Opportunities in the Circular Economy with Julia Davies

In this episode, environmentalist and investor, Julia, opens up about her investing journey in the field of climate tech and sustainability. As the founder of 'We Have The Power', an organisation that invests in solutions and startups tackling single-use waste, Julia discusses her mission and the challenge of catalysing practical action towards a sustainable circular economy. The episode dives into the accomplishments, potential, and challenges faced by various circular economy startups that Julia supports, including Dizzy, Revolution Zero, and Clean Bus. Julia also highlights her vision for focusing on reuse over recycling, advocates for changes in consumer habits, corporate behaviour and government legislation, and shares her unique insights on striking a balance between investment appeal and socio-environmental impact.

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00:01 Introduction to the Podcast
01:00 Guest Introduction: Julia Davies
02:17 Julia's Journey to Sustainability
03:10 The Role of Early Stage Startups in Impact Finance
05:08 Julia's Investment in Reuse and Circular Economy
06:24 The Challenge of Changing Consumer Habits
07:40 The Role of Corporations in the Sustainability Transition
09:58 The Potential of the Circular Economy
10:39 Innovations in the Circular Economy: Case Studies
12:09 The Challenge of Systems Change in the Circular Economy
19:08 The Role of Government Regulation in Sustainability
24:29 The Importance of Focusing on Impact in Investment
43:16 Inspiration and Advice for Sustainability Journey
46:24 Overhyped and Underhyped Trends in Sustainability
47:44 Investing in Biodiversity and Nature Conservation
48:36 Policy Reform for a Sustainable Future

Transcript

0:01

Hello, and welcome to the seed. Our intention with this podcast is to illuminate the climate tech venture space, sharing the stories, the insights of the founders, pioneers, innovators, and investors who are shaping this space at this critical juncture. Through the stories we'll share, we'll provide insights, knowledge, as well as solace, reassurance and hopefully community to those who are pushing the boundaries in the climate tech and sustainability space who are working so hard to make the world a better place by building or investing in the very companies that are going to make the change we need to see. So if you enjoy what you hear, please do share this episode with a friend or leave us a review on whichever platform you're on so that others can also find our work. I'd love to hear from you, so please drop me a message at Jake at 7gen. vc if you want to continue the conversation and with that, thank you for joining us and enjoy the show. So hello and welcome to another episode today I'm really thrilled to have on the show Julia Davies. Julia Davies is a philanthropist, investor, campaigner, as well as being a trained lawyer. And she's the founder Of an organization called we have the power, which is an investor that's investing into solutions and startups tackling single use waste and trying to reduce the way that we consume in our society. Julia's mission is to catalyze practical action by investing into startup companies that offer sustainable products and services, as well as providing philanthropic loan finance to help to accelerate regeneration, conservation and restoration. Julia's got an. Fantastic roster of companies she's invested in, typically in the reuse and circular economy space, which we're going to be talking about today. And she's really keen in investing in solutions that cooperate towards moving the UK towards a circular economy. Julia is also a member of the patriotic millionaires club in the UK, which is campaigning for a higher level of tax on wealth. So Julia, it's fantastic to have you on the show. Thank you so much for giving us your time. Welcome. Jake. Yeah, brilliant to be here. So. Can you just tell us a little bit about who you are, what you do in your own words, and how you came to do what you do today, which is to focus on the circular economy and reuse as an investment thesis to enact change? Well, I came here because I've always been focused on sustainability and the environment in my own life. So for a long time, the best I could do was just try and live my own life sustainably. And I came to where I am now when I sold out of my stake in a company I helped set up, that was Ospro Europe, we distributed backpacks. And so I've got that passion for the outdoors, as well as my passion for the environment. And that gave me the money to do something about it. To basically go from just living my own life sustainably, trying to make the right choices, to then support other people to do that and support us in the very significant transition that we need to make. And you've clearly zeroed in on early stage startup investing, but that is just one spectrum of what you might call impact finance. You know, there is philanthropy, which I know you also have, but there's also, you could be investing into listed securities. You could be investing into project finance, et cetera. Why have you decided to focus on the really early stage kind of private company venture space? And why do you think? that holds so much potential to deliver on the impact kind of objectives that you want to see. Well, it's really interesting. So when I first came into money, my first instinct was to to donate to the charities that were really campaigning to tackle single use waste. Single use plastic is a really big focus, but it's much more than that. So that's where I started out. For example, I funded the supermarket survey at Greenpeace where they analyzed all of the huge amount of waste coming out of supermarkets. That was in the year when Sainsbury's came out bottom and, you know, shining a light on what they were doing. That really had a big impact and it started conversations amongst the supermarkets about how we're going to address that. I also funded City to See, who are a fantastic NGO based in Bristol. They've done great work on refill you know, really shone a lot of light on, you know, huge problems that we have to things like flushing dispose, well, supposedly disposable, but not actually disposable, wipes down the toilet and all of this kind of stuff. So, so I was funding various campaigns, but actually I reached the point of thinking, actually, it's no point trying to tell the public that Single use waste is a problem if it's really difficult for them to do anything about that and as you know We're in a situation where it could be more expensive to buy For example fruit and veg loose in the supermarket than it is to buy it in plastic packaging so we were trying to create this demand from consumers to change whereas actually it's really difficult for them to do it because all of the suppliers, the whole industry around this was making it really difficult. So I came to the conclusion that what we actually needed to do was invest in solutions. So I'm very, very interested at that point in time, companies that are really showing how reusable, reusable can be done because the automatic response of big business to people becoming aware of plastic pollution. You know, there's horrendous images of marine life, you know, just basically, you know, with stomachs full of plastic, you know, seabirds feeding their chicks plastic. We've all seen that. We've all been horrified by it. But it's been this big focus on plastic being the problem, but actually the problem is single use. It's single use waste, which, which I just think is rubbish. It is rubbish. It's by its nature, it's rubbish because it's designed to be thrown away. And as we know, there is no way. So, so my focus was very much on how I could support companies that were showing how we can move from this shameful era of humanity, where we've treated the Earth's resources as if they're completely disposable and just thrown them away, so we've treated it as if there's huge areas of the world that we can just create as rubbish dumps, into a world where we actually value resources and we actually treat things with respect. And so we move to using things, you know, as much as they can be used. And there's some fantastic companies that are doing that. So it sounds like you're tackling a really broad societal issue, but what you've touched on there is that there's a corporate angle here. Companies, for example, are using plastic packaging as a better way in their eyes to provide, to furnish the brand's products for consumers, and no doubt they're seeing things like cleanliness You know, convenience, et cetera. So there's a corporate challenge, but there's also a huge consumer challenge in that we simply buy stuff. We throw it away far too often. And there's a perennial challenge in startups, which is that often the visionaries and the innovators have these amazing ideas, but companies with their corporate buyers or consumers, if they're corporate consumer users or buyers, just sometimes aren't quite ready for it because they're. used to what they know and they like that familiarity. So do you think the challenge here lies with consumer education and awareness and changing some of those habits, which in a way goes back to what you first started off doing with some of those surveys? Or do you think actually there's a simple solution here, which is companies have just got to get their acts together and start To quote Gandhi, you know, be the change that they seek rather than just saying we'll listen to what consumers want and the consumer's always right because the consumer isn't right, the consumer per se, the consumer just wants what they, what they know and what they're familiar with. The consumer now wants what the corporates, what the businesses have taught the consumer to want. There wasn't a demand for every piece of vegetable and fruit to be packaged in plastic if you went back like 20 years or whatever. That was something that was brought in, and it's more convenient, of course, in the supermarket if you package it all up it, it can just be run through the till, nobody has to bother with this weighing, all of that kind of stuff. So, so the consumers have been led to expect this level of convenience, they've been led to believe that that is the best way to present fruit and veg. ANd so, if just educating the consumer was going to sort this out, then the problem would have been sorted with the Blue Planet. It was horrendous, you know, the images that we were showing there, and there was a spike in publicity, so people really started to understand what, you know, what problems were happening. We saw images of all of the plastic waste that we're exporting abroad and dumping on countries that are much less able to deal with that waste than we are. We didn't want it here, we sent it off. away, you know, we've literally thrown it away outside the UK. So we need both things. We need consumer education to be pushing for this change and demanding the change. But we do need these fantastic companies that are innovating and showing how it can be done. Because we will have the likes of big corporations will keep trying to tell us, no, no, no, it's too difficult. No, no, no, we need to do this. It's, it's not, it's not viable. It's not financially viable. But it is if that's the way that we've decided that we're going to do things. Now, of course, a lot of these problems could be sorted out overnight by the government if they, if they put the legislative provisions in to support that. And, and, you know, and I do have sympathy for businesses that say, you know, the government need to create this level playing field. And that would be wonderful if they did that, but we're not there yet. And very often the government is wanting to be led by business. So we end up in this chicken and egg situation with everybody saying, no, it's the consumers, no, it's the government, you know, no, it's business. And there are businesses that are showing how this can be done. But, you know, there's fantastic innovation that's going on in the fields of showing how we can do reuse, how we can do circularity. And the wonderful thing about doing this, moving towards this circular system where we're not just disposing things all the time is we're not just circulating products and goods within the UK. We can start circulating money within the UK. And when you think about this sort of difficult economic situation we're in at the moment, that isn't something to be dismissed. That's important. So the great thing about the circular economy is it has the potential to create jobs here. It has the potential. Like I said, to keep money within the local economy. And there's some great examples of that being shown. So one of the companies I'm invested in is called Revolution Zero. And they are taking us back to where we used to be. So in hospitals you know, if you went into surgery, people used to have they used to be wearing, you know, surgical scrubs and they used to be surgical screens, etc. around the operating table that all got washed and reused. And then for a period of time, we've just gone to everything. gets, you know, disposed of. Everything is single use, which is, which creates all manner of additional problems, which some of those additional problems are actually health related. So for us to be, you know, creating these additional problems within an organization that's supposed to be all about health, you know, it's insane. So they are doing fantastic work showing how we can go back to using reusable surgical gowns, reusable surgical drapes. And they're not just doing that, they're also showing how those items can be washed and sterilized in a way that's, that's modern. So it's, it's low in terms of water usage, it's low in terms of energy usage, and chemicals. So they really are looking at the full picture, and then they're creating the potential for a sort of diversified range of decontamination hubs, which are around the country. So, you know, this isn't just consolidating opportunities and jobs in one place, they can be set up in wherever, you know, the hospitals are based. And, and like I said, this is, you know, these are all added on, stacked on benefits on top of the very, very obvious environmental issues that they're addressing. What you touched on there to me seems to be like one of the kind of contradictions for innovation in the circular economy space, not contradictions as such, but one of the challenges, which is that if you want to innovate in the circular economy, and when I say the circular economy, I don't just mean the pure circular, but if you want to take those concepts and you want to apply them to our linear economy to make that more sustainable, then as a startup, you're by definition a small organization and yet to be effective, you need to apply Your field of vision and analysis to a huge value chain, you need to consider the whole circularity of this, including the end of life, whereas the existing typically much, much larger organizations are carrying on in the status quo by focusing on just this tiny slice of that packaging value chain. Which might be when they buy it, when they use it to say, wrap something up, whatever that product is, and then they don't really care about where it came from, per se, and they don't really care about where it's going. So it's almost feels as if you mentioned there about government support, but, you know, without it, you have these small companies trying to innovate by taking on these huge challenges against these huge incumbents that aren't really thinking about half of that challenge and therefore. Don't need to apply their resources to anything near as big a scope of kind of analysis or as large a value chain as the incumbents. And you've obviously invested in a load of these startups. So I'm curious if you see that as a challenge that they're actually facing. It's a huge challenge that they're facing, but increasingly those big companies are going to have to face this because we do have new legislation coming in, don't forget, which is going to start specifying percentage of recycled materials within packaging, etc, etc. But all of those things really are just, you know, they're just a fault. They're not really addressing it. We know that there's a lot of problems with recycling plastic. And we're just, you know, we're just now starting to acknowledge what those are. There's a lot of, you know, hazards associated with it. There's a lot of evidence that if you make a, you know, a drinks bottle out of recycled plastic, the potential leaching from that plastic into, into the beverage inside is, is higher. So it's all manner of issues. They're associated with that. So these big corporations, they're trying to kind of like hold back the tide of, of having to make these changes. But they'll have to do that. And that's where these innovators are, are there, they're on the cusp to really. Maximize the potential of this is going forward because it is going to come, you know, the, the, the enormous problems being caused by this, they're building up day by day by day. We know, you know, we know that we now have microplastics in every single part of the ocean. We know that they're now funding microplastics in, in, in breast milk, human breast milk, you know, all of these kind of things. I, I keep wondering, what's the point at which people are going to say, no, this is, this is too much, you know, we've really got to act. And I think we are getting there. We're getting there. And we need these fantastic innovators. So, for example, Dizzy, which I know is a company that you're very familiar with. What I love about them is they really do look at how we're going to properly address this. Do you want to just give us an introduction to Dizzy for those who don't know who they are and what they do? Yeah, so they're a fantastic startup. They started out with with an online offering called The Good Club, where people could buy organic groceries. And within that, they had part of the offering, which was zero waste. So that people could buy their dried goods, their pasta, their rice, et cetera, in plastic containers, which the customer would decant and then send them back. And they also arrived in it was an online offering. They also arrived in returnable boxes as well. So the boxes, everything was delivered and went back. That was fantastic. But they, like you touched on, they recognized that if we're going to really address this, it's no good just having little niche businesses, which are offering some very dedicated and motivated consumers a refill offering. We need to actually start moving the grocery trade overall. So what they're now doing is they are supplying a reuse and refill offering to other retailers currently focusing on those that have a doorstep delivery options. So they're with Aiden coal, milk and more on the modern milkman, but moving on from that, and they've really thought about this. So what I always say is that. The food industry that is dragging its feet about moving to reuse, they've always said that actually we need to change consumer habits and that's difficult and so to the extent they've engaged with this, they've done a little bit of in store refill and that's never worked well. It's, it's always been all manner of hassle, you know, and I'm someone that will go out of my way to do refill, you know, I'll go to my local refill shop, I'll clunk along all of my containers, etc. I know how difficult it is, it's hassle. Most people don't have that. That luxury, you know, if you're a mum dragging along three toddlers, you know, you can't be taking all of your containers to the store with you and then trying to refill whilst you're watching your kids that are running around causing chaos. Equally, if you're, you know, an older person that's, it's a struggle enough going, going to the supermarket, you can't then be adding the weight of taking your own containers. So I always felt that that in store refill was just a little bit of a token gesture. What we actually need to do is, is continue to offer consumers the level of convenience that we've taught them, that, you know, the business has taught them to expect. And that's what Dizzy does. So it's offering a refilled offering, and that's very different to refill. So they're offering your groceries come in these very nice looking now containers. which you can either just keep and use them, or you can decant them at home, and then you return those containers. And that is a very fundamental part of the destination which I want us all to get to. So my vision is that out on my driveway, instead of having, you know, a big recycling bin and a small mortar refuge bin, I want a smaller refuge bin, quite a small recycling bin, and a big reusable bin. Because there's absolutely no reason why a lot of the containers that we have for food for food, et cetera, cannot be going back and being centrally collected, washed, and going back to, to be refilled. Now, we're a long way off that, and Dizzy are doing fantastic work moving this forward on that journey. Because there's a lot of things you then think about packaging design. You can't just use the same old containers that we've always used and then just refill them, because they can be really difficult to wash. It can be difficult getting the labels off. Difficult to refill. So all of these things need to be thinking thought about and dizzy have been absolutely no basis in that. And what's fantastic is they've been, you know, that they've been sharing their vision with others within the sector and making real steps forward. They show that it can be done. And I have seen that busy reuse vision thought piece. They've done that white paper. So we'll make sure to link to that in the in the show notes for anyone who wants to take that and run with it a little bit further. Julia, you mentioned that about. Government regulation. One of those key pieces of regulation is the, the, the, the EPR by the extended producer responsibility, whereby the users of and the creators of single use packaging have a responsibility for that packaging, including its disposal and the challenge being there's, there's, there's all these great ideas about sustainability. And then it comes to the crunch and both politicians and businesses that you said earlier, and I'm not saying this is a criticism, by the way, I'm saying I'm more holding the retailers to account here. They say they want to do these things, but then it comes to it and they are lobbying for that piece of legislation to be delayed. And obviously that's in their interest and I'm sure morally they absolutely understand that single use packaging isn't the way forward. They're once again, seeing a need to change. And they know there's only one direction that we can go in, and yet they are hindering and slowing and resisting. And I think that's pretty fair to say, you know, that they're asking for a delay on something they know needs to happen. I don't think I'm being unfair here. They're resisting this change. So the challenge that therefore creates, especially for, you know, innovative young businesses that are trying to say to customers, i. e. these same retailers, and trying to say to investors, this is the landscape we're operating in. We've got these regulatory timelines. So by this date, we know our service is going to be really valued. Then the government moves the, the kind of finish line. And suddenly startups that were thinking they can use this piece of legislation to offer a piece of, to offer a solution, they've now had that push back. So I'm curious what your thoughts are on that delay, and obviously that's very temporal and of the moment, but what your thoughts are on that potential delay, to be fair, they haven't confirmed it, but they've been lobbying for it. And whether you think that does create really unnecessary volatility for startups who are trying to solve these problems, but the goalposts are always moving. Obviously it does. And, and obviously the government could, you know, they could change this so, so quickly. And the best example of how quickly they could address this and move us. in the right direction is what happened with smoking. And we saw a step change on smoking at the point of which they banned smoking in public places, where they stopped the advertising, you know, so that you just basically, you know, you went in the shop and people weren't being faced with it. It made such a huge difference overnight, and the government could do that. But unfortunately, we can't rely on this government to do that. But I don't think that that is the only driver. Increasingly, companies are going to have to show what they're doing towards their net zero pledges and don't forget the plastics. They come from fossil fuels. There's a, you know, there's a big carbon footprint associated with this. In the past, I've had people, you know, I've had sustainability managers try to tell me. That a disposable fork was more sustainable than a reusable fork because, of course, you use energy and etc to wash, well, sorry, that doesn't wash with me, sorry to say that, because you can address all of that, you can wash more efficiently, you can use renewable energy, but ultimately, we only have a finite amount of land and we only have a finite amount of resources and we are stretching that to the limit so, so, so far. So, of course, most businesses, what they would prefer to do, rather than doing the step change, which we need, is to move from single use to reusables. A lot of them are just thinking about a different form of single use that isn't plastic, because plastic's been identified as the bad guy, so let's just change it to something else. But, ultimately, that's just causing another form of problems, because anything that is disposable, it's going to basically be something that's grown, probably. In which case that's just creating another demand on land, and we already know that we're using too much land to produce our food, so we're not leaving enough land for, for nature, which isn't just a noice to have, you know, we, we, we really are not going to survive as a species if we just destroy all of the other life on earth around us, because we can't, you know, we've, we've almost wiped out the pollinators, and we may think we're incredibly clever, but we really cannot manage without them. So these changes have got to be made, and yes, corporates, some corporates are dragging their feet, but others, I think, are starting to get it. And I think the drivers are coming from more than one place. They're not just coming from legislation. They're not just coming from the campaigners. We're now getting more and more analysis of, you know, the sustainability assessment of companies. And that's just going to get greater. aNd so all of these are going to be factors, isn't it? So, Judy, if we could ask you here, what would you really like to see change? If you could wave a magic wand. Would it be legislation? Would it be consumer habits? Would it be investor? kind of appetites, would it be corporate buying criteria? Where do you think this change needs to start? Because I think that's possibly a more constructive question for me to ask rather than me teeing you up to go and, you know, trash everything that people aren't doing. What, what do people need to start doing positively and affirmatively to make a change? Yeah, I mean, on the assumption that most of the people listening to this will be people who are considering investing in, in solutions. I Think that what we need is for impact investors to be thinking about and acknowledging the extent of the emergency that we face. So, we are absolutely in a really, really serious position, both from the climate, on the climate front, on the biodiversity front, and in terms of the fact that we're toxifying our oceans, our rivers. We've got to act on this really, really fast. And what we do in 10 years time is kind of almost irrelevant. We need to be doing things fast. So I would be saying to people, if they are genuine about wanting to create impact with their investment, be looking to put their money into businesses that are creating solutions that can be implemented pretty quickly. And I think moving us from single use to reuse is one of those solutions. We absolutely have got to reduce our consumption. Of the Earth's resources and our disposal of it because, you know, we can move completely from fossil fuel based energy to renewables. And, you know, we can do that grant green transition, but if we continue to extract more and more resources, and we continue to just throw away more and more things, it's really not going to help us. We are just going to be continuing to destroy all of the bases, which, which basically make our home livable. And so, so reuse is just absolutely fundamental, and it's, it's something where you can see the change that's, you know, you can, you can create the figures and, and, and identify what difference that is going to make, and it's possible, because you know what, we used to do it like this, we didn't used to have this degree of disposableness, we didn't used to have people buying clothing as if it's almost a single use item and actually, do you know what, we weren't less happy then, you know all of this excess consumption has not led to happier people in fact. I would say that we've probably got the greatest level of mental health crisis and greatest level of loneliness. And, you know, all manner of issues, particularly amongst young people, who are often seen as consumers. Yeah. And I think, yeah, we talked a lot about food here. I think it's also, we've also seen the same in food, haven't we? Which is that processed foods typically need packaging. Nature does a pretty good job of providing at least fruit and vegetables in some form of. you know, biological packet, so to speak, whether it be a skin or whatever. So coupled with what you were saying there, you know, if you look at the levels of heart, you know, cardiothoracic illness, diabetes. obesity, et cetera, then a huge amount of that really can be attributed to modern processed foods, which themselves need, because they're processed, they need to be put into a packaging. And I remember someone once saying to me, or listening to it somewhere, that actually if you walk into a supermarket today, all you're really doing is buying plastic. And when I had that realization, and I sat, or stood, Down the middle of a supermarket aisle, you did look around and of course, some of it's in cardboard, some of it's in glass, but let's say you go down a saucers aisle where you go down the drinks aisle or, or something like that. You go down one of the aisles with dry goods, let's say pastas, and you look around even, even worse, you know, convenience stores when you're in the snack section and everything is just plastic. You see plastic, plastic, plastic, plastic everywhere, and that's when I think I really realized we had a plastic problem. Because all of the food we were buying, you're actually buying food, plastic, with a bit of food inside it. Often is the case. And I think that links to what you were saying before, in that we weren't less happy earlier. And we weren't less healthy before. We've had all this plastic, we've had all this, all these processed goods, we've had this disposable society, supposedly so that we can be, we can live with more convenience. But as you say, it hasn't necessarily left to improve happiness and having foods more convenient, you know, having calories and nutrition more conveniently available to us has not made us healthier. In fact, we're less healthy and we're more obese. So I don't think anyone could really say plastic has been Sure, there's definitely some use cases, especially in hygiene and sterilization, etc. But I think most people would struggle. To demonstrate a long lasting sustainable benefit or health benefit or societal benefit that plastic has really introduced. Yeah, and I think you can take that further to the whole level of consumption, you know, because as we've been told that it's going to make us happier. But yet, you know, did we have this level of issues back, you know, even a few decades ago. So I think that, you know, I think if we start re examining as a society what we want, and if what we want is we want to be happy and we want to raise happy kids. and happy young people, then I, I think the kind of changes that we need to make that, you know, that they kind of, they go, they go hand in hand. And so in terms of what, you know, what I would, would like to achieve is I would like us to be really genuinely thinking about every single way in which we can be supporting all of those great businesses out there that are bringing forward sort of, like I said, really imminent and impactful. Solutions to the problems that we have. And another one that, you know, you wouldn't think of necessarily as part of the circular economy is a fantastic company called Clean Bus. And what they're doing is they're retrofitting diesel buses to electric. So, yes, that's circular because they're reusing the buses. But why I love that so much is, is not only is it speeding up the transition from, from diesel to, to electric, which we obviously have to do to address the climate crisis, it's really focusing the effort where it's needed most. So. Right now we're sending the most vulnerable people and the most disadvantaged people. in society out in diesel buses where they're breathing in toxic air that's more toxic inside the bus than outside. So imagine all those kids going to school with school bus or imagine all of those people, you know, in a very busy sort of densely populated part of the city, but they've got a lot of pollution anywhere where they live. And then they're in buses for their breathing in all of that toxic air quality. So by promoting companies like Clean Bus, who are just cracking on and making it quicker for us to make this change. We're bringing it forward and we're really focusing the effort where it's going to have the greatest benefit, you know, because it's all very well, you know, like moving to electric cars, but that's just going to improve you know, the benefits for just one family at best. With buses, you know, because we know that we can't address all of the issues just by moving everybody from fossil fuel cars to electric cars, you know, because there's lots of issues in terms of the, you know, all of the resources, the precious resources associated with batteries, etc. Thank you. So when you start looking at it in terms of resources being precious and not, you know, just finite and we get to take them all, then that's when you start being a bit more you know, you, you, you start being a bit more careful with how you use them. And, and what, one of the things that I always like to think about when I'm sort of trying to explain to people about why it's so important for us to move to a circular economy. And, and move away from this sort of sort of, you know, extract, consume, dispose economy. We just need to remember that we're not the only species in this world. We're just one of many amazing, amazing species. And we do not exist in isolation. If we eradicate all of those other species and we're just left with us, you know, the animals we eat, the animals we keep as pets, and the animals that thrive on our rubbish, like the cockroaches and rats. But we're not going to last very long. So we've taken it to the brink. We absolutely have taken it to the brink. And these companies which are recognising this and recognising that we need to consume in a more intelligent way. They, they're the ones that are really sort of pushing this forward at the pace that we need. Yeah, there's a stat which I remember seeing which is staggering. And I think it was from Greenpeace or WWF. And that is that there are 8. 7 million species on this planet. And humanity. Along with the pets and the livestock that we keep to sustain us. constitute 99 percent of the animal biomass of the planet, which, if you think there being 8. 7 million species and one of them occupies 99 percent of the biomass at an animal level, that is absolutely staggering when you think about just the monopoly and the impact that we've had and You know, obviously, we look at this through a very biased lens being that species. But I think if you most of the other species had any level of subconscience that could rival ours, they would be looking at that thinking the equality here, the inequality sorry, is is is vast. And, and of course, you know, we're building lives in societies that we'll think we're very happy with. But that is a staggering stat when you think one species has 99 percent of the biomass leaving the other 8. 7 million with The other 1%, which, which is a pretty radical stat to move back to solutions. And to keep this positive and affirmative, you're obviously looking at a wide range of companies in the circular economy space. Where are you seeing success? You know, which industries and which markets do you see as being ripe for startups? And where are you seeing success within your portfolios in terms of either problems or industries? I'd love to, to, to glean some of those insights that you reap from, from your own portfolio and investing. I think that we're seeing real, real progress. We're all not, there's so many things like this, you know, we're on the cusp. We're on the cusp of these things really starting to sort of take, take their role. So, like I said, I think, again, I would come back to Dizzy. I've seen, you know, the transformation that has been in their offering since I first engaged with them to now. It's huge. And if you look at if you recall a little while ago, there was there was a refilled offering through, I think it was Tesco, and is that, was that loop or looped? And what that was, and it didn't work too well, did it? But then that was basically using the same kind of containers as they would use for single use, refilling them, and then not really thinking through the entire process for making that work. What Dizzy have done is they've absolutely thought about the whole thing. Every single little bit needs thinking about because it's got to be a smooth, efficient process. You know, we cannot have this as being, Oh, we didn't think about how we're going to get those labels off. Or we didn't think about, you know, that they weren't going to stay on or, or that, you know, it was actually going to be really, really hard to get into this sort of like the corners of this container when you're washing it. And, you know, we cannot ensure that it's sterile and clean when we then. Send it for refill. So all of these things need to be thinking, be thought about. And Disney have just made so much progress on every level of that. So like I said, you know, they've, they've thought about the end of life. Even if those containers, they've made them, they look great. Which is, which is important. It might sound, you know, trivial, but it isn't. You know, if we're going to like, you know, we all know that that the companies and brands that it really matters to them, how they present themselves to their consumers. So all of these things are really important. So I'd say they are making significant progress. Revolution Zero as well, you know, they, in a way, they're trying to tackle a really, really tricky problem because their prime, you know, one of their primary customers will be the NHS, not easy to deal with. But equally, in trying to address this huge sustainability issue with the NHS, they have a whole, you know, constituent of people with the NHS who really get this. So the doctors, the nurses, the people in, you know, in, in the health sector, they really understand the environmental issues that we are facing. They understand that the climate and biodiversity crisis is a health crisis, so they want these solutions. So, so, in terms of how they have very quickly, over a very short period of time, gained real traction and real support from a whole host of you know, hospital trusts around, around the country, and then have. address each new challenge, you know, the speed with which they've come up with this decontamination unit, which can be set up where it's needed throughout the country is, is really, really fantastic. And they're doing that because they are employing an incredible team of people that you know, they get the problem, they've got the skills and the expertise to, to come up with the solutions and they are implementing it. And they are, you know, they are, you know, considering constantly how they can do what they're trying to do better. So, you know, I've got so much respect for all of these people, because if we're going to address what can seem like a sort of insurmountable overall problem that we are facing, the fact that we have, you know, treated, treated the world that we live in so badly, the only way to address that is to pick off one issue at a time and have people that are willing to dedicate all of their efforts to one specific issue. And that's what Dizzy are doing, that's what Revolution Zero are doing, and that's what Clean Bus are doing. And that is what we need. You know, but many of them, they are on the cusp, they still need that investment, but they are so much closer to achieving impact than some of the things that vast sums of money are going into, and that's where I'm at. Yeah, no, I can appreciate that frustration. You know, you look at the clean tech, climate tech investing stats, there's a huge amount of money going into, for example, transportation. And, of course, that's typically through the huge fundraisings that have been done by companies like Tesla or Rivian, et cetera. And some of those, those EV startups, because I think investors can see that there's been a well trodden path to huge consumer adoption, but you touched on something earlier, which is that, you know, where people want to find solutions. And I think what you're saying there is, for example, the NHS knows they have a problem. They want to find a solution. Food retailers know there's a problem. There's legislation coming in. They want to find a solution, but I imagine there were also some really burning use cases. Where people don't want to find a solution, but actually maybe that's where the problem really needs to be solved and we don't necessarily need to go into specifics there. But there's always that slight dichotomy isn't there that the people who are probably asking for help are probably those who least need it because they're the ones with the awareness. And actually it's the ones who are really digging their heels in and saying, we're going to carry on as we are. Thank you. We've done okay for the last decade or two now, probably the ones who really need the change, but I can totally appreciate if you're an investor, you would not be saying, yeah, go and go and try and sell into a market that fundamentally doesn't want your products. But that does create a misalignment of incentives when you look at the entire impact piece. It does, but there have been some, you know, there have been some really great success stories which have seemed, seemed very tricky to address. And, and I'm going to, I'm going to bring up something now, which I don't know whether or not your investors want to listen to this because I think it's, it's showing the potential for massive. Transition. And that is a very thorny issue of disposable sanitary products and how that could be absolutely transformed. And my mission is for disposable sanitary products to become a part of the past. And that's been transformed by period plants, which weren't around not so long ago. So one of the companies I'm invested in is Ancestors. And they are, you know, they aren't just croissants. There's a lot of different brands out there now that produce this product, which didn't exist for some time ago, but it is absolutely. You know, it's, it's groundbreaking in terms of how this could really address that massive rubbish problem. But they're making really good products as well, because of course there will be people that will come in and they'll go, Yeah, we'll make this, but they, they're making something that doesn't last very long. And then that has potential just creating yet another problem. So what we need is people to come into this that want, you know, they don't just address a problem which they can come up with. a kind of supposed fix to it. We need them to come up with really good fixes that are going to stand the test of time, that aren't just going to create an alternative problem. The best example of one problem being replaced with another really terrible problem is disposable vapes. So I mentioned smoking earlier because I think smoking is such an example of how we can change a society. I know we haven't got rid of smoking altogether. But, you know, I can remember when, when you had a night out, you came home and your hair and your clothes stank of smoke because every pub and every restaurant, people were smoking everywhere. That doesn't happen anymore. So we can change the society. So that was wonderfully positive. And then, of course. The, you know, vapes were a part of the transition for helping some people get off smoking. But now we have disposable vapes, which is just this terrible problem that's come in now, which is, you know, an example of something which seemed to be positive, that's now become really bad. And I suppose that's what I was trying to get at when I was talking about the fact that if we just replace single use plastic with a number form of single use. We're just replacing one problem with another problem. We're just catering to market. Yeah, and we could do a whole podcast on kind of systems thinking and systems change. But I think that's a lot of what you're alluding to here. And you mentioned companies like Dizzy, for example, having taken the whole gamut of problems that apply and that manifest throughout an entire system. Not a linear system, but a circular one. In that circular economy, that's absolutely, I think, where a lot of the thinking needs to go to, you know, it's probably not enough systems thinkers out there and certainly when you develop these visions These ideas, these concepts as a startup founder, it's then a huge task to go and say, well, that was a good idea. Actually, let's think through all of the systems related implications for this, but it's great to see so many companies actually seizing that. And I think that's a great thing with startups. They have such a hunger to learn that they see this problem, they think they have a solution, and then they run with mapping out the entirety of that problem solution sets and try to understand how they can affect change. So whilst there's definitely a huge, huge, huge challenge in front of us, I think like you, I share a lot of the optimism, a lot of the hope for what some of these companies are doing. And you've discussed a number of great examples here of companies that are doing great things in this space. So thank you very much for taking us through all of that and your experience. And, and Julia, if it's okay, what I'd love to do is just finish up with a couple of the, the rapid fire questions that I alluded to before we came on the microphone. So are you ready for us to move on to those? So first question then is what is the best piece of advice that you've ever received? Oh, goodness me. I told you I needed to think about these earlier. I think that, I think that what I've had to do in, in my sort of career journey is, is in a way to try and focus in on certain things. So I'm a bit of, I do have a tendency to a bit of a scattergun approach and to try to do absolutely everything. And I suppose advice from people around me has been that I need to focus on the things that I'm best at doing. And you need to recognise what you're good at doing. And I think that where I have skills is in helping other people. It's helping catalyse and make things happen, rather than actually being the person that implements. And I think a really, really important thing is to recognise where your skills are and where your skills aren't. And I'm definitely my best place in, in just being the supporter. And that's what I try and do with all these amazing companies that, that I'm involved with. I try to give them a lift up because I think they're better at doing what they're doing than I ever could be myself. Okay, great. Thank you. So the next question then is, Who's someone who served as an inspiration for your career and your own sustainability journey? Oh so in terms of my own sustainability journey, I think that's just come from myself. I could say David Attenborough, and of course, I'm absolutely loving him, and he is actually in the corner of my office because my son bought me a cardboard cutout of him, so it really makes me look like a stalker. But I've been, I've been incredibly inspired by many of the young people that I have supported as part of the youth climate movement. So a couple of years ago, I got involved in supporting Mock Cops. which which was something, and it was an initiative of students organising for sustainability. It was when the main COP got cancelled because of COVID, and the young people, you know, they just stepped up and said, we can still have a COP, we'll have it online, and actually we're going to show you how we're going to make it far more inclusive than any of the COPs have been before. So, unfortunately it didn't get as much publicity as it should have done, but the young people that worked on that were just Staggering, you know, I cannot believe the seriousness and dedication that they displayed at that age, because I'm telling you now, I wasn't like that at that age. They really are incredible. And there's a tendency for us to say that young people can sort it out. And I think that's a despicable thing to say, because, you know, we're the adults, we need to sort it out. We absolutely cannot leave it to them. But we still have got to show them absolute respect, because they've done amazing work. So the third question then is what do you see as the most overhyped trend or technology right now? And conversely, which is the most underhyped technology or trend right now? Carbon capture. It makes me scream. I'm not saying that we don't need it, but it's obviously the money that's going into it. If that money was going elsewhere, if that money was going into us reducing energy consumption at scale, then, you know, we, we would absolutely. be moving much, much faster. There's much, much easier ways for us to bring down our overall carbon budget and carbon capture. I don't have a problem with people doing it, but do not, please do not direct our money towards it. I think our money has got to be going into. Well, one is, is nature, because nature's pretty good at capturing carbon, and and, and if we are, if we are coming up with these ridiculously complicated technical solutions once we're continuing to kill whales and, and dolphins, and basically make our ocean uninhabitable, so we're, we're going to be releasing huge quantities of carbon because we've killed everything in it, then that's the definition of stupid. Okay, well said. If you had a billion pounds or dollars to put towards furthering any sustainability cause, where would you invest it and why? I think I'd be using a lot of that money to basically protect a lot of the, the most biodiverse parts of the world. And protect them in the way that the indigenous communities of, of those areas have protected them for a very long time. So there's, there's, there's a lot of A lot of parts of the world, which we're continuing to chop down, and we're continuing to lose species, and we're continuing to lose carbon stores at such a rapid rate. As you know, we're, you know, we're at the point, the tipping points in the rainforests, you know, where we're at the point of tipping them from being rainforests into no longer being rainforests. And that's got, going to have catastrophic effects for us all. So if I had that money, which obviously Bezos, et cetera, do have that money, I wouldn't be finding it difficult to spend that money. As Jeff Bezos said, I would, I would find ways to spend it very fast and I to protect, you know, the most important habitats on earth. And so the final question then, if you could enact one policy reform, what would that be? I would, I would go straight to, to making reuse our primary focus. So I would require I would, I would enact reusable collection at the doorstep. I would prioritize us collecting items, all items that could be reused for reuse. So I would be putting all the effort that's been put into sort of promoting recycling and incineration, et cetera, into setting up the structure that we need for that. And, and it is possible. You know, we used to do it, and other places in the world have continued to do it, for many things, like from beer. to milk, et cetera. So I think Thank you, Julia. Thanks for those rapid fire questions. Sorry that we didn't give you enough time to, to polish them up as you'd like, but thank you so much for going through your experiences, the lessons that you've learned, the insights that you've gleaned over your investing career. And so my final question to you is, if people want to learn more about you, if they want to get in touch with you, if they want to continue the conversation, how can they get in touch and where can they find you? I'm on LinkedIn, so they can find me on there. My website is wehavethepower. org and you can find lots of information about all of the work that I'm doing there. A big part of what I do is I support acquisition of land for nature restoration for projects. which I call funding nature they can get in touch with me through the wildlife trust. So, yeah, if anything that I've said is interesting, Thank you so much for coming on the show. That's been fascinating. Thank you for sharing all of that wisdom on reuse in the circular economy. And I wish you and all the investments that you've made the best of luck in trying to make the world a better place. Thank you.