever dreamt of a great use of this place to have a forum for sustainability and a place for spirited debate, brilliant. In fact, she didn't really have debate was a bit of a difficult one. But you know, I don't want to sort of dis it. In reality, it's so funny. I had a director general of a very large charity come up to me and say. What's actually going on? Why have you got her here? And then literally as I was talking to her, um, I had another person come up, put a hand on my shoulder. Ballsy move that you've got her here to have this conversation. And I thought, that's actually kind of sums up exactly the way I feel about, um, this. I think it's the right thing. I wish we had more, um, more time and more debate.

I think would be my start at the beginning.

Yeah, I feel it's start at the beginning. Yeah, she's made a point, and actually next year it will be easier to get someone else because she's done this.

I also— I did feel quite proud that we actually had that situation here as well.

No, I think you should be, quite rightly so. Um, we've been here now for 2 days. We've got the last half day here. What are you going to take away having seen all these talks? What are you going to do differently?

If there's one thing, um, I've You know, I've got a real sort of mission for better diversity within the organization. And the one thing that I am already doing differently, and I'm a real person for action, is engaging these emerging leadership leaders. And I want to, well, watch this space in 2026. But I've got something that we're hatching, a plan that's going to be absolutely off the charts incredible with those emerging leaders.

And next year we can talk about it.

I just love it. When we're here next. When we're here next.

You guys are always welcome. Can I ask you guys a question?

Oh, I see. Turning the table.

That wasn't—

whoa.

Yeah, we'd love it. Come on.

It's not scripted.

I can't do it. Go on. I'm a bit anxious. You're a bit anxious?

I'm a bit anxious. No, no. I mean, you've been interviewing everyone. You must have done, what, 25, 30 interviews or something? I don't know how you're going to edit it all together.

Not my problem. Not my problem.

Stick to the savage.

Oh, well done. And they're smiling still. Um, but yeah, I mean, you've done all of this. What is your outtake from this? Because you've probably got a better overview than anyone else, and you haven't been in these debates or anything, but you know the output.

I think that's a wonderful question. Thank you for asking it. Um, I think, I think a couple of things really came across to me. One was talking to a woman called Dr. Victoria Hurth, and she was talking about going back to basics to really understand why sustainability of both people and planet matter. Like, what is the point? What is the purpose? And she was sort of saying we haven't got clarity on that.

We—

I don't think people have a direct connection to the genuine underlying point, which is about people having healthy, well-lived, you know, a, you know, a best, you know, a good quality life, you know.

Yeah.

And, and really trying to ram home that connection that we're saving the planet and the biodiversity because it will make you happier and you have a better lived life.

Yes.

And, and, and ultimately trying to refocus it back to that. You know, that was a moment of, of real kind of eye-opening. And having a wonderful conversation yesterday with a lovely lady called Bemi, and she was saying that we don't have a metric that talks about how much the planet is going to bite back onto us rather than the impact that we're going to have on the planet. And actually that was a moment of like the penny drop of like amongst many, but a real moment of, of course, we've always framed it from our, our impact on the planet and we never, we sort of vaguely said, oh, it's going to kick back. But yeah, there's nothing that, you know, there's nothing that really cements that moment. And actually that was like, whoa, there's something really in there.

Yeah. Yeah. How about you?

I'd say that going on from that, conversations with the chairperson for Anglian Water.

Oh yes.

There is a systemic problem with the infrastructure that we have, and I think that that goes into this. We do need to change things around, and I think we've got so many thought leaders, and I'm hoping that we start to push the boundaries, we start to think about how we're going to do that. And that comes down to— there's been 2 very common themes— is communicate community and communication.

Yeah.

And that's storytelling. But if we can do that and push those boundaries, then I think—

Is there something about leadership from, um, government as well?

Government's not come up huge amounts.

Okay, I'm going to ask you a question then. So if you were in government today, what would you do from what you've taken out of Anthropie? What would you do as your top priority, or what would you think the overarching Is it infrastructure?

I'm not used to having hard questions.

Oh no, I'm just thinking.

I think I would— I think I would be— something that's come out is about hyperlocalism as well, is about creating very locally specific solutions. Yeah, I would be creating and empowering local decision-making through, you know, people's assemblies, people's parliaments, whatever you want to do to take a holistic look at the hard decisions that we've got to make. Yeah, and I would do that regionally because then it's about you and your neighbors solving your own problems. And then I would use that ground-up information to start to create a countrywide strategy, which might vary across the country because they've got slightly different problems.

Yeah.

But I think to be having an edict centrally down has failed.

Yeah.

So then you kind of build a— you build a sort of people-led information, people-led sort of ideas up.

Yeah.

And actually, that's been another theme talking about how we rewire the economy, that actually you need the granular data.

Yeah.

To start understanding the impacts of what you do. And I think that goes for people as well as products.

So thinking of that hyperlocalism, I know you do a lot of work on community housing and housing that's good for the community and good for the economy, good for everything. And I'm just thinking, is that hyperlocalism the secret to the success with housing development?

Yes, 100%. I mean, that's what I was talking about in a session yesterday, on Wednesday, and I'm talking about a session later. 100%. You know, we have disconnected people from the act of building houses and Guess what? People don't want them. So the NIMBYism grows out of the lack of fairness because people are not benefiting from that. And there is a lot of wealth being generated through house production. So we need to get a way of the wealth being generated from house production, land, house building back into communities. And we also need to get a way that the houses being built are suitable for those communities' needs, not the needs imposed by a centralized large house builder.

Yeah.

That has got to change. So I think hyperlocalism really seems to be a theme that, that has come across, but in a modern way because we have data and communication. That doesn't mean it's like NIMBYism. It doesn't mean that it's— it doesn't impact the center. In fact, it has to, but it's about getting the neural network of our country firing properly to make better decisions.

Yeah, and I love the fact that you're using biomimicry in your descriptions because I think it's absolutely fundamental. I always talk about the economy, you know, economist and statistician in training, and I always talk about the ecology of the—

Yes, industrial ecology is one of the most wonderfully exciting things. I went to that Helensborg or something in— yeah, with the coal fire. So you could do that here with your— you've got a heat source now.

Thank you.

You can generate, as you were saying, you can replicate that model, which would be such a great project.

Yeah.

I'll get my pen and paper out, Andy. We'll start sketching.

I was going to say, cut the camera and we'll actually start talking. How about you? Anything you want to add to that?

I would say start putting the right drivers in place in order to orchestrate that change.

Yeah.

And that could mean investment, it could mean better compliance in the right areas, it could mean— I just think that— and actually, there was someone that— someone said something very off, um, camera, which was a company called Nourish, and it is a news feeds that is completely independent of— and I think we need more of that. I think we are in an echo chamber. We've told to leave our silos at the door, and that's because we're all in echo chambers, and we just need to be listening to everyone. And that's— and we're not doing it because we don't have the right drivers in place.

And there's something about basic human sort of kindness and respect and all that sort of stuff that actually just unlocks it. And the key to that is also have a great bit of fun while you're doing it. And that is what this conference is so great at.

Sustainability has been so posthumously— I mean, I mean, really. Andy, I think we could sit here and talk all day.

I love it.

I've got to go and give a talk. I'm sure you've got to go and host the great—

I'm not doing anything today.

Mate, thank you so much for coming and chatting to us. That was wonderful.

Thanks for doing this podcast.

And actually, I think it's your podcast now. I mean, the way you turned that around.

Thank you, guys. Cheers, dude.