Spill The (Green) Tea with Pauline Robson
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Malin Cunningham
Welcome to Spill the Green Tea, the podcast where we dive into perhaps the most controversial part of sustainability, how to talk about it.
Katie Treggiden
That's right, we're exploring how to talk about your eco-efforts without getting called out. Join us for straight-talking, behind-the-scenes insights and practical takeaways that will help you gather the courage to shine your light in these volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous times.
Malin Cunningham
It's a serious topic and we don't shy away from that, but we will bring you uplifting, positive and pragmatic conversations with brilliant guests and in-depth discussions between the two of us, all to give you the confidence to talk about your imperfect efforts towards genuine sustainability.
Katie Treggiden
Because it's not just showing off, sharing your progress helps you connect with clients and customers and inspire others to be more open about where they are on their journey. We need your stories now more than ever.
Katie Treggiden
Pauline Robson is an award-winning insight and sustainability leader who spent most of her career at WPP Media Agencies.
Katie Treggiden
She started by building a volunteer sustainability team within an agency. She eventually had a full-time role as managing partner and head of sustainability at Mediacom, now Essence Mediacom.
Katie Treggiden
And after almost 20 years, resigned that role to study for a Master's in Sustainability and behavior change at the center for Alternative Technology.
Katie Treggiden
to find out what really motivates us humans. She's on the Anti-Greenwash Charter Advisory Board, so she's pals with Charlie Martin, who we interviewed
Katie Treggiden
in the episode that dropped on the 17th of June.
Katie Treggiden
Oh, we had a good conversation. We talked about the levers of change, how it feels to have so much responsibility and yet very little power. Some of the structural issues that are actually driving the great green hush that Malin and I talk so much about.
Katie Treggiden
And why internal communications can be so hard, and yet so important. And she dropped some epic book and podcast recommendations, so enjoy this episode.
Malin
So we champion progress of perfection on this podcast, and always start with the same opening question, and that is, what is the one thing that you might do, that might not seem that sustainable, and why?
Pauline Robson
Mmm, yeah, so I…
Pauline Robson
I found it really hard to bring this down to one thing, because I started looking at this kind of in a…
Pauline Robson
thinking about this in a big way, and it's, that, let's face it, most of what we do isn't sustainable, right? We're in… we're in that, kind of, 10% of the world's population that's responsible for 50% of global emissions, and even my baseline of just existing in… in the UK,
Pauline Robson
in this society is using up more than my fair share of CO2 emissions and the Earth's resources. I think it's something like if everyone on the planet lived the way that we do in the UK, we'd need two and a half planets worth of resources, which is a lot.
Pauline Robson
So, it's quite hard to narrow it down to one thing, and it's not a reason to try, you know, not to try and be more conscious of what I'm doing, because I've made lots of
Pauline Robson
changes, to my life. But if we think about that sort of global, kind of fair share of emissions, we probably need to get down to something like two, two and a half tons of… of…
Pauline Robson
emissions per person to be sustainable in terms of emissions, and I'm way off that, whatever I do, even with all the changes that I've made to my life in terms of my diet, the way that I travel.
Pauline Robson
what I buy.
Pauline Robson
And that kind of really demonstrates the extent to which we need both individual behaviour change and systemic change as well. But, but having said that, the one thing that I haven't been able to let go of, that is… is pretty bad is my… I've still got my American Express British Airways credit card, you know, the one where you spend money and you collect Avios.
Pauline Robson
So I still have that, and I still collect my air miles, and I still save up my…
Pauline Robson
companion voucher, and even though I fly way more rarely than I ever used to do, I still do it from time to time, and occasionally I book a business class seat as well. So that, I feel really awful saying that out loud on a podcast, but that's.
Katie Treggiden
It's so interesting, isn't it?
Katie Treggiden
So interesting! I did a post, the closest I've ever come to going viral on Instagram, I did a post of eco-confessions. And what I found so interesting was which ones riled people.
Katie Treggiden
Some people were like, well, those two are fine, like, number one and two are fine, but number three is outrageous, and other people were like, number three is fine, everybody does that, but number five? How could you? And I think, as you say, all of us living in…
Katie Treggiden
developed countries in the Global North, you know, the… even if we get down to the average for our country, or below the average for our country, that's still too much.
Pauline Robson
Do they?
Katie Treggiden
And I think we all have, you know, we all have things that we do that we probably shouldn't, but none of that should stop us from trying to bring it down over time and campaign for systemic change, and I think that's the thing, isn't it? It's that balance between personal agency and systemic change.
Pauline Robson
So those two things are really interconnected, right?
Katie Treggiden
Thank you.
Pauline Robson
are made up of individuals who do things, and so, you know, your actions are influencing the system and the other way around, so you can't… I don't think you can separate the two. I think you have to have both, and they influence each other in different ways, but, yeah.
Katie Treggiden
Yeah.
Pauline Robson
You can come up against it as a sort of… it's either or. You do one or the other, and yeah, I don't… that's not… that's not the right way to look at it.
Katie Treggiden
Yeah, and there's no point doing things individually until systemic things change, but as you say, they're so intertwined.
Katie Treggiden
And talking about personal agency, you spent a long time at WPP, which is also where I started my career many, many years ago, working in media sustainability. You've described a point at which you felt like you had a lot of responsibility, but very little power.
Katie Treggiden
Tell us what that felt like from the inside, and why that seems to be such a common thread in sustainability roles.
Pauline Robson
Yeah, I, look, I don't…
Pauline Robson
I don't think this is unique to my experience. I think it's common for a lot of people who work in sustainability roles, certainly from
Pauline Robson
conversations I've had with people, not just within agencies or within the industry, but, you know, from across a whole range of different sectors.
Katie Treggiden
Yeah, and sorry, we should just flag up for readers, because we're all… we all know what WPP stands for, but people might not. WPP is one of the biggest conglomerates of advertising agencies, media agencies, all the companies that, sort of.
Katie Treggiden
look after comms for clients, for companies, so just to give that little bit of background in case anyone's sitting there going, what the hell is.
Pauline Robson
Yeah, what are we talking about? Yeah, you know, you know, and there was lots of great work going in… going on in the organization. I think sometimes when you are… so I was working in an organization where I was
Pauline Robson
the only person doing that role. And that can feel like a really lonely place, and I think it's, you know, it's true for a lot of sustainability professionals. It's, you know, I think unless you are…
Pauline Robson
working in a very, sort of, purpose-driven company, and what I mean by that is, you know, a company that's got purpose, sort of, embedded into what it's doing. So that could be, yeah, you know, kind of, sustainability is built in, it's kind of built in from the bottom up. It's really difficult to balance
Pauline Robson
the needs of the company, the needs of the planet that people who, you know, people who get into sustainability doing it because they want to make a difference, and they want to create really positive change for the planet, and for the people who live on the planet. And when you don't have that embedded in a way of working, or you don't have the wider business on that journey with you, it's really hard, and so it feels…
Pauline Robson
quite frustrating. It feels like things maybe aren't moving on as quickly as you would like them to, even though they probably are moving, you know, that progress is being made. I think it can feel quite…
Pauline Robson
frustrating when you're trying to drive that change, and you're not seeing it move as fast as you would want it to. And that's not necessarily the fault of the business, because it's, you know, it's really tough out there at the minute. There's so many competing priorities for particularly people in leadership, but for everyone working across
Pauline Robson
a business in a working day. So, yeah, unless it's embedded, unless it's a key priority, it's absolutely going to fall down the agenda.
Pauline Robson
And I think…
Pauline Robson
one of the reasons that… there's lots of reasons why it's not seen as a priority for many businesses, but I think
Pauline Robson
to some extent, as a sustainability community. We're not necessarily that great at making the business case for why this needs to happen in a way that is…
Pauline Robson
compelling in the context of everything else that's going on out there. There's lots of stuff, you know, it's a really tricky business environment. It's a really tricky environment, full stop.
Pauline Robson
And I think particularly at the moment, with…
Pauline Robson
organizations, it feels like sustainability is really sitting firmly in that realm of reporting and compliance. There's, you know, a lot of new regulation that's come in,
Pauline Robson
So that takes up a lot of time. If it does kind of move a bit further up the agenda, it's firmly in the kind of space of risk, which is really important to understand, and it's becoming increasingly relevant given, you know, everything we're…
Pauline Robson
facing into it at the moment from a climate perspective, you know, we've got half of Europe seems to be on fire, we're in the midst of this never-ending heat wave, we're starting to kind of see those risks becoming really tangible, and kind of very real and very immediate.
Pauline Robson
But it's certainly not sitting in a place of opportunity and innovation, which I think is… is where the exciting… where the exciting opportunity really is.
Pauline Robson
I think it was a couple of years ago, so IBM published a report where they found that businesses were spending 43% more on sustainability reporting than they were on sustainability innovation, and that's just…
Malin
Wow.
Pauline Robson
Yeah.
Pauline Robson
You think, like, sustainability is such… it can be such a huge driver of innovation, so if we're not recognising that and… and working with that, I think we're missing a huge trick.
Pauline Robson
And yeah, I think part of that is an internal comms issue, part of that is a skills and training issue, but I think that's an important thing that kind of needs to happen, is to recognize that this is… yes, it can feel very risk-laden and heavy and scary, but there's also a huge amount of opportunity in this transition that we're not kind of moving forward with.
Malin
Yeah, absolutely, and sort of going back to that,
Malin
challenge. Obviously, as an agency, you're there to build a brand, to, you know, tell really exciting stories about the businesses that you represent, on the one hand, and then we're saying that, actually, sustainability isn't necessarily associated with some of those
Malin
sexier stories, as it is at the moment, although it can be. So if the client's on going down that road, what…
Malin
what does that mean, then, you know? Where is the incentive for an agency to raise it and…
Malin
challenge that, or is there one, I guess?
Pauline Robson
Yeah, it's… I mean, they should be. I'm not sure there necessarily is. I think, you know, as I said, there's… it's not…
Pauline Robson
a priority. I think, you know.
Pauline Robson
agencies are really stretched, clients are really stretched. I mean, everyone is really stretched, and I think unless you're pushing on an open door, it's very difficult to make that case, particularly if
Pauline Robson
people don't feel confident, they don't feel they have the knowledge or the skills to be, sort of, raising this as a topic of conversation with clients, and I think
Pauline Robson
To some extent, there's a bit of a sort of structural power issue going on in this as well, which is that outside of the kind of day-to-day thing that agencies are brought on board to do, and sometimes even within that, actually, it can be very difficult to kind of challenge clients and push back.
Pauline Robson
So, I spent most of my…
Pauline Robson
career on the media side of things, and so it's kind of, you know, working in media agencies who plan and buy media on behalf of clients, and…
Pauline Robson
Just thinking about the kind of, you know, the space where… Those types of agencies.
Pauline Robson
have license to kind of advise and challenge clients. It's in, you know, how do you deploy your media investment? And if we bring that into kind of looking at
Pauline Robson
Emissions, for example, so… if we think about this, I'm going to look a bit at, kind of, where…
Pauline Robson
emissions come from. So, for most agencies, operational issues will be around 1% or 2% of their overall emissions. The rest will be Scope 3. So when I worked at WPP, more than half of those Scope 3 emissions came from media placement, so that's huge for that organization.
Pauline Robson
When you break it down to, kind of, how much of that
Pauline Robson
you know, in a client's overall Scope 3 emissions, that could be a really tiny amount, because
Pauline Robson
Particularly if you're, kind of, looking at.
Pauline Robson
a big multinational that's got really complex supply chains, that's got, you know, huge manufacturing operations, really complex distribution, you could be looking at maybe, you know, a percentage point or two. In which case, for them, that's not going to be a huge priority, certainly from a sustainability team's point of view. So, even if you're kind of pushing
Pauline Robson
That client to think about.
Pauline Robson
reducing those emissions, you know, if that's not a big priority for their sustainability team, they might just think, well, actually, I've got, you know, much more low-hanging fruit over here, or a bigger emissions challenge over here that I need to deal with, and that doesn't get prioritized. And I can talk a bit more later about why that's, you know, that shouldn't be the case, but,
Pauline Robson
Yeah, I think even in that space where agencies probably do have some license and power to challenge, sometimes that's not seen as a priority for clients. When you step outside of that.
Pauline Robson
more broadly into comms or opportunities for comms, it can be quite tricky, I think, to kind of make that compelling case for clients if they're not, you know, thinking of you in that way as a
Pauline Robson
As a company that has expertise in that area.
Katie Treggiden
Mmm.
Pauline Robson
So, yeah, I think that the incentive is not always there to do it, yeah.
Katie Treggiden
That's so interesting, I can remember, I worked, mostly in creative agencies.
Katie Treggiden
back in the day, and we're talking, like, early 2000s, long, long time ago, but I can remember people saying to… I've worked in client services, and I can always remember people saying to us as kind of junior client services people, like, understand that this is your whole world, but it's about 5% of your client's job. Yeah. And they're a tiny cog in a big company, and, you know, so the impact, you know, is…
Katie Treggiden
When you're in the thick of an agency, and you're coming up with concepts, and you want to win awards, and, you know, all of this stuff, it feels like… it feels like the whole world, but we were constantly reminded what a small part of our clients' day it was, let alone
Katie Treggiden
the business, and then when you work out what the percentages are of sustainability, I think that's really interesting, because we, you know, Malin and I talk a lot about greenhushing.
Katie Treggiden
on this podcast, we both work in this space, and have done for, sort of, 10 years, and have really seen everybody jumping on the bandwagon of talking about sustainability, some of whom shouldn't have been.
Katie Treggiden
And then this kind of big green hush where even the people who should definitely be talking about sustainability have gone quiet.
Katie Treggiden
And we tend to imagine that's about fear, it's about worrying about getting called out, but it sounds like there are actually real structural issues in the way that industry is set up.
Katie Treggiden
That are driving at least some of that silence.
Pauline Robson
Hmm. Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know.
Pauline Robson
Fear is a… is a big part of it. I think there's lots of things that sit behind green hushing, and absolutely, like, I think that one of the key ones is fear of saying the wrong thing, and I think…
Pauline Robson
You know, that's…
Pauline Robson
I think it's a really good thing that we've got lots of green claims regulation, right? I think it's absolutely necessary to make sure that
Pauline Robson
The few bad actors that are out there that have been greenwashing are kind of held to account, and that that can't continue, but…
Pauline Robson
I think it has caused some good actors to inadvertently fall foul of the regulation when they're genuinely trying to do something positive, and I think…
Pauline Robson
That has stopped people…
Pauline Robson
having… or companies having the confidence to talk about what they're… they're doing. So I think that's one reason, and… and that… that also feeds into agencies, because if there's this kind of culture of fear around it, that, you know, it's…
Pauline Robson
you know.
Pauline Robson
you're going to be less reticent to kind of proactively go to clients and suggest something. You know, you get this kind of… almost this culture of silence starts to sort of occur. So that's one reason. I think there's loads of other stuff going on as well, so…
Pauline Robson
You know, we're seeing this really,
Pauline Robson
polarized political context, particularly with the return of Trump in the US and all the stuff that's happening over there. So I think there's also
Pauline Robson
for some companies, this feeling that it could be politically damaging to speak about the work that they're doing. In some cases it is, particularly in the US. I think, you know, there's this fear of, not just a regulatory kind of slap on the wrist, but a fear of a consumer backlash as well, if you, kind of, you know, you're…
Pauline Robson
You annoy a certain sort of section of your customer base because you're speaking out on a topic that can, in some cases, be quite polarizing.
Pauline Robson
And I think… there's a… I think there's also a bit of… A kind of broader…
Pauline Robson
I hate to say this, but, you know, I think when sustainability was a really big talking point in the industry, and I think, like, even pre-COVID now, because it was… sustainability was the really big thing, and then COVID happened, and then it was all about cost of living, and even though the two things are kind of inextricably linked, it feels like…
Pauline Robson
we're in this space where all the conversation is… is being dwarfed by AI, and that's… that's the thing that everyone is kind of…
Pauline Robson
rushing out and developing and talking about, which, you know, will leave aside the whole sustainability challenge that that brings as well, in terms of energy and water use and all of that stuff. But, I think that's kind of…
Pauline Robson
You know, almost overtaken the conversation that was happening around sustainability, which shouldn't be the case, but it is, because people have limited bandwidth in their day-to-day.
Pauline Robson
roles,
Malin
Yeah, it's interesting.
Pauline Robson
As well, yeah.
Malin
Yeah, it's interesting, because I've had several conversations with people in agency lives that are not necessarily
Malin
sort of part, you know, they're not part of this movement, whatever we want to call it. You know, they're not in the green space, and they don't know that much about sustainability in general. And loads of that sort of general comments completely tie in with that, and they're saying that, you know, it's not…
Malin
you know, sustainability isn't that interesting anymore. Nobody's interested in that. It's not really how you sell, you know. That was… that was then, this is now.
Malin
It's fascinating, because, you know, it's obviously partially true, but it's not… also not actually true at all, if you think about
Malin
you know, things like, you know, the rice and all of these new products that are fundamentally, you know, like, I'm thinking about deodorants and toothbrushes and, you know, all this stuff.
Pauline Robson
Yeah.
Malin
Kind of products that actually
Malin
They are green, aren't they? And they are being… those particular ones are being sold in that way, as well as the likes of the, you know, the popularity of things like vintage, for instance.
Pauline Robson
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, there's still loads of, you know, great… there's loads of great
Pauline Robson
more sustainable products, I think there's a, you know, question about.
Pauline Robson
you know, how we tackle this crisis. You know, we do have to make switches, and that's really important, and there's lots of great development going on in that, and there's lots of shifts in behavior, like you say, like, the rise of vintage, you know, is huge, and it's changing the way that people think about
Pauline Robson
shopping for clothes, which is a really positive thing. So there's still lots of great stories to tell, but I think, yeah, it's,
Pauline Robson
advertising and comms is quite a faddy industry, isn't it? Like, there's all… there's.
Malin
Yes.
Pauline Robson
a new trend that pops up that everyone runs after. It's just, yeah, like…
Pauline Robson
It doesn't mean that there isn't great work still going on, it just means that…
Pauline Robson
at the moment, it's not really being talked about, and, you know, I think…
Pauline Robson
I think green hushing is, in many ways, actually more dangerous than green washing, because it.
Malin
Find it.
Pauline Robson
It perpetuates this sort of…
Pauline Robson
It's got a word… it's got a name, it's a spiral of silence, right, where, you know, there's… there's…
Pauline Robson
lots of research that says that people want to see positive action on climate, they support it, they want to see governments doing more, they want to see businesses doing more, they're really sort of supportive of, you know, social norms around climate action, but they massively underestimate the extent to which other people support these things.
Malin
Yeah.
Pauline Robson
And they are… people are less likely to want to…
Pauline Robson
speak out about it, and to take action if they think that they're alone in doing that. There's that, you know, they want that kind of social support behind them. And so, if we're in a space where companies aren't
Pauline Robson
talking about the progress they're making, however imperfect, and they're not kind of normalizing this as a conversation. It's, you know, it's telling your customers that you don't care about sustainability, it's letting… it's letting other companies off the hook.
Pauline Robson
on action, because it feels like this isn't normal in the industry, it's not a norm, and so therefore I can get away with not doing it, because no one else is doing it. And it kind of… you end up with this sort of vacuum of, you know, this silence creates a vacuum, and then the counter-narrative can come in.
Pauline Robson
And, you know, and then you get, sort of, all the…
Pauline Robson
voices about, you know, anti-net zero, it's all too expensive, no one cares, no one's doing anything anyway, and that becomes the sort of the norm that we face into, and that's really damaging, so I think, you know, yeah.
Malin
Yeah.
Pauline Robson
Green hushing is quite a pernicious thing.
Malin
Yeah, and another aspect of that that KTA and I covered, actually, as a completely separate episode. We call them solo episodes, even though there's two of us. But, and that was, I don't know if you saw it, from Solitaire Townsend, talking about the other
Malin
perhaps one of the other aspects is that there are loads of organizations, and I'd just be interested
Malin
to see if you've come across this, that are, they have set these really steep targets and are now starting to realize that actually they're going to struggle to meet them, not because they're not doing
Malin
a lot, necessarily. It's just that they didn't realize just how ambitious they were when they set them, because it is… Or actually that they were…
Katie Treggiden
hoping certain structural things would have changed by now, and they became…
Pauline Robson
Yeah.
Malin
Yeah, exactly. So just be… I don't know whether that's something you come across, because that would also then… that's a different kind of greenhouse, isn't it? That's people taking a pause, or businesses taking a pause, thinking, not quite sure how to tackle this.
Malin
For fear of backlash, or, you know…
Pauline Robson
Yeah, I think that that's a really valid point, you know, I think… It's
Pauline Robson
Yeah, I mean, they have been really, in some cases, very challenging targets, and it's great to be ambitious, but I think it's… I think…
Pauline Robson
people value honesty, and I think if you've set a target that's too ambitious, I think that, you know, rather than going silent, I think it's perfectly valid to say, actually, you know, this was… this was a really ambitious target. We're taking, you know.
Pauline Robson
just name it. We're taking a bit of time to work out how we do this. Here's what we've done so far. I think communicating the progress
Pauline Robson
Bet you have made so far, and where you've still got
Pauline Robson
you know, where you've still got things to do is absolutely fine, but I think just… just going silent is… I don't think that's a particularly…
Pauline Robson
helpful thing to do, particularly in the context that we have at the moment, where there's so many dissenting voices that will come in and kind of overtake the conversation, so I think
Pauline Robson
Some communication of progress, no matter how imperfect, is better than none at all.
Pauline Robson
Yeah.
Katie Treggiden
Speaking our language, Pauline
Katie Treggiden
This is something we talk all of… we talk about all the time, this idea of, communicating imperfect progress.
Katie Treggiden
Now, what we've been talking about so far, and probably most sustainability comms conversations, focus on either talking to other businesses, to clients or customers, or to the public, to stakeholders.
Katie Treggiden
But you are essentially trying to communicate sustainability inward to colleagues, to leadership, to the board. What does internal sustainability comms get wrong, and why is it so much harder than it looks?
Pauline Robson
Yeah, I mean, internal comms is… is challenging across the board, right? That's not… that's not just a sustainability thing, it's… it's…
Pauline Robson
It's really hard to get right, and… and even in companies that, you know, who specialize in communications, it's really… it's really hard to get right.
Pauline Robson
And I've worked in several, and it's always been a challenge. I think…
Pauline Robson
from a sustainability perspective, and again, I don't think this is unique to… well, I mean, it's not unique to sustainability, but I think there are elements of it that are. You've got lots and lots of different audiences to communicate with, and…
Pauline Robson
The things that they care about and the way that sustainability will show up in their day-to-day work will look really different for each of them.
Pauline Robson
So, the way that you would…
Pauline Robson
Communicate sustainability, and talk to a, you know, a senior leadership audience is very different to how you would communicate with an internal
Pauline Robson
you know, sustainability, green team, planet team, made up of volunteers who are really passionate in, sort of, grassroots, bottom-up change in the organization. So there's, like, lots of different ways of
Pauline Robson
you know, kind of how you communicate with those different audiences. So I think that's stakeholder mapping
Pauline Robson
piece, and that understanding piece is really important, so that you've got an understanding of who those different audiences are, you know, where they sit within the organization, and what their needs are. Like I said, I don't think that's particularly unique to sustainability, but I think there's a real challenge within that, then, around language.
Pauline Robson
And how we talk.
Pauline Robson
to leadership in particular, because I think there's, like, there's three parts of it to balance, which is speaking the language of the business, which I don't think sustainability people are always particularly good at.
Pauline Robson
I think that's, you know, to be honest, I think I struggled with it sometimes, too. And then there's the kind of… there's the very…
Pauline Robson
technical sustainability language, that kind of comes with that. So, you know, how do you explain these kind of sustainability concepts in a way that people understand, without kind of,
Pauline Robson
you know, you have to make it feel easy to understand, but also there is a lot of complexity in it, so you need to make sure that that's kind of, you know, not overly simplified. And then I think there's another bit of it, which is,
Pauline Robson
which is there's… and I'm gonna, like, I'm gonna say the word emotion, and it's not about, you know, like, the sort of histrionic kind of emotion of, of, you know, like.
Pauline Robson
you know, standing up and waving your arms around and trying to get every… but it's like, how do you communicate this in a way that feels very human to human? Because it can feel very, sort of, technical.
Pauline Robson
abstract language, anyway, from a sustainability point of view. How do you… how do you connect that in a way that is… is very human, that gets people to understand
Pauline Robson
why this is important from a business perspective, but also why it's important from a human perspective as well. And I think they're three difficult things to balance, and I think people who
Pauline Robson
work in sustainability, certainly the people that I've worked with in this space are, you know, all care really deeply and really passionately about making positive change, and sometimes it's very hard to kind of
Pauline Robson
You know, keep that in check.
Pauline Robson
When you're sort of communicating these things. So it's finding that balance between those three things of, you know, the language of the business that's specific to the audience that you're communicating to, the language of sustainability, and bringing that human element into it as well. So…
Pauline Robson
Yeah, I think that, you know, it's not easy because that's a difficult thing to kind of get into balance in a way that is effective.
Malin
Yeah, that's really interesting, and it's a perfect segue to them talking about where you are at now. So, obviously, you left WPP, or I think it is, anyway, to do a master's degree in sustainability and behaviour Change at the center for Alternative Technology in Wales, I believe.
Malin
And most people, most people in sustainability, they don't, in sustainability.
Malin
comms, they don't… haven't studied behavior change, and I guess that's what… part of what we're talking about here, isn't it?
Pauline Robson
Mmm.
Malin
And emotion. So, what are they missing?
Pauline Robson
Mmm…
Pauline Robson
Yeah, I think that… that word missing is… is… is a key one, actually, because I think when I…
Pauline Robson
when I left, so I left in August of last year, to… to do this Masters, one of the reasons I did that was… was because I felt like I was missing something, and so I'd worked in…
Pauline Robson
media agencies for 25 years, and before I moved into a sustainability role, I'd spent most of my career working in consumer research and insight, so you'd think I'd have a pretty good handle on, kind of, behavior and behaviour change, but I, I just felt like I had a very narrow understanding of
Pauline Robson
Why people do the things they do, and particularly…
Pauline Robson
Particularly how… how change happens, and particularly within that, how social change happens. So…
Pauline Robson
I felt like I was, you know, media's quite a, you know, it's a bit of the wider comms industry, so, you know, media, there's media, then there's advertising, then there's comms more generally, and then there's a whole other, sort of.
Pauline Robson
you know, systemic kind of thing that sits around that too, and within those things, there are lots of levers that you can pull to enact change, and I felt like I was working with a very narrow set of levers. And so I wanted to understand more about what other levers are out there in terms of how that change can come about, so…
Pauline Robson
I am now 9 months into my course, 9 months? Nearly 9 months into my course,
Pauline Robson
I have a slightly less narrow understanding of why people do the things they do, and how that social change can happen.
Pauline Robson
I am definitely coming… I think I haven't finished yet, I've still got a few months to go, but I think I'm going to come out of this with more questions than answers. But that's fine, I'm okay with that. But I think the reason it's…
Pauline Robson
the reason that it's important, and I think particularly from a comms perspective, is that
Pauline Robson
I think it's something like two-thirds of our net-zero transition in the UK is going to have to come from some kind of behaviour change, so whether that is…
Pauline Robson
shifting diets, or retrofitting homes, or installing heat pumps, or changing how we travel. There's going to be some element of, you know, people having to change how we do things. So…
Pauline Robson
having an understanding of how that comes about, I think is really important for anyone in sustainability, but particularly within sustainability comms. And you know, and as we touched on earlier, but also, I think the reason that I wanted to do sustainability and behaviour change together was… was really to understand from a broader systems change.
Pauline Robson
perspective, how all these things interact and how they interlink, you know, is kind of… it's all very well and good to be sort of communicating to people about
Pauline Robson
how they need to change their behaviour, but unless those support structures are in place to allow them to do it, it's going to be very difficult for people to make that change. So I think understanding how the two things work together has been really beneficial. And as I say, I'm going to come away with,
Pauline Robson
a lot more questions than answers, but crucially, I'm going to come away with some tools to help me address that, and some ways of thinking and theories and different approaches that will help me to kind of unpick questions and kind of, you know, put answers together. So, yeah, so that's quite exciting.
Katie Treggiden
Mmm, that's so exciting. And I know what you mean about coming out with more questions than answers. I did a master's a couple of years ago, and our professor's mantra, almost, was just sit in the discomfort of not knowing. Sit in the discomfort of not knowing, and I'd just be like, but I need to know, and just sit in the discomfort, Katie.
Pauline Robson
Yep.
Katie Treggiden
Oh, God, it was excruciating.
Pauline Robson
Yes, yeah, yeah.
Katie Treggiden
like…
Katie Treggiden
our desire is to jump to a simple answer, or to jump quickly to an answer, and the quick answer is rarely the right one, right? So you have to… it's such a skill, I think that's the main thing I learned from my master's, was that ability to sit in the discomfort of not knowing.
Pauline Robson
Our response to every question, I think, now is, oh, it's complicated, because there's always another layer you can strip back, and there's always…
Katie Treggiden
Yeah.
Pauline Robson
But that sits behind it, so it's like, yeah, there is never…
Pauline Robson
there's never a right answer, there's an answer, and then there's a slightly different answer if you look at it through a different lens, but there's no, you know.
Katie Treggiden
Yeah, that's fair.
Pauline Robson
rarely a definitive answer to any question. I did,
Katie Treggiden
Some consultancy for a hotel group a few years back, and…
Katie Treggiden
like, a week in, they were like, I know, don't tell me, it depends.
Pauline Robson
Yeah, that doesn't have the other answer, yeah.
Katie Treggiden
The…
Katie Treggiden
It's more sustainable or that? Which is it? A or B? And you're like, well, it's a little bit more complicated than that. Yeah.
Katie Treggiden
Now, behaviour change research shows I think. Pretty… pretty!
Katie Treggiden
I think the results are in.
Pauline Robson
Yep.
Katie Treggiden
that fear and guilt are pretty poor motivators, at least for sustained action. They can motivate something quick, but if we want people to keep doing something, keeping them in fear and guilt is not the way to get there.
Katie Treggiden
So why does so much of sustainability comms still lean on fear and guilt? What… and what's a better approach? How do we actually motivate sustained action? And you're not allowed to say it depends or it's complicated.
Pauline Robson
Okay, okay. I think… I think there's still a bit of a misconception, although I'm not quite sure why it exists, but I think it's, you know, if we give people the facts about climate change, it'll be enough to motivate them to change their behaviour, and, you know, the facts are scary, and so, you know, it's kind of…
Pauline Robson
it's that messaging of, like, if you don't do this, if you don't change this, that terrible thing's gonna happen, right? And I think, as you say, like, look, fear… fear can work
Pauline Robson
if there's an immediate threat. So, you know, like, Gosh, it's…
Pauline Robson
your house is on fire, so you need to run away, right?
Katie Treggiden
I mean, I was in the west of France last week, terribly close to a wildfire.
Pauline Robson
That motivated me.
Katie Treggiden
We got home.
Pauline Robson
Yeah, it feels very live, that example right now.
Katie Treggiden
Yeah.
Pauline Robson
what's going on, you know, all over Europe.
Pauline Robson
So, yeah, it works if there's an immediate threat, but as you say, it doesn't really work for sustained action. Like, it's… it's really hard to sustain positive action from a place of fear and threat, particularly when the other elements that support behaviour change are also missing. So it's much more…
Pauline Robson
kind of compelling to… I think about it as kind of giving people something to run towards, rather than something to run away from. So what's the positive thing that we want people to move towards? Because that is… that's much more motivating, in terms of getting people to change their behavior. And I think we've been really bad at…
Pauline Robson
Communicating that from a sustainability point of view, because it's, you know, a lot of the…
Pauline Robson
A lot of the conversation has been about, you know.
Pauline Robson
what we need to give up, and things that have to be sacrificed. And yes, you know, we are going to have to give some things up, right? You know, ultimately.
Pauline Robson
The climate crisis is a crisis of overconsumption, so we are going to have to consume less, but there are, you know… but there are lots of positives to that as well, and there's lots of positives to…
Pauline Robson
shifting diets to more of a plant-rich… you know, it doesn't sound that appealing, but it can be… it can be made much more appealing, particularly if you kind of talk about the other benefits that come along with that. So, you know, feeling better, you know, spending less money on food, you know, the kind of broader… the broader benefits to, yeah, to your health and your lifestyle.
Pauline Robson
or, you know, changing the way that you travel. I was, there was a campaign, I think it was a couple of years ago, and it was…
Pauline Robson
I'm pretty sure it was for Possible, which is a charity, and it's a really brilliant example of how you kind of sell the benefits of a behaviour change, because it was… so it was called Bump into Brum.
Pauline Robson
And it was a campaign in Birmingham, and it was all about getting people out of their cars and engaging in more active
Pauline Robson
forms of travel. So, you know, walking, getting the bus, and it was really great, because it basically sold it
Pauline Robson
as a way to get into your community. So, you know, but by not being in your car and driving to where you need to get to, you are going to bump into Mrs Smith down the road, and you're going to have a lovely chat, and you're, you know, it's going to create this really lovely.
Pauline Robson
cohesion within your community, and I think that's a brilliant way of selling a benefit. So it wasn't about, don't get in your car because it's bad for the environment.
Pauline Robson
it was about, here's all the brilliant things that you can experience if you walk around, or get on your bike, or hop on the bus, and I think that's just such a clever way of doing it. So it's like, what's that positive
Pauline Robson
sell, that positive benefit that is going to make people want to change their behavior, rather than that kind of guilt-tripping.
Katie Treggiden
Yes.
Malin
Yes.
Pauline Robson
kind of style of communications. I think that's a really lovely example. I think we need more of those kinds of examples.
Katie Treggiden
That's so interesting, it reminds me of a time my husband and I were cycling around Copenhagen, because that's just how you get around Copenhagen, right? Yes. And we heard jazz, we're both really into live jazz, we heard jazz and just kind of veered our bicycles towards the music, and ended up scrapping our plans for the afternoon and spending this lovely afternoon in a beautiful courtyard listening to jazz. But what was interesting is when I was in France last week.
Katie Treggiden
Because I was frightened, my instinct was to get home.
Katie Treggiden
Yes. I just wanted to get home. The options narrowed, and we got home. Now, really, we could have got a train, we still had holiday left, we could have got a train to all sorts of places in Europe where there weren't wildfires, and enjoyed the rest of our holiday, but because we were in fear.
Pauline Robson
Mmm.
Katie Treggiden
All the creativity had gone from our brains, it was an absolute.
Malin
Yeah.
Katie Treggiden
If we must get back to safety, we must get back to what's familiar, we must get back to what feels
Katie Treggiden
safe, and I think… I think that's the other thing about motivating people through fear, is the options narrow, and people tend…
Pauline Robson
Absolutely.
Katie Treggiden
To what they know.
Pauline Robson
Yeah.
Katie Treggiden
Rather than when you're operating from a place of what if, and as you put it, which is beautiful, this idea of running towards, that then opens up the options, and then we can start thinking.
Katie Treggiden
about different ways of doing things, which, as you say, might mean making some sacrifices, but might end up being way better and way more interesting, like that little jazz in a sunny courtyard in…
Pauline Robson
Yeah.
Katie Treggiden
In Copenhagen.
Pauline Robson
Yeah, think of all the experiences you missed by kind of shutting yourself off, yeah, absolutely, yeah.
Katie Treggiden
of that.
Malin
Yeah, it's interesting, I've, I've,
Malin
I always travel on public transport in Manchester, and this last 3 weeks, they've been doing loads of work on the tram network.
Malin
So instead of taking an hour door-to-door, it's taking two. So, but obviously, you know, they've got to do the work at some point, otherwise, you know, you have the opposite problem.
Malin
And the first couple of days, it was a nightmare. And now I'm actually… because I'm, again, I'm discovering other areas of the city, and yeah, I can't wait for the transfer back next week. But it has actually been not just a pain, but actually quite interesting as well, because I've seen other things. I've discovered, actually, the new number 10, which I wouldn't have done otherwise, you know, in the.
Pauline Robson
Of course, yes!
Malin
Yeah, and, you know, all of these kind of things that… the same type of thing that you just stumble across because you're taking a different route than you would normally. So, yeah, I completely get that.
Pauline Robson
But I think you raised a really good point, actually, which is that, you know, it's… unless we put those structures in place to make that behaviour change easier for people, because, you know.
Pauline Robson
you're obviously kind of very committed to traveling by public transport. There's people who will look at that and go, I don't want to do that, because it's going to add an extra hour onto my journey, and I haven't got the time, I haven't got the patience to deal with that. How, you know, it's not just about
Pauline Robson
you know, creating the kind of desire to change that behavior, but it's, have we got the policies and the structures and the wider sort of systemic changes in place to allow that to happen? Because you can't have one without the other.
Katie Treggiden
Yeah, and let's be honest, we were cycling around Copenhagen, because that's the easiest way to get around Copenhagen.
Pauline Robson
Yeah.
Katie Treggiden
Structures are in place to support it.
Pauline Robson
Mmm.
Malin
Yeah, absolutely.
Pauline Robson
really right over there, and I, you know, and I think there's… there are… I'm very lucky, I live in London, we've got great public transport. There's lots of places in the country where it's just not an option, and you have to get into your car because… Yeah, well, I live in.
Katie Treggiden
Rural Cornwall, so…
Pauline Robson
Yeah. Yeah, there's one bus every two hours, and yeah, so, you know, fully recognise that.
Malin
Right, so moving on slightly, you're now also on the advisory board for the Anti-Greenworth Charter, so I'm really interested to hear, sort of, what drew you to that, how did you come across it, and what drew you to that?
Malin
And what does responsible communication look like when you get into the details? So not the principles, but sort of more in practice, because I'm guessing that's what it's about.
Pauline Robson
Yes, yeah, absolutely. So, what drew me to that? So…
Pauline Robson
I… I think you've had Charlie on your podcast, haven't you, Charlie Martin?
Malin
I have, yeah.
Pauline Robson
So maybe some people watching and listening to this will be familiar with him. But yeah, I met… I met Charlie, and he's brilliant. And…
Pauline Robson
Yeah, I mean, I… yeah, I think…
Pauline Robson
like, trust in communications is everything, and particularly when it comes to communications and sustainability. So I think the work that he's doing with the Anti-Greenwash Charter is…
Pauline Robson
is really important. You know, people talk about responsible communication. People want brands to behave responsibly, and to communicate responsibly.
Katie Treggiden
I mean, that's kind of why brands exist in the first place, right? If you go right back to the origin of brands, it was to communicate trust and safety.
Pauline Robson
Yeah, yeah, exactly, but there's this kind of…
Pauline Robson
I think, particularly, you know, we're in a sort of very… febrile, kind of, cultural…
Pauline Robson
time at the moment, and I think that trust is starting to become eroded, and so people don't always trust…
Katie Treggiden
AI, I think there's so much…
Pauline Robson
Yay.
Katie Treggiden
slop on the internet, that you're not quite sure what's even real, let alone what.
Pauline Robson
watched.
Katie Treggiden
So, you know, Trump sort of coined this term, the post-truth era, but yeah, I think trust has never been more important.
Pauline Robson
No, exactly. So, yeah, trust is really important, but it's starting to become eroded. People don't…
Pauline Robson
people don't necessarily trust that brands are being truthful when they communicate what they're doing. I think, you know, we've…
Pauline Robson
You know, greenwashing has been a big contributor to that, in terms of, you know, people have felt
Pauline Robson
that brand sometimes overstates, you know, what they're doing. So… so…
Pauline Robson
when I kind of… when I met Charlie and heard about what he was doing with the anti-Greenwash Charter, and I saw the work that they were doing, I was… I was really impressed and wanted to get involved.
Pauline Robson
And I'm sure, kind of, Charlie explained what it was all about when he was on… on the podcast, but there's…
Pauline Robson
essentially kind of two strands to the work. So, the first is becoming a signatory to the Charter, which, Malin, I think your company.
Malin
Yeah, we're signatures, yes, yeah.
Pauline Robson
And so, I mean, you could probably speak more to what that experience has been like, but it's, you know, it's kind of putting the kind of, putting the support structures in place, really, so it's kind of…
Pauline Robson
Assessing your historical comms, creating effective green claims policies, creating, you know, training for the organizations, regularly reviewing the communications of the company to ensure that it's aligned with regulation and policy, and
Pauline Robson
What's great about that is it kind of… it… it…
Pauline Robson
It gives organizations the confidence to speak
Pauline Robson
about sustainability in a way that's very authentic and very truthful.
Pauline Robson
yeah, without feeling like they're gonna say something wrong, because they've, they, you know, they… we've got these, you know, you've got these guardrails in place to allow you to do that, and… Yeah, and I…
Malin
And actually, let's just jump in, because I think… so we've just had our review, or we're in the middle of our review, and I think the interesting thing about it, concealing that, obviously, as a business, we spend a lot of time in that space.
Malin
is actually language, so making sure that you have the terms and the language that you're using defined, because it goes back to one of the points you made before, isn't it? Like, there is so much language.
Pauline Robson
Yeah.
Malin
In this space, and it's easy to forget that not everybody knows what everything means. So, actually, we realized that we had to add quite a lot to our glossary this year, because new words come in, and all of that. So, yeah, just as a little…
Malin
you know, experience from going through it just very recently, and I think that's such a useful tool.
Katie Treggiden
The commonly accepted
Katie Treggiden
understanding of words changes over time as well. You know, the word sustainable used to mean, back in the day, used to mean that you were behaving in a way that meant the planet's resources would be sustainable, but somehow it came to mean business as usual.
Pauline Robson
Yeah.
Katie Treggiden
sort of this shift in how people… and you never quite know where people are on that journey with what these words mean, either. So, yeah, it's a really tricky one.
Pauline Robson
It is, and do you know what? It's, you know, I've been using the word all the way through this conversation, but I would happily, like, ban it altogether, and I think we need to find a better word, because you're right, it's like, what are we actually sustaining?
Katie Treggiden
Yeah, but it's hard because I used to run an online education platform for designer makers who wanted to become more sustainable, and I used the word sustainable because that was the word they used, that was the word they understood. If I started talking about circular or regenerative.
Pauline Robson
Oh, yeah.
Katie Treggiden
I lost them. Once they were in, that was then what we were moving towards, and that was the language that I started to use, but in advertising it and in marketing it, I had to use the word sustainable, and I got criticized for it. But I was like, that's the word that the people I can help understand, so let's start where they are.
Pauline Robson
Yep. Yeah.
Katie Treggiden
And then we'll talk about what circularity is. And, you know, there's also this sense that circular…
Katie Treggiden
I've heard the word circularity being criticized because it doesn't include regeneration. It does! The third tenet of the circular economy is regeneration, but there are people saying, oh, we don't want circular because that's just the same thing again and again, we need regeneration, and so these words are… I mean, I'm a writer, but words are so slippery, it's…
Pauline Robson
Yeah. Really tricky.
Katie Treggiden
And I think that definition of terms on your website is so powerful, to say when we use this word, this is what we mean.
Pauline Robson
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so you've got some precision behind it.
Katie Treggiden
Okay.
Pauline Robson
I think that's really important. So yeah, I think, you know, that's…
Pauline Robson
that's one of the great things about the Greenwash, anti-Greenwash Charter. That's… that's the kind of…
Pauline Robson
the first strand. The second piece is…
Pauline Robson
something called TrueMark, which are… it's the sort of certification piece for standalone pieces of comms, and, you know, so it reviews them against regulations, against your own commitments, and it's almost like a sort of…
Pauline Robson
a badge of quality, or a sort of quality mark to show that the comms can be trusted. So, again, I think that's, you know, really great to be able to show, you know, for an organization to have
Pauline Robson
confidence that they are communicating in a way that is truthful, and transparent, and… and authentic, but also for people who are looking at that comms to kind of go, okay, I can trust what this is… is saying.
Pauline Robson
So going back to your question about what the practice looks like rather than the principles, I think actually, you know, that's not a bad process and blueprint to start with. You know, kind of setting the policies, like, training is such an important piece of this, making sure that people within the organization feel…
Pauline Robson
confident, and they have the skills, and they feel empowered to sort of talk about this and make those decisions.
Pauline Robson
And I think… Like, Practice, really, is the key word, actually, because…
Pauline Robson
even before you start doing the communication, if you haven't been doing the practice of making that progress, like, you've got nothing to talk about. So,
Pauline Robson
You know, it's, it's kind of… having…
Pauline Robson
Having that progress in place to start off with,
Pauline Robson
is, yeah, is absolutely key. And let's face it, you know, progress over perfection, because perfection is not possible. So, yeah, it's kind of taking those steps and being really clear about
Pauline Robson
where you are making progress, but also, like, where you're not making progress as well. I think that's just as important, like.
Pauline Robson
we've talked a lot about, you know, there's no definitive answers, and I think for organizations, you know, that people are feeling their way into this, let's face it, because often you're stepping into something that is kind of completely new in terms of how you're doing things, so…
Pauline Robson
We're not gonna get it right all of the time, but being really…
Pauline Robson
upfront and clear about where, where, you know, where you are getting it right, and where… where perhaps you're not, and what you're learning from that is… is really, I think people are really kind of keen to… to hear about it,
Pauline Robson
Yeah.
Katie Treggiden
And I think there's something that I… used to saying that has just solidified something for me, which is we've spent a long time talking about this fact that until you're doing it, you shouldn't be talking about it and communicating progress over perfection. But I think there's something in the texture of the way you talk about something you've actually done.
Katie Treggiden
That is just so much more authentic and engaging and compelling than talking about something in theory or something you're going to do, which tends to be quite flat and quite two-dimensional.
Katie Treggiden
And so I think…
Katie Treggiden
Doing those things, practicing before you preach, and communicating progress over percept… communicating progress over perfection will automatically give your comms a texture and a nuance that they wouldn't have otherwise.
Katie Treggiden
And that will breed trust, which is really… I had never thought about it that before, so thank you. Thank you, Pauline, for that. Right, I have one last question before I hand over to Malin for the quickfire round.
Katie Treggiden
You've gone from setting up a volunteer green team inside an agency to making sustainability your full-time role, and now to stepping outside the industry entirely to study sustainability and behavior change. What do you now wish you'd known at the start of your journey?
Pauline Robson
Mmm… Gosh, lots and lots of things.
Pauline Robson
It's really weird to think back, because that journey started…
Pauline Robson
That kind of, shift started quite a long time ago, a number of years ago.
Pauline Robson
And I have learned a lot of things along the way. I've also, like, I've also had to unlearn a lot of things, and let go of a lot of things as well.
Pauline Robson
And I think…
Pauline Robson
had I known at the time that that would be okay, I might have let go of them a bit sooner. And I'm talking about things like, you know, I…
Pauline Robson
I left my job at the end of August, and I had to let go of, those kind of outward signifiers of success that used to be so important to me for such a long time, so it was, you know.
Pauline Robson
even thinking about the brands that I used to buy, and the amount of money that I used to spend on things like handbags and jeans and things like that, that just aren't interesting to me anymore. But then also things like letting go of my…
Pauline Robson
job title that I worked really hard to kind of get, you know, I worked really hard to get to this position for so many years, and then to step away from that, and letting go of my salary.
Pauline Robson
all of that felt really… I mean, it was a big deal, and…
Pauline Robson
I didn't quite realize, you know, I always assumed that I didn't have much of an ego until I had to get rid of my, you know, lose my job title, and I was like, oh my god, this feels like a big thing, so…
Pauline Robson
Yeah, and I think had I known that, actually, that it's fine, that's fine, it's all okay, I might have done that a bit sooner, and taken that… that… had the courage to step in to, you know, take that step and make that move a bit sooner.
Pauline Robson
I also really wish, and this isn't just kind of at the start of that journey, but I wish I'd had a better understanding of this many, many years ago. It's just a better understanding of systems and systems change, because it just feels so fundamental to…
Pauline Robson
everything that I'd been trying to do, and that I didn't really have
Pauline Robson
much grasp of. I still don't feel I have that much of a grasp of it, but I have a bit more of an understanding of it now, and I know that I've got a lot more to learn about it, and this is, you know, I'm still in the early stages of that learning journey, but I wish I'd
Pauline Robson
known about that sooner and learnt that sooner. And then…
Pauline Robson
The other thing is, just…
Pauline Robson
I wish I had understood that,
Pauline Robson
And I think this is connected to the systems thing, actually, that… that…
Pauline Robson
I didn't need to put so much responsibility onto my own shoulders, and I think this is very…
Pauline Robson
common amongst people working in sustainability, that you feel like you have to fix it all, that it's all down on you. It's, you know, it's down to you to, kind of, to solve this. And that can be a really lonely and stressful place.
Pauline Robson
And it's not true.
Pauline Robson
It's like that, it's impo… like, you can't do that, it's impossible. But sometimes it feels like when you're in it, and you're feeling the heaviness of it, it can be quite difficult. So, yeah.
Pauline Robson
And I think, actually, to counter that, like, finding… and I did learn this very early on, and I feel really lucky that I did, but finding a group of people who are on a similar journey to you, who can be in this with you, is so important, because that can help.
Pauline Robson
to kind of lift some of that, that kind of weight and that responsibility. So, yeah, they… they will be there. They will either be in your organization, or more broadly in the industry, or somewhere in your community, and seek them out and hold on to them, because, because those relationships are really, really important.
Malin
Yeah, well, that's great. It's interesting, because I just remember Early days,
Malin
and sort of being newer to this community, and feeling like… I couldn't quite understand why some people could still be happy.
Malin
You know, like, you know, because you just have this, like.
Malin
sense of doom, and, you know, when you start realizing the scale of the challenges that we're facing, and exactly that, you feel like that sense of responsibility, thinking, why… how can people just go about their normal lives, and they know all this? Yeah, but… Yeah, you know, why…
Pauline Robson
Yeah, and that's so important, and I… I sort of have…
Pauline Robson
started doing this sort of little practice every year, and I do it around about the time of the winter solstice, which is a kind of looking back on the year that's just gone and looking forward to the year that's coming in. And there's a really useful, great tool called the Year Compass that kind of gives you lots of questions, so it kind of…
Pauline Robson
gives you a bit of a structure for reflecting backwards and looking forwards. And…
Pauline Robson
it kind of asks you to come up with a word for the year ahead, and for the last couple of years, I've picked the word joy.
Pauline Robson
Because I think it's… it's so… you hit the nail on the head, Malin. It's so important to… to kind of bring that in, because
Pauline Robson
everything feels really dire when you look at all the challenges and the problems that are out there, and yet there's so much beauty and joy to be found in the world, and so, yeah, kind of seeking that out and making space for it is really, really important, so…
Katie Treggiden
I saw a beautiful quote, which I'm gonna butcher, so I will try and find it and put into the show notes, but, an activist during the AIDS crisis said something along the lines of, in the mornings, you know, we visited people in hospital and we cared for the people who were dying. In the afternoons, we went to protests, and in the evenings, we partied. And each three of those things was as important as the other.
Pauline Robson
Yeah.
Katie Treggiden
Because they just wouldn't have got through the mornings and the afternoons if they hadn't have been finding joy in the evenings. And I think in any…
Katie Treggiden
crisis in any activism, it's so important to find joy, and as you say, Pauline, community, finding the people who are in it with you. So yeah, I'll try and find that quote so that
Katie Treggiden
folks can read it a little bit more eloquently than I've just rendered it.
Pauline Robson
Yeah, no, absolutely. And Rebecca Solnit talks about it a lot as well. She talks about this idea that joy sustains activism, like.
Katie Treggiden
He began.
Pauline Robson
Because it's… it's so… it's hard, you know, unless you have something to lift your spirits and keep you going, it's… it's really difficult to sustain it, so we have to. We have to make time to seek those things out, yeah.
Malin
Great, right, are we ready for the quickfire round?
Malin
The first question, the first question is very apt.
Malin
So is hope, is it a cop-out or vital?
Pauline Robson
100% vital, like, yeah, I mean, otherwise…
Pauline Robson
what, like, what sustains you, what keeps you going, if you don't have hope?
Malin
Yeah.
Pauline Robson
And, you know, I think I… I'm thinking about hope, like, not in a kind of, oh, let's cross our fingers and hope for the best kind of hope, but in the sort of Joanna Macy sense of active hope, of hope as a practice, you know, kind of…
Pauline Robson
You know, stepping into something, and…
Pauline Robson
You know, taking action, because you want to change things, and you feel that you have
Pauline Robson
some hope to do that is really important.
Pauline Robson
So, yeah, I… you know, it's,
Pauline Robson
It's very easy, like, we've talked about joy, it's very easy to fall into despair and despondency,
Pauline Robson
And, you know, and, you know, I wallow in it sometimes, because also it's really important to recognize that those feelings do exist, and you have to acknowledge them and honor them, and phase into them. I think it's a bit weird to just kind of pretend they're not happening, but…
Pauline Robson
Yeah, but, you know, it's kind of…
Pauline Robson
take time to feel those feelings, but also we need to move beyond them as well, so…
Pauline Robson
So yeah, seeking out the joy, seeking out the positives is really important as well. There's lots of…
Pauline Robson
Great… lots of amazing people doing brilliant things, and lots of, you know, really exciting projects out there, and people trying…
Pauline Robson
new ways, better ways of doing things, different ways of living, all over the place, across the country, across the globe. So, yeah, seeking out some of that positivity is really important. Positive news is a really brilliant source for that. It kind of…
Pauline Robson
it's not just sustainability, they sort of pull together, like, positive stories from all over the place, so if you're feeling the kind of…
Pauline Robson
The overwhelm of the news agenda, definitely seek that out, because.
Katie Treggiden
Yeah.
Pauline Robson
Yeah.
Malin
Yeah.
Katie Treggiden
link in the show notes.
Pauline Robson
Great, yeah, it's a great.
Malin
Yeah, I subscribe to it, actually. It's just… just what you need. Oh, totally, yeah. It's a dose of positivity. Absolutely.
Pauline Robson
Yep.
Malin
And what are you reading at the moment?
Pauline Robson
Gosh, I… yeah, because I'm doing this course, I spend, a lot of my days reading
Pauline Robson
Lots of scientific papers, so…
Malin
No, I said…
Pauline Robson
My, yeah, my… the amount of time that I have for reading for pleasure has kind of fallen off quite a lot, because there's only so many words that I can absorb in a day, so,
Pauline Robson
But I'm kind of, yeah, I'm turning to fiction a lot more than I otherwise might have done, and at the moment, I am reading, There Are Rivers in the Sky by Ellie.
Malin
Oh, wow, yes.
Katie Treggiden
Wait.
Pauline Robson
It is amazing, absolutely, yeah, it's such a beautiful book.
Malin
You're the third person in a week to recommend.
Pauline Robson
Standard, too.
Malin
I read two of her other books, but haven't read that one, so it's definitely going now.
Pauline Robson
Yeah, I've not read any of her work before this one, but, yeah, it's beautifully written. Yeah, it's, there's a really, like, lovely water theme running through it, as you'd imagine from the title. There's also a lot of,
Pauline Robson
is kind of central to the plot is ancient Mesopotamia, which is not a civilization that I know much about, so I'm learning lots about that. So yeah, and there's lots of, you know, themes about
Pauline Robson
connection and identity and loss, and yeah, it's a great read. Don't really recommend it.
Malin
Wow, great. Again, we'll put a link in the show notes for that. And can you give us an example of some great sustainability comms that you've seen lately?
Pauline Robson
Do you know what? I had to seek out some examples, because I've not really seen… maybe going back to that green hushing thing, there's not a lot that's kind of…
Pauline Robson
coming into my feeds, or that I'm seeing, sort of, organically out there in the world. But I… I love Tony's Chocolonly, and, you know, I love their chocolate, love their communications, and I…
Pauline Robson
A few days ago, I dived into their impact report, and.
Malin
Hell yeah.
Pauline Robson
I think it's great. It's, it's, like, it's really on brand. They… obviously, they have a very, clear mission, and a very serious mission, but I think the way they talk about it with…
Pauline Robson
With a bit of a reverence, and a bit of humor, and in a way that is very accessible, and in a way that's very human.
Pauline Robson
it's just a brilliant piece of communication. It's very accessible, you don't have to be a…
Pauline Robson
you know, expert in sustainability or in social impact to kind of understand it. It's really clear, but it's also undeniably, you know, Tony's. So I think, yeah, I think that's a great example.
Malin
Yeah, love Tony. And, Casey, the same question to you. What have you come across recently?
Katie Treggiden
So this is not a new example, but new to me. There is an outdoor furniture company called Vestra, who are incredibly sustainable, and in June
Katie Treggiden
2022, they opened what at the time was described as the world's most environmentally friendly furniture factory. That's not the bit I think is interesting, that's brilliant, but from a comms point of view, one of the things that is certainly in my credible comms framework, which we've had a whole podcast episode
Katie Treggiden
on, and I know Malin talks about a lot as well, is transparency.
Katie Treggiden
And this factory is literally transparent. So, they've built it in the middle of the woods. It's shaped like a plus symbol, so there's a circle in the middle, and then there's a color factory, a wood factory, an assembly area, and a warehouse area. The bit in the middle, the circle in the middle, is the visitor center.
Katie Treggiden
It's a tourist attraction, people go and visit it.
Malin
Wow.
Katie Treggiden
The factory roof is covered in natural forest vegetation, which the hiking paths go over, so the roof of the factory is open 24-7.
Katie Treggiden
But there are windows everywhere. There is no part of the factory that can't be seen from outside, so visitors can walk up ramps and peer in whenever they want to. There are no fences, no borders, no confidential premises.
Katie Treggiden
they described the factory as a tribute to Right to Rome, and their goals at the outset was to build one of the world's most open and transparent factories. And I just think, you know, we talk about transparency.
Malin
Wow.
Katie Treggiden
metaphorically, but they have… they've created a literally transparent factory, and I just think… I mean, they're a brilliant, brilliant company doing incredible things, but I just thought that was a really interesting example of supply chain transparency.
Pauline Robson
I love that, I want to go, sounds great.
Malin
Where is it? Where are they?
Katie Treggiden
They are in Norway.
Malin
Right, our thought was coming in, yes, amazing.
Katie Treggiden
I think. I'm just gonna double check that. Yes, they are annoying.
Malin
Yeah.
Katie Treggiden
In the woods, so…
Malin
That is so cool, right? I'm definitely checking that out. I've not come across that. Then back to you, Pauline, then. So, favorite podcast?
Pauline Robson
Mmm, apart from this one…
Malin
Oh, yeah.
Pauline Robson
So, can I sneak in two?
Malin
You can't.
Pauline Robson
So, the first one is, Accidental Gods. I don't know if you've come across that.
Pauline Robson
mandoscope.
Malin
Yes.
Pauline Robson
brilliant, which I… yeah, I mean, she has some amazing guests and really, kind of, extraordinary, deep conversations, but I love the whole, sort of, throotopian positioning that she has on that, which is, you know, she talks to people who have
Pauline Robson
the ideas and a kind of path forward for helping us navigate the kind of crisis that we're in. And in full recognition that the future we are stepping into is, you know, we've left it too late to kind of avoid some of the really terrible impacts of climate change, so it's not going to be this kind of
Pauline Robson
utopian, kind of bright, rosy future that we have to kind of recognize that that is the reality that we're facing into, but there are ways that we can
Pauline Robson
kind of… make that… make it better. And so, yeah, I think…
Pauline Robson
her, kind of, whole positioning around that, you know, it's not a dystopia, it's not a utopia, it's kind of something in the middle, and we need to find a way through it, is really, compelling. And then we've talked a lot about, kind of, hope and positivity and joy, but the second one that I want to…
Pauline Robson
Recommend is, screw this, let's try something else.
Malin
Oh my god.
Katie Treggiden
I mean, for the title alone.
Malin
Yay!
Pauline Robson
It's absolutely brilliant, and it is just… it's…
Pauline Robson
It's a real, sort of, it's a masterclass in, kind of, positive storytelling, so each episode takes an example of,
Pauline Robson
a sort of community that has created really positive change. And yeah, it sort of tells the story of the individuals that have made that happen, and how it came about. It's really uplifting, it's inspiring, but it's also kind of… it's told in a way that feels very accessible, and in a way that…
Pauline Robson
makes it feel that that kind of change is achievable. So it's… it's the kind of listen that you… you come away with it and you can't help but feel hopeful after you've listened to it. It's, yeah, it's a really well, kind of.
Pauline Robson
Put-together piece of storytelling, so definitely recommend that one, too.
Malin
Oh, wow, I shall be sampling that on my 2-hour journey home today.
Pauline Robson
Oh, there you go.
Malin
I've been fitting in a lot of podcasts. Right then, and finally, to wrap up, what is your top tip for communicating imperfect progress towards genuine sustainability with confidence?
Pauline Robson
So, as we've talked about the anti-greenwash charter, I can't… I can't not put in a plug for them here, so check them out. Yes, of course. But, yeah, you know, I think probably this comes up a lot, but transparency and honesty is… is absolutely key. So this is… this is a really complex space, and no one's getting it right 100% of the time, so I think the key thing is…
Pauline Robson
To own your wins, but also own your mistakes as well, and show how you're learning from them, and if you can do that in a way that is kind of,
Pauline Robson
yeah, it's authentic and… and honest, and I think you'll be a lot of the way there.
Malin
Amazing. Thank you so much.
Katie Treggiden
Thank you, Pauline.
Pauline Robson
Thank you.
Katie Treggiden
We have been Katie Treggiden and Malin Cunningham, and this has been Spill the Green Tea. Please leave us a review and share this episode with anyone you think might find it helpful. And let's get people talking about this stuff.
Malin Cunningham
Thank you my co-host, author, journalist and consultant, Katie Tregidden. Katie is on a mission to share true stories of imperfect progress towards genuine sustainability, and to help purpose-driven brands talk about their eco-efforts for clarity, credibility and confidence. Katie has a brilliant resource called Green, Not Greenwashed, that will help you do just that.
You can find a link in the show notes.
Katie Treggiden
And thank you to my co-host, Malin Cunningham is the founder of B2B comms consultancy, Hattrick. They help businesses build commercial credibility and a competitive edge through standout PR, thought leadership and carbon literacy training. And Malin has a fantastic guide for sales and marketing professionals called Green or Greenwashed?
Great minds think alike, what can I say? And you can find a link to that in the show notes too.
Malin Cunningham
And a final thank you to all our brilliant guests and to Kirsty Spain for editing and producing this and every episode.
