E069 - Andy Middleton from TYF Group - Part 2

Welcome back to the Green Element Podcast, where we feature business leaders and innovators transforming their operations to be more environmentally and socially sustainable. I'm your host, Will Richardson, and I can't wait to meet our guest today and help you on your journey of sustainability. We're absolutely seeing that already. We're seeing, I mean, the fact that I'm running an environmental management consultancy living just north of Edinburgh and we're based predominantly in London.

Yeah.

Kind of says it all. I go to London once every month, sometimes longer, and I'll go down by train in the morning and sometimes I can get on the train in the evening and come back up again. And that says it all. And I think that we're seeing a shift in London of people moving out. And moving to different parts of the UK because they don't need to necessarily live in London anymore. And it's brilliant because it's just pulling everything.

And there's— I told a lawyer friend last night, there's a whole bunch of Bristol professionals who camp on one of the beaches a couple of miles from here, and they come down every year for like the last 15 years. 2 of them were hot desking at TYF yesterday. They're both, you know, they spend the daytime doing serious environmental or corporate law stuff, but then by 5 o'clock they're in the ocean.

Yeah.

And at 10 past 5, they're playing with the kids or whatever else they're doing. And I think it just shows that we haven't all got to permanently be confined by the walls of kind of corporate stuff. I think that's really encouraging.

Yeah.

Edinburgh or Cardiff or St. David's, away from some of that, the normalization of the kind of corporate world, I think it's— they bring richness and ideas the communities that they're based in, around Sustrans or around wherever else it is. And I think that brings like the micronutrients that allow communities to thrive.

If you could offer one piece of advice to our listeners which could help them with their purpose, what do you reckon that would be?

I think it's one of the things that we used to talk about was the— when we were working with businesses is that we're not capable of building or creating anything that we can't imagine. And that In a world where so much success is measured to protect the fragility of our egos, we— too many people have been encouraged to not dream big. And therefore, if you don't dream big, you reduce the risk of not succeeding, and you protect yourself from failure and a bunch of other things. But you also stop yourself doing things that are truly remarkable. So I think that to spend a bit of time thinking about, you know, what would you do if you knew for certain that you couldn't fail? What's the change that you'd set out to make? And the longer you spend thinking that through and the clearer you get on it, the more likely it is to happen. Because if you haven't got a clear dream about what your own heart wants to say, you can't ask other people for help. And I think the clearer and more compelling and truer that dream is, the more likely it is that other people will go, hey, Will, how can I help you? But if your dream is about an incremental improvement in something, the response is just carry on and do your day job.

Yeah.

So I think, I think so, connect really, really listening to the heart. And my wife Sarah talks about when you're doing that and then listening to what our heart wants, notice where you feel that in your body. When you talk about a really bold dream, where do you feel it? Which part of your body does it make tingle? Listen and notice. what we're saying kind of deep down when we think those things through. And the world clearly needs bold change, and I have no doubt that we're capable of making it. And the biggest barrier in many ways is people believing that that is so.

Hmm.

So for anyone starting a business or changing direction or knowing that they might need to do more, invest time by yourself and invest time with other people thinking, if we knew that we had green lights all the way, If we knew we couldn't fail, what is it that I would set out to do with this one true and precious life of mine?

That's probably one of the best pieces of advice I've heard. That's brilliant. Can you tell us a bit about how you approach environmental management and carbon footprinting within TYF? So like, I guess just understanding how you look at the sustainability and environmental management Sure.

So I guess the journey, our first kind of proper dive into some of that stuff became, you know, when we switched our hotel and in effect our entire— we switched our hotel towards organic. And it was a really expensive process because of course in a hotel it's organic everything, you know, obvious stuff now. And this is like 15 years ago probably. Everything had to be organic. It's hard to find, hard to find, more expensive to buy and And there's a whole lot of kind of government stuff about checking, is it organic or it looks organic? And so, you know, in that process, we went through and audited our entire inventory at the hotel and shifted it, you know, shifted all our cotton to organic, etc. And so one of the ways that we approach is trying to— is to buy products from businesses that we really trust, who we know are doing as good as they can be in the space that they're in. So TYF is the second oldest Patagonia retailer in the UK for like 30 years. And, you know, I trust Patagonia to do the work that they do in the way that they say that they, they do. And as we were talking about earlier, buying from businesses like buying from B Corps where we know that, that there's a process. So in terms of the way we spend our money on products and services, we try to do that. We work with our suppliers. So there's one of our kayak manufacturers is a company called Palm. And we help them think through the process of making plastic, you know, making kayaks out of recycled plastic. Half the kayaks in Iraq now are made out of recovered plastics and stuff, which doesn't solve the problem, but it becomes more of a talking point when you're taking people on the ocean and seeing plastics and saying, hey, we shouldn't be making these boats, but if we didn't have waste plastic, etc. And there are some areas of products that we still use which are really bad environmentally. Like buoyancy aids that we use for kayaking and stuff, because they're made out of foams that are pretty hard to work with. So purchasing becomes— it's hard in some areas but better in others. But what we try to do in terms of environmental management is give as much ownership of that as we can to our customers. So when you're talking about the way that we use kit in the outdoors, it's saying use it gently.

Hmm.

Use it fully, but use it gently so that you don't damage it in a careless way. Because that shortens life, and if it shortens its life, clearly it increases the impact. So there's a story to be told about, you know, one of the reasons for not dragging your surfboard across the beach is you don't damage the surfboard, but you also won't leave a trail of microplastics on the beach where you've just taken your board. Yeah. Helping people make the connection between their behavior and kind of outcomes that are much bigger than them. And then I kind of— on the, on the, on the side around on energy and stuff, like years we were You know, we used to offset our carbon going way, way back with Future Forests, as they were then the first business in Wales to offset, and have since shifted. We have our own, so we do all of our heating, 100% of our heating in the business is on biomass, you know, on a feed-in tariff. We have a solar installation in the office which doesn't produce all of our energy, but we top that up with, you know, green tariff. with green tower electricity. And, you know, we have a concession that provides— that does a food concession that they've got really high governance standards which we check through with them. So, you know, I would say that we're probably in some areas, like on our B Corp score, we're really high on the environmental bits because we've been working on that for a long time. I still want to see more about how we use the data that we collect to inform and educate others. Yeah, more visible about what we're doing. And I'm really keen that particularly in terms of the B Corp space that we connect up businesses, for argument's sake, like Finisterre, Joja, Mama Bebe, TYF, retailers, like B2C retailers, to have conversations about how we can communicate and work those sort of things through differently because we'll have many of the same kinds of challenges.

Surf Dome as well. Yeah, because we're doing their— we're now helping them with their environmental reporting across absolutely Everything. I mean, they are really trying to go one step further with reporting down to their plastic coat hangers. They want to know exactly what it is that they are producing, and by doing that, they're going to know what to reduce.

Yeah, yeah. No, and I think Surftamer— they're not B Corp though yet, are they?

No, they're not, but working with them kind of might as well be, to be honest with you.

Yeah. And they're certainly doing some great stuff in that area for sure. So I think in terms of our impact, we are, you know, I think I'm pretty proud of what we're— I guess in terms of where we're at, I kind of describe sometimes compared to our competitors, we're on like 9 out of 10. But compared to where I'd love us to be, we're probably still only on 3.

Right. Yeah, you're a high achiever.

Well, I guess it's high standards, I think, and it's kind of going, actually, you know, I don't know what that looks like yet, but if we got it right, then I think there's so much more that we'd be doing about how we tell the story of managing our environment in a more sustainable way to customers particularly, so that they can change things. So, and to give a sense of that, like, so St. David's, as I mentioned, is a tiny city, but we are a city.

Yes.

And we've just put in a submission to WWF's One Planet Cities Challenge.

Right.

You know, about actions we're taking. And the broad idea that we put together with a bunch of businesses and the council is to start building St. David's as a sanctuary city.

Right.

People, places come for safety, to grow and to learn and to change, you know, whilst having a good time doing what they're doing. And, and in doing that, even though the population of the city is tiny, we get something like half a million visitors that come through St. David's every year.

Right.

Every single one of which touches at least one business in St. David's. So if we can tell the story about our environmental impact as a city to those visitors in a different way that makes them want to engage, then hopefully we can create some capacity for their own behavior change shifts.

That's really good.

And in terms of your experience, where are you finding that the businesses you work with have had the biggest aha moments in terms of their Shifting on environmental performance?

I think it's the cultural shift. What they're starting to see is everyone they're employing wants to work for an organization that is sustainable, and particularly the younger generations. But I wouldn't necessarily put it only on the younger generations, to be honest with you. I think that they're going— the minute they start to be— go, actually, let's put an environmental management program in place, I think they're all quite surprised. Oh, wow. That person in IT, that person in HR, everyone across the whole organization wants to be involved and wants to have a part of it. And they suddenly all want to have a say in it. And they go, brilliant. This is amazing. And the bigger organizations, the likes of Grant Thornton, have had massive amounts of savings financially by doing it. But I mean, they're actually a really interesting company because they're accountancy firm, they signed up to the SBTi very quickly because they saw the benefit of it and went, actually, we now have been doing environmental management for 7 years with these guys. And we took them through Science Based Targets initiative because they saw the benefit of globally reporting on it. And as accountants, they got it quite quickly. But I think there is a massive cultural shift within the organizations that we're seeing. I remember being with a large advertising agency about 12 years ago and saying to them, oh, you're going to save this much money, because that was the conversation that I initially always had with organizations because I knew that was what would get them over the line. I didn't care what it was. I just wanted them to be more green. And the CEO— and it was M&C Saatchi, actually— and She turned around and went, we're not doing this to save money. We're doing this because we absolutely care about the environment. And I was properly put in my place. But it was a great properly put in my place. It was actually nice to be told off by— suddenly, that's the first time that's happened to me. And then it's happened ever since. And actually, from that moment, I changed my language in my initial meetings, and it wasn't all about saving money then, because you could see that actually things weren't about only that.

And I think that's really interesting because I think there's, in that process of change, I think often the absence of the language that allows people to describe just what you said in itself can be a real barrier. And in some ways, saying to people, you need to do this because it's the right thing to do, and here's a safe grown-up way to do that makes it possible for people to buy a different product, right? Whereas in the past, it's almost like, you know, it took me ages to ask senior people in government to say, look, I'm happy to meet you in wherever, or you could stick your walking boots in the back of your car and come down to St. David's. But once you start offering it, saying, what, so I could go walking for 3 hours with my dog whilst talking business? They're gonna go, I'll be there tomorrow. I think being— having the— it's a bit like kind of coming back to the what would you ask for, what we would ask for is that businesses would do this just because it's the right thing to do.

Yeah.

And it's almost our job is to offer that to people and say you could do this just because it's the right thing to do. And in some ways people almost like need to hear that bit and go, oh God, you're right, it is the right thing to do, can you do it for me? You go, yes, that's what we do. Yeah, I think it's really interesting. And I think for me, I guess coming back, we touched earlier on about some of the work that you're starting to do around around sort of preparing some potential tool packs to go into schools, you know, with Brad and Fuglebinder and others. And again, I think the idea of giving next-generation change agents familiarity with those schools around, around EMS-type stuff, so that why wouldn't you in effect create that EMS package for every school in the country?

Yeah, we give away our carbon reporting tool to kids as well, trying to get schools to learn how to understand their environmental footprint, because by putting it all together and understanding everything that they're doing within the school helps them understand how to reduce and what they're producing, I guess.

Okay, so here's a— here's just a— here's an idea development question. Okay, so of how many— if you had a big, a decent-sized secondary school of like 1,000 or 1,500 kids and you wanted to put together an in-school EMS team, How many kids would you suggest were working on it together to have a reasonable chance of doing a valid piece of work?

See, I don't have kids that go to school, so therefore I'm assuming it's roughly 30 kids per class.

Yeah.

You could have one kid per year and have subgroups within that year from a child from each class.

Yeah.

And then that would work, and then a teacher from each department. Because I think that would be really interesting because the geography department would be different to what the biology department, which would be different to the English department, and because there'd be different personalities within there as well. And you would have such a melting pot. There would be more kids than teachers, which would be, I think, a really positive thing because it— you'd actually want it to be. And it goes back to what you were talking about before. You'd want it to be driven by children because they've got no inhibitions. They've got no— baggage that they're taking with them, they will come up with ideas that will be great ideas. They may not necessarily be realistic, but they're not going to have any, oh, we can't do that because of this. And I think it'd be really possible to do something like that.

I love the idea of giving a formal kind of EMS framework as the kind of cornerstone of the work they do about reducing the school's impact. Reducing negative impact and maximizing positive impact. So they've got a real data on something that actually would be recognized by the council in terms of the stuff they're working on. And so some of the things that we've been talking to headteachers about are getting kids, for instance, to audit this— all of the plastic that comes across their school gate in a day.

Hmm.

Count it. What is it? Itemize it. And at one level, just come up with a creative solution that would stop everything being there. Go work out how could you make it less bad if that was the case. And so we teach them to become those creative problem solvers because that's, that's where the fun stuff is.

It's funny, you're making me think now because we're just about to launch an online course of how to be more environmental. So an organization can go through the course and we're literally writing it with a consultant. We've already written the PowerPoint presentation and the notes and she's converting it into an online teachable platform. But we could then, once we've done that, we could actually easily just convert that into a teaching course. And I would be very happy to give that, I guess, to give it away, or even just do it very low cost to schools so they can just take it and then run with that. And they've, like you've just said, they've got a pack of exactly what it is that they can do and how to do it.

And I think, in particular, older kids, getting them to do it on some of their parents' businesses. Yeah, that could be quite fun, couldn't it?

Hmm.

I love the idea of that. And I think, yeah, it could be— again, it's— I think once it comes back to Alice standing on— standing and saying, I could run to anywhere that I can see on land, you know, if kids have that confidence because they know they've wrestled with the data and the bits that are certain and the uncertain stuff and just have a bit more familiarity with what those— what the language is about change, then they could impact parents' behavior in a huge way.

Yeah.

And I think for me, this idea of multi-generations collaborating about how you change the place that you live is— it has to be such a rich and important area because actually people do, I think, more or less, people have some care for the place they live. And more so out in big cities, but even in cities, you know, where you rest your head is your home.

Yeah.

Work out how together to make those places more resilient and more thriving by making different decisions, it becomes super exciting. And coming right back to the start point, that although that is a kind of like— there's an engineering stroke accounting solution to that— when that's coupled with that understanding about how to get into nature and enjoy it and absorb it, so that the anchoring of why you're making that change happen is at a soul level, You connect to the things that matter and support you. I think that gets really exciting.

This is the longest podcast I've ever done. I've just looked at the time. Brilliant. I've got one last question for you. What's one piece of advice you could offer our listeners?

An extra piece of advice, okay, so this is on top of taking time to think what you'd do if you couldn't fail, is to think about— imagine yourself In 10 years' time, and imagine that self in 10 years' time advising you today what to do, bearing in mind what you already know in your heart and your head to be the right thing to do. And what would the older, wiser you tell you to do today with the hindsight of 10 years? And do that today.

Okay, I'm going to try that myself and write it down afterwards. Thank you so much, Andy.

No, absolute pleasure. It's been, I mean, so much of a— so much for me to learn and so much to do. And the opportunity of scaling stuff up, I guess, through multiple ways, but through, you know, particularly the work through schools and education, is— that gets me really excited because there's an energy there of freshness that can make change. And we shall make some of these things happen together, and maybe down the line get some of those— how about here's a goal, okay, for the two of us. We get some of this happening in schools, yeah, for like really in a really exciting transformational way, and then you do a podcast with the kids who've made it happen.

Yeah, right, okay, that'd be cool.

Cool.

You can use the school in your area as a starting point.

Bro, okay, brilliant.

Thanks, Andy.

So good to talk, and we'll catch up soon.

Brilliant, cheers.

Bye.

Thank you so much for listening to Thank you for listening to the end of this episode of the Green Element Podcast. Do take a moment and share this with your friends and colleagues and rate and review the podcast wherever you get your podcasts. I'd love to know what has been your biggest takeaway from this conversation. What are you going to do differently? Please share your thoughts across social media and tag us so we can see them too, @GE_podcast. For links and show notes for this episode, visit our website, greenelement.co.uk. Thank you again. I hope you will join me on the next episode, and together we can help create a better world.