ANTHROPY25: Joanna Yarrow - The Importance Of Joy

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I think what energizes me is that, you know, nonetheless, in this time of big challenges, There are so many people and organizations coming together in different ways to look at this and come up with ideas.

Welcome to a special Anthropy miniseries, Sustainability Solved, recorded live at the Eden Project. This episode talks to a lovely woman called Joanna Yarrow, who runs a company called Human Nature Places, who are a probably One of the most forward-thinking developers, I'd say, in the country, and they're looking to do a large-scale project down in Lewis. She has a really interesting background, doesn't she, Will?

Yeah, she does. She does. She has worked for IKEA amongst other organisations, and some of the stories that she told us about her first 24 hours in IKEA were brilliant.

I think that was over lunch though, not over lunch.

It was over lunch. But you know what? You could probably Google it and search for it because it's not hidden, is it? It was just—

I'd just love me to do that. I really like this. A vegan meatball, wasn't it? And accidentally announcing a vegetarian meatball, which, you know, for IKEA, that's like half a billion meatballs suddenly had to be invented. Anyway, that's not what we mainly talked about. She did— she comes from a sort of a very— rather sort of trite phrase, but a very hippie background from the sort of good life, as she calls it. And then she moved into sustainability. But she's a fascinating person who thinks really differently and really has got a big focus on how do we create sustainable places for people to live with a big emphasis on food and transport. But she also sort of took apart our questions and challenged a lot of what we were trying to do. I mean, I have to say, we had been interviewing for 2 and a half days by this point and we were a little bit—

Yeah, she was the penultimate one, wasn't she?

She was.

She was one of the last ones.

We were probably a little bit fried and she sort of, she poked—

Played on that.

Yeah, she played with us. She felt like a giant cat and we were like little tired mice. But it was a fascinating, really good conversation. And her, we asked her what her metric, the most overlooked sustainability metric would be. And her answer was very simple, joy. Jo, lovely to have you here on the podcast.

Lovely to be here. What an amazing setting.

It's good, isn't it?

Yeah.

I feel kind of like I'm a jungle dweller now. We've been here for 2 and a half days.

You basically are. Basically am.

Yeah.

Jo, tell us who you are and a little bit about yourself and also about your journey, 'cause you've, You've had a fascinating wander through the world, haven't you?

Oh God, now you're asking. Okay, well, hello, I'm Jo, Joanna Yarrow. Um, well, what do you want to know?

What are you doing now?

What am I doing now? Okay, right now I'm helping to run a company called Human Nature Places, and we are one of those awful companies. We're developers, property developers, and we basically design, build, and run neighbourhoods that make it easy to live a more sustainable life. That's the, that's the shtick. But I'm not an architect, I'm not a designer, I'm not a planner at all. I'm just a lifelong sustainability person. And I grew up, I suppose the journey started in a wood, a woodland in Sussex. So I had the like really green parents in the 1970s when it was—

Homemade clothes. Oh.

The good life.

The good— oh yeah, they were the good life, but in a kind of really unfashionable way.

Right.

So yeah, homemade clothes. If I was lucky, from a jumble sale, that was shopping. I, you know, it's the stone-ground wholemeal organic triple-reused greaseproof paper sandwiches with the Windfall apple. I just wanted a packet of crisps, you know. At the time, it felt like child abuse, you know. We didn't have a car. We didn't have a telly.

Yeah.

I just wanted to be like everyone else.

Yeah.

But I did live in a forest and I'd get home from school, have a biscuit, and then that would be it. I'd be off. I was kind of in charge of things. And so, you know, in hindsight, that's probably what shaped me for good or ill. Because on the one hand, I, you know, like many of us who were lucky enough to have hands-on contact with nature at an early age, the idea that you needed to look after and ideally make a bit better the world that you relied on was something I just kind of felt. It was such a no-brainer. That was my playground. And it was only afterwards I started to study and learn it and that kind of imprinted, I suppose, on me. But at the same time, I was really aware of this tension because I wasn't like my mum. I actually wanted more than one jumper. You know, I've always loved fashion and travel and I was doffing off my pocket money and my lunch money to buy Vogue. And so I didn't want to live off-grid and pee on the compost heap, although ironically, you know, that happens these days. Um, uh, you know, I, I wanted my cake and eat it. I wanted to, to, to have a way of life for myself that was, you know, natural and healthy and about looking after the world around me. But I also wanted travel. I didn't want to make compromises. And I also recognised that most people, even if they could, weren't going to want to live in a Sussex woodland. And so my mission, I suppose, as a person, and then professionally, became this challenge of how do we create opportunities for as many people as possible to live a good quality of life that is enjoyable?

Mm-hmm.

and gives you the chance as a human to thrive and flourish, that also respects natural boundaries and ideally makes the world a bit better and creates more equity so that more people can do that. So that's, you know, it wasn't like a plan, but in hindsight, that's been kind of my red thread, both personally and professionally.

And what energizes you at the moment about sustainability?

Oh, you've got to look a bit harder these days than you did a little while ago. I mean, yeah.

I can't believe you actually sighed at that question.

It's a bit— well, I mean, look, it's, you know, it's been a long week, but it's a bit bleak out there, isn't it? So, so you do, you know, it's really important to find your energy. And that's actually, you know, that's one of the things for me that's been so great about this week. I think what energizes me is that You know, nonetheless, in this time of, you know, kind of big challenges, there are so many people and organizations from literally all walks of life coming together in different ways to look at this and come up with ideas. I mean, you know, I suppose I, you know, I am, I'm a bit monotone in many ways in that I've always sort of seen the world through this lens. People say to me, oh God, how long have you been in sustainability? And I was like, oh, since I'm about 5. And it used to be a small band of people who were kind of similar to you. And now it's not. Now it's like, there are so many people that you've never met who you come across and they're like, oh, actually, I don't even know what cybersecurity is, or I don't, you know, I just— all these different areas of endeavor where they are putting their minds to this as well. And I think that that is, although it's the same themes, you know, decades in and the same challenges, so many different sorts of people are coming at this from different angles and with different types of solutions. And it's A, fascinating, and B, you know, it is encouraging.

So what do you think the main mistakes that the sustainability movement has made? I mean, I've met you probably nearly 30 years ago, I think.

Well, back when I was about 4.

Yes, exactly.

I'm even older than that. I'm even older than that. Yes, yes, yes. We've crossed paths over the years.

What mistakes do you think have been made?

Well, Well, I mean, I think there are some things that we're still not very good at and mistakes that we keep making. And I think that we're still not very good at making the challenge and particularly the solutions that we need to build into people's lives relatable. And, you know, I think we still, even though many of us are almost like the problems are more tangible. We used to talk about climate change as something distant, both in time and geography.

Yeah.

It's really not. There are a few of us who haven't experienced that hands-on. But we don't make the solutions relatable. And I think that that's one of the things that— I was at IKEA for 7 years working in sustainability. And something that I really admire in their business approach and also in the approach that I think we between us managed to craft towards sustainability was actually moving this from the abstract science to all politics or policy, as well as distance in terms of time and geography, to people's everyday lives. So actually, you know, their whole founding philosophy as a business is to create a better everyday life for the many people. So as many people as possible. So you just kind of reframe that to 21st century challenges and say, okay, we need It's in your DNA. The job is to create a better everyday life for as many people as possible, with a lower climate impact or in a nature regenerative way. And so you start with how people live and how they want to live. So what are people's everyday realities? What are their hopes, their needs, their aspirations? And that's your brief. And then you say, okay, well, how might that be better on your terms? Maybe you need to save money, maybe you need to save time, maybe you want to lose 10 kilos. That's actually what's most important to you. How can we then work out from that to start addressing more conventional sustainability challenges like climate or energy or waste? And I still don't think that whether we're in the world of politics or whether we're in the world of investment or whether we're in the world of placemaking, we got good enough at grounding these big existential challenges of our time into people's everyday. Because until we do that, and until we make it relatable in that way, people aren't going to give it the same priority or the same level of interest as they do at those other really, you know, what would you call it, human issues that are front of all of our minds?

Quick word from our sponsor, 51tocarbonzero.com. If you're a CFO or board member staring down CSRD or Scope 3 and thinking, where do we even start? We at Sustainability Solved would point you to 51tocarbonzero.com. They turn complex, fragmented emissions data into something simple and give boards clear audit-ready visibility on exactly where the reduction opportunities are. It's not another reporting tool that adds work. It's built so the data holds up when your auditor asks the hard questions. If that's a conversation worth having, get in touch with 51@carbonzero.com, or just drop me a message and I'll point you in the right direction. Right, back to the episode.

If you had to bet on one sustainability solution scaling successfully in the next 5 years, what would that be?

Oh, one sustainability solution. Okay, I'm going to be really annoying here. And I'm just going to just pick holes in the question.

I don't think that's in the rules.

That's an interesting question. But I think the more interesting question here is, I mean, part of the problem is what, you know, what's the sustainability solution? I would say, okay, it's like, well, what's the everyday life problem? that we're going to create a solution to.

I'm keeping it in Bemi at the moment. We interviewed someone yesterday from the— not LSE, from Imperial.

Imperial.

And she said something very similar and said that the problem that we have is we're not actually looking at what the planet impacts us.

Yes.

And we should be having a metric around that because that will catapult catalyze people to do something about this because it affects them.

Yes.

Yeah.

And I feel like it's because—

Well, we're othering otherwise, aren't we? We're saying, you know, sustainability is a different thing, and it's that we may or may not get to it on a Friday afternoon when we're a bit knackered once we've done everything else. And sustainability is not another thing, it's just a different way of doing what we otherwise need to do. And that used to drive me Yeah, all right.

Yeah.

I'm the one asking the questions now. So, so, so, so actually, to try to answer your question.

Oh, thank you.

Rather than just picking holes in it.

That's what we agreed.

We ask questions, you answer them. That was pretty— that's in the—

Oh, I didn't see that part of the contract. No, no, no, no, no. I thought I could— look, I've got an 11-year-old daughter. I'm very used to being challenged on before I even actually get into the conversation. I'm just playing that back to you. No, I think, um, Well, food, actually. I mean, it's, you know, it's— if you— okay, 2 things. If you take food and travel, that's getting on for— my maths isn't very good, but, you know, probably 60, 70% of our impact, both in terms of climate and ecology. So, you know, if we were to do clever things, in the next 5 years that were to help the majority of us and the majority of our meals to be more plant-based and less wasteful. And if we were to help the majority of us to meet the majority of our daily needs without needing to get into a privately owned car, then, you know, we'd have made really great strides. And we wouldn't have tried to fit something else in on a Friday afternoon because we all need to eat. And most of us need to get from lots of A's to lots of B's during the week. So, you know, it's not— you don't probably need a flying car. You probably don't need lab-grown meat. You probably just need better designed places so people don't have to travel so far to meet all their daily needs and they can use their legs more.

Yeah.

And, you know, plates of food that are delicious, nutritious, and get eaten. And aren't so reliant on animals.

And what 3 things are you doing in your organization to reduce emissions?

Oh, well, there's a lot of hot air still in meetings. No, sorry, that's a fatuous answer. To reduce— well, okay, so what we do in our organization is, as I said, it's about designing. And once the planning systems kind of actually building sustainable neighborhoods. And so clearly, the biggest way that we can address emissions is by creating those places that enable people to live far lower total carbon footprints, lifestyles. And so what does that mean in practice? It's things like the materials that we use for the buildings. That's an obvious one. Those are mostly almost entirely bio-based. So it's about using timber and local biomaterials and making them energy efficient and so on. But it's actually much more than that. So we look at people's total footprint. So coming back to the point I just made around food and travel, for example, designing places so that people can travel actively. So legs and bikes. And then co-mobility, so car sharing and so on where needed. And also that have a really thriving food economy. So where food growing is designed into the place. And so that you're working with the local food growing, the bioregion, to kind of draw that into the design of the place. And you're creating community canteens, those sorts of things. So that's— sorry, long answer. No, no. So that's where a business like ours can, I hope, inspire and enable people to, many people to live in a lower carbon way. So yes, the residents of these places, but also the people who come to and use these places on a daily basis, and then the whole bioregion around them. It's less, and it's not so much about then double-sided printing and so on as a business, although of course that's terribly important too.

What sustainability metric do you think deserves more attention?

The hippie in me wants to say joy. Because I think that as well as making sustainability an extra job, so something additional and different to our everyday lives that we might fit on Friday, that's a mistake. But also framing it as some, you know, making it something extra difficult, worthy, and about addressing problems isn't very motivating. And also doesn't give you much energy in the here and now. And I think actually, most of what we're talking about is about living a better life.

Yes.

And I don't mean that in a Calvinistic perspective. But I mean, in a life that where you're healthy, both physically and mentally. You have social connection. You have time. You're not so reliant on external resources. So you don't need to have so much money. You have more agency. You have more connection with your place and your family. And those are all— there's a lot of science behind that actually, which is proven to give people happiness and happiness gives you health. And it's very difficult to measure. Of course, which is one of the challenges. But actually, that is incredibly important because that is very motivating. It's magnetic. And it's something that people want more of. And so if we could kind of create some kind of joy matrix, that might help to kind of see some of this stuff.

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

Again, I'm sorry to question your past experience.

I knew you'd do this question. I was like, why did I end up with this question? Because it's one of our final questions.

And I was like, I've run out of options. We're going to be here all night, aren't we? I mean, I think the, you know, the obvious point here is there isn't a silver bullet. And while we all sit around discussing silver bullets, we're wasting time. So I think the short answer is do everything everywhere all at once. But obviously within that, find the things that are going to be most meaningful, as in most relevant in terms of scope for carbon reduction. So things like food and mobility are up there. And things where people have agency. So where there is urgency. looking for things where there's urgency. In other words, it's a big problem, and if we reduced it, it would make a big difference. And where people have agency. So yes, coming back to food, I have a touchpoint on this at least 3 times a day, probably 6, 7, 8 times a day because I'm a snacker. And I'm lucky I have, within reason, ability to choose what I eat on an everyday basis. Yes, that's— is that a cop-out?

No, it's fine.

I think that's just the way the world is. You know, there is no— it's not going to be action.

Action is the one thing.

Everyday action. Yeah, that's scalable, but also that fits people's priorities so that does give them a better everyday life in the meantime, because that's what they're going to want to do.

You're going to take this question apart.

What are you going to ask?

Where do you think business and sustainability is at on a scale of 1 to 10?

Yeah, okay, fine.

I knew she was going to say it.

That's the reason why I didn't ask it.

Define business. No, I heard some bonkers stats here this week, most of which I've forgotten, but one of them was something along the lines of in the UK, 99 point— and I can't remember the decimal, but it's Something like 99.4% of businesses in the UK are SMEs.

Yes, yes.

So think about how many businesses that is and think about the diversity of things that they are doing.

And how many high street companies were here, like newsagents. And we had one— one of the people I interviewed was a hairdresser.

Yeah.

And she turned around and said, I've not met any high street companies here. And I said that There's such a— we're missing so many of the SMEs.

So I think when we say business, we need to be careful because, you know, organizations perhaps. And now I've forgotten the question.

What's your temperature between 1 and 10? Where are we at?

Oh, I think we're between 1 and 10.

That's very specific.

I think one of the wonderful things is the diversity that we have across that range. I think that we had, you know, there are some businesses that are, you know, moving towards 10. Unfortunately, I don't think that as many of them as should be get their story out there. So we just probably can just think of a few big names. And I think part of the job to do is to help shine a light on those leaders and the diversity amongst them so that we don't just think that you have to be a global mega brand to be making a difference. That's one of the challenges.

Brilliant. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you, Jamie.

Thank you.