POPULAR REPLAY: Wine Society talks about why investing in your supply chain is crucial in 2025

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It's summer. It actually really is. Summer in the UK. Um, it's amazing. I was chatting to a friend of mine, uh, last week about, you know, what we've been up to. And, um, we're in the UK, we always talk about the weather, don't we? And she turned around and said, you know what, if it went cold now— bearing in mind I live in Edinburgh, um, east side of Scotland, so it doesn't rain nearly as much as the west side But if it became cold now, then I would really feel like we've had a summer. It's been hot since April. Now, on a superficial, personal, probably selfish level, summer starting in April and being absolutely amazing through until maybe September, maybe autumn, uh, is amazing. You know, I feel like we've been outside. I've got 2 kids. We've done a lot of time in the sea. We've spent a lot of time in lochs. We've, you know, we've just— it's been brilliant. The kids went off school at the end of June. Being in Scotland, they go back middle of August. So, um, We, you know, we've been to Wales and swum by the sea. It's, it's been brilliant just spending time with my family and, um, my mum and, you know, it's— and my in-laws. We've had a wedding. It's just, it's been, it's been a fantastic summer so far and it's not over either. And this is partly why The podcast episode is slightly delayed this month, and equally, we are taking a wee bit of a break to spend time and enjoy this summer. Now, I'm acutely aware that it is hotter than it usually is. I'm acutely aware of what else is going on. In the world. We are bombarded by the stuff from the US. Interestingly, if you go down that rabbit hole, which every now and again I do, I realize how much more they are bombarded than we are. We just get tidbits, and that seems a lot. It's phenomenal what's happening. And then the stuff that's just going on with Syria now We've seen this horrible, horrible stuff with Israel and Palestine, and then we have the Ukraine war just continuing going. I know this isn't sustainability, but I think sustainability does come into that. Sustainability is us. People. Sustainability is our personal ecosystem mixed in with the world ecosystem. I've always firmly believed that it's really important to understand what is, you know, what's going on in the wider field, what is happening in the, you know, around. So, your stakeholders. So, let's talk about the business. You know, you've got to be thinking about your clients, the people that have invested potentially in your business, the people that are working with you in your business. They are investing in your business, the customers or clients, I guess, that you are serving and the society that you are working within. So, are you a business that has a supply chain? And if you do, then that supply chain is incredibly important, more important for some businesses than others, i.e., our supply. Actually, no, I, as a consultancy software business, we are, we have an important supply chain, our suppliers, we have very few of them, but they're incredibly important to us. And we think very highly of all of them. And on that note, I'm going to repurpose the Wine Society podcast that we put out in— I actually don't know when we put— oh, December. So last year. And the reason why we're putting it out is it really articulated how to work with your suppliers, think about your supply chain, and that ecosystem But bringing it into the environmental problem that we face. And we know that wine is being really impacted by climate change. And as much as we, I, have enjoyed the summer so far, we know that there are ramifications for that. And it's not that I'm trying to bring it home, but we've had such good feedback from this podcast, and Dom is so articulate in the way that he spoke about the problems that the Wine Society are facing and how they're solving those problems. And that's the bit I want you to take home from this episode if you haven't listened to it already.

Enjoy.

Remember, you can reach out to us, podcast@sustainabilitysolved.org. One thing I haven't mentioned is Charlie. It's kind of weird doing a podcast without Charlie. He equally is spending time with his family. I made it all about me, didn't I? That's a bit rubbish. Um, it's not all about me, it's all about us. Actually, it's all about you as well. Um, now I'm being a bit silly. Um, but yeah, no, Charlie's the same, feels quite strongly about, um, you know, being with his family. It just, it made sense. We've been at this for relentlessly once a month for the last, I think, 5 or 6 years now, and just taking a wee bit of a break. We're gonna be back. In the autumn, and I look forward to some really good episodes. I already know what they're coming up, so I am looking forward to them, and I hope you are too. All right, take care now. Bye-bye.

Pay a fair price, invest in your suppliers, and then it's that old adage of working with the industry and getting a few of you together who all kind of think the same way, you can start to actually get a few things done, and then others will join.

Welcome to Sustainability Solved, where our mission is to help you solve sustainability problems in your organizations. I'm your host, Will Richardson, founder and Chief Purpose and Innovation Officer of Green Element Group. And as ever, I'm joined by my wonderful co-host Charlie Luxton. Charlie, how you doing?

I'm good. I, I, I'm trying to be Christmassy. I'm, I'm trying to warm up to the, to the Christmas break and getting excited about all of that. What about you?

I can't wait. I can't wait. Um, I, I'm now in two minds of whether I'm on the 18th of December and We've had our Christmas party for work, and we've had our Christmas thing, or whether it's a dreary day. Actually, it's not even dreary; it's actually a glorious sunny day here in November because we've obviously sometime in November.

Don't break the wall. The whole magic of I mean I have to say like let's be level. It's it's like late November. We're pretending it's Christmas. But can you imagine the people that do this stuff? for a living and like making like a Christmas party in January to— or in February, you know, in— sorry, June for your TV programs. It kind of seems slightly bonkers. But anyway, it is November. Let's not, let's not— but we are getting— I'm, I'm ramping up for Christmas. What about in the rearview mirror now? What, what's your takeout from COP? I have to say, I slightly was not interested, but I'm interested now that a bit of time has passed. What, what do you think came from it?

I mean, for all intents and purposes, it was a bit of a shit show, wasn't it? I mean, I'm not sure if you're allowed to swear. Probably not. Can you beep that out, please, Mr. Producer? But it really is disappointing. I read yesterday that one of the things that the Northern Hemisphere countries did was right at the last minute say, oh, actually, we've got this group of people and we're only going to pay the $300 billion or $250 billion when they could have actually said that right at the beginning? Because this was a lot about finance and trying to finance the Southern Hemisphere countries. And you just kind of go, it's all playing games. And we've now had 3 oil— is it 3 oil and gas countries that have been hosting it? They've been making deals left, right, and center for oil and gas. I mean, If I was on the outside, if I was an alien looking in and I'd go, right, so fossil fuels are the reason why they're in this mess. These humans really are stupid, aren't they? Because they're asking the fossil fuels that put them in the mess to sort out the mess that they're in and they haven't changed their economic structure. What's that about?

I mean, the only upside you hope— I mean, 2 things happened I thought was interesting. One is that the UAE called out Saudi Arabia as being effectively a bad actor in the whole process. and named them, which I thought was pretty significant. And they're very close partners and allies. And I think because UAE had hosted the previous COP, they felt moved to say, you're undoing all stuff that we did, stop it. I think that was interesting. I think the second— my one hope, Will, in terms of COP is that maybe this is the low point. This is the nadir of the process. And actually people will realize what has been going on, that The petro industries have flooded the entire event in an effort to dilute and dissolve what the ambition of the program's been. And maybe we'll see a transition, maybe we'll get better hosts going forward, maybe we'll get more action again. But I mean, Ed Miliband wrote quite an interesting piece saying that irrespective of the short-term pain, it just seems so clear that the long-term trajectory towards renewable energy is unstoppable. And maybe, maybe all of this is, is just dancing, you know, dancing around while the inevitability happens. So—

Well, I think that's the answer. I think that's— I think a lot of scientists came out with Trump with regards to that in the US. The, the ship has already sailed. It's going along. Whatever Trump wants to do is he's only going to impact his own country now. The rest of the world Is— and actually most of his country want renewables. Why is Texas, one of the biggest oil-burning states in the US, the largest renewable energy producer? It's because they're making money.

So moving on from all of that Christmas stuff, Christmas spirit, Christmas cheer.

Yes.

So Secret Santa, let's talk about Secret Santa.

Oh, thank you so much for mine. It's brilliant.

It arrived And so wait a second, listeners, wait a second, listeners. We decided to give each other a Secret Santa gift, and I, being told that this is what we're going to do, ordered my Secret Santa gift, less than £10. Uh, in fact, a secondhand product that I managed to source, and I got it sent over to Will, and it's arrived, hasn't it, Will?

It has arrived, it has arrived, and I was so on it, and I was like, Charlie, you need to get this done. And I spent about three or four days trying to work out what to give him. It's really hard to you because you've got because we're also on air, so we've got people to listen listening to us. So therefore, we've got to do it under ten pounds. It's got to be environmental, and I would have actually done a mixtape for you if I'm brutally honest. That's what I wanted to do, and the postage would have been the money sent. But the reason why I didn't do a mixtape was because of copyright issues, and I wondered if people would have a problem with that. And I'd be really interested to know if— could you email us and tell us whether you'd have had an issue? Because I'm now wanting to know, because that's— because I just wanted to give you— anyway, I then was thinking about—

I would, I would do jail time for your mixtape, dude. So you should have just gone with it, because actually, Nothing's arrived from my Secret Santa. I have got an empty hand. It's en route.

So, I got you a CD from Martin Bennett, and it's called Grit. And he was a producer, music artist from the Isle of Mull. And his music is really cool, Scottish-influenced dance music that blends together incredibly well, and I thought your love for the islands and surfing and water, it's a nice blend of all of that. It was a secondhand CD from Music Magpie, which is my personal love, um, website. It's my website of choice for everything. Uh, well, I only buy music. And anyway, I just, I wanted to buy you Drum and Bass, and a really cool Ambient drum and bass album, but I couldn't find them on Music Magpie, and so I got you Grip. But actually was Laura's. Laura was the one that said, "Why don't you do this?" And I'm like, "Oh yeah, okay, that's a really good idea." Well, no, I'm very excited.

I love I love Scottish music. I I've I follow a lot of Scottish bands. King Krius, Cirque du Soleil. I absolutely love Scottish music. Really? Look forward to getting that.

Yes.

Yes.

And secondhand.

And yes, it was secondhand. And you got me Wildfell, and that is a book around the— about the Lake District.

Exactly.

It's a very thoughtful gift because of your wife's and my family, who have a house there and grew up there. And it's— I'm really looking forward to reading, actually.

So critically, secondhand book. I think it was Awesome Books or World of Books, one of those fantastic websites, secondhand books. So it's about a guy who moved up to the Lake District to run the Haweswater RSPB estate and his kind of journey into understanding about how the biodiversity of the lakes has been degraded by farming practices, essentially post-Second World War, and essentially because of the number of sheep that they've put up there. It is such a nice book in that it really is thoughtful and understanding about the existing uses of the land, i.e., farmers, It tries to understand how we can balance the potential for reintroducing wildlife or restoring wildlife whilst respecting existing culture. And there's some fantastic bits in it about going to Norway and going to the Alps and seeing what the lakes would've been. It's absolutely brilliant. And as you say, you know, you're not just— you grew up there, your grandmother, I think your great-grandmother was born there.

Yeah.

Kate's mum spent the war living there with her grandmother and her mother.

Yeah.

Your family house, you guys have had for 200 years up there, haven't you? So I know my wife and I know your family have an enormous connection to the Lake District, and reading this book, I see it differently but also have hope. So great book, great book, Wild Fells. Really, really recommend it.

Yeah, it's brilliant. Yeah, I was really touched and loved it, loved it. I mean, that just shows for under-tenor, You know, there you go.

Great presents.

So Charlie, what have we got coming up today?

Well, it's a fantastic chat with a guy called Dom Deville from The Wine Society. Love The Wine Society. Amazing organisation owned by all of the members. It's a members' benefit society. And it's a fascinating chat really that sums up, I think, a lot of the issues facing the majority of businesses in this country, which is that Scope 3, i.e., supply chain emissions, are the biggest part of what most of us are gonna be tackling with because We just don't make that much stuff here, or most businesses don't. So that's really interesting. The second thing that I really came out of it for me was this idea of when your product or the thing that you are selling is massively impacted by climate change, as wine is and agriculture is, how do you respond to that? And I think the, the, the real inspiration has been about reaching sort of down the supply chain and then turning and asking, your, the people you are selling to, to also, you know, to get that longitudinal conversation going on. And then finally, actually, there was some fantastic insight into the role of procurement. The Wine Society buy wine from people and sell it to other people, but actually, how do you embody your value set into that process? And I think there's some fantastic stuff that comes outta this conversation that I think is really relevant to the people listening and really relevant to people trying to run sustainable businesses in our economy. So I found it a fascinating bit of a belter of an episode. What about, what did you, what was your big takeout, Will?

I think the fact that The Wine Society have closely looked at offsetting and looked at insetting and recognized that there is some real problems with the offsetting markets, but are absolutely wanting to look at their supply chain because they need to. In order to reduce those Scope 3 emissions. And they have ingeniously and intuitive— not intuitively, but, you know, they've properly looked at their supply chain and looked at how they can help their supply chain to reduce those emissions through a variety of different means that we're going to find out on the episode.

My jargon-busting bell has been ringing off the charts during that comment there, Will. But if you stay listening, you will understand everything that we're talking about because we do explain it in more detail. Enjoy the episode.

Thanks for joining us today, Dom. It's great to have you here. And before we get into the specific problem that you're going to help us with today, why don't you just tell us a little bit about The Wine Society? Because even though both me and Charlie are members, not everyone will know what it exactly is that you do.

Thanks, Will. Thanks for inviting me on. Great to be here. So The Wine Society, it is basically an online wine retailer. So we will, we have a team of buyers, they travel the globe, and it's their mission to find really interesting wines from about 26, 27 different countries around the world. We then ship those wines to our headquarters warehouses in Stevenage and then sell them to our our members. And so I think the difference with The Wine Society is we're, we're a mutual, and no one really knows what a mutual is. Most of us that actually work at The Wine Society don't really know what a mutual is, but it is basically, it's kind of like a club. But so you pay £20, I think it is now, to, to join The Wine Society. You're a member for life. You don't have to pay a penny more if you don't want to. You can buy one bottle a year, you can buy no bottles a year. You can buy 1,000 bottles a year if you want to. But the point is that because we're a membership organisation, we don't have shareholders. So all the profits go back into the business, and they go back into the business on quality, service, and increasingly so, sustainability. So that means that our wines are really good quality, but they're also really cheap. So it's kind of like the, one of the best sort of kept secrets, really, the Wine Society. It always amazes me that not more people know about it. Because it's a, it's a really interesting model, that, that mutuality. Because, yeah, we don't, we'd have to make money. Of course, we have to make money to, to survive. But as I say, all the money just goes back into the business and making it better.

And it's your 150th anniversary, isn't it, this year?

It is, yeah. So we were founded, yeah, 150 years ago today. By a group of guys who basically were annoyed with the price of wine and said, surely we can do this better ourselves. Why don't we form a club and we'll just source the wine ourselves from really interesting places and sell it to ourselves at really fair prices, like fair prices for us and fair prices from the people we buy it from. And honestly, that model has stayed the same for 150 years.

Well, I'm a huge fan of The Wine Society. As you say, I think the wines you get are really good value, really good value. And the fact that I've only ever had like 1 or 2 bottles that haven't been good, and whenever I've written in and said they're not good, I've got a full refund or a replacement bottle without any questions. And I just think that's an amazing service. So I love it.

Yeah.

But I suppose the big question is, what are the main sustainable sustainability challenges that wine and you specifically face?

The obvious ones. I mean, climate change is a big challenge. People often forget that wine is an agricultural product. And so we buy grapes, or, well, the producers that we buy from, they buy grapes from big farmers, small farmers, but people all over the world. And farming is just becoming more and more of a challenge. You know, just weather systems, changing climate, droughts, floods, hail in the summer, all sorts of things, you know, and that really affects the crop. So climate change is a biggie and adapting to climate change. Carbon reduction, of course, all businesses working on that one. And then another biggie for us is the kind of the human rights element as well. Another thing that people don't really think about so much in agriculture is all these grapes have to be picked, and they are picked mostly by humans. So that needs lots of people in the vineyards picking grapes at harvest time. So it's a situation where you suddenly need hundreds of thousands. Champagne, you take Champagne, for example, they need in about a 4-week window, 120,000 additional people to pick the grapes. So those 120,000 people have got to come from somewhere. Back in the day, they used to come from the local community. You know, everyone would get together and go and pick grapes for a few weeks and all support each other. But now people don't really want to do that. So it's often migrant labour. It's third-party recruitment agencies that bring people from Africa, from Eastern Europe, from Asia to do the picking. And you can imagine there's a lot of risks with that in terms of the treatment to those people. So those are kind of the big things we're working on, I'd say.

And what about biodiversity and chemical use in the vineyards and in their winemaking process?

Yeah, definitely. Again, it's not something that people tend to think about with wine, is the fact that it's a very— it's a highly processed product. A lot of people think actually it's just squished grapes and you put it in a bottle or put it in a barrel and let it ferment for a little while and then stick it in a bottle. But actually it's the same with most farming these days. Conventional farming involves a lot of herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, fertilizers, chemical applications on the land. So, That obviously has an impact on biodiversity. Well, you know, when you see these vineyards where it's just a row of vines and then bare earth next to it, it looks lovely. But actually what that means is that all biodiversity has just been killed and it's just the grapes that are living.

Right.

And those grapes are actually growing from chemicals. rather than from natural stuff in the soil, if that makes sense.

Yeah.

So biodiversity loss, I mean, it's happening in farming all over, as we know, but wine's no different, really.

You also do a lot with regenerative farming as well. Could you explain the difference between the biodiversity and regenerative?

So regenerative is essentially a farming practice. So, as I was just saying, since the Second World War, Farming has, what's called sort of conventional farming, tends to rely on a lot of chemical applications. Those fertilizers to provide nutrients for the crops. You're tilling the land to stop weeds growing, plowing. You're throwing down herbicides to kill weeds. You're putting pesticides down to kill the bugs that might eat the crops, essentially. So there's a lot of stuff going on onto the land. What regenerative farming is, and in wine it's called regenerative viticulture, is trying to move away from that dependence on chemicals. So it's trying to essentially use nature to provide all the things that the crops need and to kind of bring that sort of balance back to vineyards. So instead of plowing up the soil in between vine rows, so that there are no weeds growing because conventional farmers don't want weeds there because they say it competes for nutrients and water with the vines. But actually you can add beneficial crops into those rows. So you can add in wildflowers, legumes, other kind of crops that add nutrients naturally into the soil. And they share those nutrients with the vines. It's about bringing animals into the vineyard to add fertilizer. So you bring sheep through the vineyards, they poo, they add fertilizer to the soil rather than you having to put chemical fertilizer on. It's about finding natural ways to manage predators. So rather than spraying your crops with pesticides, You can bring bats or geese or other kind of predators into the vineyard that eat the things that you don't want or keep them under control. And it's about not tilling the soil because by churning up the soil, you're damaging the soil and you're also releasing carbon dioxide that's stored into the soil into the atmosphere. And actually, soil is a massive—

Sink.

carbon sink. So if you have healthy soil, it will absorb huge amounts of carbon into it. So that's kind of the regenerative approach. It's about using life to manage life, really, and using nature rather than using these sort of chemical inputs.

So if we see that as the sort of the backdrop to the general challenges of the wine industry, and as you rightly say, to the whole agricultural industry, If we just focus for a second on, on the Wine Society as a business, 'cause that's organisation, if you like, that's the kind of interest. What for you are the, I mean, should we get a bit nerdy here and talk about Scope 1, 2, and 3 for a second? Much as my jargon alert is going off here. As a business, let's talk about your Scope 1 and 2. Will, give us your very quick summary of Scope 1 and 2.

Scope 1 is— Scope 1 and 2 are emissions that you have produced, i.e., Scope 1 is what petrol have you poured into your car? What gas have you used for your air conditioning units? What gas have you used to heat your building? And Scope 2 is your electricity offsite that has used a fossil fuel or not, but, and it's brought in. So those are your Scope 1 and 2 emissions.

So Scope 1 and 2 for The Wine Society, massive or not so significant?

No, really quite small, actually. And all businesses will be different. So for us, our Scope 1 and 2 is about 6% of our total carbon emissions. So what that means is 94% of our carbon emissions are in our supply chain. So for us, that's the wine production. So that's some of the things we were just talking about, chemical use in vineyards. It will be diesel for tractors in vineyards driving up and down. It will be energy use in wineries. So that kind of wine production. It'll be packaging. Amazingly, for us, 31% of our total carbon emissions come simply from the glass bottle. So it's the making and disposing of that glass bottle. Then you've got shipping as well. So imagine bringing all that wine from around the world to the UK. That's a biggie. So those are kind of where our biggest emissions are. So when you think about, right, how are we going to reduce our— carbon emissions, actually it's all about working with your supply chain. Because yes, there are those 6% of emissions that are directly attributable to us. So we have, as Will was just saying, it's putting diesel in vans. So we have 30 of our own vans that we do some of our distribution in. So yes, we can move those to electric vehicles. Yes, we can reduce energy consumption in our offices, and we're doing those things. But actually where you can have the biggest impact is in your supply chain. So that's where it gets tricky.

Which is effectively your Scope 3.

Which is broadly your Scope 3. Yes.

You also have quite a lot of wine storage, don't you? Members' wine storage. I mean, I assume you've— what's the kind of demand of that element of the business? Is that within the 6%?

Yeah, so that'd be within the 6%. So we have just one site. So we're based in Stevenage. We have 5 warehouses here. So if members want to store their wines with us because they don't have space at home, for example, or they don't have the right conditions at home, we'll store them for them in our warehouses and they're temperature controlled. So for us, the energy use of that temperature controlling will come under our Scope 1 and 2.

But ultimately, you are dancing at the edges, aren't you? If you really focus on the 6%, obviously, That's not the biggie, is it?

Exactly. What have you—

because this is a really classic one, isn't it? I mean, this is a huge challenge that I think many organizations face. A lot of organizations, certainly consultancies and all those kind of people, it's all about the Scope 3, isn't it? It's all about the beyond stuff. How have you tried to tackle that given that you're actually in charge of so little of nominally in charge of so little of your carbon emissions?

For us, it's all about working in partnership with our suppliers. So, and I find this really interesting because I've been in sustainability for a long time and I've seen how procurement has shifted. Sort of 30 years ago or so when procurement was all about getting the best price. So if you were a procurement officer working for a brand or a retailer, you were a hero if you beat your suppliers down and got the lowest price possible. It's then kind of shifted over the last few years to actually, it's not just about price. We also need our suppliers to take care of compliance for us. So there's some environmental compliance in there, but it's health and safety standards and things like that. And now we're in a stage where actually the decent businesses are thinking, my God, I can't achieve my sustainability goals without my suppliers because so much of what we do of our business activities are in our supply chain. So we've got to work in partnership with our suppliers. So we've just got to— some of our suppliers we've worked with for 100 years, some we've only worked with for a couple of years. We kind of have those relationships inbuilt, but that's where we're focusing efforts on what we can do with them.

I think all proactive and really forward-thinking organizations are doing exactly what you're doing. And it is so good to see. I look at some of the businesses that we work with and the better ones are all in a similar vein to you. And I think that's brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.

So what are the kind of initiatives that you are initiating with your partners, and how do those initiatives come around? Do you say, hey, Mr. Winemaker, you need to do better? Or is it, is it more of a, what can we do together to improve this?

So it involves a lot of thinking. So we have about 1,000-ish suppliers in any one year, so you can't work with everybody. So you do, you do have to take it bit by bit. So one of the things is we are producing emissions, we want to reduce emissions, but at the same time, and that's where our priority is, but at the same time, we recognize we are still producing emissions as we go. So we wanted to see if we could offset those, some of our emissions. So our Scope 1 and 2 emissions at the very least. And We looked into this, into various different carbon offsetting schemes, and actually, because we're working in agriculture, we thought we've got access to all of this land, why not invest that money directly with our suppliers? So we've got a Climate to Nature program where we give money directly to our growers. So that's one thing that we're doing. Another thing we're doing is around engaging with our suppliers on what are the big sustainability challenges we're all facing? And it's about having conversations with them, talking about their priorities, talking about our priorities, and then coming up with plans of how we can help them. So how we can help them move to lighter bottles because they're lower carbon. How can we help them understand how to reduce carbon in their businesses, etc., around new product innovation as well? So there's a whole bunch of areas around there that we we can work with them on. And then the third big area for us is working with the industry to catalyze change. So if you think about something like bottle weights, it's all very well. And if you reduce bottle weights, you're essentially reducing your carbon emissions because they're lighter to ship and they also take less emissions to produce. If we go out there and on our own and just tell all of our suppliers, please reduce your bottle weights, well, they'll say, well, that's fine, you know, you want us to do that for you, but we have a bunch of other customers who are not telling us to do that and actually want heavier bottles because they think that consumers think that heavier bottles means more quality. So then you need to work with the industry and get everybody working on the same issue. So Everybody working on bottle weights, everyone talking about, okay, the need for the industry to reduce bottle weights, to reduce carbon footprint, to make change. So there's a bunch of areas there.

Well, should we go back to the first one? So you looked at offsetting and decided, well, against it on one level, but I suppose you're organizing. I mean, I have heard this phrase insetting, and you decided to to take that route. What was the driver behind that?

Yeah, we did. I personally think that there is a really good case for offsetting. I think offsetting schemes, they've come under a lot of scrutiny. They've had some bad press recently, but I think the concept is really sound, you know, and it's about diverting more money into projects that sequester carbon or avoid carbon. And I think we absolutely need more money flowing into climate adaptation, climate resilience, carbon reduction. So I wouldn't have had a problem doing that, but actually because of the, our type of business where we have access to thousands of growers around the world, thousands of hectares of vineyards, we thought, well, why don't we just give that money directly to them to do nature projects in their vineyards? So we created this fund. It's not a huge amount of money, it's about £65,000 a year, but we'll do it every year. We have 2 criteria for our growers to apply for. One is for projects that are conservation restoration type projects, so it might be tree planting, it might be hedgerow planting, it might be rewilding. Or the second criteria is for to help them adopt regenerative viticulture practices, because there are quite a lot of barriers to entry to to changing your farming practices. You know, you imagine your grapes; you've been adding chemicals to your grapes for the last your vines for the last twenty thirty years. It's like a drug; they're addicted to it. So moving your vines. off chemicals is a slow process. And what it can often mean is that your yields go down for a few years. So obviously, then there's a risk of the farmer making less money because they have less grapes to sell. So there are barriers to entry like that. So what this fund is doing is helping to help— is sort of providing a bit of seed money to help either get somebody started on their regenerative journey or help them overcome some of those financial barriers.

And how are you then estimating, or maybe you're not because you're not effectively looking at exactly carbon offsetting, are you working out the carbon impact of those programs individually?

In all honesty, no, at the moment.

I love that honesty and I don't blame you. No.

So we have taken the view for now that we— because we've invested in 11 projects this year and they're all really varied. So one of them is planting trees in vineyards, for example. So it's kind of an agroforestry project. So there'll be maple trees, olive trees, and I think truffle trees. Because trees and vines go really well together. If you think about where vines grow naturally, they're creepers. They just creep up trees.

Mm-hmm.

But so when you see a vineyard, that's not the natural way that vines want to grow. They actually want to grow with trees. Trees and vines work very well together. They share nutrients, they share water, they share all sorts of things. So agroforestry projects like that, There are some projects which are kind of trialing new approaches in regenerative viticulture. So we have this one project, this is getting quite geeky now about—

Go ahead. We love a bit of geeky. We're into this. What is that?

Hydroseeding. So you imagine you've got vines as you go through spring and into summer, weeds grow. under those vines. And what a lot of conventional farmers would do would be just to spray them with herbicides. But there's this new approach called hydroseeding, which is basically, it's like a water spray that you spray under the vines. It's a mixture of water, cellulose fiber, seeds. And what that does is then grow beneficial crops under the vines. So it's crops that add nutrients into the soil and that don't compete with the vines. And this provides kind of a blanket of dense crops under the vines that capture carbon, that improve moisture retention, protect the soil from erosion, provide nutrients into the soil and for the vines, all those kinds of things. And crucially, it means that the farmer then doesn't have to spray herbicides. So we've funded a trial to look at that. Can that work for the wine industry? We gave money to one producer for them to buy a direct drill. So it's a piece of equipment that goes on the back of their tractor that drills seeds directly into the soil without needing to plow the soil. Because as I was saying earlier, when you plow the soil, you damage the soil, but you also release a lot of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. So if you direct seeding, it literally just does a little groove, has this little wheel that spins around and makes a little groove in the soil, and then it just punches the seed into the soil. So they can plant these cover crops, so crops in between the vine rows.

So are you sort of trying to create almost like an intellectual hinterland around projects that you're hoping will seed behavior change into the wider industry? Is that part of how you're—

Exactly. That's what we're thinking at the moment. So because they're all really diverse projects, it's really hard to measure the impact of all of those. It's really hard to come up with concrete numbers around X biodiversity produced or X carbon sequestered. So we're using it as a way of investing in our supply chain, so building relationships with our suppliers. We hope it is really genuinely contributing to more sequestration and biodiversity, even though precise measurements is going to be difficult. But the third thing is learning from these projects and then taking that learning, packaging it up, and then sharing it with all the other 1,000 suppliers that we work with to try and encourage them to do similar projects, or at least show them how, how to do it, how to get going. So it's providing case studies to them. So listen, we invested £3,000 in this project. We did this, this was the benefit, and this is what the grower got from it.

Well, you're almost becoming a kind of think tank within the wine industry, aren't you, in a way?

Well, hoping to definitely contribute to the growing body of knowledge, for sure. Yeah, because farming's hard.

Yeah.

Right? And farming in the face of climate change is really hard. And then you've got retailers and brands saying, oh, and now I want you to be more regenerative or to use less chemicals. So there's a huge amount of pressure on farmers, whether it's wine or tomatoes or whatever crop. So they need help really, and they need guidance and they need to understand what works because A crop like grapes, you only get one chance at it.

Yeah.

If you cock it up, you've lost your whole crop for that year, and you've lost your whole income for that year.

Do you work with other buyers? I guess Tesco's, Just Reading Brooks, et cetera. Do you talk to each other and go, this is what we are doing, what is it that you are doing? And so that's, there's more of a cohesive approach across the whole wine Yeah, I think that's growing.

I think that's still pretty young, if I'm honest. So there's 2 organisations that I would mention. One is called the Sustainable Wine Roundtable, which is global in nature. There are probably more members from the UK at the moment because that's where it was founded. And that's just a collaborative forum. It's just where people get together, share things, share learnings. So that—

And are those wine producers within there?

Yeah.

So it'll—

okay.

Yeah, it'll be everyone. So it'll be wine producers, it'll be bottle manufacturers, logistics providers, retailers, agents. So membership is really, really broad. So that's definitely helping. And then there's another organization called the Regenerative Viticulture Foundation. Um, which is a new one. It only started a couple of years ago, but basically their mission is just to, um, help people move towards regenerative viticulture. So they provide, um, uh, case studies, um, uh, they provide technical advice, they hold webinars, um, they send out guidance notes and, and all sorts of things like that. So that's definitely helping, but it's It's pretty young, you know, there's not, there's not, yeah, there's never quite the collaboration, I think, that one would like.

Yeah, which we need. Just before we dive back into the episode, I wanted to quickly share something that might interest you, especially if today's conversation has got you thinking about your own sustainability work. Some of the things we hear most in this industry are, I wish I could connect with other people doing this work, or I'd love to turn my sustainability expertise into something more. Well, Green Element, the sponsor of this podcast, have created their own ambassador network, and it does exactly that. This isn't about selling you something. It's actually about helping you make money while building the sustainability community we all need. So here's what's in it for you. First, you get to join a genuine community of sustainability experts who share knowledge, refer work to each other, and solve problems together. So no more working in isolation. Secondly, there's real money involved. There's a 10% commission on software referrals and 5% on consultancy work. We're talking about projects that go from £1,000 right up to £100 grand. Plus, you'll be able to boost your presence by taking part in our fireside chats. I've actually got an email in front of me from Louise Stevens, one of the ambassadors, and it says that all her clients are genuinely happy because she's got a great partner and her clients love them. But here's the bigger picture. You'll be helping accelerate the sustainability transition that we desperately need. Every referral, every connection, every collaboration. Moves us closer to the world we're all working towards. If this resonates with you and you want to earn some extra income, click the link in our show notes to apply to become a Green Element Ambassador. Okay, back to the show.

Just to circle back for a second, Dom, you mentioned, and I know Will, that there is a lot of skepticism, or there's been a lot of controversy, if you like, around offsetting. Should we just Like, fill in what have been the failings of that and what is the potential of that as a concept, as a mechanism for dealing with carbon emissions?

I think what Dom said was exactly correct. I think offsetting per se, in the reason why it was set up, is actually a good thing because it was helping families in Southern Hemisphere to put in stoves that are more environmentally friendly. It was to— it was almost insetting around the world. The problem started to appear when companies were selling offsets for, say, £1 a ton or free for the first 3 months, and they were just planting trees literally willy-nilly anywhere. Those trees were not necessarily going to last. Those trees were sold as one ton of carbon offsets, as or as a removal. They were saying it was basically removal of one ton, whereas if you plant a tree, it takes forty years if all is correct for that one ton to be removed. So you're not removing it then, and therefore business was going on as business as usual. You had a lot of communities around the world that were being affected by big corporates buying up swathes of land around the world, and they were planting the wrong type of trees. It was colonialism all over again. And I think the way that the Wine Society have looked at insetting is such A refreshing, sadly refreshing way to look at their supply chain. And it's just wonderful to see.

Yeah, thanks. I mean, I would echo that. I mean, there are some really good offsetting schemes out there.

But let's not call them offsetting schemes. That's the bit that gets me is we need to call— we need to get them to come up with another name for them. And it's a part of your corporate responsibility program. It's a part of your supply chain. It's a part of your It's not taking the emissions away, it's working with your suppliers.

Yeah, I think so. And that was the conclusion that we came to as well. And there may be a chance with this over time where our growers can earn extra income by selling carbon credits. And so if we're investing in them or if we are proving to them that planting trees in their vineyards has a benefit to their vineyard. So it brings more biodiversity in, but actually it has a benefit to the grapes and the quality of the grapes and the resilience of the vines to climate change, which is the theory. If we can prove that, encourage more growers to do something like agroforestry and plant more trees, That's got a great benefit to the world because the trees are sequestering carbon, but it may also have a double benefit for the grower in that it helps the resilience of their vines, as I was just talking about. But they may also be able to sell the additional carbon that they're sequestering as a carbon credit. So there's additional income source for them. It's still early days, that, and there's a whole host of problems with carbon credits.

There is a lot of problems with that.

I don't want to go into them now.

But I mean, I think if we can, if we can put aside the complexities of putting them into action, the concept is very valid, isn't it? You know, the idea that you can ascribe a value to a unit of carbon and you can do something to hold that or retain that or, you know, or take that outta the atmosphere. That seems sensible. I understand it. The devil is in the detail. So this interests me because it strikes me that that is one way as an organization, I mean, your catalog comes and there are hundreds and hundreds of bottles of wine in there. What I would love to see and what I've always wanted to see in supermarkets markets is some kind of score system that makes me realise how sustainable is this bottle of wine on a scale of whatever you want it to be, 1 to 10, 1 to 5, green to red, whatever you fancy. I mean, is that something you've played around with internally or is that problematic?

That would be quite hard because it'd be so subjective. And there will be views on regenerative, there'll be views on Like natural herbicides over there's going it's going to be and also you've got regions around the world, so you've got water depressed regions that are producing why I think that would be really difficult and it goes into I want to talk about the results sorry of what you have been doing with the insetting and I think this ties nicely into that like what. What have you seen as the results from the money that you've been putting in? And could that play into some kind of scoring system?

Yeah, possibly. So we, we've literally only just spent the money since September now. So, and because we're working with Nature, so we launched it in March. This is the first year we've ever done it. We launched it in March. We went through a whole kind of application process through the summer. We chose our winners at the end of the summer, and now we've just basically handed over the money. So the projects are just starting now. So it's too early to tell really.

Yeah.

But I mean, the whole tell me what's sustainable and what isn't sustainable, and that communication to consumers is just, honestly, the conversations that I have about that, it's a constant conversation because wine's so, exactly as you said, it's so subjective. It's not like I don't know, chicken, for example, you know, when you go into— which is really binary— when you go into a supermarket and it says, right, high welfare, free-range, organic chicken, and it's certified Red Tractor, whatever it is, and then you've got the essentials version, it's quite a binary decision. Whereas wine, there are so many factors involved, and in wine, there's something like 40 or so different sustainability certifications. So the whole sustainability certification market is crazy. And one person's sustainability, sustainable wine is not another person's. So there's a whole debate about organic, for example, and is organic actually sustainable? You might be an organic farmer, for example, or a regenerative farmer, but then you the producer puts the wine in a 1-kilogram glass bottle. So it's really difficult, and I don't think the industry's got an answer to it yet, although we're trying to work on it.

Yeah, I mean, there's similar issues around construction industry, but we have things called EPDs, Environmental Performance Declarations, which are ultimately, I suspect, at the end of it, their objective, and that's supposed to capture the impacts of making the widget that you stick in a building. I suspect it is easier to, to, to sort of marshal the information than it is with wine. But you'd like to think at some point we need those figures. I mean, you've, in some way, you have worked out the carbon emissions associated with your Scope 3, haven't you?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Some way. So you have some data somewhere. Quite how accurate it is and how much you wanna share that with consumers, I don't know. As a consumer, I'd love to see it, but I totally understand it's a fraught area. How have you seen your relationships with suppliers change? Because it feels to me very much like by putting sort of skin in the game, if you like, by investing in these transformation projects, you're sort of in the journey with them. Have you seen the conversations changing, not just with the 12 chosen, but with the wider supply chain?

Yeah, definitely, definitely. Honestly, it's transformative taking these kinds of approaches. So we have some relationships with our suppliers that go back 100 years. We have some relationships that just go back a few years. But I think that a supplier seeing a retailer investing in its supply chain, whether that's handing over money to do projects in their vineyards, whether that's putting on webinars, which we do, Whether that's having— and this goes back to your earlier question, and I probably should have said this earlier— we have a category of wines on our website called Producers Making a Difference. So we have done our own evaluations of our suppliers, and we've put the ones that we're thinking are making the best strides forward on sustainability into this category of Producers Making a Difference. We think that they're the more sustainable ones. So that gives them more marketing, more sales opportunities. We're really now starting to talk to them a lot more about the human rights issue. And that's a win-win because there's growing media attention about exploitation of workers in the agricultural sector. So it's beneficial for us to be working on these things together. So we're providing guidance, we're providing training, or we will be next year, free training to our suppliers to go on training courses about How to recruit seasonal workers, what are the issues to look out for, how to do audits on your labour provider. So I think that just all these things they find helpful, all these things make them think really positively about The Wine Society. And, you know, wine's quite competitive in terms of, like, finding the best wines. There aren't always enough isn't always enough wine to go around. And we get good allocations of wine. So suppliers want to sell to us. So they come to us with the wines that they've got and say, we want to sell to you. These are our wines, or we've only managed to produce a certain amount of this wine this year, but we would like to sell it to you guys because you have the same values as us. So that partnership just It's a real win-win.

Yeah, I can— it's, it's really hard, isn't it, for wine producers? Because I would imagine that the profit margins are very low, and then they also fluctuate massively due to climate change and the difference in environments that they're producing in. And one of the things that you probably need as a organization, but also as an industry, is probably more money to be put in to be able to tackle the problems and understand what it is that needs to be done in order to circumnavigate climate change.

Yeah.

And I think that the producers need more money to help. Some are very wealthy, some of course, but a lot live on the margins. So just to put it in perspective, for a £6 bottle of wine that we sell, only, I think, 6% of that money goes to the producer. The rest goes on shipping costs, taxation, packaging costs, things like that. Whereas a £7.50 bottle of wine, about 17% of that money goes to the producer. The producer. For a £10 bottle, it goes up to 28%.

Oh, wow.

So you can see how if we increase the sale price, and I know I shouldn't really be saying things like this as a retailer, but if we're paying a fair price for the wine, if we're selling it at a fair price, that's both fair to suppliers and also fair to consumers, We can channel more money down the supply chain so that the suppliers can do the things that they need to do because sustainability does cost money, as we all know.

Just to point out to the listeners, I would say that your bottles of wine are at least £2 cheaper than pretty much anyone else's, even at the £10 range. And then it just goes up from my sort of experience. So even if you are paying a little bit more to the producer and you're selling it slightly cheaper, the fact that you don't make profits in the same way as a traditional company means you can still make the magic happen, which—

Yeah.

Which is partly why I love the organization so much. And if you have to charge a little bit more to get more into the sustainability sector, I'm fine with that. But I'm obviously biased.

But if you were to look at it really cutthroaty, as in this is why we need to be charging more, is if you're a producer and you've got to get— we've talked about migrant workers coming over. You're either basically in a position where you are not able to Have all of your grapes picked, and therefore you lose all your crop, or you pay for people to come over. And I would imagine no one wants to treat people badly. No one. I really fundamentally think that it's it's it's almost driven by the consumer. You know, we are driving bad habits within the supply chain, and that needs to be communicated more. And I think we need to be talking about it openly and saying. Actually, if you want to buy wine, £10 a bottle and just buy one a week rather than 3. My maths is awful. Whatever, you know what I mean?

Yeah.

Well, I agree.

I mean, it's covering the ethical costs of production, isn't it?

Yes.

You know, you think, well, I'm picking on the clothing industry now, but—

I was thinking exactly the same.

How can you buy a t-shirt for a pound? I mean, something is not right. Something is going wrong. Somebody's not being paid properly. Somebody or something is being exploited. It's got to be because things can't be that cheap. So yeah, I mean, we very much think that our suppliers, they— we're asking them to do a lot, right? This goes back to what I was saying earlier about how procurement has changed from, well, actually we just want the lowest price. But now we're saying to our suppliers, we actually, we need you to save the world for us because All of our emissions are in our supply chain, but actually we still really want you to give it to us really, really cheap. Well, something's got to give. And suppliers do need the money to pay their seasonal workers properly, to take the risk of adopting more regenerative farming practices, for example, because there is a financial risk to them. Or they need to pay a consultant to come in and help them. These things just, they cost money. So I think we have to be aware of that.

Yeah.

And do what we can to help.

Yeah.

So in, in the journey that you've been on over the last couple of years, what have been your kind of main takeouts? What have been your mo— moments of real success? And what do you think the big challenges are coming up for the industry?

One of the successes that is not just down to The Wine Society, but a few of us, is this Bottle Weight Accord. So we agreed, about 12 retailers came together. It was organised by the Sustainable Wine Roundtable, and all have pledged to reducing bottle weights down to lightweight bottles by 2027. And, you know, that's quite transformative in terms of carbon reduction. So if we all— it's about 2 billion bottles a year. all those retailers added together. So you can see how that kind of can have a big impact. And we were really involved in that. I think, and I hope that that's going to have a real change. The other thing I think I'm really proud of here is just, and I've talked about it a lot already, it's just the general approach that we take to suppliers. I think, again, I think that's really really transformative, and that kind of partnership approach. Well, what's going to be difficult going forwards? Getting— I think we've— there's— it's the same with all things with sustainability. When you— we've only been on our sustainability journey for 3 years, really. I've been at The Wine Society for just coming up to 3 years, and in the first few years, you work on the low-hanging fruit.

Mm-hmm.

You work on the stuff that's kind of easy, moving to renewable energy, putting solar panels up, reducing lightweight, lighter weight and lightweighting bottles, those kinds of things. But then it gets really hard. How do you actually move more of your supply chain into regenerative viticulture? We're sort of teetering around the edges of it. How do you get the industry having a proper conversation about human rights? In the industry and doing something about seasonal workers that come in. How do you get the industry all calculating carbon emissions in the same way so that we all properly understand where emissions are coming from and we've got accurate reporting and we're all working on the things that need to be worked on? So that sort of collaboration. piece and the industry working together is going to be a big— it's, yeah, a big challenge and opportunity.

Would you say that's one of the key takeouts, irrespective of the industry you're working in, that it's about the conversations, it's about collaboration, it's about going outside of the silos of a traditional business boundary, if you like, and understanding we only solve these problems together?

Yeah, definitely. I mean, my key takeaways are it starts with paying a fair price. If you're a retailer or a brand, you have suppliers, you've got to be paying a fair price to your suppliers because that's where, as we talked about, your emissions are, that's where your risks are. And that's where you can have the biggest impact. It's your suppliers making these changes. Pay a fair price, invest in your suppliers. And then it's that old adage of working with the industry. And getting a few, even if you can just get 2, 3, 4 of you together who all kind of think the same way, you can start to actually get a few things done and then others will join.

Brilliant.

Dom, that's fascinating. Now, do you like wine, Dom? Do you drink the odd drop?

I do. I know very little about wine. I kind of fell into wine. I've always been in sustainability. And until I got this job, I was just sort of a drinker of it, and I'd drink all sorts of plonk. But now I have found, being here, that I still don't know anything about wine, but I know more about what I like and I don't like.

Okay, what are you going to be drinking on Christmas Day?

So I like a Rioja.

There you go.

I like that it's red curranty, blackberry kind of fruits. And, you know, a bit of a plug for The Wine Society, we sell a very, very good Rioja.

So that, that'll be being opened in, in, in your household on Christmas Day. Lovely.

Thank you so much for coming on today, Dom. Happy Christmas and Happy New Year.

Yeah, thanks for having me on, guys.

Happy Christmas. Enjoy that bottle of Rioja.

So, Charlie, the wines are What were your key takeaways from that?

Well, now I've got something else to worry about. So I didn't even think that exploitation of migrant labour in the wine industry was a thing I had to worry about, and now I'm worrying about it. I'm like, oh gosh. I mean, I knew about the other stuff. I knew about chemical usage and I knew about biodiversity. I mean, amazingly, when I was younger, I travelled to New Zealand, South Island New Zealand, and you look at these miles of vineyards, and you know that they've only been there since about the '80s, '90s, all about Sauvignon Blanc and all those areas around Marlborough and everything. Most of them have come in the last 30, 40 years, and you just think of the amount of biodiversity that's been lost. So wine certainly has an impact. What I took away from an organisational perspective was what a great organisation the Wine Society are, and I love what they're saying about trying things, not being afraid to make mistakes, not getting too obsessed about the carbon modeling. Because they're not talking big sums of money. You could spend £64,000 just trying to model the carbon that the little projects might save.

Yeah.

And at some point, you've just got to try stuff, learn lessons, move fast, fix things. And I really felt they were doing that. And I love the way that they're trying to lead both the consumer and work down supply chain, like both up and down and with their peers. I thought, I thought it was, yeah, I thought it was really inspirational. What about you?

I, I agree. I totally agree. I think that if more organisations think the way that The Wine Society think as an organisation, i.e., holistically, we'd be in a much better place.

Yeah.

So tell me, I've been a bit rubbish with, with, with book club. I, I didn't make the last one 'cause I was away for most of it. And then by the time I was back, like, there was hardly any book left to do. Your next book sounds like a, a very challenging read. And again, in the lead-up to Christmas, I'm just not around. But what are you reading next? Tell me about it.

We, we're reading Me and White Supremacy, and the idea is to educate white people about racism that's endemic within society. And I've read a few books around this subject, and I It really is a part of— even if you think you're not racist, you realize that some of the stuff that you do is inherently a part of the problem. And I think it's really important for us to educate ourselves around this subject. Interestingly, the last book we read, Ministry for the Future, we talked about carbon credits and we talked about stuff like that on this episode, and it comes up in Ministry for the Future. I'm seeing a lot of stuff in society and what the future could look like that has been described through Ministry for the Future.

And I love— So it's effectively sci-fi.

It is sci-fi in the real— in reality. And I think that's what I'm enjoying about this book club, is you actually talk about what's going on. And so this current book We're going to be talking about it. It goes in weeks, I think, and we're going to talk about it after each week. And so if any of the listeners want to start reading Me and White Supremacy, ask questions, and we can discuss it, and we can bring them into the show. And if you've got any books that you think that we should be absolutely reading, what we want to do is we want to have those uncomfortable conversations. and talk about things that actually no one wants to talk about. So that's how we're going to solve sustainability. And it's really what the whole show is about.

I mean, I think it's just that moment of realising that there's another thing that you don't really want to talk about, you need to talk about, i.e., slave labour in wine or badly treated labour in wine. It's just endlessly you find these things that I think very easy, you can just brush it under the carpet when actually the daylight is the thing that will, will change these issues. I, I am going to read— I am going to read that book, Me and White Supremacy, because I think, I think what I'm fascinated to understand is the subtext of the structure, the social structures that have been put in place effectively by white people over the last 400 or 500 years that you're not even aware of.

Yeah.

And they, and they are, I suspect, always skewed towards the people that constrict created the structures. So again, not an easy read, but you know, there we go. That's, that's the life. So I think that's it for this. That, that's it. Not a very Christmassy end to this show.

No, there is. You know what, uh, I'm on my personal sustainability—

people, crikey, have some fun.

On my pers— on my personal book reading, I'm actually reading Alex Ferguson's, um, autobiography at the moment, and that is Brilliant. I'm not a big football fan, but actually it's an amazing book and it's got some lovely parts to it. And it is quite uplifting to listen to how he's— and I think about it from a business point of view and what he's done and how he's tackled difficult personalities like Roy Keane and et cetera. So I think that— I don't know where I'm going. I'm trying to uplift the show. I'm trying to uplift it.

No, but look, it's Christmas. Everyone should be excited about a few days off. Really enjoying that Christmas period, you know, resting and recovering for another year of trying to solve the sustainability issues that affect your business.

I think that what would be really good is you can either email us, but more importantly, come and join the Sustainability Solved Hub and ask questions within that. Let's pull together all of you wonderful people that are listening to the show And your brilliant brains. And as a collective, we saw this on this episode, as a collective, we're much better together to be able to understand sustainability as a whole.

Well, also, if you could rate the show and leave a comment on Spotify or wherever you listen, that really helps us out as well. And also just mention the podcast to the people that you know that you think might be interested. And if you've got any thoughts, you want to get in touch, Things you want us to look at, issues you want us to tackle, insights into the things we've discussed. We'd love to hear from you.

podcast@sustainabilitysolved.org.

Bingo. Happy Christmas, Will.

Thank you. Happy Christmas to you too.

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