E156 - Anna Murphy, Freelance Sustainability Consultant

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Welcome to the Green Element Podcast, where we meet business leaders and innovators transforming their operations to be more environmentally and socially sustainable, and in the process, help you on your sustainability journey. I'm your host, Will Richardson. Our guest today is a freelance consultant who supports companies embrace a systems-based approach to sustainability, ensuring their strengths are utilized and equity is achieved. She uses the Future Fit Business benchmark methodology to achieve sustainability goals for her clients. Welcome, Anna Murphy.

Thank you, Will. It's great to be here.

I'd like to start by asking you about your journey into the sustainability sector. How did you get involved in sustainability?

Yeah, so I was having a think about this. And I think a lot of it comes down to, or at least some of it comes down to the fact that when I was a child, I got really weirdly obsessed with primates, so especially gorillas and orangutans. I've always loved them. And it became very difficult to learn about them without becoming very upset about the conservation issues surrounding them. So I actually remember crying in front of the TV once. I don't remember how old I was, but seeing orangutans being forced from their homes because of deforestation and the fires that were being lit in order to make way for palm oil plantations. And then learned a bit later about Dian Fossey, who was this very prominent conservationist who was murdered by poachers for her work with mountain gorillas. So I think that sparked quite a lot of it from a relatively early age. And then there were a couple of really influential other experiences in my life. One of those was on my gap year, I went to Tanzania to take part in, you know, one of these very typical gap year volunteering schemes and found that extremely, extremely problematic. The whole process of going and building toilets and teaching children English when really we were young and kind of had no idea what we were doing. We had no idea about the culture that we were immersed in. That then prompted me to go and learn, to go and study colonialism and postcolonialism when I did history and politics at university. And while that might not seem related, actually it was an inroad to learn about the economy and how our economy over the past couple of hundred years has resulted in a huge amount of environmental degradation and some of the relevant structures. One other experience which was very influential was interning with Baillie Gifford, which is an asset manager. So I got this kind of research travel internship and ended up looking at the role of blockchain and how it could be used to facilitate transparent supply chains so that consumers then had more information about certain products and could make more informed choices. And just through conversations with people at Baillie Gifford, I got a real sense of how powerful finance is and that actually changing finance just a little bit could do a lot more good than, you know, setting up a social enterprise or working for a small charity or something like that. So that got me really interested in impact investing, which was then kind of how my career started.

We're seeing or hearing a huge amount about that at the moment, aren't we, around finance and pensions and where people store their money, keep their money, save their money, I don't know, and the effect that it can have?

Yeah, definitely. I think it's— I mean, I actually, I watched a YouTube video yesterday by Business Declares and John Elkington was really hammering that home, how important the role of finance is. And Future Fit's theory of change really is grounded in providing better information to investors about the social and environmental impacts of of companies. Because at the moment, so much, you know, one of the problems with ESG metrics is that they're not actually giving people the right information. And that then means that financial decisions and investment decisions are based on, yeah, just on not particularly valuable and material information.

I always find it funny and kind of, I guess, worrying because of the network that we have and the way that we do business. We're paying money into accounts of sustainability experts, and a few of the more prominent ones have still got some of the banks that you wouldn't necessarily think they should be banking at as their banker. And it just shows where we've got to get to, because if those seasoned professionals are not changing their banks and not— and we, we've changed our bank now twice in the last few years because of First of all, because of ethics, and second of all, because we outgrew them. But it's not that hard to do it. It is a bit of a pain in the backside, to be honest with you. But it— and I guess what I'm saying is that there's a lot of communication that needs to go on, on top of the communication that's already going on around this, isn't there?

Yeah, I think that's true. And I think there are 2 issues there. I've changed my bank to Triodos, Which is good, but I mean, the online banking experience, I'm sorry, Triodos, but it's pretty terrible compared to what I had before. So like at the moment, there is a trade-off to using a more sustainable banking option. And that's just me as an individual, never mind when it comes to business banking, which I have much less experience in. But then the other thing is that a lot of these so-called more sustainable options are actually not, they're not sustainable. They're still investing in in oil and gas, even if they've decided to eliminate some of the worst options there, they are by no means sustainable. So yeah, I think those are the 2 main issues there.

Can you tell us a bit about how, about the Future Fit methodology that you use?

Yes, I would love to. What I think is really special about it is really that it starts with the destination in mind. So a lot of sustainability benchmarks are encouraging businesses to become iteratively better or to become better compared with others in their industry. Whereas Future Fit has this vision of a future-fit society, which is that all humans and other life can flourish on Earth forever. So, it sounds very, very grandiose and slightly ambiguous, but actually underpinning it are these 8 properties. So, you've got energy is renewable and available to all. Water is responsibly sourced and available to all. Waste doesn't exist. Pollution doesn't exist. People have the capacity to live fulfilling lives. And there are 8 of these properties. And then underpinning these are 23 break-even goals, which provide a very practical way for businesses to understand how to get to a point where they're no longer undermining the pursuit of that property and what they need to do to get there. Now, Geoff, who's one of the CEOs at FutureFit, always jokes that if we could go back and redo it, we probably wouldn't choose 23 of them because it's somewhat cumbersome, can be slightly intimidating when you're talking to businesses for the first time. But at the same time, they are really practical and each one of them has this, has what's called a progress indicator. So you get a score from 0 to 100 depending on how well you're doing. Some of those are really simple, to be honest, and really quantifiable in that, say, the goal to do with waste, you literally just need to get to the point where you have eliminated all waste, and that's how you get to 100, and it's done by weight. Whereas some of the more people-related ones are more done by a set of, or more measured by a set of criteria. So, with regards employment terms, it's to do with you having sick pay and you having holiday and you not working over a certain number of hours per week. So, those break-even goals articulate what any business must do in order to reach what we call this extra financial break-even or this line in the sand where you're no longer doing any negative damage. And then Future Fit also has what we call the positive pursuits. Which any business can take part in or can contribute to, to speed up progress towards this society which embodies the properties which I mentioned earlier. So, one example just to help clarify the difference between the Break-Even Goals and the Positive Pursuits is that if you're, say, a chemicals company, with regards water, you want to make sure that you're not using water in water-stressed areas and that your discharge is of a safe discharge quality. So that's you making sure that you are, you're reaching 100% on the break-even goal, but you're unlikely to be doing something proactively good for the world regards water. Whereas say a water treatment company which is helping provide clean water for those who previously didn't have access to it is contributing to the positive pursuit. So, that's kind of the difference. And there are positive pursuits across all of the properties in the same way that the break-even goals also cover all of the properties.

And any organisation can go through it, can't they?

Yes, for any organisation.

Of any size?

Any organisation of any size. And there are different ways you can approach doing it. So, we have this online community, which is a fantastic way to get started, actually. And we've just published in that a a tool to help you prioritise the most important goals to start with. So, for— I mean, I was going to say for smaller businesses, but actually for any business, quite a useful way to get started is to think— to use this tool to work out your most important breakeven goals to get going with, so you don't have to look at all 23 all at once.

Okay. Why do you use this methodology, and what value does it offer?

There are a variety of reasons that I was really drawn to it and actually ended up applying for a job with FutureFit in the first place because I really believed in it, having spent a bit of time researching and analyzing different frameworks. I think Martin, so he's been on your podcast before, he's one of the CEOs, he talked about it being used by investors, which is true. What I personally find really exciting about it is the way that it can be used as a strategic management tool, in that it collates and brings together so many existing, basically so much expertise across the social and environmental space. And so it's a really good kind of one-stop shop for understanding the best course of action across your business in all of its different fields. On top of that, I think it gives a really clear definition of what sustainable looks like. And unfortunately, that is incredibly rare. So, some of the founding team spent about 6 years, I think, researching environmental and social systems science to develop the benchmark. And this is incredible because there's so much confusion in the space for businesses about what sustainable means, what green means, what regenerative means. We've had this whole trend in greenwashing. And you've got certifications emerging like B Corp, which are really valuable and play such an important role in getting businesses going on the journey. And Future Fit's quite different to that because there is no Future Fit certification. There is no business yet which has benchmarked itself against Future Fit and which has reached a state of breakeven across all of the goals. But what, by defining Future Fitness, it empowers a company to be really, really transparent about where it is on its journey. And I think that lends, it shows a degree of ambition and a degree of authenticity, which I think is really important. A second reason that it's really special is that it very, very clearly delineates between what positive impact looks like and what negative impact looks like. And this is important because so many ESG funds and impact funds and ways of categorizing companies, they put them in a, oh, your product isn't necessarily doing something good for the world, but because you go about things responsibly, you kind of broadly fit in this responsible ESG bucket. And then other products where, because you're building wind turbines or because you're building solar panels, you're automatically in the positive impact bucket. And that is such an artificial separation because realistically, oil and gas companies create huge amounts of employment, which is really valuable for the economy. Wind turbines, there have been issues with wind farms resulting in the resettlement of local indigenous communities because they've used up local, they've come onto local land. You've got massive issues in solar, panel supply chains because a lot of the— one of the key components comes from China and there are reports showing that there's forced labor. So basically every company is going to be producing both some positive impact and some negative impact. And Future Fit is a framework which helps a company record both their positive and their negative and therefore have really informed, nuanced conversations about the trade-offs because there are always trade-offs and I don't think we talk about them enough. And FutureFit kind of helps companies to evaluate them and therefore make better decisions. So, those are 2 big reasons that I think it's really valuable and really important.

I think really good reasons as well. I mean, you've taken us through the methodology quite early on in your thinking. And actually, going back to that, you don't do it just once, you should be reviewing it? And would you be reviewing it annually?

Yeah, you definitely don't— you definitely want to do it more than once. I think an initial baseline is, you know, it's pretty resource intensive. I don't think you can get away from that, especially because most businesses are not yet collecting a huge amount of social environmental data. But once you've done it once, it's then a lot easier, obviously, to go and do it again. So, yeah, I mean, essentially, you'd want to do a baseline, work out where your key improvements need to be, and then over time do subsequent— I guess you wouldn't call them baselines, but subsequent updates.

Reviews.

Yeah, exactly. But we don't have— because there's not a certification and because we really advocate for it to be used as a strategy tool, there isn't a prescribed journey that you have to go on as a business to tick any boxes. So it's really up to you how you want to use it best. So one company might decide that they want to do a baseline across all 23 goals, whereas another business might think, actually, 10 of these are much more important to us, so we're just going to start off with 10 and then develop over time.

And I think that's actually a really important point to note because certification can be downgraded through the quality of the companies and organizations that are going through that certification. And the reason that can happen is because of the drivers that each of those individual companies have. And there's always ways to get around certification in my mind, having worked in certification for so many years. It doesn't matter how robust certification is, you can still get the outliers that have managed to get through that shouldn't have that certification. And I think what you've just said negates that because the quality control is on the incumbent, not the certification company itself.

Yeah, it's, it's true. And we've had, we had some, some conversations internally about this, and it was quite a steep learning curve for me appreciating that Future Fit puts out the guidance, but it is not our responsibility to basically to do the auditing, right? So we have auditing partners like Grant Thornton, which companies can use to audit their baseline or to audit their— the calculation of their progress indicators. But that is not our job. And also, as with anything, there's always got to be a degree of interpretation, and companies can choose how extensive they want to be when it comes to, say, you know, BE05 is to do with harmful emissions. You know, there has to be a point at which they decide that something that something is immaterial and therefore they're not going to measure it. I remember us doing research and being like, oh, well, new furniture emits harmful things and freshly painted walls can emit harmful VOCs. But are we going to expect a business to try and calculate that so that they can put it into their Future Fit baseline? Well, no, because it's really difficult and really expensive and not a good use of energy. It is the role of the business to work out what they want to get out of Future Fit and to use it as a strategic tool to work out where they want to get to. And there is, yeah, there's a degree of flexibility about how, well, hopefully I'm getting the point across.

No, it is. And I think that's a really important definitive gap between Future Fit and other certification actually. And I think that's actually really, I think that's really interesting and I think it's really, really, it's a really strong point.

And also, so this has been quite interesting transitioning from being part of the Future Fit team to being freelance because now what I do a lot more of is bringing a Future Fit lens to companies who might have, they might already have a sustainability strategy or they might be mainly using B Corp but looking for something else. That's actually been really refreshing, just bringing in relevant pieces of relevant pieces of Future Fit and helping companies use it in a less formal way. Because really, the challenge—well, not not the challenge for Future Fit now—but for us to be successful, we want companies to use it. And actually, at the end of the day, does it matter whether companies are using it as part of a broader strategy, whether they're doing a full baseline, or whether they're getting inspiration from it? I mean, it doesn't matter. We just need to get companies using it in the ways that work for them.

Yeah, no, absolutely. And some businesses pursue sustainability measures to survive in their market, whilst others choose to embed sustainability in their organization because they're concerned about the future of our planet. What has your experience been whilst working with businesses? Are they driven by their impact on the environment? or the expectations within their sector, or something altogether different?

What I have found is that, so generally the people who I'm most in contact with are sustainability managers or head of sustainability, and they are really in it for the impacts on the planet or the impacts on people and planet. And then the challenge comes in them kind of selling it to the board or selling it to the C-suite who do care to an extent, but also are very much focused on the bottom line, which is understandable because they're a business. So, I think quite a consistent experience has been working with really incredible, passionate individuals at the sustainability manager level, And then being consistently challenged to be as transformative as we would like to be at the higher level.

Okay. The Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill campaign is something you've been working on. Can you tell us a bit about this?

Yeah, sure. So for a bit of context, I got quite involved in Extinction Rebellion last last September.

Yes, I'm starting to remember this now.

And participated. What called you up saying, I've been arrested, having a mild existential crisis, having been arrested, chatting to one of my good mates who's a police officer about what to do about it. But basically what Extinction Rebellion was advocating for at that point in time was the Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill, which I then became really, really interested in, and why it felt so amazing to be part of Extinction Rebellion and to be supporting it is that it really, it actually gets to the heart of, I think, the what and the how of the climate emergency, in that it's saying we really need to focus on 1.5, not 2 degrees, and we need to use real deliberative democracy to work out how to get there. In terms of the what, you know, I'd— and recently this summer I was thinking about how to spend my summer and I spent a bit of time looking at the Better Business Act, which is also something definitely worth supporting and it is fantastic. But why I was attracted to the CE bill is that it's actually demanding action which is both in line with planetary science and social justice. What I mean by this is that at the moment, the net zero target by 2050 that the government has, it reduces emissions at a rate consistent with at least a 66% probability of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees, as long as everybody gets to net zero by 2050. So everybody across the world. Or it's aligned with a 2-degree world in a scenario where, yeah, where the UK decarbonizes faster than others, meaning that not everybody does Decarbonized by 2050, so it doesn't actually align with a 1.5-degree world where the UK accounts for the fact that it has contributed huge amounts of historical emissions and is actually much more developed and therefore can decarbonize faster than other economies. So that's what this EU bill is really trying to get at, and it also takes a really systemic approach in that it's talking not just about reducing emissions but really. Restoring biodiversity, which although this year has been much more on the business agenda, last year wasn't and is still very much the underdog, despite being both really important to actually reduce emissions and also important in its own right as part of one of the planetary boundaries that we need to make sure that we preserve. So, that's kind of the what. And then in terms of the how, the CEE Bill advocates that we have a citizens' assembly to decide the processes and some of the mechanisms by which the UK decarbonizes. And this is really valuable. I mean, we don't need to get into the issues with British democracy. It's giving people a very genuine voice in how they want society to look and will therefore result, I think, in a much fairer transition than if we didn't have a Citizens' Assembly. Now, I'm aware that there has been a Climate Citizens' Assembly, but the government's response to it has been, I would say, entirely tokenistic. So yeah, and I guess in Kind of in conclusion, the work that I've been doing in getting businesses to engage with the CE bill is really encouraging. It's about encouraging businesses to get political with their action. And that's kind of at the heart of it, right? Like, businesses can become more sustainable themselves, but business alone is not going to solve the climate emergency. We need regulation. And this is a chance for business to drive forward the governmental change which is necessary for sufficient action to happen.

And where are we with that?

Yes, we've got 119 MPs supporting it, I think 29 peers. We've now got a Conservative peer supporting it, which is really Really exciting. There's another reading, I think, in September or early October. But even on that, I mean, the— yes, the aim is to get the entire bill passed, but actually already you can see some of the— you can see that it's been successful in certain avenues. So this year, the carbon budget integrated shipping and aviation emissions for the first time. So the British carbon targets now include those, and they previously didn't. And that is, that was included in the CEE bill, which I think is a really important kind of success to celebrate because it demonstrates that even as the bill goes through extremely, extremely slowly, these things are gaining traction or elements of it are gaining traction.

That's really good to hear. Yeah. It's nice to hear positive news. It's good.

I'll try.

You'll soon be starting a Master's in Public Value, Public Policy and Innovation. What inspired you to enrol in this course?

It sounded really fun. No, that's my new career plan, is just do stuff that's fun. My mission, I mean, this sounds probably a bit intense, but I really care about playing a meaningful part in transitioning our economy towards a wellbeing economy or an economy which has people and planet at the center. At the moment, we haven't delved into it, but I think we've skirted around it quite a lot. Our economy is so driven by growth and by GDP and by profit. On the assumption that these things by default will improve people's lives. And actually increasingly we're seeing that they sometimes do and they sometimes don't. And there are issues like obesity and diabetes and depression and increasing rates of suicide and things which all demonstrate how economic development is no longer necessarily improving people's lives across the board. And therefore what we really need to do is rather than measuring economic success by profit, we need to measure economic or societal success by other metrics, which is really about people's well-being and the well-being of the planet. And so from this master's, what I'm really looking— what I'm really looking to get out of it is, is the role of government and policy in driving forward this change and the role of business in driving forward this change, how they can work together, and my role within that, because my experience up until this date has been much more in business. I'm really aware that at the same time, the real leadership needs to come from government, and there is a total lack of leadership from governments around the world. People talk about how the UK is pioneering the net zero by 2050 target, is pioneering, and it is. Around the world, it's leading. And yet it is nowhere near what we actually need, never mind, you know, the business— the government, sorry, isn't even on target to achieve it. So there is such a big gap between— yeah, there's just a total gap in leadership. And from the master's, I'm really hoping to delve into the role of business in driving forward that political change, I think. And also Mariana Mazzucato, who set it up. So she set up this Institute of Innovation and Public Purpose She's amazing. She's such a— yeah, she's such a hero. But her book called The Value of Everything, I would recommend to everyone. It was one of the most influential books I think I've read. And she set up this master's and will be teaching on it. So yeah, might get to meet her. And George the poet, I'm not sure if you've heard of George the poet, but he's doing a PhD. So maybe I'll get to bump into him in the corridor at some point as well. Which would be pretty awesome.

I will look him up. That sounds great. I've been lucky enough to be a part of most of your professional career, I think, haven't I?

Yeah.

We met probably when you'd just finished at Bailey Gifford.

Oh, yes.

And I feel really fortunate for that. And so I'm really curious to know the answer to this. What lasting change would you like to achieve in your career? Or put another way, what legacy would you like to leave?

I mean, kind of like I said, I think that our economies need to put people and planet at their centre rather than GDP. And that's not to say that I hate GDP and it's not useful, but we need to move away from this obsession. We need to stop seeing the means as the end and start defining success by the end, which is people and planet, rather than seeing economic growth as a good thing in its own right. And playing a meaningful part in persuading ultimately governments to measure their success differently is where I would like to go. Scotland's doing really amazing Well, it's talking good talk in that space at the moment, whereas Westminster is just nowhere. It's so far away from from getting there, and that that experience I talked about in in Tanzania, I think, was quite transformative in me thinking, okay, I really want to drive change within a culture that I understand and that is kind of mine, that is mine to change. So I feel like Britain's kind of the playing field that I would like to act on.

It's funny, isn't it? One of the Kennedy brothers, I can't remember which one, actually talked about GDP back in the '60s, didn't he? And said that— I can't remember exactly what it was, but I remember thinking that he basically said the more mafia and the more criminal activities that go on in the US, the better the GDP.

Yeah.

Just to me showed how flawed GDP was. And so even then they knew it was flawed.

Yeah, he basically says it measures everything except that which makes life worth living, I think is the quote. And that it can't measure your— it can't measure justice, it can't measure empathy or integrity or any of these things. And Donella Meadows also has some really interesting things to say about it. And I think one of her key messages is You know, like measuring social and environmental wellbeing is really hard. Like GDP is a one lovely number. It's one number, it's one metric. Profit is one metric. And you know whether you're, you know, if you're a business, you know whether you are in debt or in profit. And social environmental impact is much messier. But the fact that it's hard doesn't make it—

No.

Like, that's not an excuse to not try. And I think that's really important to acknowledge and just accept that it's going to be imperfect, but measuring it imperfectly is better than just choosing another metric and not measuring it at all.

Lastly, what would you encourage businesses to think about with regards to their own sustainability journey, bearing in mind what you've just talked about with the GDP?

I think there's 3 things I would probably want to leave as lasting thoughts. One is, why are you doing it? You know, what is sustainability actually all about? Is it because you're scared about the existential crisis for humanity? Is it because you care about your bottom line? Or is it because, you know, for me, the reason that I'm really passionate about it is that those who have contributed least are going to suffer disproportionately, both now and in the future. And so it's fundamentally an issue of justice. That's what really, you know, that's why I care about it. And as soon as you have that justice lens, sustainability becomes about treating the people in your supply chains or in your value web who are most vulnerable a lot better. And so, you can't just, you know, you tackling your carbon emissions without paying your— making sure that the people in your supply chain are paid living wage is just totally misaligned. So yeah, really thinking about the why of sustainability and if it is to do with justice, trying to integrate social equity into that strategy. The second thing is systems, obviously, 'cause I've been at FutureFit and I've had this drilled into me. You know, the world works in systems and change happens in a really nonlinear way. So, get to grips with planetary boundaries. There's this, one of the best papers I've read this summer actually has been by Kering, and I think it was just titled Planetary Boundaries and Business or something. And that's really, really interesting. It basically, it's a useful framing for what things to prioritize based on what the world needs. And then also there's this emerging field of social tipping points and how we can actually, we can drive forward change which will then lead to positive kind of cascades of change. So have a look at social tipping points and then and try and work out where you can drive positive change, which is actually already part of a really important movement, which is going to result in further cascading positive change. Because that then, it basically allows us to make the most of the nonlinear way in which change happens because of the world being a very complex system. And then the third thing is, Just be open to much more radical transformation than you would probably like to be open to. I read this really interesting article yesterday which basically said that in most settings, climate and sustainability professionals are not getting paid to change important things. They're getting paid to protect important things from change, in that our primary offering becomes the least-cost plans for incremental socially credible action rather than successfully convincing companies to take really transformative action. So, I think what that demonstrates is, if you're going to bring on board a sustainability professional for help, really be open to the possibility that it might be your entire business model that needs to change over time, rather than just incremental things. We're kind of going into this age of disruption, and actually that makes this a really interesting time to bring in new thinking, because you're going to end up with a competitive edge if you're ahead of everybody else doing that. And so one kind of final question, which I think came from one of the Future Fit strategy workshops, is how can you use your unique set of competencies and resources to address society's most pressing needs in a Future Fit way? Because if you can, if you can do that, then yeah, then you're pretty awesome.

Brilliant. Thank you so much for joining us today, Anna. It's been, yeah, it's been brilliant talking to you.

That's my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

And thank you for listening to our Sustainable Business Podcast. Please do join us for our post-podcast discussion in our online community at sustainabilitysolve.org.